KevinD

It can be done. Granted, it requires an extremely high degree of maturity and psychological development — to say nothing of intensely passionate regard for one's partner. That the average person living in our culture today could not even imagine this state, let alone attain it, should not in any way affect your view of what is possible between conscientious human beings in the realm of love.

[Moderators: I'd like to request that the previous post (#17), as well as this one, be reinstated as its own thread.] I absolutely sympathize with your fiancee. You had no right to "poke holes" in something which is important to her. Is this your idea of romantic love? I'm underwhelmed by your conviction. What are you apologizing for? After all, wasn't she the one exhibiting "stupidity and illogicality" (to use your words)? Wow — you go, guy! Get in there and attack those arguments! Ignite the debate! (Sheesh . . . and you two aren't even married yet.) She is ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. BINGO. RIGHT ON THE MONEY. JUST like last night. Carbon copy, right down to the last detail. A+ in perceptiveness and locution on her part. Your "Child"? Please. At the rate you're going, you'll be lucky if she pencils you in for a dinner date in two weeks. Let me give you a piece of advice: Your fiancee doesn't give a whit about any of your brilliant "arguments," or the most logically-founded of your conclusions — so long as you're acting in a manner which is anything less than 100% accepting, supportive and caring toward her. The moment you start talking down to her, like a pupil or a child, telling her in effect that she's wrong and that she needs to be rehabilitated in some way by you — that's the moment she loses all interest in whatever you have to say, and her romantic feelings for you start heading straight toward the toilet. There is no "right" or "wrong" in a romantic relationship. Either both of you are right, and each of you ACCEPTS the other fully, or the whole relationship is wrong, and you're both in for a bucketful of pain. This is why you must never, never, NEVER pick a fight with the one you love — and this is triply true if you are a man, and the person you love happens to be a woman. Fighting, bickering, arguing, debating — all of these are entirely counter-productive, and are anti-romance to the core. If you find that you simply cannot discuss your differences in a mature and non-combative way; if reaching mutually agreeable solutions on important issues is just not possible with a given person, then perhaps you shouldn't be with him or her, or maybe even with anyone at this particular point in your life. All I can say for sure is that the two of you had better get your issues straightened out well BEFORE you walk down the aisle — and for god's sake, don't even DREAM of having children together if you're not both seriously on the same page about how you should raise them. As for what you should do now — hopefully this post has made you feel pretty bad and stupid, and that's exactly what it's intended to do. Use your self-loathing to propel you out to the grocery store to buy a nice bouquet of flowers for her, then high-tail it over to where she lives, at which time you will sit with her and ask her to explain at length all of the ways in which she feels that you have let her down. (Plan on this taking a while.) DO NOT under any circumstances allow the conversation to erupt into another argument; steadfastly refuse to "get into it" with her in any way, no matter how angry or abusive she becomes toward you. Lend her your most sympathetic ear, DO NOT interrupt, just let her talk on and on, and on and on . . . and on. When she stops or says she's finished, ask her to keep talking and tell you more. Listen with your entire body — your whole being. SEE her as she speaks to you; look especially at her eyes. Try to FEEL everything she says to you on the deepest level that you can. She is telling you things of the most profound importance; things which relate to your entire future together. Treat this experience as the most solemn and significant of your life. When she's all done — and I mean ALL DONE — telling you how revoltingly horrible a human being you are, and how terribly disappointed she is in you, an amazing thing might happen: she may actually start to feel better toward you. Then and ONLY THEN should you tell her that you're sorry for what you've done, and how badly you feel about it. (If you apologize too quickly, you'll sound like you're trying to get it over with, which will likely only upset her more.) Here's the real lesson I suspect you need to learn, along with countless other men who may be reading this: Women don't care about you, until they feel seen, heard, accepted and understood by you. Try what I suggest; you just might be surprised at the results.

No more so than any other act of being a parent involves the use of force. Young children cannot decide for themselves where they will live, what they will eat, which school they will attend, etc. These decisions must be left up to their legally responsible guardians. The government has the right to intervene only in cases of actual (i.e., physical) brutality or neglect. It cannot decree which ideas parents may or may not impart to their children. To argue otherwise is to advocate intellectual dictatorship.

The government has no right to interfere in the realm of ideas.

I'm putting together an OPAR study group in the Los Angeles area. (For the newbies, that's the book Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff.) We'll meet once a week, most likely on Saturdays or Sundays in Hollywood. If you're interested in being a part of it, please email me at [email protected]

Jennifer Snow is definitely one of my favorite people to read on this forum! It's always a treat to see a new message posted by JMeganSnow. Happy Birthday, Jennifer! Have a GREAT one.

I disagree. I would say the primary value one seeks from romantic love is a sense of psychological visibility — followed closely by companionship, and the experience of sexual enjoyment. "Intimacy" is too high-level a concept to be meaningful, apart from these other more essential factors. I'm a little bit baffled by your use of the word "proper" in this context. Initially it seems as though you're saying that if the conditions you describe do not exist, then properly speaking — that is to say, by definition — one does not possess a monogamous relationship. But then you begin talking about what you call an "improper relationship," which clearly implies a (negative) moral evaluation. Can you explain how you apparently went from one meaning of the term to the other?

To the extent that the term is meaningful, I would define "greed" an irrationally excessive desire, one which entails or leads to harmful consequences. You could say that the farmer in the fable about the goose that laid the golden eggs "got greedy" — that is, he wanted more, and tried to obtain more, than he could legitimately lay claim to in reality. In doing so, he destroyed the very thing which would have (eventually) made him rich. There's clearly a package-deal involved in the way most people think about and use the term.

So how do we go from that, to his present opinion that visiting strip clubs is OK? Is this a purely theoretical argument you're having, or are you feeling hurt because you believe he wasn't honest with you? Is he actually visiting such clubs, or expressing that he would like to?

Wow — 23 virtues! I only have 19. I'm impressed. If that's not being excessively honest, I'd hate to hear to hear the impolite version. Why do you want him so badly? You say that he has told you he loves you. Do you believe he's telling you the truth?

Forget Objectivism or armchair psychoanalysis for a moment. How are your boyfriend's actions affecting YOU? Does this describe your present emotional attitude toward him and the relationship?

I'll be teaching an introductory-level voiceover class — "Voiceover for Virgins" — in Los Angeles on Saturdays, July 8 - 29. We'll cover all the basics of commercial and animation v.o., working in a real recording studio. No experience necessary! For more info, visit my website: www.captain-transistor.com

A month ago, I posted this response to a pro-freegan blog entry:

Here_to_Confess, you claim to understand the difference between religious morality and Objectivist morality. I'm not at all sure that you do. You've said a number of things which imply that although you no doubt reject religious morality in content, you seem to, at least to some extent, accept it in form. Particularly troubling is the statement you made at the start of this discussion, about your having committed "sins" against Objectivism, much as a Christian would speak of having sinned against God. As IAmMetaphysical pointed out, you can't "sin" against a secular philosophy: Objectivism provides you with a comprehensive worldview, including a code of moral values (i.e., principles) to guide your choices and actions, with the purpose of helping you to live successfully and achieve happiness. You speak too much as if you were the servant of Objectivism, not the other way around. If that's the case, then it's not at all surprising that you're now looking to Objectivists to pronounce a judgment upon your life and moral worth in general: To continue to behave irrationally — i.e., to know full well that a given course of action is wrong, yet you still choose to undertake it — is absolutely, unequivocally immoral. But does taking such action, however egregious, make you "fundamentally" immoral? I can't even begin to imagine what that would mean in an Objectivist context, even given your definition. But in Christian terms, it sounds an awful lot like the doctrine of Original Sin. I have to wonder if that's what you're really after here. Would you secretly like for someone will tell you that you are indeed beyond hope and redemption — that you are so depraved, on so deep a level, that you cannot possibly improve and thus will never enjoy grace (i.e., achieve self-esteem and happiness) — so what's the use in trying? Do you seek a kind of twisted sanction from us, one which will in effect permit you to continue to act destructively, since such is in your foul nature anyway? Or perhaps you're hoping that you'll be told, after all of this fanfare and buildup, that your "sins" are in fact, mere minor transgressions — that you're making much too big a deal about them, and that you can rest assured knowing that you can still get into Heaven in spite of your (continuing) petty evils. Is that the kind of sanction you seek from us? Objectivism rejects Original Sin, and the notion of "sin" in general, and any concept of right and wrong which places it outside of the volitional control of the individual. You're not damned by virtue of having been born human, and you're not morally disfigured today merely because a less mature and responsible version of you chose to undertake a wrong course of action yesterday. A person's moral worth is determined by him; by what he does, not necessarily by what he's done. Your past is your past; it's a fact, and like all facts it must be accepted and dealt with to the very best of your ability. Just as it would be dishonest to sweep past events under the rug and pretend that they never happened, so it's doubly dishonest to wallow in your feelings of guilt over bad decisions made in the past, while using such feelings as an excuse to continue behaving badly in the present.

There's no issue of "deserving" it. The term music is a designation, not a complement. Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's value judgments. That's a valid, objective definition of the field; it tells you what the thing is, not how good or bad it is. Music is a sub-category of art; it's the branch which re-creates reality by employing the sounds produced by the periodic vibrations of a sonorous body, and evokes man's sense-of-life emotions. (See "Art and Cognition" in AR's book The Romantic Manifesto.) Be careful not to mix apples with oranges: A work of art has to be judged on its own merits, not relative to anything else. For this reason, you can't really compare pop with classical music; they're two different categories, and one cannot be assessed by the standards of the other. (It's also why the two have rarely, if ever, been successfully combined.) Lots of people will dismiss a work of art as invalid or illegitimate, merely because it doesn't jibe with their personal tastes, or lofty (often pretentious) views on what a work "should" consist of. There's a word for people like this: snobs.

The key words in Rand's quote are on the physical level. (In fact, in the original essay, "physical" is italicized.) Miss Rand is emphatically not advising that we take our cues about how to live from plants and animals. Her point is that LIFE, biologically speaking, is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. It's this fact — about man — which forms the base of the Objectivist ethics.

There is no such thing as "validat[ing] the use of alcohol as either good or evil," for the same reason that there's no such thing as establishing whether the use of physical force is good or evil. One could conceivably consume alcohol for moral or immoral reasons — just as one could use a firearm to commit a robbery, or to defend one's life against an attacker. When evaluating human behavior, one must always look to why a particular person chose to perform a particular action, at some particular moment in time. Was the person acting in a manner consistent with his life and well-being — or in blind disregard of it? Do his actions make sense, given the circumstances under which he was acting? Did he know what he was doing? Did he seek to understand the meaning and consequences of his actions? (And if not, does he have a policy of thinking and seeking to understand generally?) Morality is always a matter of basic principles and context, not concrete-bound rules or commandments. Granted, it's hard to imagine any legitimate reason for a person ever wanting to become "wasted." But just because a certain action is almost always immoral, it doesn't mean that a smaller degree of that same action is also wrong, albeit to a lesser extent. (Freshly-squeezed orange juice, generally speaking, is extremely nutritious and life-serving. Trying to chug down a gallon of it in one sitting, though, could kill you.) To put it another way: We do live in a world of absolutes — but not intrinsic moral values.

That doesn't sound right to me. I can think of many situations in which it's perfectly acceptable, even necessary, to be guided by one's feelings, with much less than full knowledge of why one feels a certain way. Should I order the broccoli soup for lunch, or the minestrone? As long as I don't have some terrible food allergy, or the restaurant is burning down around me, I'm on quite safe ground selecting either, aware of nothing more than that I happen to prefer one variety of soup over the other at this moment in time. If I see an attractive lady across the room, assuming that I'm single and looking for love, why shouldn't I go over and talk to her, motivated solely by my positive emotional reaction? Do I really need to know, in clear and conceptual terms, exactly why I like her, in order to ask her out on a date? Can't the introspection wait until later? Can't I just say, "She seems like a lovely person," and move myself in her direction before she gets away? How could one operate at all in the field of romantic love without a high degree of spontaneity — without a great deal of trust in one's emotions, and the sense of freedom to act on them — i.e., without the inner security that one's feeling responses do in fact represent pro-life values and value-judgments, and are unlikely to lead one to destruction? Far too many Objectivists seem think that emotions are to be treated as guilty, or at least suspect, until proven appropriate. To a certain extent, of course, this is true: in principle, emotions are not tools of cognition, and are not reliable guides to action. But it's a gross non-sequitur to conclude therefore that every emotion one experiences must be analyzed and understood before one can act on it — or worse, that emotions never play any role at all in a rational person's decision-making process, especially in his most important decisions, such as what city to live in, which career to pursue, or whom he should marry. One's life and actions must be guided, overall, by reason. But living rationally absolutely entails an awareness of the meaning of one's emotional responses in general, and the ability to act on one's feelings to the extent that such is appropriate, given the context. If I know in reason, for instance, that I cannot make a wrong choice — if I know that either the broccoli or the minestrone soup would make a fine selection for lunch — then I'm free to let my feelings be my guide. If I have no reason to believe that dire consequences will befall me by talking to a particular girl that I see, I don't particularly need to know why I'm attracted to her in order to say hello and find out more about her. And it would be the height of absurdity — of irrationality — to attempt to progress in a romantic relationship without any reference to or respect for my emotional responses, and to try to base my every romantic decision on sheer intellectual appraisal and calculation. As bizarre as this last may sound, you can read posts on these very boards advocating almost exactly this policy. Of course, nobody could actually practice such lunacy, at least not consistently (or successfully). But to the extent that a person accepts a dichotomy of this kind, you can be sure that he'll experience a lot of guilt, bitterness and frustration — and he'll most likely wind up blaming Ayn Rand and that damned repressive Objectivism for it all.

Thank you, D'kian. I stand semi-corrected.

You might want to check the quote which you currently have in your signature, attributed to AR. ("When I die, I hope I got [sic] to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.") In addition to the misspelling, I doubt very much that Miss Rand ever wrote or said that.

That's not true. A person could be imprisoned in a slave labor camp, or dying of an excruciatingly painful disease, or experiencing any number of other terribly tragic situations, under which it would be naive and foolish to say that such a person is, or could be, in any meaningful sense, "happy." Happiness is the result, not merely of holding the right values, but of actually attaining them. Certainly a rational moral code forms the essential foundation for a happy life — and under normal circumstances, if a person adopts such values and works hard to attain them, given enough time he almost always will succeed, and happiness will be his emotional reward. But don't fall into the trap of thinking that anything is ever automatic or guaranteed in life, even to the most rational and conscientious among us. Life entails a process of struggle, effort — and always, the possibility of failure. Anyone who thinks otherwise, or who opts to ignore this fact, is bound to become very frustrated, and very unhappy indeed.

Remember that when we talk about a standard of value, we're talking about a standard of moral value — a standard by which to judge right or wrong, good and bad. To hold your happiness as your moral standard leaves open the question: What specifically makes you happy? Since happiness is the emotional result of achieving your values, in effect all this is saying is that you should value that which you value. Man's life is the only valid and objective standard of morality. But don't take the concept of "life" too narrowly: Man has to live, not only in the biological sense, but he has to live as man; if he is to achieve long-range happiness, he has to live a life appropriate to a rational being. His happiness is properly the purpose of his life, but in order to attain that, man needs life-serving moral values.

I'll be teaching a six-week Saturday voiceover workshop with the San Francisco Comedy College, February 18 - March 25. (I'll be commuting from L.A. to SF every week.) This is a introductory-level course with an emphasis on humor and comedy. For more info, email me: Kevin (at) Captain-Transistor.com My website: www.captain-transistor.com

First off, DrBaltar, thank you for sharing your very difficult situation. I hope your post is widely read. Far too many young people today are truly clueless about marriage; they have no idea how serious a matter is it, and what very serious consequences can follow if it doesn't work out. Forget about trying to figure out what "an Objectivist" would do. There are no hypothetical people here; this is about you, your situation, and the choice you're going to have to make (and live with). Objectivism has nothing to say about anyone's specific problems or decisions; a philosophy can offer you ethical principles, and others can share ideas and advice, but ultimately you're always responsible for making your own choices and living your own life. How can you be devoted to reason, but only under certain circumstances? What mental method do you employ in the exceptions? Blind faith? Intuition? ESP? But more importantly: How does being an Objectivist in any way preclude loving your kids and wanting the best for them? I think you may be laboring under some very bad misconceptions about what it means to be rational. While I can't go into long explanations (you might want to re-read The Virtue of Selfishness), suffice it to say that a parent's self-interest, and his children's best interests, are not only not in conflict, they're one in the same. If you begin with the notion "It's either my life and happiness, or my children's lives and happiness — either I suffer for them, or they're going to suffer for me," I guarantee that everybody is going to end up suffering in the long run. If that's your only hope for "immortality," then immortality is a lost cause. People are independent entities, not extensions of their parents. Everyone no doubt carries much of their family's genetic material and physical characteristics (big deal), and certainly we've all been been influenced and affected by our parents in a thousand ways, large and small. But ultimately, we are who we are by choice, and that's what really matters. I can promise you, though, if you turn yourself into a sacrificial zombie for the "benefit" of your children — or worse, your kids get the feeling that, in your eyes, they are pawns who exist to carry on your legacy and live up to your expectations — they'll most likely resent it, and you, for the rest of their lives. That's a kind of immortality, I suppose, though probably not what you had in mind. You seem very bitter toward your wife. From what you've written, I get the impression that you're in a truly loveless marriage. You don't respect her. Maybe you have good reason not to — I don't know. You certainly haven't said anything at all positive about her here. You imply that if there were no children involved, you would have parted ways a long time ago. I have no idea if your marriage can be "saved." I do know, however, for an absolute fact, that marriage is first and foremost a romantic relationship; without a shared feeling of romantic love at its base, it's meaningless to talk about working to try to improve it. I also know that you have a right to be happy, and that your happiness is by far the greatest gift that you could give to those you care about. No matter what choice you make, you're going to have some very challenging times ahead of you.

Why would you feel the need to be "generous"? Are you saying now that he shouldn't do the things you suggested? As a general piece of advice, don't ever ask someone why they've rejected you. It's uncomfortable enough for a woman to have to turn a man down — now you want to come back and demand an explanation? The only "asking" you get to do is when you ask for the date. She'll either accept your offer, or not. If not, that's all you're entitled to. Any reasons or explanations you should receive are not likely to be the truth, or at least not the whole truth. Be a man, accept her rejection gracefully, and move on. [EDIT: I keep trying to post my last two messages separately, but the system keeps sticking them together as one! Can a moderator fix this? Thanks.]