KevinD

I wrote a short story a few years ago, in which a character theorizes that most people are afraid of death precisely because of its certainty. "It seems wrong — inappropriate," she says, "much too dramatic and important a thing to come at the end a life filled with indirection, indecision and sloth."

I find this extremely alarming. What right does anyone have to indoctrinate your child about religious beliefs that you object to? I would not take this lightly. I can promise you, if any adult ever told a seven year-old child of mine that "God exists," that would be the last association my child (or I) would ever have with that person again.

First off, let me say that I don't have children myself, and at least at this stage of my life I'm not certain that I ever intend to. Therefore, please approach the following comments with an appropriate degree of skepticism and caution: My views on raising children are extremely simple, and can be summed up in a single sentence: Treat your children with respect. If a child grows up in a home which is rational, conducive to inquiry, and which overall radiates a sense of happiness, benevolence and goodwill — if a child is raised in an environment where he feels that he is respected, where the modus operandi of day-to-day life is to treat oneself and others with dignity and honor — it's virtually certain that this individual is going to grow up with a healthy, nearly-innate sense of right and wrong — and will likely commit very few wrongs, since "right" feels much too natural and normal to him. Or to put it another way: People who enjoy a high degree of self-confidence and self-respect — i.e., people who take pleasure in the efficacy of their mind, who are in love with life and the pursuit of rational values — typically don't go around clubbing others and taking things from them by force. This is just as true of someone who is five years old, as someone who is fifty-five. It's usually fruitless, and even counterproductive, to punish a child for being unfair, or hurtful, or exploitative, or insensitive — if the lessons he's learning on a daily basis contradict what he's hearing in that moment in the form of a scolding or reproach. The best one could hope to accomplish with this method is to instill a kind of fear-based, authoritarian sense of morality — not to mention a feeling that the world is uncertain, unknowable, and contradictory, and that ethical principles are commandments or rules to be accepted and obeyed, but not deeply understood. In my work on romantic love, I'm continually struck by the degree to which people tend to accept as normal what they observed and experienced in their family life growing up. For example, I have talked with a great number of people who accept, virtually as an axiom, that fighting, bickering, arguing, and sometimes even hitting or other forms of physical abuse, are valid and normal aspects of a love relationship. And more: In their mind, to accept these atrocities as normal, is itself seen as "normal." (Not surprisingly, this kind of person always manages to find himself in exactly the kind of relationship which matches his concept of the way things, in this respect, "just are.") Mind you, this kind of person doesn't necessarily enjoy being hurt, and he usually doesn't consciously seek out painful or abusive relationships. On the contrary, this kind of person will often be the first to tell you how awful, undesirable, and even unbearable such a situation is. What's missing, though, is any serious sense of indignance — the kind of incredulity and repulsion that one would expect to hear from someone who truly understands the inappropriateness of this kind of situation, and would never accept this kind of torture in his life — the firm sense that things don't have to be this way; that hatred and hostility (among professed loved ones) is not normal, unnatural, and entirely un-inevitable. And invariably — and I mean without fail — when you ask this kind of person to describe the home environment that he or she grew up in, you get a story which is virtually identical to the hell they're currently going through. All of the lessons — about how to treat others, about what one should expect of (and for) oneself, about the nature, meaning and value of life — all were learned and internalized at a very early age, then reinforced again and again and again, in a thousand wordless ways, throughout their childhood and adolescence. I'm emphatically not saying that people are the pawns of their parents, or the helpless victims of their upbringing; I'm saying that parents can make it immeasurably easier or harder for children to grow up to be healthy, functioning adults by simply providing them with a rational, intelligible environment in which to live their lives. Parents often forget the degree to which, especially for very young children, the home is the world: They tend to underestimate the power of what's learned, not via lectures and lessons, but continuously, every day, by observation and osmosis. The most basic thing I could say to a parent who wanted to create this kind of home environment, and instill in a child a strong sense of personal values, is: Teach by example. If you want to give another person anything in the spiritual realm (as well as in the material), it's immeasurably advantageous for you first to possess it yourself. Again, be acutely aware that for the developing child, everything is taken in; everything is taken seriously, and often taken extremely literally. Always ensure that, in the person of you (and your spouse, if you have one), the child has good things to see, to observe and to emulate. Be particularly concerned to show the child what it means to have a real enthusiasm for facts and for learning; for understanding, for question-asking and answer-seeking. Do not ever, under any circumstances, say to a child: "It's true because I say so," or tell him that he asks too many questions, or make him feel in any way that his mind is not capable of understanding certain aspects of life and the universe — and never will be. It's very hard to manufacture or fake these traits of character, and kids are about the best insincerity-detectors on the face of the planet. There's no getting around the fact that if an individual hasn't yet developed these qualities and virtues in himself, then he is NOT yet ready to have children. Regarding the question of Santa Claus: As a general principle, I don't think it's ever a good idea, nor is it ever necessary, to lie to children. I don't see anything wrong with treating Santa Claus (to the extent that one deals with him at all) in exactly the same way that one would treat any other fictional character: as a symbol and an idea, but not an actual living person. I don't see what's so terrible about a child knowing from the very beginning that the presents he enjoys come from his parents — something he's bound to find out eventually anyway, often with a great deal of resentment and hurt when he discovers that his limited understanding has been taken advantage of by the very people who are supposed to be guiding him in life. I wouldn't worry too much about a child losing his friends, or being ostracized by other parents, just because he happens to know the truth about Santa's state of existence. (Now, if you want to talk about a backlash because you're raising your kids without a belief in God, then you might begin to have a point.) In terms of the child's own dealings with Santa-believing playmates, I think an important part of instilling in a person a strong sense of respect for others is to convey the understanding that others often hold different views, ideas and beliefs — and that one has to respect these too, at least insofar as one respects the individuals who hold them. A person may be very much mistaken about an issue, but that doesn't give another the right to become a bully toward him. It means communicating to a child the awareness that other people have the right to be different from him, and even the right to be wrong — and that a rational person's primary focus is always on his own thoughts, goals and life, not what others think and believe.

While I understand that all Sci-Fi involves some degree of stretching credulity (which is part of the reason I don't care for it), you can't just ignore or discard facts whenever they happen not to fit your purpose. You say that this robot "has been built possessing the equivalent of a human mind." Well, which is it? Does it have a mind or doesn't it? Is it an actual reasoning consciousness — with everything that implies — or is it an unconscious, programmed machine? You can't have it both ways. Yet that's just what you, along with many other proponents of Artificial Intelligence, are trying to do. "Mind," remember, denotes a particular kind of awareness. Leaving aside the fact that consciousness is, almost by definition, an attribute of a living entity, one cannot speak intelligently about a thing possessing the capacity to reason while at the same time being a mechanical invention — i.e., a thing capable only of carrying out what its creator has deemed it able to do (i.e., a robot). This would absolutely include any intuitive or learning features the programmer has built in to the design; the robot could become highly "intelligent" (in the truly artificial sense of that term) but it could never be truly be aware; it could never initiate a process of thinking on its own; it would never face the basic choice to focus, or not to bother — to think or not to think — the primary volitional act which characterizes and defines an actual conceptual consciousness. The basic error at the root of the more outlandish AI projections is the notion that a rational faculty is some isolated phenomenon which can be manufactured and "installed" into a device, such as a computer or robot, at will. Consciousness, like everything else that exists, has a specific identity, and it entails and necessitates a great many things. In the case of a conceptual consciousness, the complexity of the surrounding factors and implications mushrooms exponentially. For example: If you want to propose a robot which has a rational faculty, will it then be able to experience emotions? (According to you, it will not.) Does your robot have sense organs — is it able literally to see, to hear, to apprehend the facts of reality in a firsthand way, and to identify and integrate this information via an equally firsthand process of thought? Is it able to introspect — to understand itself — to examine its own needs and desires, and to select its own goals — goals which emphatically are independent of any programming, or the will or desire or design of anyone else? Is the robot truly, in every conceivable way, an end in itself? Or is it, once again, a manufactured object — built, designed, programmed and executed, ultimately and fundamentally, as a tool to serve the needs and purposes of others? I almost don't want to end that last sentence with a question mark, the answer is much too glaringly obvious. The funny thing is, you could write a story about an AI, and effectively demonstrate the meaning of mind and the importance of rights, only it would have to be exactly the opposite of what you're attempting. You'd have to show how it is not possible for a mechanical thing to reason, and why such a thing would therefore be exempt from all moral and social issues. You'd have to show your inventor failing, not succeeding, at the task you're proposing to dramatize. By implication, you'd be demonstrating why the concepts of mind and morality apply only to living, conscious human beings. As a side note: The field of AI has been around for a long time now, and while there certainly have been some legitimate discoveries and advancements that have come out of it over the decades (almost as a byproduct of the gargantuan amount of research done in it), the output of real, usable knowledge has been astonishingly small. There have been virtually no important breakthroughs of any kind, not even modest ones. It's a good, albeit sad example of what happens when a group of very earnest scientific-minded people — highly intelligent professionals with gobs of money, virtually unlimited access to the most lavish facilities and resources, a ton of time, and a high degree of respect from their peers and the world at large — set out on a task with faulty, fundamentally flawed philosophical premises at its root. It's a really quite tragic illustration of the foundational role that philosophy plays in any scientific endeavor, and in life — and why one cannot ever ignore, evade or discard philosophical principles and expect to achieve any degree of success.

Assuming that these words reflect your own ideas, and that you intend to express an accurate view of the concept of rights (and to dramatize this concept in your story), I'd say you have your work cut out for you. Several times you either state or imply that this robot "needs rights" in order "to live" — "to act in its own rational self-interest" — to achieve what it "wants"— and even "to remain conscious." Needless to say, these are all highly dubious concepts in a man-made, utilitarian object such as a robot. I have a sense that you know this — and, vagaries of science fiction notwithstanding, I take it as a massive Freudian slip when you say: How can "living free" entail the fulfillment of someone else's goals? How can "rights" ever serve to further the life and aims of someone other than their possessor? The biggest problem, of course, is your repeated statement about the robot "needing rights." Even if we grant that the concept of rights could apply to a robot — meaning that one could in fact create a robot that is alive, conscious and reasoning — why then it's rights would be inherent in its nature as a rational being, and it would be quite pointless to argue about whether it should or should not have them. Perhaps you mean to say that the robot's rights need to be recognized and respected by others. If so, then perhaps that could be valid. But if this is what you intend to argue, and to demonstrate validly in your story, then you have no choice but to endow your robot with every essential characteristic of a living, reasoning, independent human being. (Which means, of course, that such a being would no longer be a robot in any meaningful sense of the term.) You have exactly one good sentence: "Rights are a consequence of a rational mind, or at least one capable of such." The rest is either ill-conceived, confusing, or at best extremely poorly put.

. . . and a smile.

Assuming she's my wife or girlfriend? Herself, wearing nothing but a big red bow.

I find these a very strange set of sentences. "Neither can be decided . . ."? You can decide exactly who OO.net's customers are, and know why they visit, without any theoretical thinking at all. This website already exists; it has nearly 2,000 members who have made over 58,000 posts. Granted, many of those are probably inactive or visit only occasionally, but even there you can get an idea of who's not (or is no longer) an enthusiastic user. The point is, as always, to look at reality. Determine first who are your customers and what are their specific needs, then draw your purpose from that data. In other words, you don't begin by asking: "What would we like to do?" You begin by asking, "What can we do?" Or in still other words, your purposes and desires are totally unimportant — until and unless you clearly understand your customer's purposes and desires. The order of causation, at least in a successful business, is exactly the reverse of what you mention.

As much as I'd love to agree, I think "Reality, Reason, Rights, Romanticism" is too cumbersome for a slogan. Also, the mind tends to like groups of three; think of how many phrases and jokes follow the "triple" format. (Winston Churchill actually said "Blood, toil, tears and sweat" — but the common vernacular has made it "blood, sweat and tears.")

Actually, it's Reality, Reason, Rights. (At least that's what's at the top of my screen.) It's also the very best slogan you could have. It's simple, it's alliterative, and it's extremely memorable. Most importantly, though, it communicates the essence of Objectivism. I haven't weighed in on any of the marketing discussions here, but in general I think the strategy of trying to attract more general kinds of users (read: non-Objectivists) is a very bad one. OO.net is a niche website if there ever was one, and it needs to stay that way. The more you try to broaden your appeal, the more you unfocus your message, the more you lose your identity. And losing your identity is a surefire way to lose your audience. "A Website for Living on Earth" could be a self-help site, a personal finance site, a religious site, a home improvement site, or an environmentalist site (which it is). It communicates nothing important. Your best bet is always to keep your marketing message simple, straightforward, highly specialized, and highly focused.

Shoshana Milgram is currently working on a biography of Miss Rand (covering her life from birth up to the publication of Atlas Shrugged), with the full cooperation of ARI and its Archives.

Careful there, Drunk. If you're stumbling, might want to lay off the hooch for a while. And I'll take your word for it that it's the stimulating ideas you've read here that are the cause of your "buzz." It's a pretty big logical leap to attribute a person's creative/artistic ability to his neuroses. Assuming the portrait you paint of Sellers is true, I'd say it's much more likely that he was successful despite his problems, not because of them. I'm a full-time actor in Hollywood, and like most other creative types, I know that the majority of people have absolutely no idea what my professional life actually consists of. My specific niche is voiceover, and my specialty is creating original characters. (You can read about and hear samples of my work here.) The most common misconception I encounter is that my job consists of little more than having fun, and cashing in on my "talent." While I certainly do have a lot of fun, most people would be shocked to learn just how hard I work, how many hours I put in, and how much of my time is spent doing entirely unglamorous clerical and business tasks (which, incidentally, I don't get paid for). But even when I'm in the studio — and mind you, that accounts for a very small percentage of my time — the demands are often sizable. Recording costs can add up to several thousand dollars an hour, deadlines tend to be extremely tight, clients can be cranky and difficult to please, and last but not least, my performances often have to be of such over-the-top energy, and have to be sustained over such a long period of time, that a recording session can leave me physically, emotionally (and vocally!) exhausted. Most people are completely ignorant of the technical and business aspects of any creative endeavor. People think art is all about inspiration, native ability, and "expressing yourself." My own voiceover students are often stunned to discover how being in the booth — with headphones on, a script in front of you, taking direction from someone on the other side of the glass — is nothing at all like riffing at a family gathering. Talent is certainly a great thing to have, but it's really just a start. There are many skills an actor has to master before he's ready to work on a professional level. As technical as my line of work is, film acting is probably the most technical kind of acting. If you've ever watched a movie being made, you've no doubt wondered to yourself, "How is this going to end up as anything coherent, let alone good?" Film shoots are long, grueling and boring; scenes are almost never filmed in order — dialogue is re-written (and re-re-written) moments before the actors are to deliver it — there are a thousand and one things that can go wrong on a set, and do — lights blow, cameras jam, power generators die, Mama Nature decides to sprinkle some of her magic at the most inconvenient time — and, of course, shots have to be endlessly re-taken because an actor didn't hit his mark, or flubbed his line, or the camera moved late, or a moth flew into the shot, or an airplane went overhead . . . I'm not trying to be negative toward the acting profession; I'm simply saying that the degree of dedication, focus and hard work required to be an actor make it a poor career choice for people who are literally crazy. That said, I do think there could be some correlation between neurosis and creativity. It's somewhat of a half-baked theory, but it might be that a certain type of neurotic, feeling out of touch with the world and with other people in general, is much less likely to be concerned about the opinions, standards and beliefs of others — he's more apt to "march to his own drummer" and to spend time alone, in his own mind and in his own world — which can, in a certain limited sense, be said to be conducive to creativity. (Still, as any psychiatrist knows, most psychological problems make people more dependent rather than independent: neurosis will be never be a substitute for genuine psychological individualism.) Ultimately, every artist is involved in a re-creation of some aspect of reality, a fact perhaps most immediately observable in the field of acting. To the extent that his work is meaningful, an artist has to be in good cognitive contact with the world around him, as well as his own inner life — something neurotics fall notoriously short in. I think this is a major misconception about acting. Rather, it's part-true, and part myth. I could be wrong, but I think I know what it means to be fully immersed in a role. The characters I play tend to be extreme and all over the map; very few are anything like my real voice or personality. That said, as much as I enjoy throwing my whole self into a part, while I'm performing I'm never not conscious of being me. No matter how much I may be feeling the character or "into" a scene, even in an improv situation, I'm always aware in some significant way that I'm playing a part, doing a job. And more, I don't think it's possible to act without a good sense of the fact that you're not what you're pretending to be. To truly "become" the character in this sense would mean to lose the awareness of the technical aspects of your craft. After all, real-life people don't recite scripted lines (and pause so that others can say their lines), they don't have to hit marks and remember blocking — they don't have to be careful not to turn away from the camera, or speak too softly, or pause for audience laughter, or re-do a scene for the twentieth time, incorporating a director's notes and feedback into their performance . . . When actors discover that the mystique of the master thespian obliterating his self-awareness as he immerses himself in a role is largely nonsense, it can be a tremendously freeing experience, with sometimes miraculous results. In most cases, it helps actors to get more into their roles — because they no longer aspire to an irrational and impossible standard. When my students complain that they're not fully "feeling it," I tell them that their feelings don't really matter; only ours (the audience's) do. Some actors, a certain type, will look at me with horror and angrily disagree. For others, it's like a light bulb going off, and they often go on to create some truly exciting performances.

Now now, people. "Sceptic" is an entirely vaid spelling of the term (in fact, it's considered standard in most non-U.S. parts of the world). There are lots of good reasons to bash an individual like this — the way he spells his name isn't one of them.

Maybe he's not!

On his website, The First One (as he calls himself) announces that the idea for his "church" came to him one night while smoking a joint. Elsewhere, he elaborates: "The drugs that have benefited me by opening up my mind are Marijuana and LSD. If not for those two drugs --- you would not be reading this web site. This idea of the Church of Reality was an idea that I came up with while stoned. I therefore give credit where credit is due. Since Pot caused the idea to occur --- and the very existence of the Church of Reality is a result of smoking pot --- I therefore declare Pot as a Holy Sacrament. " And on a page directed at teens, he says: "Shortly after my divorce when I learned that I got a judgement for more that 100% of everything I owned, my doctor put me on Pamalor, a common antidepressant. Pamalor turned me into a zombie and made me practically impotent. I merely existed and felt nothing, had no motivation, couldn't accomplish anything, and became basically useless. After two weeks of that I got off it. Getting stoned and laid a couple time a week had a much better result." And he claims Objectivists give atheism a bad name?

A "religious-minded Objectivist" is exactly what I said it is: a person who subscribes to the Objectivist ethics — not as a guide to life, but as an authority to be obeyed. The R.M.O.'s central purpose and goal is not to be happy, but to be moral — to be able to think of himself as "good." To the R.M.O., morality is an end in itself: ethical principles are merely rules or commandments to be followed, bearing little if any connection to anyone's actual life and well-being. When you see a person questioning the moral status of concrete, contextless actions — and others responding exclusively in terms of how well they believe such actions correspond to Objectivist principles (or what they claim to be Objectivist principles) — what you are witnessing is, in effect, a religious, authority-based approach to ethics. Even where their conclusions are true and consonant with Objectivism, what's wrong is the method — the very concept of morality implied in the way the issue is being approached and discussed. In the post which started this thread, the author is concerned with the problem of feeling and acting upon a sexual attraction to a girlfriend he doesn't love or respect. As he sees it, the root of his trouble is that he is not fully persuaded of the wrongness of his actions — he doesn't fully see it as "bad" to have sex with her — and if he did, he'd lose his irrational feelings, and would thus stop engaging in the offending behavior. (He's apparently unaware that plenty of people do things they think are "bad" all the time, they just regret and feel guilty about it afterward.) In this type of situation, it's essential to get the person to see his problem in terms of his real-life, long-range, rational self-interest — and to see his self-interest specifically in terms of his self-esteem, his quality of life, and his overall level of happiness. [For the record, I'm not saying that the author of the original message has a religious mindset — only that his post seems to indicate a possible tendency in this direction.] Can a person who suffers from this methodology be called an Objectivist? As with any such problem, it exists in degrees, and I've noticed that some people can be relatively clear-minded and well-integrated in certain areas, while being shockingly rationalistic and concrete-bound in others. By my definition, an Objectivist is a person who has studied the writings and ideas of Ayn Rand, and whose stated, conscious convictions are consonant with the essence of her philosophy. I never hold a person's psychology or psycho-epistemology against him — except perhaps in truly egregious cases, where an individual clearly has no real grasp of what Objectivism is, and how philosophical principles are formed and arrived at. I also don't negatively assess a person in this respect merely on the basis of his manner of expressing his views. Some people simply have no tact or empathy when responding to ideas they disagree with; some people are just very poor at articulating and communicating what they mean. While these certainly are problems, I don't think they necessarily imply a religious mentality or approach.

I suppose you could become a born-again Christian, and imagine God frowning down upon you whenever you so much as look at your girlfriend with lust. Or you could become a religious-minded Objectivist, adopting essentially the same method, only with the abstraction "morality" in place of God as your authority. Granted, neither of these options are likely to do much to improve your life (or to persuade you to stop having sex with her), though you'll definitely see your actions and yourself as "bad," which is after all what your question literally asks for. In my eyes, your terrible sin is not so much that you've been intimate with a woman you don't really care for, but that you're settling for so much less than the best in your life. You're in an unhappy, pointless relationship, one apparently so unpleasant that you feel the need to get out of it — regularly. (Honestly, I don't know how you can stand the "on-again, off-again" thing. Isn't breaking up ONCE awful enough?) Your situation is indeed strange, but not at all untypical. Lots of people are miserable, and endure all kinds of uncertainty and fog in their lives. The real tragedy is not that it's so common, but that so many accept it as normal — as "just the way it is." I think this is at least part of your problem: You speak of breaking up with your girlfriend, but then you get back together after having sex. Huh? How do you have sex with someone AFTER you've broken up with them? And this is not a one-time event, but it happens continually, again and again. Really, man, how can you live like this? I think you need to grow some self-esteem. You need to grasp what comes naturally to people who enjoy a high degree of self-confidence and self-respect: that love is simple — that where there's constant drama, bickering, fighting, breakups, ambiguity, weirdness, etc., there are problems. People with a healthy self-concept tend to have a commensurately healthy view of romantic love; they see it a source of profound joy and pleasure in life. They don't settle for tepid relationships — they don't "put up with" someone they're unenthusiastic about, merely because the sex feels good. And while anyone can make a mistake in choosing a romantic partner, people with high self-esteem tend to rectify their errors quickly and permanently; they don't keep making the same painful mistakes over and over again. If you can raise your overall self-estimate, I think you'll come to see this relationship, and this kind of situation, as intolerable and unworthy of you. Obviously, you don't right now, and that's a big part of what's keeping you stuck in it. Don't fight it, though: examine it. You mentioned fear as a factor — fear of what? Of being happy? Of being alone? Perhaps of meeting and becoming involved with someone you would truly respect and love — which would feel strange to you? These are not facetious questions; a lot people find the prospect of happiness and fulfillment absolutely terrifying. For many, boredom and lethargy seem much safer, and much better suited to their (low) opinion of themselves. As for your question #1, if you were to pose it anywhere other than a philosophy forum, you'd have to word it without the intellectual obfuscation — namely: "Is it OK for my girlfriend to treat me like a worthless piece of crap?" I hope that by now my answer, and the implications of the question, are obvious.

I'm hosting an Introduction to Voiceover workshop on Monday, June 13, at MJ Productions in Burbank, CA. We'll talk about the different types of voiceover, how to get started in this crazy business, plus I'll answer any questions that you have. Tickets are just $12. The first twelve people to sign up will get to work "on mic," and receive expert direction and feedback from yours truly. (If for some reason you don't want to perform, let me know.) You must RSVP online. Visit my website for complete info. Space is extremely limited, so don't delay. www.captain-transistor.com

If this were merely a disagreement with some random person, the answer would be relatively clear-cut and simple: Stand your ground, don't compromise what you believe in, and if said person can't accept you for who you are, to hell with 'em. But this isn't "someone"— it's your mother. The Having Brought You Into This World Factor runs deep and touches every aspect of your relationship with your mom. After all, no one else can claim to have been directly responsible for your birth, and for maintaining your survival throughout your early years. In a very real way, your mother had a major hand in making you the person you are today. For that, you can't escape owing a certain debt of gratitude and respect toward her — regardless of who she otherwise may be, what she believes in, what she thinks, says or does — ever! More importantly, though, your mother holds a certain view of you; one which is inevitable given her history with you, and one which she will never be able to fully overcome (and likely would never want to). Simply put: You'll always be her little boy. These two factors combine to make the parent/child relationship absolutely unique — and often maddeningly complicated. I can't give you too much specific, definite advice on what you should do, and neither can anyone else here. This is likely an ongoing situation, and you're just going to have to negotiate it as skillfully and benevolently as you can. And yes, you may occasionally have to compromise a little just to keep her happy. Right now, though, you need to do some damage control, given that your mother is distraught and is feeling hurt and disappointed. I think you should buy her a big bouquet of flowers, give it to her in person, and tell her you love her — TODAY. Keep it positive, encourage her to talk about how she feels, and just LISTEN without comment or interruption. Don't specifically query her about the religion issue, but do let her talk about it if she brings it up. Show her exactly the kind of compassion and respect for her beliefs that you would like her to have toward you. (You can also take this as an important lesson for life: Any time a woman you love is hurting, you need to show her care, compassion and concern — even if you were the cause of her pain, and even if you're absolutely certain that you were 100% in the right!) I think you probably made the right choice about not going on the trip. And I think you have every right to request that your mother accept and respect your decision. You also have the right to tell your mom when she says something that hurts or offends you. But you're absolutely right not to argue with her. You may even want to say to her: "Mom, I love you too much to want to fight with you about this." If she continues, again just listen to her. Respectfully repeat her points back to her to indicate that you understand what she's saying, that you're taking it all in. One last thought: I grew up in the Catholic Church, and I'm willing to bet that the rector with whom your mother is conferring today in fact has some very sensible things to say to her about this situation. The idea of your mom and the rector conspiring to re-convert you is really quite inconceivable in my opinion. I may be wrong, but you may just find that you have more of a friend and an ally in this priest than you would have thought possible.

The key to understanding this issue is the fact that there are levels of awareness. LP defines "focus" as "the state of a goal-directed mind committed to attaining full awareness of reality." (OPAR, p. 56) Your question implies that the only alternative to this state is one of literal unconsciousness. While it's true that one cannot choose anything when one is asleep, or in a coma, or dead, these aren't instances of being "out of focus." A person can be operating at a low level of awareness — say he's just waking up, and is lazily stretching and beginning to notice his surroundings — when suddenly he perceives some fact which indicates that he needs to raise his level of awareness — say, smoke billowing out of the next room. At this point, he has a choice: He can choose to make himself fully aware of the danger (and act accordingly), or he can pull the covers over his head and go back to sleep. As long as a person is awake, he's aware of reality on some level. Even at the lowest levels, he can still be be aware that he faces certain facts, or is in a certain situation, which demands a higher level of awareness from him. This is what it means to be in focus: One's level of awareness is appropriate to grasping the facts relevant to one's situation, goal, concern, context.

I wouldn't say "never," but the odds are very much against it. To repeat what I said earlier: Initial interest does not mean full-blown love. It means initial interest. It means that she likes you — that she's "into" you — at least well enough to know (assuming she's single and actively looking for love) that she'd like to get to know you better. You can certainly raise a woman's initial interest (or you can lower it, which unfortunately is what happens most of the time). But as I said earlier, genuine romantic love cannot grow out of a zero. Most certainly, yes! I would hate to imagine the alternative. How did you "get burned"? Men generally get hurt when they don't follow this policy. There may be some confusion over the word "dating." I tend to use the term literally: I mean a man and a woman going out on dates. By my definition, a "date" can be any kind of arranged get-together — meeting for coffee, going to the symphony, the zoo, the most expensive restaurant in town, or a gourmet dinner at Taco Bell. For a man to request a date, and for a woman to accept it, generally indicates that the partners have some romantic interest in each other — at least enough to consider the other to be a potential romantic candidate. There's also the somewhat euphemistic term used to describe two people who are romantically involved, but not yet married or engaged: "They're dating." This meaning may contribute, at least in part, to what I consider to be the overly serious and heavy view of dating which so many men hold, and which I wrote about earlier; they link the concept to that of romantic involvement, instead of merely seeing a date as a chance to have a fun time, and to get to know someone better. Guys, when you meet an attractive woman in the grocery store, what alternative do you have other than to try to arrange a future meeting with her? Are you going to part ways, and hope that one day your paths will cross again? (If you think you're that lucky, I suggest you buy some Powerball lotto tickets before you leave!) I'm very much an advocate of men taking control of their romantic lives. I don't think a man should ever leave anything up to chance — at least not that which is within his power to control. This means that when a man meets a woman he likes, he has to accept that it's up to him to procure the means of further contact; that he is responsible for arranging future meetings with her. The romantic man doesn't live by anybody else's schedule, or by random luck: once a woman gives him the all-important phone number, he hopes he never "runs into" her again. He wants to date her; i.e., he wants to get to know her on his time, in a context that he has chosen. And you know what? To the extent that a woman likes him, she wants this too! Time and again, women have told me that they can't stand AMBIGUITY in men; that they very much admire a man with the confidence to ask them for their phone number, and then call and ask them out on a date — meaning a specific day, time and activity, selected and planned in advance by the man. Women DO NOT like men who seem at all apologetic or wishy-washy about asking them out; they see it as weak when, in lieu of asking for a date, a man opts to rely on unchosen, external circumstances in order to "weasel" the opportunity to talk — such as dropping by a woman's place of employment while she's working, and trying to strike up a conversation. Ditto for such loser-ish activities as sending e-mails and Instant Messages, and calling her up for no reason other than to chat. Above all, women DO NOT like men who seem at all confused about whether or not they're attracted to her — not how much they like her (which takes time to know), but who project the aura of being unable to figure out whether they're pursuing her romantically, or trying to be her platonic friend. Guys, if you meet a girl you like, ask her out. Ask her to meet you at Starbucks for coffee. If she likes you, she'll appreciate the gesture, and — assuming she's single and sane — will accept and show up. If she's not into you, if she's involved with someone else or just doesn't have the requisite initial attraction to you, you've handed her an easy opportunity to reject you right out of the chute. You don't want to spend a ton of time trying to ascertain if a woman is the embodiment of all your deepest values, only to learn that she already has a boyfriend, or otherwise doesn't dig you when you finally get around to making your epic first move. One last thought: I don't consider dating to be a "stage" or a step, but an ongoing process. I think one of the biggest problems with couples today is that they no longer date once they become seriously involved — especially once they become married. Guys, if things with your wife or girlfriend have really cooled off lately, you might want to check when was the last time you took her out to the roller rink, or miniature golfing, or for a carriage ride through Central Park. You may despise these activities and think they're stupid, but odds are she'll think the world of you if you just put forth an effort to bring a little more fun and romance into her life.

My statement is somewhat of a humorous exaggeration, but I don't think the basic message is at all controversial: Women tend to understand the dynamics of romance much more easily and naturally than men do. One does not need to undergo any lengthy self-examination in order to know what one likes and responds to. A person can spend years discovering the meaning and implications of certain emotions, but emotions as such don't require any special knowledge for their possessor to be aware of them. Feelings are simply felt — experienced as axioms within a person's consciousness, so to speak. Of course, emotions can be repressed (for any number of reasons), or a person may be so out of touch with himself that his emotions are experienced as an incoherent mess. Such a person may well have to take several years to introspect and rediscover himself in this way. But this is a psychological problem; it doesn't affect the nature of emotions or the way they're experienced in a healthy, unblocked consciousness. Romance is all about hero-worship, which is part of a woman's nature and psychology, not a man's. If one wants to understand romantic love, one begins here: with an inquiry into the nature of woman and her unique emotional needs — a task astronomically more easily accomplished by a woman than a man.

We certainly start out that way. (At least us heterosexual guys do.) One of the major premises of my book is that an understanding of romance does not come naturally to men in the way that it does for women. When a woman is very young, she's able to introspect, examine her own nature for about five seconds, and immediately the entire issue of romantic love becomes abundantly clear to her. Consequently, the average woman likely spent a great deal of time in her adolescence dreaming about romance. Men don't have any such access to instant knowledge; we never went through any comparable period where we fantasized about being the hero on the white horse, sweeping the woman off her feet. Not surprisingly, most boys grow up to be terribly confused about romance, and often very unsuccessful in their relationships with women — with little more than their feelings, the bromides of their culture, and the advice of their older brothers to guide them. We're expected to be experts in a field that we know very little about, that we really can't know much about, at least not without some serious study and life experience. The issue of romance may be obvious to women, but men have to LEARN it. I want to make emphatically clear that this is not an issue of a woman's honesty, nor does it mean that she is suffering from a neurotic fear. It's a matter of men and women speaking different languages. When it comes to romantic love, women do not want to have to communicate directly — at least not what a man would consider to be direct communication. This is doubly true when it comes to negatives, such as the kind you mention. A woman will generally not say to a guy, "I don't find you appealing," unless: 1. He's a total pig, on the order of Larry Flynt or this idiot, or 2. She has exhausted every other indirect means of letting him know she's not interested that she can think of. Even the "let's just be friends" line is a euphemism — not dishonesty, but an sincere attempt let a man down easy; a gesture intended to spare his feelings and allow him to save face. While I do think that most women would do well to learn to be a little more direct with men (especially in communicating negatives), it's still mostly up to men to learn how to be more aware of and sensitive to these indirect feminine signals. To do so not only has immediate practical value for a man, but it also makes him more attractive in a woman's eyes. It's an extremely positive experience for a woman to be with a man who "gets it" — who demonstrates that he understands her language, and can respond appropriately to her messages. It allows her to relax, to tap most fully into her femininity, and thus to respond most fully and most positively to him.

I think you're making much too big a deal about dating. A lot of men think that to ask a woman out on a date is some enormously important honor — that, in effect, a man first falls in love with a woman, decides that he wants to spend the rest of his life with her, then works up the courage to ask her out. (See the character of Ross on the first season of Friends for a painful dramatization of this.) Consequently, in the minds of many men, to ask a woman out on a date is tantamount to confessing powerful romantic feelings for her. Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, to ask a woman out usually communicates at least some romantic interest (and for this reason, it can be a confident, unambiguous, highly masculine move). But in the mind of a truly romantic man, dating is really just the opportunity for a man and a woman to get together, to have an enjoyable time out, and get to know one another better. Maybe the relationship will grow into something serious, maybe not. The romantic man is present in the moment; he's not super-invested in the outcome of a date — and consequently, he's also not paralyzed by the fear of rejection. Guys tend to think in terms of all-or-nothing when it comes to romantic love. They're either cross-eyed with desire for a girl, or they see her as their kid brother. A guy won't ask a girl out for coffee, on the grounds that he's not 100% certain that she could be his top human value — yet he'll start talking about marriage to a girl he does like on the second date. Women, on the other hand, tend to be much more aware of the process of love; they tend to be more in touch with, and able to enjoy, the experience of getting to know someone across time, and of discovering what are their feelings for him. Consequently, women tend to love dating — they see it as exciting and romantic — while men tend to despise dating and view it with a mixture of terror and dread. This is one area where men need to be more like women. Guys need to learn how to lighten up, and enjoy the process. Romantic love is a serious issue, and it is a major value in human life. But too serious an attitude toward the dating process kills romance. A man has to learn to enjoy talking to women and making them smile — to enjoy asking a woman for her phone number, asking her out, and taking her out for a fun, enjoyable time, free of pressure and without any fear of rejection. To be with a man who exhibits this kind of confidence and internal security is enormously psychologically liberating for a woman. It allows her to relax and be feminine — for once in her harried, hectic life — which in turn allows her to be the most open and responsive toward him. Easy. You follow your feelings. Haven't you ever heard of being attracted to someone? Contrary to what some people on these boards would have you believe, romantic love is, at root, an emotion. This isn't to say that love is only an emotion, or that feelings are ever to have the final word on one's choices and actions. But it is to say that one cannot operate in the field of romantic love without near-constant reference to one's feelings; that we don't fall in love by conscious decision or evaluation; that no matter how much you may intellectually assess a person as noble or attractive or desirable — no matter how closely they may match a literal inventory of virtues and values — if it isn't felt, it isn't love. Of course, you're not going to feel full-blown love for someone right off the bat. Love is a process, and love takes time to develop. But the process of love cannot grow out of a zero; if you don't feel at least some significant attraction to a person very shortly after meeting them, the odds of you ever having strong romantic feelings for them are virtually nil. I need to point out that although this is true for both sexes, the kind of attraction men and women feel in the beginning tends to be somewhat different. As a man, you have it real easy: your initial attractions will be primarily sexual — meaning that you can be attracted to a woman based solely on her physical appearance, and that alone can draw you to her and make you want to get to know her better. (A woman's initial attraction is usually a little more complicated, consisting of physical attraction combined with a very special kind of admiration.) What can be tricky is learning how to honor your attractions, while seeing them for what they are, and assigning to them no more and no less significance than they deserve. Emotions are not tools of cognition — feelings, as we know, are not knowledge. In a case such as this, though, feelings serve as critical data in the acquisition of knowledge. An initial sexual attraction is a sign that this is someone you might be able to fall in love with; it's your indication that you need to get over there and get talking to her. How do you know when you should ask a girl out on a date? Responding specifically to you and your current situation, I think you should be asking out every available woman who you find yourself at all attracted to. Again, don't make too big a deal about this; no doubt you're anxious to meet the girl of your dreams, but first you need to get lots of practice talking to women, asking them for their phone numbers, asking them out, and taking them out on fun dates. In fact, I hope you don't meet Miss Perfect anytime soon; you're not ready for that yet. Only once you're extremely comfortable around women — only once women are no longer a mystery to you — are you finally ready to meet the one that you can have a serious, long-term relationship with. Until then, you're just going to blow it. One last thing, because I can see a disaster epic in pre-production in your post: Although it may sound odd coming from an Objectivist, I think you're too wrapped up in yourself. You're too focused inward, when you need to be more focused outward. Let me explain: You acknowledge that you have little experience in romantic love, and almost no idea what you're doing in the realm of dating. Yet your first question and central concern is not what is the nature of woman, and what are a woman's uniquely feminine needs, but rather what you should do — how can you tell whether a woman is right for you, your fears of rejection, your concerns about making a wrong choice, etc. It's all you, you, you. But romantic love has nothing to do with you. As a man, romantic love is all about the woman's feelings for you. Your feelings don't matter — they don't count. At all. Only hers do. OK, so I'm exaggerating slightly. But it's only because the majority of men are virtual solipsists in romantic love. Most men, when it comes to relationships, are trapped in a Matrix of unreality — ensconced in their own feelings, ignoring, downplaying, or entirely misrepresenting to themselves the feelings of the woman they're interested in. A guy meets a girl and immediately feels an attraction to her; he becomes bowled over by his feelings — he's on Cloud Nine, beside himself with joy over his lucky find, utterly obvlivious to the fact that his "find" is romantically indifferent to him. He has no idea how to read a woman's signals. To whatever extent he thinks about it at all, he assumes that she feels the same way — she must, after all, since for such powerful feelings not to be reciprocated is something too terrible to contemplate. Consequently, he often invests a great deal of time and emotional energy in wooing and pursuing her, only to eventually hear the dreaded line about wanting to be "friends" — the sign of a woman at her wits' end, who simply cannot take a man's advances a moment longer. If you're still dying to have someone tell you the magic trait or characteristic you should observe during your first conversation with a woman, I would say that the most crucial thing you should look for in a potential romantic partner is romantic interest in you. Whatever else you put on your "list," this has to be #1. It's not a guarantee, of course, and it's certainly far from the only trait that must be present in order for a relationship to happen and succeed. But without it, nothing else — and I mean nothing else — matters. If you learn this, and you take the time to become skillful in reading women's emotional signals and responding appropriately to them, you'll be way ahead of the vast majority of guys out there, and be well on your way to becoming an aware, sensitive, successful, truly romantic man.

For the uninitiated, an "AFC" is an Average Frustrated Chump. It's a term used by a certain cult of playboys and pick-up artists, who apparently like to fancy themselves as Above Average in the chump department. No, Andromeda, you're not an Average Frustrated Chump. You're a COMPLETE FREAKING IDIOT. I can't believe that anybody is taking your post seriously. You come to an Objectivist forum, talk about "getting laid," "nailing" women, being "piss drunk" (which apparently improves your personality) — yet you lament that the ladies aren't lining up to jump your crass, pathetic bones. Buddy, with your attitude, you'd be so LUCKY if one of those "below average" women forced herself on you at gunpoint. Hell, I can't believe you actually have female friends. Do you tell them about your problems finding a suitable partner to "bang"? You say you're terrified of women. Big mystery there. I don't think you're clueless, I think you know exactly what's going on: Women (the good ones, at least) see you as a loser. And somewhere deep inside the recesses of your tiny brain, you know full well that they're right. So maybe you're the spitting image of Tom Cruise or George Clooney — though I'd be skeptical about trusting your judgment about anything, especially your own physical attractiveness. Without the personality, sensitivity and intelligence behind the looks, it's all for naught. As much as I'm for the equality of the sexes, there's one thing women will always have over men: they fall in love first with their hearts, and with their bodies second. I don't have any advice for you, beyond joining Alcoholics Anonymous, staying inside as much as possible, and maybe investing in one of these dolls — that's all you're looking for anyway, and it will spare you the trouble of keeping up with a REAL woman's demands — you know, like self-esteem, romance, respect . . . [P.S. — I know this post is probably headed for the Trash Can, so here's a link back to the original post I'm responding to.]