Eiuol

So much context is missing the question can hardly be answered. Is this a Victorian-age toilet of special value that can only be fixed by plumbers who have special knowledge of plumbing of the time period? Is she naive with people because she has a billion dollars? How does a person who doesn't know how to spend money properly get to be old and then have $100,000 to spend? And who's to say $100,000 is too much? The ONLY question that can be applied to this situation here is if the plumber lied about the condition of the toilet such that it would seem to be worthwhile to spend a lot of money.

I think the main issue is they do not take their own life as the standard of value. Have you tried asking your friends why they get up in the morning, or what they want to do after college? There are people out there who do take their life as the standard of value, at least people who really have reached life goals in a short period of time and maintained it. The only way they could have done that is to focus on what *can* be done in that particular moment time. Focusing on anything else is changing standard of value into something outside the self, such as fame, fortune, legacy, inventing the equivalent of the airplane, etc. Your friends may be focusing on those non-self standards, thus they probably think of the meaning of achievement in an entirely different way than you. There becomes a need to do something really really amazing, but given how that is so difficult, it becomes a lot more satisfying to be mediocre and end up taking a 9-5 job after college until they retire. Such a viewpoint is almost demanding for certainty of the future. However, the best a person can do is act on the knowledge that they have, not the knowledge they wish they had. Such is the great thing about growing older: anyone can acquire more knowledge about how to reach their goals. In addition, anything you can't quite accomplish, that only means you learned something, quite like what you explained. This has nothing to do with fear of failure, it has to do with standards of action, and what achievement *means*. If anything, there is a twisting of achievement to mean that achievement then makes one's life worth living, rather than saying achievement is the result of declaring one's life as important and acting to further life. In order to change these bad ideas, I think all that can be done is to think about why life is good and identifying how to make life good. That's what philosophy is for.

How, exactly, would that be cruel? It would almost be worse to say "you're no good now, so I won't bother." Better to work on ways to deal with an admitted feeling and hoping, maybe, the other person will be interested in helping you feel better.

You can't really say you learned something if you can't express it, at best you could only say "I think I learned something because it feels like I did." Expression is essential, which is different than knowledge-from-argument. The mentality you are describing seems to be more a problem of excessive reliance on deductive logic OR the idea that if you can't be refuted than you must be right. So, I don't quite agree with Mindy; the "fix" would be practicing inductive logic. I am not exactly sure how to go about doing that.

That's why I often see little value in entering many discussions on subjects like capitalism. Sure, you may even get a person to agree with what you're saying, but that could change even a year later. Really, the only times to enter a discussion is if the person seems reasonable enough. The best route for your own sake is probably to give them a few points to consider, and if you REALLY know your topic, you can convey essential ideas in a few sentences. Still, if you really want someone to accept your ideas, the only approach that would work is a long-term one, something which can only be done with people you see everyday that you value highly. Don't just have discussions, though. With your routine interactions with these people, show and explain what it means to use the principles you agree with. No, you don't need to be preachy about it, just occasionally say in a sentence or two why you did something in particular.

"Do your best." That one is my personal favorite.

Now just to be clear, before I write anything further, I am not saying how a person looks does not matter AT ALL. However, what would a high physical standard be? What would a low physical standard be? Seriously, I struggle to give any rational reason why any physical appearance is necessarily better. I don't think there is a rational reason most times. Now we can discuss extreme deformities, but that's not even the context here. The problem the OP is describing does not seem to be a matter of having "too high standards", but rather, no REASON to have whatever standards these are. I get the 'all else being equal' part, but what makes these Maxim models (or various fashion models) necessarilly more physically attractive/beautiful than anyone else? At best, you will say it's makeup. Don't forget that HOW a person stands even changes their appearance immensely. Or you might say they take better care of their health and body. In any case, it's not anything like a "better" nose, "better" legs, or a "better" chest. What would better even be? Women in the 1920s *tried* to make their chest flatter, and nowadays it's pretty much the opposite. All I'm getting at is that yes, physical attractiveness is great, but what IS physical attractiveness anyway and what makes a person attractive? Either the OP is simply friends with this girl similar to what Sophia said, which is perfectly fine, OR he has some arbitrary standard of beauty that is somehow getting in the way.

I would really really doubt you have some sort of psychological problem. I would suspect it's more related to how she doesn't have a "magazine-cover" body, and over time that came to be, in your mind, the only thing you *should* say is attractive looking. If you look at the type of woman in the 1920s that was equivalent to today's "magazine-cover" body, standards of what make an attractive female body were quite different. It may help to remind yourself that she is not any "less beautiful" than the idealized body, and really she just has a different kind of body. I don't mean that as a method of rationalization, I do think most bodies simply look different rather than more or less beautiful/attractive. It's possible that your lack of sexual attraction is due to something else entirely.

I would say yes. Considering that a lot of making art has to do with sense of life, it is possible to misunderstand why you made what you made. The misunderstanding may be due to evasion, rationalization, or simply not having fully understood all of your underlying premises. On top of that, a lot of art has to do with sense of life, so in a real sense, everything about you is laid bare, regardless of if you realized or intended to reveal certain ideas. There certainly would be an objective interpretation of a piece of artwork, but that is still very difficult to figure out, and not even the artist can simply say "that interpretation is wrong because that's not what I intended". Intention is separate from objective evaluation. An artist subconsciously expresses certain metaphysical values which are unaffected by intention, or at least at the time of creation.

I don't think learning necessarily must be a process of volition. If your sense organs were repeatedly faced with the same stimuli, I suspect your brain would automatically attempt retaining such information in a manner you were describing on the last post of page 1. The sensations would be grouped differently than how they would have originally, so the process is considered learning.

I like this post, and I hope I can expand on it somewhat. It isn't actually that difficult to answer moral type questions around here. While validating that egoism is a proper moral system can be complicated, it can be taken for granted that rational self-interest is proper. Considering that, all that needs to be asked is "how would such and such an action affect someone's life?". Not everyone is affected by actions taken in the same way, so this is where context comes in. Depending on the question, say if it's "Is smoking marijuana immoral?" more bits of context may be required, answers to questions like "Is it for medical use?" can make a huge difference. You don't need to read about Objectivism for years to be able to answer moral questions, a principle of selfishness is nothing more than putting your life as a primary.

Soooooooooooo much context is required that there really is no way of knowing. Only an individual could really depending on their circumstances. Still, aiming for job security isn't really life-fulfilling. If you thought things were going to be beyond bad, it would *probably* be better in the long-run to just do something really radical like becoming a revolutionary, but of course, even that depends on your circumstances. To use a fictional example from We The Living, it was preferable for Kira to simply attempt fleeing Russia rather than put up with everything and struggle to make a living. It's a sort of question that can only be answered given a lot of background knowledge about a person.

I would be interested, but really it would all come down to some more specifics of implementation before I really commit myself to anything.

Anyone can become great at thinking if they practice. If you assume your thinking isn't good enough and can never be good enough, well, yes, you probably would want to just let someone else do the thinking for you.

I think architecture is a whole different context, particularly since I don't think it is art. In any case, how Rand explained Keating's premises is a different issue than the one you're asking in this thread. Nothing really involved the creation of architecture with Keating's premises. Architecture involves taking into consideration the function of the structure, it's not really about art in the Objectivist sense of the term. It would perfectly fine I think to write Joyce-style stuff without showing a terrible sense of life in a context of something like a sort of story that involves a character who views life in such a way and maybe you give examples within the story of the trash that the character wrote. As I said in the last post, it really depends on why. I can't just give a blanket statement like "never use trashy art techniques!" Usually, though, there probably is no reason to use bad techniques (or even non-art techniques).

Well, the point of art isn't really what values are expressed, but how values are expressed. In a way, if you enjoy expressing destruction in a manner of essentially spewing nonsense and actually *want* to express destruction in that way, it shows a sense of life that probably feels repulsed by reason. It is "appropriate" to use such techniques, the more pressing question is why you are using those techniques and to what extent they make up the main sort of style which you use.

Greatness; at what? Brilliant; at what?

All it showed is that you have a pretty negative sense of life, or you didn't understand the book. I don't think the latter is the case. You haven't provided any examples from Atlas Shrugged of what in particular gave you such a negative viewpoint on what Objectivism means or stands for, so there's really nothing to respond to.

*Why* do you think that? I'm not saying Atlas Shrugged should be your absolute favorite book, but in what way does the book, to you, suggest that even if you achieve your ambitions you'll never be truly moral? Give an example of an event.

I do not think it is comparable to having a favorite color at all. There is a standard which you can judge a team, which is through the skill of its players and the ability of those players to perform under pressure and competition. It would be collectivistic - or at the very least, mindless - to cheer for a team for any other reason. Some people seem to cheer for a team because it represents their hometown, which I think is wholly wrong. Even in the World Cup I think it's wrong to cheer for a country *because* it's your home country, even if it is indeed a great country. The team does not necessarily represent the country's culture or founding values, and may in fact not represent any of that because the players are incompetent.

Fortunately, there isn't any person or government who simply "owns" the Internet, since it is made up of millions of pieces of hardware and equipment such as routers, modems, fiber optics cables, etc. To own the Internet would essentially be to regulate it to the extent that no private company or person can own the equipment required to communicate with other computers across the world.

And that is why life is not intrinsically good. Choosing to die *is* choosing death. When life becomes agony, life ceases to be of a value. Mindy, how is organic dissolution, as you phrased it, anything besides death?

Your vote would make a difference in the sense that your vote is part of a total going towards a particular candidate. Whether or not your vote *SINGLE* vote determines the outcome of an election is not even important, since the purpose of a democratic election is to see what the majority want. This does not mean not voting is immoral, nor did anyone even say that abstaining from voting is immoral. The point is, "my vote won't make a difference" is not a good reason to not bother voting. A good reason would be that both candidates are equally as bad and either one winning will be against your self-interest.

I thought that, too. Anyway, this is pretty neat.

One thing that should be considered is if there's a difference between how you define yourself to be, and how others define you. I would think a self-identity is how you describe yourself to be, primarily based upon memories of your actions, including feelings. If you had severe memory loss, as far as YOU are concerned, you are entirely new. What you used to be would be irrelevant, because it has no bearing on what sort of person you are now. However, you would still have a particular kind of person, a particular kind of entity, to other people. This can be thought of as personal-identity (if you have a better word in mind, please suggest it). You have a specific history, including the cause of the memory loss. The relationship between what you perceive yourself to be, and what others see you as, seems to be quite confusing. That seems to be the main issue in discussing one's identity as an individual. If what I *understand* myself to be is the essential, then the state of my consciousness defines what I am, and severe memory loss does indeed make you a new person. What you are as an entity, though, is not dependent upon the state of your consciousness, or what you remember. It would *only* be the sum of your actions, regardless if you realize or remember all the things you did before memory loss. Still, there can be some confusing considerations with non-physical sense of self. Say, one can say they have a particular sexuality, but does the absence of any sort of relationship make them outwardly asexual? Is a person who says they are bisexual actually just heterosexual if they've only had relations with the opposite sex, regardless of what they understand themselves to be? That may seem offtopic, but I think it does pertain to "the essential of an individual through time." Does the way that other people define an individual matter? Does one's individual identity *only* consist of their actions?