Tomer Ravid

I am apparently gonna be pissing off by taking humor seriously, but the truth must be told: It seems like he does not think, rather memorizes some slogans as a substitute to actual reasoning, while speaking. They probably don't even have a good source \ indication on the nature of a rational argument, since I never respond automatically, I don't think of Ayn Rand either while discussing. I think and phrase my sentences in my head before slowly putting the argument. As well, observe that the therapist simply reacts with "Aha . . . I see . . . you are an Objectivist" (mentioned as if it were some illness) without proving what's wrong with it. And he is the one to be considered the "common sense" in the issue. In a recent context, it reminds me a fanatic mystic who confessed that he 'just knows' that god exists. Where exactly can a young guy get Objectivism during his freshman year? LOL, they would wish he could have so they can regard themselves underground, but just go to Google and search for Objectivism; past month. You won't find a whole lot of percentage of positive ones. Ojectivism is the exact opposite of existentialism, being founded on the principle 'Existence Exists.' As well, it holds that everything is itself. An Objectivist does not have to define sky---it demonstrates some fundamental misunderstanding of the epistemology of definitions. A definition is required so long as a concept is an abstraction from abstraction, which means: it requires complex conceptualization and is not an obvious sensory given. In such a case, a definition is required so one can know what he's talking about. But according to Objectivism, conceptualization and perception are an axiomatically valid means of knowledge. "Private corporations cannot be trusted with the means of production." Let alone the fact I suppose he means the vice versa, because this sounds pretty Marxist--- this altruism is not even the sort of abstract circumstances of O`ism. Plus "means of production" is a floating abstraction and an invalid terminology since it assumes that the property (=values) just exists and the rest is a matter of who luckily picks it up. "Libertarian, why?" Omitting the fact that the (partial) similarity between O`ism qua philosophy and Libertarianism qua "philosophy" is exclusively technical, concrete; the libertarian party is not liberal (as a derivative of 'liberty,' the genetic roots of the concepts) even in accordance with libertarian standards. "I'm afraid he has a severe case of logical contradiction." A is A? "Is he an idiot?---For the moment, yes." Rationality as man's basic virtue? "[A]nd I'm going to hire him. Son, I'm gonna pay you minimum wage for papers . . ." Objectivism does find money a value, but not an ultimate value. Personally, I cannot stand people who give up their greatest values and especially moral principles in order to get beloved by anyone and thus "earn" some bucks. Personally, I would never agree to receive tax-paid money (unless I have already paid taxes throughout my previous life), no matter how great it is. So, the contradiction does not exist. Yet, I must admit that the Samus T-shirt made me laugh A LOT

Sorry, I forgot to write about it. Anyway, I swear it was my first impression, that the three first minutes are beautiful. As a matter of fact, I don't have to swear, I can prove it: From my messenger history, five twenty-seven: ". . . Prokofiev had started nicely (two first minutes *MAXIMUM*) and then moved to some weird chromatic walkings on the grounds of the classical technique." I can send you a screen-printing of the conversation history if you really want me to. I am not a great harmony expert, but I know that you can use dissonance selectively and under a certain contextual. If you just use it qua primary attraction, i.e., cacophony, then it will be just as much as . . . Well, nothing. Why are you dropping my context? Or you think I have to fit my standard to the ("axiomatic") fact that Prokofiev's second concerto is not artistically good? The same applies to philosophy, mathematics, physics and nature in general. My presumption is that I do NOT live within a Cave of Platonism. Factually, the perception of music has some objective nature. Proof: Only human beings can enjoy music. Therefore, men are characterized by some mathematical faculty that perceives an organization of notes. The term "evil" is not applicable to them. I have never used that word in order to describe them. Concrete knowledge is not hierarchal.

Read again. I said that the beginning actually makes sense, but then it just goes into a desperate dissonance. I don't think that popularity gives any new information. Dyslexic or not, the "Muslim Sense" of music (or more correctly; oriental integration) does NOT mean but more like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjzFq3R0qgE. I don't know about you, but to me anything it expresses (if it does) is unintelligible, incomprehensible, and I have grown in a much more eastern society than most of you. I do not know all the compositions of Prokofiev, and I am certainly going to listen to that. I did say that Prokofiev is a bad musician, I simply gave a particular instance of the embodiment of my standard and how it actually distinguishes between good and bad music. Not everything that an artist does is art. "Logical" simply means "integrateable." How much you are repeating music that fits my standard and how much it strengthens \ dismisses the enjoyment is another issue. Ever before I heard Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky used to be one of my favorite composers. But I had to come to realize that the artistic standard to contain only the style is destructive. Stravinsky, be he genius as he could, deals with evil subjects at least 50% of the time.

Sorry for responding so late, it took me quite a time to manage to handle that. I am not even sure if the original commenter is still browsing in O`ism Online. Nevertheless, I did not get into that subject only because of this godforsaken thread, and expressing the sense over musical taste has been a long-range task for me. For honesty's sake, I have read some of your blog, and I do not find it to have anything to do with Objectivist esthetics, id est, to posses the consistent and integrated projection of pro-man and pro-rationality metaphysical values. Through the following post, I shall---KILL ME---try to bring into existence a general direction towards an objective standard of judging music's emotions and values, and I shall do that on the ground of Rand's (proved) theory of values, her theory of esthetics (which is proved as well), her (validated by means of introspection) theory of music, her hypothesis on the nature of its emotions and metaphysical values and my own musical taste (which according to my artistic experience I regards objective), in part Rand's. The three former are placed in the book The Romantic Manifesto. But first, let me repeat and empathize that I don't recognize such thing as 'Objectivist music' as much as I don't 'Objectivist furniture' etc, and anything as such. Objectivism has absolutely NOTHING to do with faith. Philosophy deals with broad abstractions, human beings deal with concretes. That is according to the sacred Objectivism itself. My only purpose here is to show you that the reasons you (as well as many others) chose what you chose is not the standards of art that are consistent with O`ist esthetics. The objective criterion of music would read as follows: Style (i) Art is a selective recreation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value judgements. The standard of art is what philosophy it projects (subject), and how it is projected (style). It does that (projecting philosophy) by showing the picture of an representing, ideal (i.e., a man of vales as an artist observes them) (or rather, a selfless, automatically acting or ultimately 'smaller than life' character, as to if the creator does not find 'vale' a valid concept at all)character, as to if the creator does not find 'vale' a valid concept at all) to deal with a given situation of whose theme. Music means the emotions made out by periodic vibrations. It is created by means of integrateable relative (stage) and relative (tempo) height of tone, integrateable relative (duration), relatively relative (time signature) periodicity. Therefore, it must be composed of integrateable notes and an integrateable relationship between them. (ii) Great art contains great style. Music is created by means integrateable height of tone and periodicity. Therefore, it should be written in a language which is understandable to a western-enlightened person (e.g., no quarters or oriental dissonance). It is not clear what foreign music expresses or even whether it expresses the same emotions of the western one. (iii) Great art contains great style. Art is created by an individual, somewhat has to challenge man intellectually and realist metaphysical value projections are detailed and complex. Therefore, music should be enough mathematically challengeable to integrate and purely integratealbe alike: No rational music is founded on mere three natural chords and quarters. Such music shall not be exciting and valuable: it will be boring, selfless and ultimately nothing. (iv) Great art contains great style. Due to the principle of mind-body unity, it contains great characterizations and great happenings (environment, universe) simultaneously. Music should be enough mathematically demanding. In music (or at least a good one), the leading instrument \ track is the equivalent of the term characterization in literature whereas the background \ 'rhythm' ones symbolize of the occasions \ environment \ universe. This fact can be simply validated by means of introspection of what each part of piano concertos composed by Tchaikovsky or Chopin. Therefore, music should contain a well-enriched arrangement. (v) Music is a performing art. Performing itself (yet not apart) is an an artistic method. Therefore, it should be played and produced well. Subject Subject is a much more crucial and a much more tough task to define. Whereas the principles of style are almost explicit to that extent---the emotions a given musical work gives the listener and why it does that (i.e., what is the logic of a purely musical perception) requires a spectrum of knowledge in fields such as psychology, musical composition, musicology and even biology that ours currently does not suffice to supply. However, I shall make a new issue by saying that this knowledge is not necessary for the sake of proving an objective standard of music: if music has any objective standard, then one can judge each composition apart without any psychological means of deduction: but means of the initial, impersonal, elementary emotions he experiences (emotions prior to a man's subjective appraisal, which depends on his own sense of life). (vi) Art is created according to an artist's metaphysical value judgement. Its standard deals with them. Art is objective. Music ultimately results in emotions. One's musical experience feels as if it were fundamental, objective. Thus the initial emotions created by music are the same for each person: such fundamental emotions as of happiness and depression, emotions that commit no sense of life (nevertheless maybe some mental-human sanity) in order to grasp. Therefore, EVERY piece of music should evoke the emotions that a rational man handles in a proper context, within the context of a rational man. Particular instances (note: I ommitted the criteria of performance and production \ sound engineering since they had been yet to be fully discovered prior to the period when the composer became the main performer and before he was, which means, prior to jazz music) (as mentioned above, this is my own judgement; not to be confused with Objectivism) (inspired by the finals of Rubinstein Piano Master Competition): Rachmaninoff's third piano concerto is a well-considered composition, making quite a great sense that one could write a whole mathematical theory on its grounds. It projects the clear, confident feelings of better ages in Europe and America, and it is, along with modern architecture and cinematography, Ayn Rand's romantic realism and fantasy literature one of the last famous-meaningful-explicit remnants of the 19th century in the 20th. As much as it makes me wish I lived in this period. It has a thus great sophistication that in a mere technical respect it might cause to shake a man, and its harmonic genius is breathtaking and hair-raising. Its dialogue between piano and orchestra as if between man and his surroundings, a genius physicist and NYC's skyscrapers is perfect, as in real life, as for the most realist and reasonable and consistent people. Rachmaninoff's sense of life is likely of man 'as he might be and ought to be,' in a rational world where there is no one to disturb him. Tchaikovsky's very first piano concerto is commonly logical, westerly logical and original and its own. Ultimately, it expresses a common, direct, realistic, honest sense of civilized joy. In contrast, there is Prokofiev's piano concerto no. 2. This piece makes no sense, either in the developed or in the Muslim sense. It has nothing to be challengeably perceived, since it has nothing to perceive at all. Even despiteful artists such as Stravinsky (who is regarded moderner than the (alleged) classicism of Prokofiev) have some admirable stylistic motives which can convince and impress a sane person. A special trivial quality of it is the fact that, replaced by tonal-rational-enlightened-western music, it would technically (while ignoring sound as if it were a romantic music per-se, yet, when there is no such thing as 'theme' or 'composition' and all you have is quick chromatic walks, none of this in effect matters. As to Prokofiev's subjects, presuming it DOES have any existence, they deal merely with his own inherent, primacy of consciousness assuming, emotionalist eternal anxiety, an anxiety to be unavoidable, inalienable, metaphysical as in a Munch painting. I appreciate Rand's musical taste a lot, since she actually attempted to enjoy music qua romanticism even despite the hardship of proving it. Now, what YOU (and all the rest in this thread) determine to be your standard of music is not even a musical: it goes something like as follows: He put forward the capitalistic through his lyrics; he cared to remind a popular novel by Ayn Rand; therefore, it music be an "Objectivist" music. And even if reference is your standard, note that the fact those punkists said something artificially consistent with Ayn Rand's philosophy doesn't mean they are Objectivist or intellectual or more than any other tattooed man-hater, neither do they implicitly nor explicitly. Being a self-asserted Objectivist does not make one's art objective according to Objectivist philosophy's standards (like all those 'Objectivist' novelists who try to copy Miss Rand's style but cannot ever get into he depths or even fit her esthetic criteria)---they are NOT Objectivists at all. Now, let me state that I have nothing against you and your blogsite in particular. What I'm saying is a mere objective criticism of your ideas and practices according to my philosophical doctrines: way more constructive AND objective than any other 'Cool negga' and then of course along with the famous three ''s. I won't lie as much as I haven't until this moment. It is going to be HARD to fix it due to how many and how fundamental your intellectual mistakes, either in regard to real-life or to Objectivism, are. I suggest you start by changing your name from 'Objectivist Music' to '[A]esthetics via Music' or 'Objective Music' or anything like that, because really, it is not Ayn Rand who hired those pop-rock singers masqueraded to John Galt and Dagny Taggarst. Secondly, close blog temporarily due to 'some thinking work.' Then, after you finish all the stages, you can decide whether to reconstruct it or open a new one. Go and take yourself the book The Romantic Manifesto with an emphasis on the article 'Art and Cognition,' which you may read even twice or three times. Re-read my post. Try to observe what Ayn Rand called a good-art in actual works, why she did so and if she was right or wrong in this context. If you want your blog to look serious, you MUST listen to the music Rand appreciated, then decide whether you have to give your taste or your blog's common style a reboot towards hers. You can accept it or not, there are lots of great-moral-genius Objectivists who have a different one. The important thing is really you understand the artistic standards of art. Thirds,I even got a suggestion for you. If you loved Rush, you can love it with a great effort. Throughout the seventies, an artistic Renaissance occurred in semi-popular semi-underground music. They call it progressive or art rock. The rebirth was, rebirth of reason, rebirth of an appraisal of reason, rebirth of beautiful, serious art, an art to deal with values. The music did not attempt to take a slice and document the current society of the time and its deficiencies, nor fit itself to its standards. Rather, they built a separate-differ world where enlightenment was possible, and good and evil were the only alternatives. he struggle has not been completed yet. The music has not always been so all-romantic. It did not necessarily stand for triumph and thus, in few cases, even individualism. But in the sphere of rock music, it was essentially characterized by seriousness---nonconformity---greatness---reason. It did not take a long time until the materialist (the Marxist philosophy regarding the 'scandal' of the 'belief' in reason, not the Marxist slogan regarding people who 'believe' in reason) punkers (yes, the same ones you give advertising through your blog, only in the costume of Galt and Taggart) finally compulsorily snatched the ball out of the 'bourgeois' white hands of the actual artists. (The use of 'compulsorily' is certainly metaphorical; I do not actually think that the lack of freedom is responsible for the fall of prog rock, quite on the reverse: their philosophy expressed in their art caused and causes it. What I mean by 'compulsorily,' as unclear, is that it was regardless of the objective artistic reality.) The next generation now turned from autodidact honest artistic into a monstrous brute that tries to revolt against society while in fact promoting its own premises: the next Avant-Garde musicians, who rejected the fashionable simplistic music, and concluded that they should do a much 'deeper' music: a music which makes no sense, a music which expresses nothing fashionable, only worse. It began by Van Der Graaf Generator. Qua composers, they where usually as good as the others at the scene, had some ideas, and not as good as actual great composers. Qua artists, they were at the highest level of evil I know. There on the path was paved. As a rule, there was no such thing as progressive rock during the 80's. As an imperfect being, I love to describe progressive rock in a single literary analogy: Fantasy literature. It did not have a great stress on characterization and on realism, but on universe and some romanticism. If you want to get introduced to it, I recommend Lizard by King-Crimson, Close to the Edge by Yes and Selling England by the Pound (yes, ignore the title) by Genesis. Personally I love this music. It describes an entire period of my life. Now, after that historical introduction here is my suggestion: That Was Propaganda by Kurt Rongey. Just send me a private message if you want to know where to buy that. Since the album is certainly far from perfect and very complex, so let me advise you how approach it: I like Peikoff's metaphor on production as compared to Rand's three novels. In case you don't know: he suggested that his book The Ominous Parallels, as an analysis of the greatest evil, is like Rand's We the Living; OPAR, as an honest statement of an optimistic philosophy of life, is as Romantic as The Fountainhead; whereas his upcoming book, DIM, is a great combination of both, just as Atlas Shrugged. In regards to music, such romantic famous composers as above are The Fountainhead; Kurt Rongey's hard yet rational music is We the Living; Atlas Shrugged in not in a status of existence today. The progressive rock album deals with the evil of the 'disease called collectivism' (according to Rongey himself) and with how even a man of sense of life cannot deal with it. It is very desperate (it made ME actually cry once), but one does not have to drop the facts' very context: the album's heavy message even in context of the lives of heroes is not metaphysical, but rather volitional, as stresses Rongey. As to its style, Rongey's better moments are hyper-melodic, almost becoming equal to symphonic compositions (and Rongey has academic education in classic composition). His music contains a great sophistication and intelligence: a time signature that gets shorter in a quarter every bunch of verses; the tempo in one ending that can be described as an exponential function; the major anthem that continues while getting upper in half a tone every two bars; and more than all, a great harmonic and melodic GENIUS that I cannot describe through these forums. All this, I should clearly mention, makes a lot of sense: Rongey's music (that which can be described as music, i.e., as the album's actual content) has nothing to do with any mental or Avant-Garde music. With modern technology and the performance abilities of Rongey, it is makes a differences as between a novel and a well-stylized film. As it can seem, as modern "prog" "artists," he does make a connection between rational music and the need to get out of any frame, which means about one to three of the album can go the toilet, but it is forgivable as in more Nietzschean periods of my life I derived similar conclusions plus the album is after all very long (about 70 or 75 minutes). If lyrics is of your primary interests (even though I suppose that the issue is reference so you have nothing to do with it, as well as it is not purely musical), take a read. The sound-samples, by the way, are not always so good, neither in the piece selections nor in their particular samples themselves. Sincerely, Tomer

The solution is that they are not Objectivists. You're giving them too much credit, as if they were brilliant logic-freak philosopher who found a contradiction in your beloved system of Objectivism. They are simply open-minded children who can stand radicalism Ayn Rand's fiction (particularly The Fountainhead), sense the greatness of the philosophy but do not understand it explicitly nor change the way of their lives. Since they are still in the context of the open-mind, they can appreciate anything without a clear-consistent standard, they believe that there are many opinions in the world and that you can justify any of them with the right rhetoric, and thus they do not make any explicit enough separation between writers such as Rand and Marx as two rationally-reasoned authors. When they notice the first explicit argument against Objectivism with which they cannot deal, they "realize": "Oh, you're all right, I was wrong and childish and egoistic all that time," and the freed private was returned back to the realm of the enemy.

"There is no such things as "values" or "concepts"---there is only the divine Selfish Gene to control our lives according to his [its] whims." - Dawkins "Socialism is the best political system because it's rather the best for Society" - Einstein "We can know nothing; only the uncertainty and introspection are the advantage of scientific research . . . Oh, yeah, and we're evil and to destroy the nature [now, environmentalists, stand on your own and state that your philosophical views are scientific!]." - Einstein. ---- Yes, Objectivist can be collectivists, relativists and subjectivists; HOWEVER some very bad examples, dude. Very emotional, arbitrary and undefined a comparison. The fact that someone admires someone or something else does not imply that he is a mystic, sacrificial animal or that he lacks values (or else prove it). There is nothing religious about the aspiration to objectivity: this is not an essential characteristic of religion, in effect it does not characterize that at all (faith is NOT another word for reason). It is but an evil package-dealing of people who want that the only thing religion can possibly constitute is consistency (or that the only thing consistency can possibly constitute is religion).

About a religious "Objectivist" and the affects of his religion: I was utterly terrified to get familiar with the Israeli Jewish who regards himself a "representative" of Objectivism: Ohad Kamin. He works for a political movement (i.e., a movement attempts to determine and define (in case, compared to the other 'political' groups, coming from the same (non-)philosophical roots, justify) my social freedom using my tax payments without an explicit philosophy of morality and individual rights, primarily on the grounds of faith) named "Manhigut Yehudit". "In spite of officially being a self announced atheist," he considers Miss Rand's philosophy to possess "some significant religious sources." (What a mystic! He actually brings the religious Commentary culture, which means "logical methodology has not been invented yet, so let us use subjective anti-reason and reasonably unnecessary metaphors as to be proofs and COME-ON, everyone explain this meaningless vague absence of clarity as he wills to," into rational philosophy~! Objectivist philosophy is influenced by Judaism due to some inconsistent artificial coincidental quotation just as much as by Kant since he claimed to be "the advocate of reason" or by naturalism since it claimed to "a study of reality". It is just a remarkable proof to how destructive "logical" inference ignoring Law of Identity is: Mr. Kamin derives such complex a new conditional about Rand's psychological status quo and her philosophy's fundamental nature ignoring the fact that its very basis is man's rational faculty and validity of perception. Furthermore, it is sort of collectivist logic to telepathically, mystically determine one's collective and beliefs (if he has any of them), never mind how confident and logical his hierarchy of knowledge is, a very primitive form of collectivist logic.) In addition, I was researching a bit, and finally found that, on the base of Objectivism, he evaded paying income taxes as an "intellectual rebellion" (what's so "intellectual" in it?), spent a couple of months in jail, and blamed the altruist pro-sacrifice code of values. This, in particular and in itself, demonstrates his abstract understanding of it. Now, I was listening to a lecture of him (well, partly, I got a life), something like his equivalent of "Philosophy: Who Needs It," he made to his movement. "We need philosophy," he said, "in order to determine whether we should act selfishly or selflessly," and to illustrate the case, he gives---you see it coming---WHETHER ETHNICALLY JEWS ARE BETTER THAN NON-JEWS as a concrete instance! What does that have to do with individualism? Nothing. It is collectivism. It assumes that never mind how (literally) virtuous and valuable you are, if you are set (set by whom?) a part of the Society of Jewry (capital S Society apart) you got it---if you aren't, ya ain't. How fun that morality is thus demanding! Moreover, even if Jewry were a living entity that can be "selfish" or "altruistic"---it cannot be called "individualism" since it serve as nothing but an inconsistent and ultimately irrationalistic amoralism, not a healthy self interest. Overall, it exposes the cognitive haze and the philosophically subjectivist apprehension: he allegedly advocates selfishness, but what is selfishness and what does "advocacy of selfishness" actually means (a way more basic question) is a subjective matter, a subject to interpretation, so that you could state, as far as he is concerned, that you think that 1+1=2, but two could also mean i to you. This is absolutely amazing that a man with no sense of epistemology allows himself to be an "Objectivist," and please remember that epistemology has primacy over ethics. But more than all, the most revelational findings about what an ignorance he plants on his crowd can be represented in the q&a period of the lecture--- "But isn't that, Mr. Kamin, that faith is always more certain than knowledge?" Mr. Kamin, you are participating in a "political group" for individual right's sake while other participants do not implicitly understand that A=A? Existence is Identity. Mysticism's validity is mystical; knowledge's validity is known. More certain? Oh, hella! Well, stay in your cave of Platonism until you will find that you are a tiger's prey. More "certain," less adoptive, but least secure. And you can only guess what his eventual answer was--- "If your knowledge is an [epistemologically] well knowledge, than it could be just as certain." (What is a "well knowledge"? Is there any "negative" knowledge? Is that intended to mean "a knowledge that does not fit-in my arbitrary ideas? No answer is given.} Well, thanks a lot, you're giving reason the same status as mysticism? As a pro-advocate of rationality I've always dreamt of it! It is so great that I have a source of aspiration.

As an Israeli citizen, in the following post I shall bring you the general context about the Semitic \ Antisemitic form of racism, which are two sides of the same coin. First of all, I want to mention that it is an arbitrary statement that Judaism is, as a matter of fact, a race (or rather an ``ethnicity,,), and when you see a Russian along with a Yemenite so-called 'Jewish' you can easily recognize this genetic fact. The Jewish origin is attributed to the religion itself as well: be it to the sons of the people who used to be Jehovah worshipers in the Middle East in darker ages (if they have ever existed at all) or the current Jews. The definition of a Jewish person is an infinite regress, while it assumes ahead that the concept of a Jewish person (as for a Jew's mother, or grandmother, or great grandmother, and so on by definition) is clear: a Jehovah's victim \ mystic. As we have two distinct concepts for an alleged identical, distinct, single-rooted word, we are dealing not with an innocent technical error, but with an evil attempt to a double agent-concept, intended to help Mahzirim Beteshuva (missioners) have fellows' brain washed into the convinction that they cannot abstain religion since 'I will choose how to define my terms and I define religion as an equivalent of nation'. For that, the concept of a 'Jew' person which consists of (a) religion and ( race at one and the same time is not a concept but an anti-concept, and as such there is no rational reason to use it and thus fall into the middle eastern primitivists' epistemological trash bin by unconsciously considering a mental attribute as if it were a genetic one. A "stolen concept" is an attempt to claim for an inference by non-logical means. But since logic is man's only means of perceiving reality is, in context, logic, I shall now analyze the statement disregarding the failed rationalization. The definition of a Jewish Person (i) is, implicitly, somebody who believes in the Jewish God and the Jewish Bible and only in them. The definition of a Jewish Person (ii), according to the Halacha, is the son of a Jewish (i) female. Now, because the distinction of this coupe of fundamentally different proper concepts does not exist, and because a definition of a concept is that which distinguishes it from any other concept, the suggested idea is that the racial characteristic distinguishes a religious from a secular person---hence the inference: "Jewish (i) => Jewish (ii)". It's thus easy to refute this bromide by means of observing that one can either convert his religion into Judaism or be Jewish (ii) yet non-Jewish (i) simultaneously. Philosophically---why? With that I am about to deal. It has been said that it is that one's race to determine the course of his life and that it is solely a matter of a benevolent-genial tradition. But the latter is nothing but the metaphysical racism of the former whose center of mass is but ethics---and do not be foolish: ethics is neither first cause nor primary, and it is made out of the same tribalistic ideology that can evaluate a human being according to his genetic attributes by the magic means of telepathy. (In that respect 'tradition' is just a non consistent form of the religious, mystical morality.) The answer to both of them is as follows: if your argument is that my fathers' and my peer group's behavior is that which changes me, consciousness is conscious and consciousness is identity which means that any consciousness is aware in itself, that any single consciousness is to determine the sum of them and not on the contrary; else if you claim that it is my great nose or the skin of my color, consciousness is volitional and one cannot foresee it ahead. Both are axioms, and both are corollaries of the fact that consciousness exists and consciousness is a single entity. These are the only existing arguments to justify this form of collectivism, determinism or together anti-individual consciousness racism. If you find any cause to avoid \ 'limit' my own volitional consciousness, you will have to prove it---and better do that without using your conceptual faculty---thought is an act of free choice. Otherwise it simply receives an 'arbitrary' status just as religion or altruism. Just a few sentences as for the Zionism, the ethical \ political application of the Jewish Ethnicity philosophy: I always like to ponder myself about how tragic it would be that according to Zionism we would have to found two different Galt Gulches as one is a just state only for Jews (or to be more precise supposedly Jews---because putting a gun over innocent, even if non-Jew people, is not a justified action) and another for the rest of the peoples, since the non-Jews will always automatically attack the Jews. It's so hilarious, really. This is my implicit sense of life moral judgement. A philosophical translation: the Zionist philosophy will always fall since no forced ('national') collectivism, the belief that Society \ Nation \ Ethnicity \ God \ Mother Earth has primacy over the individual's mind, can never work in a rational world. Why had it worked to this very day, and why is Israel the most free and industrial country in this desolate desert---in particular, why did Ayn Rand so enthusiastically? Well, it is because it used to be composed of intelligent-western-assimilating people who were denounced and had a major philosophical mistake in their suggested causes and solutions of the problem. But philosophy is the science that deals with the broadest abstractions---and you do not get the premises of your very enemy in order to beat him. Observe what will happen when people will represent the reflection of this philosophical mistake---when people will start to constitute the Jewish 'tradition' collective. Oh, in that period will it end!

Benevolence is a virtue only in a given context. It is not fundamentally positive or fundamentally negative. If you are benevolent even when people really do not deserve it, well . . . it does not fully imply of altruism, but it is rather a psychological concern diverting you into the second-hand. It is not too productive that one sense commitment to be considered to be good by evil mutants and zombies according to their criteria by helping them do small things whenever they want.

One cannot beat these leftists ever since they declare that your logic is a mere faith, that you live in a Platonic cave and that everything that seems reasonable in your mind is nothing but a cognitive haze. Moreover, observe how they regard Objectivism "a religion" or "simplistic and populist" and by means of what arguments (more correctly: slogans, no self judgement) and the weapon conformity ("Oh, look at these, they claim that the individual is the means and the end, but it is opposed to my very opinion, so that I will invest in not loving that as well as sharing that in public") they do that: that is, no philosophical claims on the ideas as they are (or rather no philosophical claims in general.

Today at school I had a couple of "gap" hours, yet I could not have gotten back home (as such is that when one senses authoritative but discovers that he is the lowest rung of education), and there was no library open to me to write some stuff on the PC, so that I decided to finish with a book I had in mind. I was looking for a silent place, it was---the hashish den. In a few minutes arrived at there some children from the 11th and 12th echelon, and sort of asked me for smoking permission. "No problem," I answered. They did not seem to be the weakest students at school---on the contrary, they were talking about the number of points of which math Bag root certificate they are going to spend, whereas most of the children from MY class have not heard of the term "Marxism." They handled some deep considerations on necessary subjects such as shoddy-populist politics (thinking that each of these people are not merely to vote in election---but rather they are conformist as well---a definite majority, clothes and also how much is eastern (not only ethnically, but also culturally) is "as talented as a hobgoblin" (such a musical genius, a romantic hero, something unbelievable). Oh, yeah, and lots of curses. There was a little shrieking criminal who regarded herself "Marxist" and "anarchist" (pay attention, it turns out that it is not talked about a contradiction, only a paradox: these are two sides of a same coin), and yelled at anything, "fascism," "fascism" as if she were a robot, trying to seem individualistic, nevertheless being controlled at a distance by dark movements that unfortunately do not hold any clear philosophical system or definition hierarchy. Observe that fascism is an ideology derived from the left wing-socialist side of the map, from the altruism and from the big government comprehension. Notice how much government control in individual living ("fascism") will exist if she will manage to be chosen (she was actually talking about founding a party), and to finally cause "equality" as in North Korea or Soviet Russia. But this fact is "forgivable," since it doesn't seem like she had performed any mental process of integration and identification before claiming her "arguments". She sang . . . Not precisely a composition, it was more like an anarchistic jingle, which consisted of the line: "You cop---fuck off". Translation: stop defending individual rights which you truly are so we can make a revolution here and enslave everyone to the savage. She had smokes her Camel until becoming a lump of ash, called her ("rightist") semi-boy friend a fascist and kissed him. Through emptiness she descended upon her student-bag and stayed there for more or less half an hour. (Such a character from a novel by Ayn Rand!) While trying to read and then think, I consider, kids that age don't have to develop an entire closed philosophical system, but they do have to show some appraisal for logical thinking, successfully putting on written arguments, scientific or economical success and even for artistic achievements---they do have to show some appraisal for VALUES---I wonder how can anything grow out of this valuelessness---naturelessness---selflessness---mindlessness, out of nothing. And then there performed an introduction between two girls who were ex-students in my previous school with a little better population---not something brilliant, but as well not coming from a bad place---that describe their personality briefly by using the fact they "smoke and drink a whole lot." I am considering myself---what makes the distinction between me and them---what had made me not create an interaction with any man as an axiomatic instinct, just for entertainment's sake, and when asked why not answer "Stop philosophizing"---certainly it the norm over here, people whose parents earn more than my own do that. And then, being asked whether philosophy interests me---I got it, a light bulb (of my own mind) was turned on---it is philosophy that had protected me all my life---it is philosophy that had gotten me out of an eternal cynicism and kept me lone as required---and if somebody think like me, and be educated my way at the right age, before he becomes a zombie---he shall be saved for the rest of his life. When I am returning home hearing Rachmaninov on my iPod---he puts this all in shout---I ain't weak, I will survive public education. Oh, will it be interesting to observe some relatives being swallowed by such horrible a society!

Welcome to O`ism, and have Good Success (as opposed to good luck, being a mystical anti-concept of 'luckless' beings) in any way you choose via your freedom to think or not. No, your questions ain't sound stupid at all. Both at one and the same time. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification, but it cannot prove "either-or" principle or a couple of sides of identification (consciousness plus existence). However, you can prove that those cannot be proved or disproved by means of common logic or formal logic (as did Godel); the former is done by means of asking: How can you prove existence without assuming ahead the world exists, or how can you prove consciousness without assuming ahead that you are aware, or how can you prove identity without assuming ahead that proof is a valid means of knowledge, etc. You may try to "prove" these axioms to anyone who does not accept them. You shall see that in any human case, they will respond: "Oh, fine, you proved it, but what does a proof have to do with reality \ you have just imagined that you had proven it \ there is no reality \ contradictions exist and your proof is not valid \ {Program.thisClass = new Program(); thisClass.InsertaGibberishStatement;}" (mark the most suitable declaration}, and in a case which is of no conceptual faculty (and conceptual faculties ARE based upon axioms) a mere emptiness. Axioms are neither provable nor disprovalbe; every honest, i.e., consistent arguer will acknowledge that none of his claims can exist without it; the assumption that you are aware of something is the basis of any human knowledge; that is, the "assumption" that knowledge is ever possible. As said Rand with a passionate wording, "The first and primary axiomatic concepts are “existence,” “identity” (which is a corollary of “existence”) and “consciousness.” One can study what exists and how consciousness functions; but one cannot analyze (or “prove”) existence as such, or consciousness as such. These are irreducible primaries. (An attempt to “prove” them is self-contradictory: it is an attempt to “prove” existence by means of non-existence, and consciousness by means of unconsciousness.)" (ITOE, 55) Superiority---over what? Over logic and reality itself---no, because a proof is the process of deriving a conclusion step by step from the evidence of the senses, each step being taken in accordance with the laws of logic and the axioms. If you prove anything---it is either you have an infinite regress or a recursive statement---and in both cases, assuming you should prove anything, you should abandon each premise that had been rationalized or proven by using a fallacy of abstraction---and hence to abandon the entire logical system, of which axioms are not properly proven. Over man's mind---Oh, it certainly can, since man's ethical nature is no axiom. The proof is the fact that an organism is to attempt to survive according to its guidance, but man has no automatic guidance or course of action---he has to think in order to achieve knowledge. You may validate the following by means of an introspection process. But according to the above, logic is the "superior" standard of identifying reality: reality is never contradictory. Therefore, logic is the only human means of knowledge. NO, because "choosing" one's axioms is not a matter of faith or of mysticism, and it can be proved valid or false. Mysticism is holding convinctions without an evidence to them being true \ with an evidence to them being false. Does "A is A" not have any evidence in reality? Can you imagine your world without it? You ARE wrong, but it is a good characteristic you ask for a correction and do not accept your rejection of some ideas as if it were axiomatic and stop listening to anyone who proves otherwise.

Objectivism is a name of a philosophy, a philosophy proven and discovered by a single person, and hence it should be written with a capital O! I do. Due to the law of identity---existence is identity, there is nothing that can be too great to not consist of a specific width and length, or, if you want: ∞=∞+1; 0=1. It brings you to so many proportional identical fallacies and derives that no size can equal itself, or, in other words, that A=!A. But since existence exists, nothing can exist outside existence. It is a contradiction in terms, meaning: existent=non-existent, ==> existence does not exist. The ultimate conclusion is that everything that exists has certain very quantities and therefore a certain very identity, but you cannot find a cause for a limitation of the size of universe, a cause for being bounded, outside the universe (nor anywhere if you take the definition of the universe as `existence` instead of `a given area`). I find it to be of no contradictory data. P.S., it is primacy of existence and primacy of consciousness (which are of a different concept); not primary! It is a bit strange for me to consider Human Nature, because it all seems thus self-evident in this branch. However, the single goal of man`s senses is to give him an evidence of something that is. It does not mean that the faculty of your senses exists independently of you consciousness (e.g., ``This sight actually exists``), but it rather means that due to the primacy of existence what you see is a symbol, an objective, mere symbol, to that which exists, in its own language: a sensory data is used to represent nothing but the thing that stands in the given distance from you. Whether it is talked about the fact you cannot see beyond a wall [it is because of the particular nature of the wall which one currently experiences], an object that far away does not look like a clear and bright identity [you can build a telescope from the comfortable distance for you!], a color-blind person [is he still able to be aware of the chemical meaning and features of the color which make it look red to properly viewing people?], a desert hallucination [what one may experience is not the failure of you senses but a natural reaction to the hot air which one should identify], a dream [does the fact you appreciate a dichotomy not testify for itself? Dream is a state that contains no metal focus, and you can recognize the fact it is a more-complex evidence on reality and its particular causes, moreover then it will be a lucid dream], an attempt to smoke cocaine, Helen Keller, or all the forms of the so-called `mental illustration`, it is a mere experience of existence, experience which is a part of existence and you can be aware of, The color red in the spectrum is only a result of the quantity of light your eye gets, and you have your tools to identify this fact. Our senses are NOT limited in understanding reality, they merely symbolize of some natural state from which one can infer every conclusion, yet this given quantity of light is no more red than it is yellow just as something is not more red than it is `rouge` but nevertheless the term is objective. By the way, when a camera captures red stuff it is not red yet---this fact is not a sufficient datum. The camera is not aware of the color, it is not conscious, one simply gets the documentation when he observes it. You should focus on achieving satisfactory virtues in the context of promoting your central purposes in which you should focus on the context of promoting your survival qua man. Otherwise you`re not rationally selfish.

I think the people will drop, not they will drop their ratio. You see, if I could have got them, any of them, before the anti-rational brainwashing . . .

You said a beautiful attribute, not a basic virtue, so I`d say feminity, and perhaps happiness and independence contained in it : EDIT: Of course these all are methods of sense of life---sense of life is not a personal attribute but the sum of them and the nature of them.

Capitalism does not creat poverty just as socialism (and `big governments`) does not create abundance. Leftists rationalist will claim: This is what happens when the government doesn`t take money from the tycoons and share it with the barbarians. Well, what tycoons, intellectuals or mere productive industirialists do you know in Somalia? None. There is simply no one with the self-interest and the ability (and therefore the rational self interest) to create this money, these goods, this property, these volitional and rational means of survival. Now here is the formula: Galt`s Gulch does not equal Islamic Totalitarian Anarchy.

It is society in the context of my own recognition of it; public high-school kids.