My name is Yang

[mynameisyang]

I am a student at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, age 22. I am a friend of Tenzing, who introduced me to Objectivism and this form. My family and I moved from China to the United States in order to find a more civilized and productive life. Although I have been a citizen for a while, I still need some help with English sometimes. Anyone is welcome to correct my mistakes.

I rejected my former beliefs in Socialism and Religion due to their ignorance of reality and belittlement of myself as an individual. I had been converted to Christianity shortly after I moved to the US, and became a devoted believer who tried to reason according to the bible. However, the more I examined the

meaning of the bible, the more I discovered its madness and pity. As time went on, the less I tired to live like a monk, the happier I became. Then one day I decided to become an atheist after I read some books by Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins. Several years of past experience suggests that I was right and the bible was wrong: the perfect, all powerful, all knowing non-existent monster is not my "father". My life functions better without it, because I am better than that delusional monster invented by savages.

Years after abandoning my faith, I become a friend with Tenzing Shaw and discovered Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Now, I can clearly see how the development of reason completely destroys all trace of mystic nonsense that I once took for granted. The introduction of Objectivism made me aware the value of me as an individual is above any collective that commands or begs me for “service”. During my acceptance of Objectivism, I also learned a very important truth about economics and ethics. “Money is the root of all good”, this explicit statement did not communicate to me any new fact, but it prompted me to look at the world critically and changed my mind forever.

Are there others on this forum who have also been "converted" from Christianity or other relegions?

I have been lurking for some time. I am interested in technology, science fiction, anime, games, and all from of art that promote these things.

[Tenzing_Shaw]

Yang and I were both electrical engineering students at UIUC. He is about a fourth of the way through Atlas Shrugged at the moment, and is listening (along with me) to an audio-book version of The Fountainhead.

[ZSorenson]

Congrats on your journey! Your mind seemed to follow a very deliberate progression from darkness into light.

In terms of anime, do you like Macross? Many of its plot points are mystical, but I think it is a great show and its continuing theme of the goodness of material and consumer culture as giving people meaning and purpose and self-esteem even during a crisis is something I like.

[mynameisyang]

Congrats on your journey! Your mind seemed to follow a very deliberate progression from darkness into light.

In terms of anime, do you like Macross? Many of its plot points are mystical, but I think it is a great show and its continuing theme of the goodness of material and consumer culture as giving people meaning and purpose and self-esteem even during a crisis is something I like.

I despised my religion because I was being "honest" to its principles. I tired to live my life according to what they said and discovered that it was impossible and insulting. Those who don't know what they are doing can still claim that they are keeping their faith, because they just do what others do and never bother to understand the fundamentals. My original motivation to join the church was due to my desire to seek beauty; I once thought the religious architecture, music, and the concept of immortality was beautiful. I grew up and discovered that beauty is not just stain glass windows, not just mournful songs, and definitely not the surrender of my life to a nonexistent creature.

I never saw the complete Macross but I know some of the basic characters, and I really like those transform jets.

Edited February 13, 2010 by mynameisyang

[mynameisyang]

Yang and I were both electrical engineering students at UIUC. He is about a fourth of the way through Atlas Shrugged at the moment, and is listening (along with me) to an audio-book version of The Fountainhead.

Thanks you for checking my grammar.

Edited February 13, 2010 by mynameisyang

[bluecherry]

Hi. Welcome to the forum. That's a nice story of progression. I like hearing about people who were once religious and/or supportive of political and economic ideas like socialism and similar things who now are supportive of Objectivism because those two things often seem like such huge road blocks for most people that I often have little hope that the good ideas will get through to them. It's encouraging to see those who did get past those things.

I was never religious at all, but I know what you mean about trying to live by a bad moral code. As a little kid I really wanted to be good. I wanted to be good because I wanted to be a person I could like and be proud of basically. It was strongly put forward to me as the only option it seemed that being good meant being a very agreeable altruist. So I really tried to do that. I tried to be "friends" with everybody, make everybody happy and give them everything they wanted rather unquestioningly for a long time. I was nice to even people who were mean to me and I would hardly say a peep in objection. I gave food from my lunch away to whoever asked for it, even many kids who I didn't know well and had plenty of their own food, until sometimes I had almost no food left for myself. It was when I was in 4th grade I started to really change. This girl I didn't know well in my class borrowed a movie of mine I really liked and then day after day for most of the year, as many times as I asked her if she'd brought it back, she never did. This happened even though we knew well ahead of time that she would be moving away at the end of the school year and I'd have no more chance to get it back. To be that nice little kid though supposedly meant not rocking the boat and saying that I suspected this girl was trying to steal my movie pretty much. After that I just got fed up and in my own little kid sort of way I realized then that other people were trying to convince me of some idea of what was good supposedly just so that they could take advantage of me, to use my own desire to be good against me. So then I started reevaluating what I'd been told about being good and seeing that I needed to be more careful about taking care of myself and selective of who I spent my good will on. I tried one more time briefly in late high school to revisit that old moral code now that I was older and may be able to more carefully and consciously assess the code and understand things I didn't as a little kid. So for about a month I tried to judge myself by that old altruistic code again and beat up on myself over all my past transgressions against it, but that just didn't work. The altruist code still didn't make sense, still was a recipe for being walked all over and ending up miserable, and I just couldn't really get myself to sincerely swallow that much ridiculous crap.

What are some of your favorite animes, sci-fi stuff and games? I like those a lot, I wonder if maybe you know some of the ones I know. And what do you plan to do with electrical engineering?

[ZSorenson]

I despised my religion because I was being "honest" to its principles. I tired to live my life according to what they said and discovered that it was impossible and insulting. Those who don't know what they are doing can still claim that they are keeping their faith, because they just do what others do and never bother to understand the fundamentals. My original motivation to join the church was due to my desire to seek beauty; I once thought the religious architecture, music, and the concept of immortality was beautiful. I grew up and discovered that beauty is not just stain glass windows, not just mournful songs, and definitely not the surrender of my life to a nonexistent creature.

I never saw the complete Macross but I know some of the basic characters, and I really like those transform jets.

I was an atheist even as a young child, because I understood that almost everything that seemed mysterious about the world had a decent scientific explanation. I was almost a radical atheist for someone that age. But my mother's philosophy was very damaging to me. In her worldview, 'bad people' were bad because of dysfunction, either because they were born with some mental disease, or they had been damaged or harmed by others. The way to deal with 'bad people' was to treat them psychologically, or shower them with compassion and love. As a child, I had a desire to view life in terms of moral clarity. When my peers tried to break rules or go against what the teacher said, I was always opposed. More and more I became isolated from peers. I still have that problem today somewhat, because even my good friends have trouble accepting me when I refuse to use drugs or drink heavily and the like. In any event, as I did make mistakes growing up, my mother's viewpoint taught me that the proper way to correct error was to throw up your hands in vain, and sulk sadly until someone came and loved you and either fixed the problem or told you everything was going to be okay. For contrast, the normal worldview is that 'bad people' are bad because they have not understood or associated choice and consequence properly, and the solution is to help them make that connection. Practically, this involves punishment or allowing someone to fail.

As a result, I entered young adulthood with a sense of moral clarity that alienated me from most of my peers and the ideology preached in American public schools. I turned, against the wishes of my mother, into what is called 'conservative'. Rather than discover Objectivism, however, my innate inability to take my life into my hands led me towards religion. Perhaps you have heard of the Mormons. They offered me, as a highschooler, the first wholly consistent view of life, morality, and the universe. They also offered 'love'. I accepted it because I knew I lacked any sort of worldview - the one society taught was very inadequate.

I continued to learn, and to think, and to try and figure out why things were what they were. What made good good, and evil evil, and so forth. This was in my attempt to become a more complete and happy man. Although religion corrupted much of my thinking - more accurately it constrained my thinking negatively, like a blindfold you could say. But I read Atlas Shrugged, and more and more from Ayn Rand, and I began to realize that faith itself was a complete illusion.

I had come to understand that faith itself was no more than a choice, completely self-generated, while I was religious. I thought this was a good thing, because I thought that this was how one 'built' oneself into a godly man. By accepting God just for the sake of it, just for personal desire to accept God. And that after faith, blessings and evidence came. I knew I was living a fraud, but I rationalized it over and over because the ideologies of the non-religious were unacceptable to me.

But Objectivism was acceptable to me. It's metaphysics and epistemology revealed a consistent and clear worldview. Let me say something about religion. Some religion can be consistent and clear, but only internally. Once you apply the facts of reality, the beliefs fall apart. Finally, with Objectivism, I was able to 'believe' in reality - as I always had - but I finally understood how.

For me, and since you were once Christian, one very important thing I learned from Objectivism was the impossibility of Jesus' sacrifice. As a moral calculation, it is completely inconsistent. In fact, even the concept of sin and righteousness failed to have any meaning to me as I learned how to look at the world using reason and reality as my guide. Sin is different than consequence. If you do something that causes a 'bad' outcome, that is consequence, and you are punished only to the extent that the consequence is negative. Sin is a non-existent mystical burden, which itself must be accepted on faith. And why did Jesus love us? For our potential? Then why not let us live? Why subordinate us? Why would you suffer eternally, with love as motive, when all we can return for that love is eternall submission and self-denial? How can you love something that utterly denies itself. How can love be your motive when your ultimate act of love is utter self-denial.

I learned from Ayn Rand that self-denial and love are contradictory. That self-denial mocks love. When I figured that out, religion collapsed completely. Though I must say, I had been long ready to leave, and very uncomfortable in religion.

Now, from Objectivism, I have learned what kind of purpose I should have, how I should achieve it, and what to do when my life does not work out the way I want it to. I have no yearning for understanding concerning other people and my life, and I no longer am willing to wait to be loved by someone or something else in order to love myself and my life.

That's why I said congrats on your journey. Humans are rational beings. From the beginning, as long as we choose to think, we are aware of the truth. It takes time, sometimes, to fully discover it. But the process of seeking it out leads to many different place. Again, congratulations on your journey! I admire you for it, and I say that in the truest way I can: selfishly. Because I am proud of my own journey, and am able to understand why you should be of yours.

I hope my English isn't too hard to understand for you. I tried not to be too simple in my writing, because I figure you want to learn.

And anime - I'm obviously a big fan of Gundam as well. Do you have a favorite version of it?

[ZSorenson]

What are some of your favorite animes, sci-fi stuff and games? I like those a lot, I wonder if maybe you know some of the ones I know. And what do you plan to do with electrical engineering?

What are some of yours?

Anyway, hello again. I hope you don't totally discount my opinions because of our conversation in that other thread.

I wanted to ask - you probably would agree with me that with altruism there is as much a mystical sense of 'sin' and 'righteousness' as in religion? Sin against 'others' for which 'the universe' punishes you or 'society' punishes you. As if there's this big Wizard of Oz or Big Brother out there that wants to hold you down if you don't absolutely act as a proper altruist. My mother is not a severe lady, but her altruism imposed on my youthful rationality caused me to view the world in a very paranoid way. I guess I just figured that if altruism was so great, there had to be a reason, right? I was always very reluctant to 'rock the boat' because of altruism. I didn't want the 'universe' to 'get' me.

Ironically, I always rocked the boat socially. I always, without being able to help myself, showed my disdain for social ritual and irrational action for the sake of popularity. People thought I was crazy - but I never fit the 'nerd' mold - so I was always just 'wacky'. I wish I understood Objectivism better in high school, I would have been more deliberate in my social rebellion. Of course, my rebellion was always against 'popular' kids - because my altruism taught to be really nice and accepting of the really 'wacky' people.

[bluecherry]

Well, there's quite a few animes I like. The last two that I saw and really liked were Death Note and Kurokami, which I've seen over the past year. As for Sci-Fi and games, I really love what I've read by Hainlein and I've read some Asimov and have books by a few other sci-fi writers I intend to get around to reading in the not too distant future. Games, lately I've been playing Persona 4 with one of my best friends and really enjoying it. At my friend's suggestion, we named the main character John Galt, which is kind of amusing with the Japanese honorifics and such used throughout the game.

Which other thread? And in any debate/discussion, you judge what's being said, not who is saying it. And besides, nobody agrees with me on everything or anywhere near everything, I'd be living in a very quiet, isolated world if I stopped speaking with everybody who may disagree with me on anything at all. So, if I don't even remember which thread exactly you are speaking about, then it's pretty safe to assume there's no hard feelings.

I agree that altruism, even from my own experience with it, is very duty based and generally nonsensical in its nature. It's like you HAVE to do things for other people, whoever they are, with no real reason why. There's just this really heavy emphasis on *feelings*. "Don't say that! You'll hurt their feelings!" (no matter how true it is and no matter how appropriate a time and manner you have for saying it.) "You have to go to so and so's birthday party! If you don't it will hurt their feelings!" (even if you barely know them and have many things you'd rather be doing and that person doesn't interest you.) "Go tell Mrs.Whatsername thank you and that you liked her gift, it will make her so happy!" (even if you really didn't like it and hadn't asked for any gift and just wish she'd leave you alone.) "You can't wear that! What will people think?" (even if you personally love the outfit and have a good occasion to wear it.) The deepest of punishments here which marks you as a shameful failure seems to be being generally despised and a social outcast. That some people may not care and be bothered by such either doesn't seem to seriously cross their minds or else just marks you as even worse for not suffering from being rejected by polite society and therefore as something that bad and that much of a freak it means your lack of caring doesn't matter because you just don't count the way other people's feelings do.

I know what you mean about figuring their must be a reason and so worrying about transgressing against something foolishly in your ignorance. I had a few disturbing moments in my childhood when I realized on different subjects that in fact I WAS actually more reasonable than most of the people around me, even droves of adults who were supposed to know so much better than me. I still remember how creeped out I was the first time I realized that religion existed and what it was, that all these people around me, tons of them, of all ages, really believed all these bizarre fairy tales they were telling me were REAL and that they were all interrelated.

I quickly became "unpopular" once I stopped trying to be such a people-pleaser, but I did rather well fit the "nerd" mold I suppose and I already had some very good friends, so that was fine for me. I often disturbed some of my friends though who were still more hesitant to rock the boat and draw negative attention to themselves. (I remember in particular in middle school a kid who would go around every day after buying his lunch and would ask everybody in the cafeteria pretty much for their snacks and just about everybody would give him stuff just to not press the issue and to make him go away. I was the only one at my table of friends who just would not give him anything and my friends were uncomfortable with this. I was of course proven to have the better way of dealing with the issue because he finally gave up and stopped bothering me, but their appeasements just kept him coming back to them day after day. Some people didn't want to be rude or mean so they'd give him the stuff, but I contended my rejection wasn't mean or rude, his asking was for putting me in that position when there was no justification at all for why I should want to give this strange kid my snacks day after day.)

[ZSorenson]

Well, there's quite a few animes I like. The last two that I saw and really liked were Death Note and Kurokami, which I've seen over the past year. As for Sci-Fi and games, I really love what I've read by Hainlein and I've read some Asimov and have books by a few other sci-fi writers I intend to get around to reading in the not too distant future. Games, lately I've been playing Persona 4 with one of my best friends and really enjoying it. At my friend's suggestion, we named the main character John Galt, which is kind of amusing with the Japanese honorifics and such used throughout the game.

Cool!

Yang, this is your thread, tell us what anime you like.

As I've said, I'm a big fan of Gundam. In America, most exposure to anime comes from Cartoon Network. Because of this I have at one point really liked Outlaw Star and also, naturally, Dragonball Z.

But I've already said that I'm a huge Macross fan. And in line with that, I like Space Battleship Yamato, if you have seen that. I don't know why I like the war ones so much. I'm trying to think of shows I've seen that I used to like but have forgotten that aren't war anime.

Let us know what you like and why.

[Lucio]

Congrats on your journey. Great for a 22 year old.

On a side note, how did "anime" entered the thread?

He said he was Chinese not Japanese...

On the syntactic corrections, I've seen "tired" when you mean "tried"

Nice to have you here.

Good Luck.

[mynameisyang]

Cool!

Yang, this is your thread, tell us what anime you like.

As I've said, I'm a big fan of Gundam. In America, most exposure to anime comes from Cartoon Network. Because of this I have at one point really liked Outlaw Star and also, naturally, Dragonball Z.

But I've already said that I'm a huge Macross fan. And in line with that, I like Space Battleship Yamato, if you have seen that. I don't know why I like the war ones so much. I'm trying to think of shows I've seen that I used to like but have forgotten that aren't war anime.

Let us know what you like and why.

I guess I just tell you since you are curious about that. I have seen anime during its primitive stages like Austro boy, Voltron defender of the universe, and Doremon etc. I have also seen many animations from the US like the Transformer, TMNT etc. I never become a fan of stuffs they load on cartoon network, because I quit TV shortly after I came to the US. My recent interests are some of the more obscure titles like Crest of the Stars, Starship operators, and Rahxephon. I also watched Ghost in the shell with Tenzing. Gundam is interesting in its mechanical design, but I never fully expose to it due to so many story lines, there is one series I recommend for Gundam fan: MS0083 Stardust memories. The Vision of Escaflowne, it was brilliant in art and animation, the plot as a fantasy makes sense more than I expected, but I don't like its mystical ideologies. I was never into any kind of cartoons, because I can't stand how they portray human as ugly and pity, and animals act like human is just awful. I did not watch that much movie as anime, I had some impression with Terminator 1 and 2, it was interesting to see those actions but I don't like its altitude toward technology. First two of the old Star war series and the latest Star trek film looks good by the new once are beyond awful. I devote even less time to games, but there are some preferences. Star craft - no need to introduce. Homeworld, not popular but I guess some of you played this. Other than RTS, the other genre I played are not familiar to most people I guess. Basically its the old arcade genre with you controlling a space ship and shoot in 2D, if you are interested, just Google the term "shmup". I have no time devote to length RPG, and no interest in fist or gun fights. Also, no time and mind to waste on racing, sports, gta, silly mario stuff, and what ever abomination there was.

You can also take look at my deviant art page http://myname1z4xs.deviantart.com/ I think it express my interest better than words. Keep in mind that I am not a good artist at all. Thanks ZSorenson and Bluecherry's response, its good to share those experiences with you. I hope the above information satisfies your curiosity.

What do you plan to do with electrical engineering?

EE in Champaign takes some real guts to get through, but I was not good enough to get to the grad program. I am working on my own project of not so high tech circuit and mechanical design. I had some ideas about how to improve consumer product design with my engineering knowledge. I have the power to do the technical and physical work, but its kind confusing for me to understand those patent businesses. Is there any employer here? I can do some decent computer and mechanical work; I can also do some technical drawing and illustration when needed. I am not picky about salary and working hours, I just need a chance for me to apply my engineering knowledge into some professional technical reasoning. I once did an intern with some small company, but it was kind boring and passive. I have to sit there all day with almost nothing to do. So I quit after one year, because I can find something better to do on my own, even not getting paid, because to me a real “job” is more important than just a job title. If any of you are interested in hiring me, I can send you my resume any time. I have arranged an informal intern opportunity with my relative in China for this summer, its a project about video surveillance system on some electrical grids. I hope this experience count as something on my resume.

There are much more I can talk to you, but I think I better stop typing before I make some terrible grammar mistake. I typed all these without Tenzing check my grammar, I hope its not terribly screwed up.

Edited February 14, 2010 by mynameisyang

[JMeganSnow]

On a side note, how did "anime" entered the thread?

He said he was Chinese not Japanese...

And all Japanese people like Anime? He has an anime picture as his avatar, it's appropriate to assume he enjoys it at least a little. Well, either that or manga.

[mynameisyang]

Congrats on your journey. Great for a 22 year old.

On a side note, how did "anime" entered the thread?

He said he was Chinese not Japanese...

On the syntactic corrections, I've seen "tired" when you mean "tried"

Nice to have you here.

Good Luck.

Be careful of what you say, relate anime fan to "Japanese" is common street Joe's view point, I was not expecting such words from an Objectivist. This kind of superficial relation logic is essentially Collectivist.

[Weston]

Are there others on this forum who have also been "converted" from Christianity or other relegions?

I "converted", but I did not do so as angrily as you did. It's clear to me (as it will become to you) that modern Christianity is not as bad as the worship of a "savage monster". Most Christians you'll meet here are really very nice people, and some are quite reasonable too.

As a side note, is it really conversion if one simply drops the idea of faith altogether? That strikes me as more of an "enlightenment".

[bluecherry]

Ah, so you're kind of doing various odds and ends with your technical knowledge from electrical engineering right now. *nods*

And I only brought up anime because the last line of the first post mentions an interest in anime. D: I don't just assume Asian = likes anime. Though now that I've heard some of the ones Yang has seen, I also saw Ghost in the Shell and liked it if you mean either or both of the TV series. I haven't seen the movie. The TV series starts off a little slow in the first couple episodes, but gets more interesting as it goes.

[ZSorenson]

Yang, have you ever played the Total War series? It's pretty fun because it combines large-scale strategic resource management with small-scale tactical battles.

I also really like a game called 'Railroad Tycoon 3'. I'm an economics student, but have learned a lot just from playing that game. Each map has about 20 different commodities with supply/demand and price levels varying. As you build rail lines between areas, the prices and production actually fluctuate - like a real economy. For example, nobody wants to travel between cities at first. But once your railroad has been running for a while, people move into the cities and then you have lots of passengers. Also, if you ship a lot of iron to steel factories (which you can buy), over time more iron mines appear. It's really interesting and fun for a strategy minded gamer.

Edited February 14, 2010 by ZSorenson