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Zero Worship

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"Zero/Death Worship" is a concept that intrigued me when I first started learning about objectivism, but it took me a very long time to understand exactly what Rand ment and I still haven't been able to think of a good way to articulate the concept to other people without coming across as a nut. I'm looking for some good introduction videos or audio clips (or articles) that explain the concept. Any help would be appreciated!

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Good topic.

September 28, 1953

When we say that nobody actually believes in God, it is true, if by "belief" we mean the equivalent of a rational conviction. But the trick, the psychological "gimmick," of mystics is the fact that they do not "believe" in reality, either. What we mean by a rational conviction has no equivalent in their consciousness. No, they do not "believe" in God in the same way as they "believe" in food, money or their material existence—but their material existence has no full reality for them, either—and that is some special state of consciousness, that is the root of the faking, the pretense, the going through an act, the unreality which I sense about most people and which I hate more than anything else, that is the form of their Death Premise, as if they do not merely wish to destroy existence, but have never even permitted existence to exist.

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I found this doing a search for zero near worship on the Objectivism CD.

Now I should like to mention a psychological aspect of the motivation of a social worker, which I regard as the most profoundly immoral aspect of the whole issue: a person who chooses social work as a full-time profession chooses to devote her life to that which I define as "zero-worship": to human flaws, lacks, failures, miseries, vices and evils, to the morally, spiritually, intellectually or psychologically inferior—to those who lack value, with the lack of value as the claim and the incentive. If a person were actually motivated by a love of values and a desire to relieve human suffering, she would not begin in the slums and with the subnormal: she would look at what our present society does to the talented, the unusual, the mentally superior children, in schools, in colleges and in their subsequent careers; she would go out to fight for them and to help them, before they perish psychologically in loneliness and bewilderment.
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Excellent find! Please excuse my ignorance, but what is Objectivism CD?
As far as I know,it is no longer available. It is a CD that contained most of Rand's popular fiction and non-fiction, plus OPAR. Since it is searchable, it's a pretty useful tool for someone wishing to lookup the text every now and then.
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Excellent find! Please excuse my ignorance, but what is Objectivism CD?

It is a no-longer available compilation of all of Ayn Rand's works and some of her post-humously published material on a CD ROM in a searchable electronic format. This was an authorized work created by Phil Oliver quite a while ago. Nothing from the Brandens is included, and many of the authors other than Rand who contributed to the various periodicals she edited are also omitted. Five chapters are missing from the version of The Virtue of Selfishness on the CD, and six from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

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