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17 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

I don't know why people keep saying "affair". It was a nonmonogamous relationship with the consent of those involved or connected, that ended badly. 

Typically a sexual affair is kept secret from the spouses, but that's not part of the definitions I've seen. There is such a thing as an open affair.

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21 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

I don't know why people keep saying "affair". It was a nonmonogamous relationship with the consent of those involved or connected, that ended badly. 

Well, Okay. At that time it would have had a lot of bad consequences for her to admit anything like that. (I don't want to get side tracked on the word "affair" but I do wonder why you have a problem with it).

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On 8/19/2021 at 7:37 PM, MisterSwig said:

Typically a sexual affair is kept secret from the spouses, but that's not part of the definitions I've seen. There is such a thing as an open affair.

The definition for a moralizing Christian maybe. "Socially unsanctioned romantic relationship with another partner" basically. It's a word used as negative moral judgment. I think more people feel so strong about this whole thing because they freak out about non-monogamy. Let's be honest here: if there was no breakup, and they told everyone when they were happy about their nonmonogamous relationship, someone would have been condemned as Satan reincarnate. And it probably would have been Branden still. 

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We interviewed Richard Salsman in the latest episode. He is a bit unique in the Objectivist movement, having at some point associated or worked with ARI, TOS as well as TAS now. We go over his long history in the movement, his thoughts on schisms involving Peikoff, Kelley, McCaskey, Brook, Biddle, and Barney. We also discuss his latest book, Where Have All the Capitalists Gone?, and Rand's definition of "capitalism." Check it out!

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Scott and I have a small debate over the issue of open versus closed Objectivism. Everyone seems to agree that "open" and "closed" are metaphors which need literal explanations. I propose that "open" refers to Objectivism as a common noun, i.e., a class of Objectivist philosophies; while "closed" refers to Objectivism as a proper noun, i.e., the specific philosophy of Ayn Rand. Take a listen!

 

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We had Robert Bidinotto on the podcast. He was an investigative journalist and active in the Objectivist movement for many years. He now writes vigilante thriller novels centered around his hero Dylan Hunter. The first part of this episode focuses on his history in the nonfiction world of journalism and Objectivism, while the second half (52:00) is about his fiction writing and thoughts on justice. Check it out!

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

We welcomed on the show Dave Goodman, a fellow Rand fan from Facebook discussions, to debate Yaron Brook's leadership in the Objectivist movement. We also get into some ideas for spreading Rand's philosophy and working with non-Objectivists like Dennis Prager. Check it out!

 

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Gennady Stolyarov II, chairman of the Transhumanist Party and an Ayn Rand fan, joined us this time on the podcast. We discussed the life extension movement and his efforts to unite like-minded people in a political party devoted to overcoming the problem of aging and death. Check it out!

 

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Gentlemen, be sure to acknowledge to yourself explicitly what you do know: you each one, just like me (much your senior), are going to die. No ifs, buts, or maybes. Totally end. Be sure to invest your life with that background as absolute and with projects consonant with your rationally expected range of end date. Indefinitely long is not what is going to happen to your duration, and at some level, hopefully explicitly, you know that. 

You will die (and eventually even the species will die). And it can have been worthwhile, indeed entirely complete, to have lived your few or several decades of existence.

Related, from another, recent thread:

Quote

 

There is a most basic and ever-present form of the human fear of death, and that is our animal wire-up to avoid death joined with our distinctive ability to think about the past and future and know that we shall die.

For each individual, ancient to modern, I think their coming end of existence is known to them at the deepest level, and that is directly terrifying left to itself, untied from conscious wider engagement in the stream of life. So when Plato has an old man speaking his terrors, especially at night when trying to sleep, of what awaits in the afterlife, I do not think that Plato and his fellows are being entirely honest with themselves and with others concerning what their fear is really about. Indeed the whole spiel—Egyptian, Greek, Christian/Muslim—about an afterlife is not simply an error of knowledge, but a psychological defense, an attempt to brainwash oneself against a truth one cannot get free of all the way down: one is going to cease to exist. From before Plato to the billboard signs of today that read “Where will you spend eternity?” we have the same self-foolery of the coming full stop.

One common thought from believers in afterlife is that otherwise: life is meaningless. The thought becomes dubious as they think more specifically and fully about their life with their spouse and children and other projects and enjoyments. Rand’s theory of value is the full deliverance from the muddle “otherwise, life would be meaningless.” All meaning and worth and purpose is derivative from our life and life before us. All chanting upon life beyond what arose in nature and ends in nature is primordial human self-foolery, and Rand’s insight brings the completeness of realizing squarely that all value and worth and purpose and problems exist only within the phenomenon of life.

 

Life, finite life, is an end in itself.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/10/2021 at 12:28 PM, Boydstun said:

Be sure to invest your life with that background as absolute and with projects consonant with your rationally expected range of end date.

Thank you, Stephen. This is what I try to do. It would be nice to live a few hundred years in good health, but I'll be lucky to make it to 100.

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We interviewed Richard Ebeling, the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel military college. He told us how he was introduced to Objectivism in high school and later how he discovered the lost works of Ludwig von Mises. Then we discussed his latest article on Marxo-Nazism. Check it out!

 

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  • 1 month later...

In this episode Scott interviews me. It was recorded last year, before we started doing the podcast together. We talk about my background coming out of a Protestant worldview and becoming an atheist and Objectivist. Scott also asks me about his favorite subject, life extension.

 

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We just interviewed the artist Michael Newberry. We talk about his paintings (and show a few of them), as well as his philosophical ideas on aesthetics and postmodernism. This was a special treat for me, as I really enjoy his paintings, my favorite being "Winter." Check out the episode!

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Scott and I respond to Yaron Brook's negative view of "It's a Wonderful Life." We argue that he's wrong. It's not about altruism. It's about a conflicted man who is basically a good person and comes to realize the importance of his individual life. Check it out!

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Phil Magness is the AIER economic historian who received the Collins-Fauci emails through a FOIA request and then published them. He also exposed factual errors with the 1619 Project and wrote a book critiquing it. We interviewed him about these subjects and others on our latest podcast. Enjoy! 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

We talked with Jason Hill about his battles with cancel culture over his views on Israel and "trans" issues. I asked him about his new book which deals with the history of slavery and calls for reparations. And we talk a bit about his views on the Democrats vs Republicans today. Check it out!

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

We had a very philosophical conversation with Roger Bissell, discussing free will vs determinism, Rand's take on music, the fallacy of frozen abstractions, and other topics, including how Roger was introduced to Rand, and his experiences in the movement. Check out our new episode!

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

So far I’ve listened to about a third of the show and thought I’d write up some thoughts before they fly away.

The lady’s voice provided aural variety which is good. 

Rand’s advice is substantially outdated.  I never thought I’d live to see the out-in-the-open corruption taking place, and the police state measures that have been installed, in the last year or so.  We have reached the point where being nice is ineffective against some injustices, such as “mandates.”  The truckers have the right idea.

Yaron Brook,  on a recent podcast, said he opposed the truckers because they were violating property rights by blocking the roads.  As the saying goes, I am not making this up.  He realized he had a problem with the Boston Tea Party of 1773 (the Colonials involved weren’t too fastidious about property rights), maybe a listener brought up that comparison.  So he blathered on about how today’s situation is different, today it’s not a question of tyrants and revolution.  Well it is and it’s obvious.

By the way, why insert a clip of Brook saying today is worse than years ago?  We need him to tell us that?   He has been helping make today  worse for over 20 years.  There are many examples.  He claims there is no evidence of election fraud in 2020.  “No evidence, zero evidence” is an exact quote.
 

 

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10 hours ago, Dupin said:

. . .

By the way, why insert a clip of Brook saying today is worse than years ago?  We need him to tell us that?   He has been helping make today  worse for over 20 years.  . . .

Mark,

In the longer view, I should say it is not the case that things are worse in America today than in all my 73 years. In 1957-58 a new flu swept the country. We knew it was coming, and a lab here had developed an effective vaccine for it before it got here. We had an FDA and a CDC in those days too. Though we had a vaccine, it could not be produced fast enough in time to help against the first and biggest wave. The virus spread so fast that the federal agencies and the Eisenhower Administration decided it would be pointless to call on people to stay home across the board. Furthermore, the incidence of the virus was largely in children. Some schools closed, and absences were enormous as parents kept their children home. The entire DC system did have to be closed. Ike got some money to ramp up production of the vaccine in time for fall of ’57. That pandemic killed around 116K Americans, which today would scale to about 200k.

When you look into the New York Times in that period, you will find very little concerning the pandemic. There were other, much more urgent things going on. Mention of the pandemic was usually accompanied by concern over protecting our military from it. Our focus, rightly so, was on USSR and its military capabilities and maneuvers. Overall, things were not better then in America than today.

On a day in October 1962, my father received a call at home from the SAC base, where he worked as a civilian in War Plans, and he was told to get to the base Now because they were going into lockdown. That evening he was in the War Room with the Generals as Kennedy announced on television his move on Cuba. Our B52’s in the air and on the fields were in highest readiness for flying to Russia to annihilate it. Things were not better then in America than today.

By ’66 I was beginning college. If a man flunked out or dropped out, he would be drafted to go to Vietnam to kill people and possibly be killed. My cousin who grew up next door to us was killed there at age 19. Things were not better then in America than today, at least not for we young men.

Since 2001 there is indeed something seriously undermining liberty here, and that is the governmental plundering of property in America. Your right to your property together with your rights over your body and your labor makes for much of what is your freedom. Every federal budget that is in the red is an acceleration of the taking of your property and your making of a life for yourself (ditto for posterity yet to be). This is the most import stab against liberty going on today. All the chatter on masks or which bathroom to go to or stopping illegal crossings of the Mexican border or the stopping my maple syrup at the Canadian border is small potatoes compared to our failure to get these deficit budgets stopped. It should be the top political issue you see gets talked about. In April 2017, with both chambers of Congress in the same Party as the White House, a federal budget in the red was passed. The leaders all congratulated themselves for compromising with the other Party. Was that comprise “I’ll cut this if you’ll cut that”? No. It was “I’ll agree to you raising that if you’ll agree to me raising this.” This is the serious issue on which voices should be sounding.

Stephen

Edited by Boydstun
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