Selfish Christians Citing Ayn Rand

Psychology and Self Improvement
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Just now, monart said:

How would it be dangerous? Yes, it would be rough living, inconvenient and isolated, living a shrugging life, but would it be better than living under your present targeted persecution?

I want a normal life in a proper society as myself.  Not living like a caveman or in an evil society that attacks random individuals for no reason. (Screenshot of an upside down emoji and now a sideways face with its tongue out from insane lunatics that are hacking me.) 

Notice,  that they aren’t doing this to the people that made it, but only those like myself struggling to make it.

I have zero interest in hiding from society but being the most important part of it as myself. 

 

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19 minutes ago, monart said:

How would it be dangerous? Yes, it would be rough living, inconvenient and isolated, living a shrugging life, but would it be better than living under your present targeted persecution?

And to be more specific I have spent a lifetime becoming the ideal man,  I’m not going to hide from lunatics and criminals but have them all brought to justice and insure that this can never happen to another individual in at least the United States again at first and then the entire world.  Evil only has power via the sanction one gives it, and I will offer it no sanction and will defeat it and those involved in this mass Evil, not hide from lunatic criminals. 

1 Like
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11 hours ago, monart said:

Without reifying the abstracted “self”, 

The notion that is perplexing is the idea that the phenomenon of experience is the reified self as awareness at base. That bodily development, change and eventual decay are conditions to the locus of consciousness/awareness, and that that locus is the self at base. The basic notions of the Vedic philosophies.

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23 hours ago, tadmjones said:

I think the essential in most religions could be characterized as a faith in a transcendental aspect of reality. A faith in the possibility of overcoming the seeming paradoxes in the gross physical environment of life on earth. 

The life and death of Christ, the perceptual aspects of a human being and the strive to offer an explanation or meaning for how non material aspects , ie ‘love’ or ‘will’ , can or do affect one’s ‘lived experience’. Why be ‘good’, what are the results of ‘being good’ , whence the good ?

Ayn Rand regarded religion as “primitive philosophy”, as pre/non-rational explanations or responses to the types of metaphysical-moral questions you include as essential to religion. We know Objectivism’s answers to those and other questions. Not until Ayn Rand and Objectivism, do Christians have a rational alternative to Christianity. Not for all Christians, but for those who are inspired by the triumph of John Galt but not by the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Since Christians are in the majority, many Objectivists come from Christian backgrounds, including those Christians, referenced in the initial post, who have yet to let go of their belief in a “transcendental” reality.

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23 hours ago, EC said:

And to be more specific I have spent a lifetime becoming the ideal man,  I’m not going to hide from lunatics and criminals but have them all brought to justice and insure that this can never happen to another individual in at least the United States again at first and then the entire world.  Evil only has power via the sanction one gives it, and I will offer it no sanction and will defeat it and those involved in this mass Evil, not hide from lunatic criminals. 

That’s the spirit! And the power to your victory. Fight them when you can. Shield yourself when you can’t fight them. Ignore them when they matter little. Stay steadfast to the realization of your ideal man. Be happy.

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1 hour ago, monart said:

Ayn Rand regarded religion as “primitive philosophy”, as pre/non-rational explanations or responses to the types of metaphysical-moral questions you include as essential to religion. We know Objectivism’s answers to those and other questions. Not until Ayn Rand and Objectivism, do Christians have a rational alternative to Christianity. Not for all Christians, but for those who are inspired by the triumph of John Galt but not by the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Since Christians are in the majority, many Objectivists come from Christian backgrounds, including those Christians, referenced in the initial post, who have yet to let go of their belief in a “transcendental” reality.

Rand’s critique of religion as primitive philosophy is as reaction to the dogma produced by ‘faith’ ,  a product of irrationality or arbitrary statements and not comparable or even remotely related to ‘proper’ knowledge in Objectivism. The condemnation of the morality that would follow an ethos of sacrifice is her defense of the self as the highest value.

Is the appeal ,(or prehension) for religionists or specifically Christians for O’ism, rooted in an escape or denial of ‘transcendental’ aspects of reality? Are Galt’s triumphs not actually literary examples of transcending the ‘mundane’? Regardless etymology , what is inspiration?(and then reconsider etymology)

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1 hour ago, monart said:

That’s the spirit! And the power to your victory. Fight them when you can. Shield yourself when you can’t fight them. Ignore them when they matter little. Stay steadfast to the realization of your ideal man. Be happy.

It still makes no sense why I keep reporting a mass amount of crimes occurring against myself everywhere constantly and nobody will do anything or help. And then I get ridiculous nonsense about hiding in the woods from criminals instead of the government doing its job. There is a mass group of evil criminals stalking around Michigan and Ohio and other states that need to be imprisoned because if they are a threat to myself they are a threat to whole cities and states,  and since it is so widespread a threat to the entire country and everyone living here. 

In fact, it’s time to contact the FBI again because a huge group of criminal domestic terrorists roaming around harassing and destroying the lives’ of random Americans like myself cannot be allowed. I don’t understand why the government isn’t rushing to stop this. This isn’t just a threat and mass crimes against myself but is happening on a scale that is a threat to the entire nation.  That’s how wide spread this is happening. Nobody is even remotely safe with this crime happening on this scale everywhere I go. There is a huge group of criminals working together secretly threatening,  harassing, and destroying the lives of everyday normal law-abiding and highly moral Americans like myself and this needs to be stopped now. 

 

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Reported this clear threat to national security to the FBI. Will report this ongoing mass terrorism event to every federal agency capable of stopping it and protecting myself and all other individuals in this country from this unprecedented threat until they act.

Something occurring of this magnitude, over such a long period of time, and across such a wide region requires a military level response. 

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On 3/27/2024 at 8:22 PM, tadmjones said:

The notion that is perplexing is the idea that the phenomenon of experience is the reified self as awareness at base. That bodily development, change and eventual decay are conditions to the locus of consciousness/awareness, and that that locus is the self at base. The basic notions of the Vedic philosophies.

The way I understand “self”:  Consciousness is consciousness of existence. Self-consciousness is consciousness of one’s existence as a self that is conscious of existence. “Self” is an axiomatic concept, not as fundamental as “existence” and “consciousness”, that integrates all the characteristics of a living, conscious entity. So the self, for humans, is at once a concept and a concrete being. The concrete self “conditions” the abstract self in that it’s the concrete self that the abstract self refers to and is drawn from. Since human consciousness is the rational mind, the self is essentially the mind, but subsuming all the characteristics of the whole organismic mindful self.

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On 3/27/2024 at 11:03 AM, EC said:

. . . Evil only has power via the sanction one gives it . . . .

This is incorrect and a very dangerous idea many have taken away from reading Rand. (A related incorrect take-away, which Rand later, correctly, denounced and clarified, is the idea that evil is impotent.) Evil is not always dependent on a sanction, and when it is, sanction from most anyone will do. Sanction from the (forum-shopped) witch doctor is common. Navalny did not sanction the evil of Putin, and he was brutalized and murdered by Putin all the same. Realistically, sanction from the victim is generally not a worthy sanction to the evil doer. To the evil doer, the sanction of the victim is generally as irrelevant as the sanction, were such possible, of a rat or insect.

(Aside: Stalin fooled people into the “sanction” of not realizing that he was the reason they were forced onto a train to Siberia. They wrote him letters thinking that if he knew what was happening he would intervene.)

Ayn Rand introduced the idea of the sanction of the victim and the dependence of evil on it in a situation in which evil was an ongoing parasitism on the victim. I’d leave validity of the idea to that sort of situation, nothing broader.

One bad idea some readers take away from Atlas Shrugged is that they and their philosophical comrades are the Atlases holding up the world as in the book (kind of an iffy metaphor of the book, really, because of our modern conception of gravity) and that everyone else is significantly a parasite on them. No, our philosophical circle is not in that role. There are other real people who are in that role in this the real world.

3 Likes
51

This group is an underground unit of domestic terrorists destroying and threatening the lives of not just myself but of all Americans right now,  and this is the most massive National Security threat in existence.  Everyone needs to immediately protect themselves and the country.  Start by sending a tip on what is occurring to the FBI.  We need to all act right now and get the government to do its job.  This is an immediate existential threat against not only myself but every American and the republic itself.  Or they will start destroying and passively murdering every one of us,  and who knows when this domestic terrorist unit will turn to active murder? At this rate they could start this at any moment. Again, this is an immediate National Security threat of largest scale in the history of the nation, this isn’t just directed at myself,  but all good moral intelligent people.  This needs to occur right now to save ourselves.  Contact the FBI. 

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Threat reported to the CIA just now. 

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9 hours ago, Boydstun said:

This is incorrect and a very dangerous idea many have taken away from reading Rand. (A related incorrect take-away, which Rand later, correctly, denounced and clarified, is the idea that evil is impotent.) Evil is not always dependent on a sanction, and when it is, sanction from most anyone will do. Sanction from the (forum-shopped) witch doctor is common. Navalny did not sanction the evil of Putin, and he was brutalized and murdered by Putin all the same. Realistically, sanction from the victim is generally not a worthy sanction to the evil doer. To the evil doer, the sanction of the victim is generally as irrelevant as the sanction, were such possible, of a rat or insect.

(Aside: Stalin fooled people into the “sanction” of not realizing that he was the reason they were forced onto a train to Siberia. They wrote him letters thinking that if he knew what was happening he would intervene.)

Ayn Rand introduced the idea of the sanction of the victim and the dependence of evil on it in a situation in which evil was an ongoing parasitism on the victim. I’d leave validity of the idea to that sort of situation, nothing broader.

One bad idea some readers take away from Atlas Shrugged is that they and their philosophical comrades are the Atlases holding up the world as in the book (kind of an iffy metaphor of the book, really, because of our modern conception of gravity) and that everyone else is significantly a parasite on them. No, our philosophical circle is not in that role. There are other real people who are in that role in this the real world.

The point I and Miss Rand made is that one must never give moral sanction to evil not that not supplying this sanction “protects” one from evil physically, which is the job of a proper government (outside of emergency situations). Kira is a perfect example and died a hero via a bullet from an evil government while never sanctioning evil and always staying true to the good in every possible manner.  Providing even the slightest sanction to evil in such a circumstance would be the worst possible sacrifice,  the sacrifice of one’s mind to evil and those attempting to destroy and enslave one’s highest value. Good recognizes the good, and it’s true not everyone that knows the good is in a position to be Atlas (which is an obvious metaphor,  not sure why you threw in the gravity statement), but one’s allies in protecting and advancing the good to every individual’s benefit is what is needed in this fight versus what has become the greatest series of evil events in the history of our Republic, and to stop it from falling from what has become a slightly hidden version of tyranny into open tyranny, while helping save other good individuals such as myself from imminent full destruction and death from the tyranny while we all work together to return America to the land of Liberty and Capitalism.

And more to the exact point from the Lexicon:

"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube . . .

When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by scoundrels — and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil."

“GALT’S SPEECH” For the New Intellectual, 216

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11 hours ago, EC said:

 . . . Atlas (which is an obvious metaphor,  not sure why you threw in the gravity statement) . . .

Because the old picture of the world needing to be held up was false. Our experience is that unsupported objects here on the surface of the earth fall, but the generalization to thinking the earth itself would fall if unsupported proved incorrect.

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On 3/27/2024 at 11:03 AM, EC said:

. . . Evil only has power via the sanction one gives it . . . 

Calling “sanction” occasions of failing to recognize evil and take actions to oppose it is incorrect English, a smearing out of the term sanction.

3 Likes
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2 hours ago, Boydstun said:

Calling “sanction” occasions of failing to recognize evil and take actions to oppose it is incorrect English, a smearing out of the term sanction.

No. Specific *moral*/rational sanction. Are you for some reason at odds with the moral concept of not providing moral sanction to the explicitly evil? If so, are you suggesting that one should compromise or excuse evil, both of which are explicitly evil ideas. 

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2 hours ago, Boydstun said:

Because the old picture of the world needing to be held up was false. Our experience is that unsupported objects here on the surface of the earth fall, but the generalization to thinking the earth itself would fall if unsupported proved incorrect.

So you are randomly equivocating the correct concept of gravity with the analogy that it is the men of the mind that drive the advancement of mankind and create all values? 

If these are your positions,  then I morally condemn you,  you are not an Objectivist, and there is very limited value that you have to offer. 

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On 3/28/2024 at 9:33 AM, tadmjones said:

Rand’s critique of religion as primitive philosophy is as reaction to the dogma produced by ‘faith’ ,  a product of irrationality or arbitrary statements and not comparable or even remotely related to ‘proper’ knowledge in Objectivism. The condemnation of the morality that would follow an ethos of sacrifice is her defense of the self as the highest value.

Is the appeal ,(or prehension) for religionists or specifically Christians for O’ism, rooted in an escape or denial of ‘transcendental’ aspects of reality? Are Galt’s triumphs not actually literary examples of transcending the ‘mundane’? Regardless etymology , what is inspiration?(and then reconsider etymology)

Ayn Rand’s noble romanticism, as she says in her Introduction to The Fountainhead, reclaims the emotions of reverence for the sacred back from traditional theistic religions’ monopoly on them. Is this Objectivist romance for real ideals what attracts some Christians/theists to Ayn Rand’s work, despite their Christianity/theism?

Christianity’s “transcendent reality” is God, and human earthly affairs are mundane. Galt’s triumphs are “transcendent” in that they are heroic realizations of his highest ideals, the exalted becoming of his rational productive being. To be inspired by this noble, uplifting romance of Galt, is to “breathe in” and be energized by that “spirit”.

2 Likes
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On 3/29/2024 at 2:10 PM, EC said:

This group is an underground unit of domestic terrorists destroying and threatening the lives of not just myself but of all Americans right now,  and this is the most massive National Security threat in existence.  Everyone needs to immediately protect themselves and the country.  Start by sending a tip on what is occurring to the FBI.  We need to all act right now and get the government to do its job.  This is an immediate existential threat against not only myself but every American and the republic itself.  Or they will start destroying and passively murdering every one of us,  and who knows when this domestic terrorist unit will turn to active murder? At this rate they could start this at any moment. Again, this is an immediate National Security threat of largest scale in the history of the nation, this isn’t just directed at myself,  but all good moral intelligent people.  This needs to occur right now to save ourselves.  Contact the FBI. 

I can’t let this be buried. This is an emergency, where a man’s life is being destroyed by domestic terrorism within the United States over at least two years now. It is happening across a wide region and countless people from all walks of life seem to be involved. This is an immediate threat to not only my own life but the lives of all Americans. My own son is right now on a nuclear submarine protecting this country from foreign aggression while his father,  myself,  is being attacked by criminal domestic terrorists ( I’m assuming it’s people somehow posing as Americans or something) and no matter how much I put out what is occurring nobody will help. Right now with this occurring the entire nation must be at extreme risk. 

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Please I am being slowly murdered by whoever this domestic terrorist group is. Why are people allowing this to happen to a fellow American? Why is nobody helping me anywhere, let alone ignoring a massive terrorist threat to every American and the entire nation in every possible manner?