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Good point. And if I met Howard Roark in my closet, I'd probably try to arm-wrestle him or something...

Wait for the CS individualism-prophet to come back from hospital, get his ego fueled with non-individualistic (but mostly plastic) good wishes "to get well soon", and eventually back to cut all defying tongues off with his emoticons and stuff.

I find it extremely ironic that a philosopher who advocated individual thought and rational self-interest would be so mindlessly parroted by people who think that they're thinking, but in reality, they're mindlessly chanting the mantras of their guru.

If you meet the Buddha in a book, burn it.[/quote
I DID I did meet the Budha in a book....Hesse's SIDDHARTHA...
I returned it to the Hippie from whence it came theen I hurried off so as not to be late for the meeting of the Parrot...oops,Objectivist Society...

No web cam .I'll expose the rest when I meet her outside the Forums.
If you encounter Dagny Taggart in your closet be prepared for more than arm wrestling.Rand liked her encounters rough.

When I was about 8 years old I watched Ayn Rand on Donahue with my father. I was too young to fully understand the things she was saying. I remember having a deep sense of respect, as the things she was saying were completely different from the things I had heard adults around me saying at the time, and they seemed to quell a lot of the existential pain and confusion I felt from a lot of those things adults would say. (I couldn't define it then as such, but subsequently have.) I just remember wondering why the people in the audience were hissing at her when she was championing their rights as individuals.

When I was 13 years old I found a copy of the The Fountainhead on a trash can in San Diego. I was finally capable of studying her and of actually understanding the things she was explaining in her allegories. I have never found a philosopher, before or since, that hadn't contradicted themselves and that could logically back up her philosophical conclusions, as she has.

http://www.logicalfallacies.info/ That's just one site, there is a lot more research available but this is the best place to start.

After I had read all of her ficiton and most of her nonfiction I starting reading a lot of the Ojectivist essays and websites. I realized I was in a real danger of completely adopting everything someone said simply because they deemed themselves Ojectivists. I was 16, and decided I needed to study the competition, In a lot of ways, I changed some of my moral premises to try to live some things out to their logical (though in all cases illogical) ends.

I was always faced with moral ambiguities, not to mention the anxiety that comes from living life as an animal would, in a lot of cases. I am not only an animal; I am a rational, conscious human being. I live on planet Earth, and I do believe that there is a correct way to live as such.

Some reasons I've noticed that a lot of people misinterprete Rand is because 1) they haven't taken the time to actually understand her philosophy (by far the largest), 2) they don't understand the entire thing (the moral and ethical misconcetpions that we have are far more wide spread and indoctrinated then most can conceive), 3) they do not want to live rationally and freely. Though there may be other reasons I haven't come across any as of yet, that are valid. Can you?

As far as her being a "political paranoiac", have you heard about the Patriot Act? And capitalism, in my research of economic systems, has produced the best standard of living--from rich cats to minimum wage workers--for its human components, then any other economic system in history. Walk around with a camera in the third world and it won't be two minutes before you have someone asking you to take them to the US. Free market trade is the only ethical style of commerce.



To understand Rand, read her allegorical novels, then read her nonfiction. It's a beautiful way to learn a philosophy (kudos Rand) and it will allow you to watch her conclusions work in human context. Notice, not in some heavenly or fallacious context, but in reality.

Thank you for that well written and personal contribution.
Being an outspoken Athiest,Rand was booed and hissed every time she opened her mouth.Her life would have been in danger in Bible Belt OK

Thanks for your contribution. I have a question: what is to live rationally and freely?
So it is all about reading certain philosophers to adopt those ways of life? I just thought that if to live that way was a natural abiltiy then human beings would not need gurus and we would not need to watch the repetition of such a comedy where a thinker pretends to reveal how to live and to achieve happinnes. It seems then, that is not a natural ability then we need the theoretical enlightment. I hope you can explain then what to live rationally and freely means.

I would also like you can show how Rand went beyond the simple hatred of the Soviets and the ultimate dicotomy of mankind between the Soviet savagery and her ideal of pure capitalism that in practice was just defense of modern capitalism with all its mockery of anti-trust regulation and other fantasies drawn by Rand herself.

When you are born on this planet you are not born with an innate philosophy on which to build moral premises. You can choose to believe what is told to you based on where, when and with whom you grow up or you can also search for information on morality and ethics. Either way you parrot something. I have a hard time blindly accepting everything people say so I have, from very early, tried to seek out what would be the most moral and ethical way to live. The truth is that there are lots of philosophies out there that are designed to control, not to teach about personal liberty.

Ayn Rand believed that capitalism was the only ethical economic system, because it is the only system that allows for full personal liberty. You own your body, the product of your body and time, and are allowed to freely--by your own choice--make decisions and trade for your own personal interest. It is the only system that does not allow one man or group of men to steal from another man or group of men.

Like I stated in the last post, most people don't understand how far reaching these misconceptions we have on reality really go. When you are born you learn ways from your parents, friends, family, churches, schools, etc. to deal with pretty much everything in life; either by them sitting you down and consciously teaching you about things, or you adopt their general behaviours and ideas as your own with very little knowledge that you did.

The amazing thing about living in the United States is that you don't have to believe me. You don't have to take my word for anything. If you believe you have come across a more logical, rational way to percieve the world and a less coercive, ignorant and violent way to treat men on this planet then Rand did; then please, let me know!

There is a view ,coming around again,of NATURAL RELIGION based on Hume and Rousseau wherein MOST of what we call Moral behavior is Inate...but that's another topic...
Your assessment of RAND has been excellant and consistent with my own understanding of the work.But your treatment has been more personal than others.Would you say more,since you have emerged as an advocate?Thank you.

I met him (I think) in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance...

I have a marble table top that should do nicely in that event.

Does she have a sister?

No. My marble top is an only child.

Pretty funny there chief.

The sexual encounter betwen Dagny and Roark took place in a deserted Subway and was part fuck, part fistfight.
You might not want to get to close to Rand unless you dont mind coming away with a bloody nose.

That was Dagny and John Galt. I misread Dagny as "Dominque." She's the one Roark semi-assaulted in her home after completing a repair on her granite fireplace. I always thought Dominique was hotter.

One would think that as little sex as occurs in Rand I would be able to keep it straight.
In the biography Branden relates that Rand had complaints about Frank O'Conner and his inability to satisfy her because he was unable to whip her ass to her level of approval.They were ,after all,superior and impelled to the ultimate fuck.
I think I sold that once and have been ashamed of myself ever since,though of course I should not be...

Shame is indoctrination. Guilt is a social factor. How many times were you told to eat your vegetables because of the starving children in Africa? Our childhoods' are filled with broken analogies and still we're expected to react rationally to a life we are told is a fairy tale but is more like a "Grim" fairy tale.

Indeed in this most pseudo corner of the Eye one must opine having been of Lenin and sat on Trotsky's knee while the ice pick fell one must indeed feel the cleft of the deutoronomous falling of the sword meaning the need for the retroactive analysis of the pseudo/artistic neo-Bolshevik movement of the lesser spotted genuflectory attribute according to Catullus from the third movement of Brahms major racket number 5 including many allusions to and involving pseudo psychic dribbling of any substance be it paint or saliva onto a living organism and the way that organism may involuntarily convulse or partially analyse, ney, whinny at its own retributional overtones of the once revelatory self convulsive convolusive neo-eclectic spasmic production of sunlight coloured liquid from all orifices...in pantalonibus non solomente maximus crappus inclusit.