Are any emotions based on reason? My first take on the subject would be No. I could be wrong...

Now that you mention it, I know at least one PhD (in physical therapy) that seemed to be functionally retarded on just about every subject I was aware of. Every month she wrote a feature article that appeared in a magazine that my employer published. She could barely form a comprehensible sentence, and putting two or more of them into a paragraph that made any sense at all was completely beyond her. But she was the owner's wife so there was nothing to be done about it. The first time I read one of her features I went to discuss it with the office manager. She said that once upon a time someone edited the feature and the intelligible version was published. The boss' wife nearly exploded when she saw that a mere lackey had the unmitigated gall to edit her writing! It never happened again.

I guess the boss figured it was a small item in the grand scheme so he didn't bother to interfere. I got along with him great because we turned out to have a lot in common, both hardcore libertarians and both atheists. I'm guessing that he's an Objectivist, too, but that was before my own introduction to AR. He sold the company; I was a manager who the venture capital guys deemed "redundant" so I sought other employ, but the former owner and I have stayed in touch for nearly 15 years so far.

Thank you, khalling. I really enjoyed looking at the house.

Here's a link. http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/7c...

your status is "guest " on this site. Some people pay attn to the producer thing others don 't. Personally I look for value in content and a little fun playing around occasionally. I'm not sure what your karma statement means.

Yes. As a producer you have access to a drawing of the house and letter Rand wrote to Wright. I think it 's in the vault in the producer 's lounge

I meant a deliberate MISstatement of Rand's idea of selfishness.

Exactly. The implication being that wisdom brings a thoughtful, maturing person beyond these "all for me" ideas. It rests on a deliberate statement of Rand's idea of selfishness. She meant relying on your own mind to form your values and conclusions. They mean trampling over piles of corpses to get a banana flip.

Value for value exchange. Gouging? Really??

I'm not a producer because I think it's just a way to draw more money out of people and I consider it gouging. It may be their product, but it's my money, little as it is.

Ken Lay was intelligent and very charming. He was well connected and even played golf with the president on occasion. Much of what Enron came from large donations to key members of both congressional parties. Then the lobbyist were sent in. That is how Enron was able to pull off capturing key elements of energy control in the west. The movie "Smartest guys in the room" made from their actions does a good job of how they worked. My boss Muckleroy is shown talking on it. He resigned before the ax came down. He was an honorable man and found out what was going on and quit. I very well remember the price gouging done during Desert Storm with propane which is a key component of the "poor man's atom bombs", the fuel air explosive bombs. I lost a huge deal with United Steel because the supply told him that they were the only ones that could supply the petrochemical product. Enron wasn't smart or had the control they thought so the project and the product was lost to a much smaller company that they found and I think got it just to show Enron that they weren't the only big dog on the block.

It's great for adolescents... Or some shit like that.

And the religious brow beating.

They're rabid.

Uh huh! Sometimes I hang out at the Daily Kos just to piss them off! They may have gotten their revenge. One of my posts was voted down by so many people that I'm supposed to report to the Pricipal's office for posting outside of site rules.

In reality, however, what I wrote was completely tame and civilized and even began by sincerely agreeing with the premise of the article. Where I crossed the line, apparently, was in my assertion that Nixon's enemies list was benign compared to Clinton's and Obama's.

I'm not going to shout mia culpa, and what are the odds that there's a site administrator I can contact to review the post that was flagged and decide for himself if I broke the rules? (My only transgression was in not being a collectivist.) My guess is, slim to none, with a further sneaking suspicion that the administrator of such a site would be indistinguishable from Schrödinger's Cat..

Oh. Sssnap!!

I still love "Stranger in a strange Land" and in fact it's a cult classic. My sister did a series of discussions at the University of Arizona using this book as a basis.

Ayn Rand makes you laugh?

I said many, I didn't say all. And because it's true, that's why.

I'll see your "ill-informed speaking about Objectivism with false authority" and raise you.

Levels of enemy / evil status:

3) Being ignorant and lazy but willing to trash Objectivism based on what you heard, think your heard or just plain made up.

2) Sincerely but incorrectly thinking that you understand Objectivism and arguing against it using false arguments.

1) Actually understanding Objectivism but willfully twisting logic and reality to "prove" it wrong, introducing straw men and red herrings into your arguments. Outright lying about Objectivism in an attempt to instill extreme animosity toward it in people who know nothing about it.

Oh! Oh Oh! Yes. Robbie listen to this!!

Is sex a political topic? Will there be a tax soon?

You don't have to agree 100% to be a fan, but it's hard to argue that unless you agree 100% that you're an Objectivist.

It's possible that there's a tenet of Objectivism that is trivial enough that one could oppose it and still call one's self an Objectivist. It's possible but I can't think of one.

I suggest that this 100% agreement requirement is neither unique nor uncommon, however, when it comes to belonging to self-defined groups. For instance, can you be a Catholic if you don't subscribe to 100% of the church's dogma?

I would suggest that you cannot. The leaders of the Catholic church have the absolute right to define what the church believes in, how the Mass will be delivered, what will be said and the content of religious instruction for every parish, worldwide. If you want to be catholic but you use birth control, or don't believe in the transubstantiation, or don't believe in Confession, or any one of hundreds of other rules and regulations passed down from the Vatican, then I believe that you are *not* a Catholic. I think it's a winner-take-all proposition.

A person who is not interested in reason has nothing to discuss at all, especially here, and that is worth emphasizing.

We frequently see strawman arguments against "worshipers" or "sycophants" who are said to "agree with everything Rand ever said", demand "loyalty tests", demand to "tell other people what they can think", etc. The strawman typically serves to obfuscate a desire to "have Ayn Rand's philosophy and eat it too" by those promoting contradictions to Ayn Rand's basic principles (through religion, anarchism, variants of hedonism, etc.). And that does not belong here. That versus "believing everything Rand ever said because she said it" is a false alternative; neither is reasonable (and the second is rarely, if ever, found at all).

But being a "fan" of Ayn Rand does not necessarily imply understanding or agreeing with her philosophy in the full sense of that concept. You can't agree with something, no matter how initially attractive, until you know what it is.

There are many reasons people are attracted to Atlas Shrugged, not all of them valid, but people with mixed premises or mistaken views absorbed from everything from education to a life time of exposure to a mixed culture can be and often are attracted to the theme of the novel without at first being able to sort out what made it possible and what contradicts it.

Atlas Shrugged projected a sense of life made possible by Ayn Rand's philosophy, which she had to create in order to project in fiction what she called the "ideal man" (and which she said was her primary reason for writing Atlas Shrugged). The novel illustrated and often made explicit and explained her basic philosophy in various contexts (including the main Galt's speech), but it did not systematically describe in detail her philosophy or show it's hierarchical structure and necessity in a non-fiction form.

For anyone legitimately interested after having read Atlas Shrugged and/or Ayn Rand's other novels, there often are -- and should be -- all kinds of questions about her philosophy not explained or fully explained in the novel; the next major step should to be to find out what Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason _is_. Ayn Rand's philosophy does _not_ just say 'go out and be reasonable' in the name of 'independence'. It has a _content_, with major, logically interconnected positions in all the main branches of philosophy. It answers major philosophical questions that have been debated throughout the history of western civilization, often with disastrous consequences from bad ideas previously spread and for which Ayn Rand provided an antidote.

For that one must read the non-fiction, which has been published in several anthologies. It includes Leonard Peikoff's comprehensive and systematic Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, and his lecture series on Objectivism from the 1970's (at which Ayn Rand was present to answer questions), which is less comprehensive but the basis of the book -- and put it all in context by listening to the Leonard Peikoff lecture serious on the history of western philosophy, which is superbly presented.

Not everyone is interested in learning all the major technical aspects of philosophy (and not everything Ayn Rand expressed on her personal choices is part of her philosophy), but a primary goal of any person serious about Ayn Rand's ideas should be the intellectual ambition to find out out what her philosophy of reason and individualism actually is and why. In the meantime, anyone can be a "fan" of those aspects he genuinely understands. But that is the opposite approach of those who mistakenly decide to "become an Objectivist", full of temporary excitement over partially understood dramatic fiction -- and then proceed to learn what they signed up for as if they had just committed to another sect of a church -- and who invariably wind up throwing off what they never understood to begin with, blaming it with hysterical resentment on Ayn Rand.

Thanks for that accurate reply Khaling (and for directing Kathy to me and my web site). Some "enemies of Objectivism" do read Rand's works and misrepresent her ideas, deliberately or otherwise. Remember BHO's remark about Rand when Ryan was a VP candidate?