Hi ewv,

Not that I agree with what bassboat said...
AND I do not intend to start a flame war here,
BUT saying that the Bible is all bad seems an ignorant position to take and you are much wiser than that! Having a knee-jerk reaction to anyone using the Bible as a way to explain a philosophical or historical viewpoint is also ignorant.

The "book" in and of itself is not bad at all. It is a historical artifact. Many of its stories have been corroborated by Modern science. And believe it or not, there is actually quite a bit in there that is in alignment with Objectivist thinking. Really there is! (Obviously not all of it). And when read as an allegory, it is filled with poetic, insightful and enlightening messages.

Remember that the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were ALSO teaching tool allergories. Each has their place.

The demise of the Bible as a teaching tool is more linked to the fact that imperfect human 'interpreters twist the original Aramaic and Greek words; They manipulate the plot-lines to serve their own purposes; And despots and religious zealots use this book to subvert peoples thinking to enslave them. But again - that should have no bearing on objectively researching the original Biblical words and concepts themselves.

I am especially amused at those who insist the BIBLE is the only true and 'holy word of G_D.'
IF G_D exists - then everything is his holy word right!?! The Bible is written by some interesting storytellers, some wise and other maybe not as much... IN THE LONG RUN, it is also a book that was compiled by fallible humans.

Just my 2 cents. Back to Krauthammer, G*D's messenger for reason in the Modern World ;-p

I can sit on a mountaintop and be at peace with no internet, social media, and cell phones. I have been that way for a long time. I have to credit at least part of that to atlas shrugged, although I would be hard pressed to explain why.

I get along with animals. I think because of this inner peace. I can’t imagine being some politician worrying what people think of me all the time

I do enjoy discussions with you on that it’s stimulating and reminds me of discussions late at night when I was in college

Did you have favorite characters in atlas shrugged?

True. AS is a book showing a decline of a culture. I guess I have a thirst for the “so what happens now” part showing a rise in a culture

I think the same attitude is still prevalent in corporations today with regard to employees. Just follow the orders and don’t think

And yet I would not say they are enjoying it. They do not seem happy. Would anyone who understands want to be like them? Not just their assets, but the way they think and feel and relate to a world they do not understand. Would you give up your understanding and sense of self for that?

There can't be a sequel because it was complete in serving its purpose to show the role of man's mind in human existence. Others could write entirely different novels with different kinds of themes with plots about rebuilding. But to equal Atlas Shrugged it would have to be very philosophical, not just a political plot about rebuilding without regard for what makes it possible.

I have always been intellectually "interested". Not smarter, just always looking for deeper understanding. It paid off in particular in the kind of work I have done in mathematical analysis in engineering (but not for any patentable inventions). And it paid off in understanding how the viro preservationists use government to take private property in order to stop them. I'm still at it in understanding the nature of concepts in mathematics and physics as they historically developed. Ayn Rand's epistemology is crucial for that.

Agreed. Collectivism benefits the collectivists at the top. Obama is rich, so are the Clintons, Pelosi, even Maxine waters and the elite Washington overpaid politicians

They didn't run the whole plantation. They were able to do what they were told to and act within that. It was all they knew because it was all they learned. If some of them showed more ability it wasn't recognized as real. Jefferson doubted they had the capacity to make choices for their own personal lives in the way free individuals did, from top to bottom, at the time. Almost everyone thought the blacks were truly inferior by biology, not competent individuals who happened to be enslaved and artificially prevented from becoming more.

Much of that attitude, to a lesser degree, carried forward until at least the 1950s, especially in the south. "Darkies" were porters carrying luggage at the train station because that was all they could do, etc. They even "talked funny". They were not seen as normal people, and it wasn't recognized that they appeared that way because they had been kept down, not by inherent limits on potential. Attributing economic motives as making principles irrelevant, as if everyone otherwise recognized blacks as equals, is a Marxist argument.

A good sequel would be great. Where does a culture destroyed by collectivism go from there. How does it rebuilt. THAT is where we are now. That is where venezuela is now.

We are living atlas shrugged right now. Even without a Galt, the motor of the world is being stopped a little st a time. I don’t make medical equipment anymore because iof FDA regulations, and I am only one example

I would say you are a very interesting person. You got much more into the details if ibjectivism than u did. You are probably a lot smarter than I am too. I am an engineer who uses creativity to expand on the discoveries of others and apply them in new and different ways. I am a problem solver

I would hope congress people and Supreme Court justices would by guided by high level objectivist principles

My only complaint was the length: that it had one at all because I wanted it to keep going.

Stalin seized, dismantled, and moved east German industry into Russia with Roosevelt's approval in accordance with plans dating to well before Yalta. The Soviets survived by looting, but did not prosper from it because its system made prosperity impossible. The Russian people were devastated, not enjoying the constant deprivation.

BUT. The blacks were good enough to run his plantation. I would dispute his honorable intentions to a substantial degree. He needed workers and they were cheap and he didn’t have to worry about losing them. The slaves were smart enough to run the plantation pretty efficiently for being inferior beings

He did what he had to do to survive. Just as the country did what it had to do to survive. When it came down to it, sticking to principles wasn’t paramount

I got lost in it. I felt like I was there as part of the story. The sign of a great writer or moviemaker

Sorry. Autocorrect seems to make more errors than accurate corrections. Statist countries continue to exist by extracting wealth from the countries and citizens they conquer. Which is what Russia did after ww2

By the time of the break he was a long way from meeting high standards!

I got "into" the epistemology by the second year of taking her seriously because it was helpful in understanding math and science. It still is and I have come a long way since then in applying it. I also found that it shed a lot of light on other kinds of knowledge, including the rest of her philosophy.

I have some very old issues of Reason from when I ordered back copies. I met Lanny Friedlander but was unimpressed with his emphasis on unphilosophical politics alone, and if I remember correctly, anarchism.

Interesting study on the role of emotions. Trump says he emotional tone of a relationship is set in the first minute or so of meeting a person. In the case if trump, he has met so many people that he quickly identifies the essence of their character almost instantly, and that’s what house into his instant emotional reaction. The emotion is an instant evaluation enabling him to act immediately without verbalizing why he feels that way. Emotions are a good thing to be cherished but only as an instant evaluation of a situation based on your values and thoughts. Bad values and conclusions yield inappropriate emotions

He had seen people like Kim and immediately ignored the nonsense and saw kin for what he is. Basically Kim saw this too, felt at ease, enabling them to talk. Same with Putin and China. Trump tells u where he is at, accepts where the other party is at, and then looks for common ground. It’s actually cool to watch

If anything will result in peace and cooperation, this us it. Would there have been peace and cooperation with hitler- I doubt it. But trumo would have recognized that far earlier than England did

There were many slave holders, especially in the south, who were inconsistent, but Jefferson wasn't one of them. He literally thought from observation that the blacks were not capable of more, though he wanted to treat them well and didn't like the slave system. He eventually saw that his inferences had been incorrect.

I was reading it on the bus on the way to a part time job, missed the stop, and had to walk back a couple of miles. Plus stealing a few minutes here and there while in the bathroom.

Could you filter that for grammar and spelling?

I think trumps experience in ruthless New York business prepares him well to deal with foreign leaders. He got to be a billionaire by looking forward for deals to enrich himself. Now I see him doing that for the USA. He will trade respect for respect and he had ticket mab’s number all along. Blustering claims of sending bombshell to the USA were just trash talk. Kim was never going to bomb the USA and trump knew it. So he responded with boasting about how we had bigger bombs. When they met, he gave to Kim personal respect required to move forward. Trump accepted that Kim wanted to survive as leader to n Korea, but stood fast on the requirements for entry into world acceptance. We will see what happens. Kim isn’t going to get freebies like he got from bush and Clinton and Obama though

Interesting. By the time of that split, I think I had absorbed the essence of ibjectivism that I could use. I didn’t get into the really deep epistemological work. I did publishing work for reason magazine for a couple of years after college, but bob Poole and Tiber Mach’s really took over the editorial work and made reason magazine a national force

I knew branden and rand split and to be honest I kind of figured rand expected branden had very high standards that he didn’t meet and that was that

There was a good deal of intellectual inconsistency too. Jefferson had hundreds of slaves to help with his plantation that weren’t freed until his death, which I find at distinct odds with his writings. He was part of the plantation establishment at the time. Monticello was quite large

By the time the country was formed, many compromises were made, and in subsequent years many “rights” were trampled in the desire to expand the country. It was kind of far from an strict intellectually consistent country