[Kaligula]

The fact that Rand made Roark an architect always made me somehow uneasy.
Simply, architecture was never truly considered as an art. And, if at all, architecture is more about subjectivity than objectivity, especially if it is to be an art.
The very nature of architecture - demands an investor - makes it a struggle with the public, if you want to express yourself through it. It is just a fight who will prevail...
Why then has Roark chosen a confrontational field of action without a promise of excellence, for what? Just so he can 'roar' (a strange surname, Roark, isn't it).....?!

The Roark's sabotage may be not only about his sense of excellence, but about his mistaken sense what architecture (finally, techne) is..

[Kaligula]

I like male characters of another female author, Marguerite Yourcenar, much more than Rand's. Zeno, the alchemist of 'The Abyss' is much more likable and believable than Roark.
Also, although his aloofness translates into female desire around him, he is after much more, he tries to harness wisdom, an open-end pursuit which has nothing to do with imposing himself on others like Roark. Still, he finishes as a victim to the Inquisition; nevertheless, in a different way than a bit Roark-like character, Cyprian, who finds himself sacrificed to flames really fast.
The Roaring Roark, who seeks his personal excellence in his personal architecture, and through this architecture, looks a bit like a caricature in comparison to Zeno, not at least due to his very roaring focus. Coming back to the Rand quote - "But, in fact, a man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself." - we get rather mundane closure; are all that solitary buildings of him, buildings - selfishly? - imposed upon a society like he himself imposes upon a woman, simply the most visible way to advertise himself for women, first, and for the world, second...?! 'Here I am, as much the uncompromising creator as a designated victor. Come!'.
It seems that Rand mistakes the dialectics of female - male desire and attraction for a larger social mechanics here. Rand is really fascinated with the fact that Roark does not get hurt at all with all that his projecting himself onto others and resulting conflicts.... But this fascination is just the reverse of the basic female fear of being hurt and of hurting others, really, of being not accepted. However, I do not think that this fear is a driving male fear.

[EDantes]

Not an expert on Rand, from what I've heard she was similar to a female Nietszche and I'm not a huge fan of her.

She seems to be pretty ignorant of human psychology and the importance of a 'tribe', 'national identity' purpose behind the motivation of high achievers. The book 'leaders eat last' for example explained how the Marine corps are so effective in their leadership and execution because of their strong concept of inter-group loyalty and a 'mission' being a powerful motivating force; people who are solely interested in the 'self' would have little incentive to take risks and drive themselves to do great things on their own, when avoiding conflict and purusing simplistic hedonistic pleasures like booze, drugs, and video games seems an easier alternative.

In reality people who are entirely self-interested seem to rarely do many great things - in fact the mindset seems to fall more in line with perpetual welfare recipients than it does the biography of nearly any notable great leader or high achiever I've read (such as Winston Churchill) - today there are plenty of shady gurus on the internet marketing watered-down versions of Nietszche and Rand's philosophy as "self improvent', yet their target demographics are often prison inmates or welfare recipients - go figure.

[BossOfBosses]

(09-20-2016 06:40 AM)Kaligula Wrote:  

Rand is really fascinated with the fact that Roark does not get hurt at all with all that his projecting himself onto others and resulting conflicts....

The story was not about Roark "projecting himself upon others", which is the opposite of his aims. Rand sought to portray the ideal individualist, a man who is dominated nor dominates other but lives for their own goals and projects his values onto the material world, not people.

Quote:

She seems to be pretty ignorant of human psychology and the importance of a 'tribe', 'national identity' purpose behind the motivation of high achievers. The book 'leaders eat last' for example explained how the Marine corps are so effective in their leadership and execution because of their strong concept of inter-group loyalty and a 'mission' being a powerful motivating force; people who are solely interested in the 'self' would have little incentive to take risks and drive themselves to do great things on their own, when avoiding conflict and purusing simplistic hedonistic pleasures like booze, drugs, and video games seems an easier alternative.

Rand had a very deep understanding of the nature of "tribal" psychology. She had a lot (mostly negative) to say on it, read "Philosophy Who Needs It". To Rand it represented a crudely primitive mode of thinking or rather feeling. The opposite of reason. Rand was also anti-hedonist (booze, drug and video games included in the "feeling" category). Drive is an internal concept unrelated to pussy, games, drugs or passing feelings i.e. Nikola Tesla, the genius who died a virgin.

[Kaligula]

'The story was not about Roark "projecting himself upon others", which is the opposite of his aims. Rand sought to portray the ideal individualist, a man who is dominated nor dominates other but lives for their own goals and projects his values onto the material world, not people.'



My point was that Roark, even if ostensibly an individualist par excellence, strangely chooses such a form of expressing this individuality (architecture) which inherently demands a huge cooperation of others, and in subordinate way, namely by following him (funding, building, living inside etc), becuase he himself only projects, but it is the others who realise his designs.
He is neither Tesla nor van Gogh, who did not care whether someone likes his paintings or not; Roark is more like Picasso I would say. Was Picasso following only himself like Roark...? Yes, he was.
The point is that the Picasso version seems to be more to Rand's liking than the Van Gogh model of individuality.

[Kaligula]

I have not read 'Atlas Shrugged' yet -too many pages - but as far as I recall, it is about a strike of creative individualists, right?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6_eqxh-Qok


So it may be simply so that a perfect individualist must be a leader too, or have a capacity for leadership.... And such is Roark, and his trial is just a kind of fight for a leadership in a society. That would also explain why he is an architect - it strenghtens his appeal as a creator for Rand, since he is dealing, so to say, directly with Nature that provides him with matter for the form of his creation. Therefore he may be more 'objective' than a painter or a writer, who do not have as
an underwriter for their creations such a strong entity as natural laws.

[BossOfBosses]

(09-22-2016 05:17 AM)Kaligula Wrote:  

My point was that Roark, even if ostensibly an individualist par excellence, strangely chooses such a form of expressing it (architecture) which inherently demands a huge cooperation of others, and in subordinate way, namely by following him (funding, building, living inside etc), becuase he himself only projects, but the other realise his designs.

Kaligula, trading with others (i.e. employing, selling, funding etc) who can help you realize your goals is not the same as "subordinating" them. They are doing it of their own free will and can opt out at any time. Roark is totally indifferent to people and even money (he goes broke and works in a quarry).

Roark does architecture not to build relationships with others, but to see his creation in concrete form. He "realizes" his creation by the process of designing it and seeing it come to life and the resultant satisfaction that brings.

[XPQ22]

Ayn Rand was a standard issue self-obsessed hoe who thought she had interesting ideas about things that she ripped off from men who expressed them way better than she did, and apparently believed she was special for cranking out two ponderous, sleep-inducing novels and maybe other reasons which nobody has been able to discern.

Howard Roark was likewise a whiny, self-obsessed bitch, who dynamited a building because he personally didn't like it: "“I destroyed it because I did not choose to let it exist." Hey, that was the apartment building where I rented my bang pad, asshole, I liked it there, it had granite countertops and everything. Didn't seem to realize that as an architect his job was to design structures that his clients want to work and live in, not dedicate them as vehicles to his own personal expression and ego-aggrandizement. If you want to express yourself get a degree in interpretive dance, or buy a private island where you can erect your own Galt-town of kilometer high pointy dick-shaped towers where all the rooms are dodecagons and the furniture must be installed at 90 degree angles to the ceiling, because that's the way you like it.

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“Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light.”

Yeah, haters all gonna hate because I'm so awesome.

[BossOfBosses]

(09-26-2016 02:50 PM)XPQ22 Wrote:  

Ayn Rand was a standard issue self-obsessed hoe who thought she had interesting ideas about things that she ripped off from men who expressed them way better than she did, and apparently believed she was special for cranking out two ponderous, sleep-inducing novels and maybe other reasons which nobody has been able to discern.

Ayn Rand was an intellectual badass way ahead of her time. She solved the problem of universals (a dick of a problem in philosophy), created a complete system of secular ethics, wrote multiple best-selling novels and launched the libertarian movement. She openly acknowledged Aristotle was a better philosopher, but she completed his system of ideas. The lady deserves credit for that. Any random "hoe" she was not.

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Howard Roark was likewise a whiny, self-obsessed bitch, who dynamited a building because he personally didn't like it: "“I destroyed it because I did not choose to let it exist." Hey, that was the apartment building where I rented my bang pad, asshole, I liked it there, it had granite countertops and everything. Didn't seem to realize that as an architect his job was to design structures that his clients want to work and live in, not dedicate them as vehicles to his own personal expression and ego-aggrandizement. If you want to express yourself get a degree in interpretive dance, or buy a private island where you can erect your own Galt-town of kilometer high pointy dick-shaped towers where all the rooms are dodecagons and the furniture must be installed at 90 degree angles to the ceiling, because that's the way you like it.

Just be glad you personally didn't get caught in the blast radius.

[presidentcarter]

I read Atlas Shrugged at Uni and it really inspired me to get my ass into gear and work hard.

I'm reading Fountainhead right now as I really need that kick in the ass again to get me out of a slump. Hopefully it has similar results as Atlas.

The chick I banged last week told me "you should read more" after she brought up a bunch of obscure literary references while we talked post-bang and I didn't know what the hell she was talking about. I brought up Rand and she said "God no, I'd never read her stuff, I hate what she stands for". I couldn't get it up for round two after that.

[XPQ22]

(09-26-2016 03:35 PM)BossOfBosses Wrote:  

Ayn Rand was an intellectual badass way ahead of her time. She solved the problem of universals (a dick of a problem in philosophy), created a complete system of secular ethics, wrote multiple best-selling novels and launched the libertarian movement. She openly acknowledged Aristotle was a better philosopher, but she completed his system of ideas. The lady deserves credit for that. Any random "hoe" she was not.

You'd think for solving such weighty problems in philosophy, and completing the ideas of the most notable philosopher of all time, there'd be dozens, if not hundreds of similarly notable philosophers and academics in the decades that followed expanding upon her insights, and citing her work in paper after paper and book after book.

Strangely, I can't seem to find very much. They must just be too dumb to figure out how great it is.

"She openly acknowledged Aristotle was a better philosopher" Oh no fooling? How generous a compliment!

Quote:

Just be glad you personally didn't get caught in the blast radius.

Blowing stuff up that offends your aesthetic sensibilities seems a tough notion to fit into any reasonable standard of secular ethics I'm aware of. Also, skyscrapers that express the grand vision of their creator but focus sunlight in just the right way to melt the dashboards of vehicles parked on the street below are really annoying.

[Kaligula]

(09-26-2016 03:45 PM)presidentcarter Wrote:  

I read Atlas Shrugged at Uni and it really inspired me to get my ass into gear and work hard.

I'm reading Fountainhead right now as I really need that kick in the ass again to get me out of a slump. Hopefully it has similar results as Atlas.

The chick I banged last week told me "you should read more" after she brought up a bunch of obscure literary references while we talked post-bang and I didn't know what the hell she was talking about. I brought up Rand and she said "God no, I'd never read her stuff, I hate what she stands for". I couldn't get it up for round two after that.

To move, you need orientation, and to get this orientation, you sometimes need a bit of staring in the abyss, like Gandalf.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaVFL1zm47Y

Rand is mainly successful in conveying a very strong sense of being 'right' to her readers, the sense that is also present in some commentaries here.
Cannot really understand how 'Atlas Shrugged' can mobilize to work... going Galt is your dream...?
Read better Nietzsche's Zarathustra.
For some reasons, I would even say, a bit undeservedly, Rand has also a bit of reputation of being a kind of naive simpleton, so a lot of people dismiss her without much thought, like your last bang. However, it is much more difficult to dismiss Nietzsche or Dostoyevski.

[BossOfBosses]

(09-26-2016 03:50 PM)XPQ22 Wrote:  

You'd think for solving such weighty problems in philosophy, and completing the ideas of the most notable philosopher of all time, there'd be dozens, if not hundreds of similarly notable philosophers and academics in the decades that followed expanding upon her insights, and citing her work in paper after paper and book after book.

Strangely, I can't seem to find very much. They must just be too dumb to figure out how great it is.

"She openly acknowledged Aristotle was a better philosopher" Oh no fooling? How generous a compliment!

You've got it out for this chick eh? Your last opportunity ended the year 1983 when she died.

All kidding aside. Her work has been cited in numerous books and papers. But her ideas are not popular. In today's world popularity = funding. Did all of Nikola Tesla's inventions get recognition? No. Such is the fate of many great innovators. A popular work doesn't make it more valid.

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Blowing stuff up that offends your aesthetic sensibilities seems a tough notion to fit into any reasonable standard of secular ethics I'm aware of. Also, skyscrapers that express the grand vision of their creator but focus sunlight in just the right way to melt the dashboards of vehicles parked on the street below are really annoying.

Next time don't buy cheap plastic. You can't melt wood grain.

Poor peoples problems.

[Sauce]

(09-26-2016 03:35 PM)BossOfBosses Wrote:  

Ayn Rand was an intellectual badass way ahead of her time. She solved the problem of universals (a dick of a problem in philosophy), created a complete system of secular ethics, wrote multiple best-selling novels and launched the libertarian movement.

You mean Objectivism? Ayn Rand herself wasn't even a libertarian.

[XPQ22]

(09-26-2016 04:17 PM)BossOfBosses Wrote:  

All kidding aside. Her work has been cited in numerous books and papers. But her ideas are not popular. In today's world popularity = funding. Did all of Nikola Tesla's inventions get recognition? No. Such is the fate of many great innovators. A popular work doesn't make it more valid.

Tesla was a genius, but a lot of his ideas really sucked, too! Maxwell had written down all the equations necessary for Tesla to realize that his worldwide wireless power transmission experiments were impossible 50 years earlier, if he'd done the math, but he wasn't big into it so he wasted a lot of time on an engineering rathole.

Guess he thought he could get physics to bend to his will through sheer determination and can-do attitude.

The best artists have the ability to recognize that they can come up with turds just as easily as gold.

Quote:

Next time don't buy cheap plastic. You can't melt wood grain.

Poor peoples problems.

That does just about sum up the "philosophy."

"Stupid dummies just be rich"

[BrewDog]

I loved Atlas Shrugged. It's not light reading either, as none of Rand's books are. But I was fascinated by it, and I've read that book four times.

But I didn't care as much for The Fountainhead. I appreciated it, and I was glad I read it. There are some lessons to be learned from it such as, "Just be the person you are, not what everyone else wants you to conform to."

But The Fountainhead got a bit tiresome for me. It was like he WANTED everyone to hate him. He took individualism to an extreme. He was just a weirdo jerk.

[XPQ22]

(09-26-2016 05:55 PM)BrewDog Wrote:  

He took individualism to an extreme. He was just a weirdo jerk.

Exactly. Nobody really had it out for you, Howard, they just ain't like you because you're severely ASD-fucked and your buildings suck

[NilNisiOptimum]

Rand had the tenor of present day political discourse nailed down in Atlas Shrugged. Perhaps my favorite part of the book is early on,, and Francisco d'Anconia is at a party and overhears a group of guests discolussing how vulgar and evil money is. He interrupts them and delivers a three page lecture on the nature of money as a tool of exchange that frankly should be in a textbook, only to have one of the guests reply "But I feel that you're wrong" and proceed to continue with the diatribe against money. That word choice, "feel", hit me like a ton of bricks the first time I read it. And it's only gotten more true since then.

[XPQ22]

(09-27-2016 12:33 AM)NilNisiOptimum Wrote:  

He interrupts them and delivers a three page lecture on the nature of money

Ayn Rand believed that her author-insertion Howard Roark was so special and enlightened that there'd be a single person in the world who would actually listen to him go on a three page diatribe on the nature of money, as if he had something truly fascinating and novel to say.

Quote:

It's not light reading either, as none of Rand's books are.

Good philosophers are usually hilarious, from time to time. Emil Cioran, who was a bigger nihilist than Nietzsche was, definitely was. Ayn Rand was about as funny as a tungsten-carbide slug. Fucking ponderous.

[Germanicus]

(09-26-2016 03:35 PM)BossOfBosses Wrote:  

Ayn Rand was an intellectual badass

Reading along... and screetch to a halt. What? I actually spit out my coffee in laughter. I can tell you right now that you're not well-read. If you think that basic bitch was some towering intellect you've never read much actual literature or philosophy. I'm not insulting you, I'm just saying don't call a Kio Rio the baddest car on the market if small Asian cars are your automotive background and you've never had experience with something like BMW or Audi or Porsche.

Rand took a bunch of stuff she remembered from her pre-Soviet Russian university education, filtered it through her female hamster of unwarranted high self-worth, and shat it out on paper. Anyone who never reads Rand isn't missing much. Anyone who never reads Nietszche or Aristotle is missing a lot.

Her knowledge of history is fucked. Just straight up wrong. Here's just one example of the many errors on her part: the Renaissance didn't happen because "Man rediscovered Aristotle and Reason." Aristotle was the official philosopher of the medieval Catholic church and it was when scholars broke away from the mold of having to conform to strict Aristotlean principles that the intellectual growth and development of science began to flourish in Europe.

Her knowledge of human psychology was similarly fucked. Her knowledge and appreciation of literature was paper-thin, as was her knowledge and appreciation of art. Also science.

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(She was) way ahead of her time.

Yes, in that second-rate females being proclaimed as great is a 21st century phenomenon and Rand had her undeserved moment in the sun starting in the 1930's.

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She solved the problem of universals (a dick of a problem in philosophy),

That's news to actual philosophers. But, no, she didn't. That half-wit couldn't figure out the meaning of the word "sacrifice" so the chances of her solving a philosophical problem plaguing great minds for millennia is about nil. Go read a few of the articles here: https://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspo...universals

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created a complete system of secular ethics,

You misspelled "mangled and stumbled and shat out a retarded bunch of nonsense."
https://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspo...h?q=ethics

So when she decided to cuck her husband because she decided that jumping on Nathaniel Branden's much younger dick was rational and moral because that's what people with a "Sense of Life" do, was that ethical? How about her response to Branden no longer being able to muff dive her elderly pussy and dropping her for a young model?

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wrote multiple best-selling novels and launched the libertarian movement.

She wrote two average novels, a novella, and a thunderous, poorly-written bore of a doorstop that sold well and got the undeserved credit for launching the libertarian movement.

Quote:

She openly acknowledged Aristotle was a better philosopher,

I openly acknowledge Ronaldo is a better soccer player than I am. Stephen Hawking is also better than me at calculus. Aren't I so magnanimous to concede that? Praise me.

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but she completed his system of ideas. The lady deserves credit for that.

No, she didn't. If thousands of Classicists over the past 2500 years haven't done that, she sure as shit didn't. Lady? Thot, more like.

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Any random "hoe" she was not.

Remember that time when she gushed about how amazing a serial killer was? How he was a real man? How William Edward Hickman, who killed a 12 year old girl by sexual torture was actually a hero? Female hamster in full force for the violent bad boy. Oh you don't? That's because it's been swept under the rug.

http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/r...-cold.html

Random hoe? Status confirmed.

Ayn Rand is great like a basic bitch who does crossfit thinks she's a legend and on par or better than Olympic gold medalists.

[Phoenix]

(09-27-2016 08:31 AM)Germanicus Wrote:  

Remember that time when she gushed about how amazing a serial killer was? How he was a real man? How William Edward Hickman, who killed a 12 year old girl by sexual torture was actually a hero? Female hamster in full force for the violent bad boy. Oh you don't? That's because it's been swept under the rug.

Aware. Lines up with her depiction of Howard Roark raping Dominique Francon as basically virtuous (or more accurately "oh so hot") in the Fountainhead. Good window into the soul of a "bare" female: sexual attraction to power and its exercise (anti-social or otherwise) above all else.

Nevertheless, Atlas Shrugged was still great, in terms of a "pleasure read", and she still made her mark legitimately due to her superior intellect (at least for a woman) and her no-holds-barred and eloquent expressions of contempt for leftism & leftists (and to a lesser extent the religious).

[TigerMandingo]

Wait....so this is the icon of libertarianism?

[vinman]

(09-27-2016 09:48 AM)TigerMandingo Wrote:  

Wait....so this is the icon of libertarianism?

Dude! Where the HELL have you been?!?

[BossOfBosses]

Quote:

Rand took a bunch of stuff she remembered from her pre-Soviet Russian university education, filtered it through her female hamster of unwarranted high self-worth, and shat it out on paper. Anyone who never reads Rand isn't missing much. Anyone who never reads Nietszche or Aristotle is missing a lot....... when scholars broke away from the mold of having to conform to strict Aristotlean principles that the intellectual growth and development of science began to flourish in Europe.

Germanicus,

You apparently contradicted yourself. Now you're saying he stunted the growth of Europe? Either Aristotle is a irreplaceable force in philosophy or he is not. Which is it? Make up your mind.

Don't be the guy who argues for argument's sake. Those dudes are lame.

Quote:

Her knowledge of human psychology was similarly fucked.

Explain. Don't just make unsubstantiated statements.

Quote:

That half-wit couldn't figure out the meaning of the word "sacrifice"

Her definition:

Quote:

“Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue.

- "Ethics of Emergencies"

That's as good as any.

Quote:

No, she didn't. If thousands of Classicists over the past 2500 years haven't done that, she sure as shit didn't. Lady? Thot, more like.

That's like saying if thousands of engineers failed to make a working airplane, the Wright Brothers sure as shit didn't. It should behoove you that thousands can fail at the same task while one or two can succeed.

Aristotle's ethics and metaphysics was riddled with holes, mis-equivocations and errors. Understandable given the limited knowledge at the time. She replaced his proto-theological concept of "prime mover" with an uncaused universe, firmly removing any cause for the supernatural. Her universe is wholly secular, godless, yet orderly. In a word, real. I can go on at length but you need to actually read her work judge it's truth for yourself and stop taking random, amateurish internet blogs as an objective reference.

P.S. Here's what she actually about hickman, and no she not "admire" him per se. She called him senseless, and horrible but admired some (masculine) traits that he had.

[Germanicus]

(09-27-2016 02:32 PM)BossOfBosses Wrote:  

Rand took a bunch of stuff she remembered from her pre-Soviet Russian university education, filtered it through her female hamster of unwarranted high self-worth, and shat it out on paper. Anyone who never reads Rand isn't missing much. Anyone who never reads Nietszche or Aristotle is missing a lot....... when scholars broke away from the mold of having to conform to strict Aristotlean principles that the intellectual growth and development of science began to flourish in Europe.

Quote:

Germanicus,

You apparently contradicted yourself.

I did no such thing. That's a reading comprehension fail-- and a historical knowledge fail-- on your part. My statement in no way disqualifies Aristotle from his actual importance. That you have uncritically swallowed the (laughably incorrect) Objectivist line about how Aristotle is the most important man to have ever put pen to paper and only his ideas-- and his alone-- are what brought us out of the dark ages shows your limited knowledge of history.

Quote:

Now you're saying he stunted the growth of Europe? Either Aristotle is a irreplaceable force in philosophy or he is not. Which is it? Make up your mind.

If you had actually read anything about the history of the middle ages you would know that a strict adherence to Aristotlean doctrine was enforced by the church and it was only by breaking away from such did the growth of science and secular knowledge gradually flourish. It appears you have not. Probably why you believed Rand's ignorant ramblings in the first place. Here's a hint to get you started-- go read about Roger Bacon and even Francis Bacon. It's not all or nothing with regards to intellectual influence. Do you think maybe it wasn't just solely Aristotle who was the intellectual inspiration and cause of the growth and rise of Europe?

Also, wanna point out where I made statements about the exact status of Aristotle in regards to the development of Western society? That's right, nowhere. Maybe you should stick to the facts on hand instead of inventing things I never said.

Quote:

Don't be the guy who argues for argument's sake. Those dudes are lame.

1. I'm arguing because you said something completely incorrect.
2. Take your own advice. Stop nutthugging a mediocrity and stop being butthurt when someone drops some truth about her. That's lame.

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Her knowledge of human psychology was similarly fucked.

Quote:

Explain. Don't just make unsubstantiated statements.

Try clicking the link I expressly included in my original post. I didn't post that for my edification, pal. I did that for your information. Go and read that site some. If you're honest and open to having your views challenged. Disqualifying it on a very superficial first look as "amateurish" is pretty fucking lame without you at least having a good look and considering it. And after that I'm not sitting here and writing you an essay on how her epistemology is premised on faulty assumptions and misunderstood observations. It is, but well, why take that time when you're just going to dismiss it as "amateurish?"

Quote:

That half-wit couldn't figure out the meaning of the word "sacrifice"

Quote:

Her definition:

Quote:

“Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue.

- "Ethics of Emergencies"

That's as good as any.

And that's not what the word means. At all. In fact, sacrifice means the exact opposite of her definition. No wonder your reading comprehension sucks. You don't know what words mean.

Quote:

No, she didn't. If thousands of Classicists over the past 2500 years haven't done that, she sure as shit didn't. Lady? Thot, more like.

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That's like saying if thousands of engineers failed to make a working airplane, the Wright Brothers sure as shit didn't.

No, it's not. That's nowhere close to the same meaning. Try this: Aristotle is excessively important to Western Civilization. (No, not in the ignorant Randian conception of history where he's pretty much secular Jesus. Actual history.) Thousands of incredibly learned and intelligent men have since studied and wrote about his works for thousands of years. And yet, it's your position that some egotistical bitch, who is demonstrably nowhere near as learned or intelligent as the scholars just mentioned, is the one who "fixed" Aristotle. Yeah, ok. As for your completely unrelated metaphor...nope, doesn't match what I said in the least. You don't do English very well.

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It should behoove you that thousands can fail at the same task while one or two can succeed.

It should behoove you not to sycophantically worship the risible alleged super-intelligence of a woman who thought that Calumet K was a great piece of literature. What's Calumet K? Exactly.

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Aristotle's ethics and metaphysics was riddled with holes, mis-equivocations and errors.

So? And Alissa Rosenbaum AKA Ayn Rand didn't do anything to change that.

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Understandable given the limited knowledge at the time. She replaced his proto-theological concept of "prime mover" with an uncaused universe, firmly removing any cause for the supernatural. Her universe is wholly secular, godless, yet orderly.

Her conception of the universe is incorrect, ridiculous, and dumb. I guess Aquinas and all those other God believing idiots who incorporated Aristotlean philosophy into their works and worldviews were doing it all wrong until little Alissa R showed 'em all up, eh? And, no that's not me giving the thumbs up to any brand of theology. Nor necessarily dismissing it, either.

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In a word, real.

Anything she got right-- well, a stopped clock is also right twice a day. Maybe because she ripped off some of those scholars who came before her, like Aquinas.

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I can go on at length but you need to actually read her work judge it's truth for yourself

I have read her stuff, bud. See, the issue is, I've also read actual philosophy and literature. She's sorely lacking compared to actual thinkers. You have read her and you're ignorant of other, better scholar's works. Which is why you love it. Please don't go on at length. If I wanted to read ridiculous bullshit with no basis in the real world written by a Jewish pseudo-intellectual I'd go read Marx or Strauss or the New York Times.

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and stop taking random, amateurish internet blogs as an objective reference.

Amateurish blogs? Like the one this forum is attached to? Listen, kid. Information is true or not due to the quality of its content, not the means of its publication. If the National Enquirer decided to print Shakespeare that doesn't mean ol' William is now a turd. Conversely, The Huffington Post is as professional as it gets and there's not one thing on that website that's worth a damn. Can you overcome that "amateurish" blog's information? I'm wagering you can't so that's why you disqualify it wholesale. Saves you from having to think.

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P.S. Here's what she actually about hickman, and no she not "admire" him per se. She called him senseless, and horrible but admired some (masculine) traits that he had.

Did you read the link I posted? She positively gushes with admiration. Those are all her words. She had the typical female sexual attraction to amorality and the negative expression of the will to power. She was not above that, and several times this fact is evident in her fiction. Also, the whole weird affair with Nathaniel Branden illustrates what kind of woman she was too.

Listen, kid. Objectivism is dumb. Learned, knowledgeable people scoff at it. There's reasons for that. Don't take my word for it. Go forth and read. Lots. About everything. When you have genuinely absorbed or investigated good chunks of the Western Canon plus read widely in various fields, you will see what I'm talking about. There really are no Objectivists who are deeply erudite. Anyone so inclined learns better and moves on.

In the meantime, I'm not really interested in carrying on this argument with you. I'll not convince you and I don't care to. It's no skin off my ass. Just don't be sitting there thinking Rand is something extremely special and her naysayers are intellectually dim. She's not and we're not. Sure, there are some passages in her fiction that I think were well-done, but her work-- especially her non-fiction-- overall is severely lacking. I've stated my reasons and provided some links and some avenues to approach if you're willing to challenge your views. If you don't...ok with me. Enjoy.