Atlas Shrugged
POSTED BY: piratenews
UPDATED: Thursday, May 19, 2011 23:22
VIEWED: 8275
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I don't think this is personal, but Greenspan is an excellent argument against Ayn Rand.
Mike,
you're right: Critiquing is a pretty liberal thing to do with your life, it's probably natural selection, the way interior decorators are gay.
Also, math problems aside, about fans. That's why Fast Five ranks so high: Only people who liked the first 4 saw it. I feel almost certain that it is not more of a cinematic work of art than that elephant merchant ivory looking thing I haven't seen.
This factor of course gives a nice boost to Serenity
That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.
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Quote:
Atlas Shrugged: The Phantom Menace
That's funny. I hadn't seen that one before.
* * *
On "Atlas Shrugged" and why I'm not going to go see the movie in a theater:
I've read the book ... twice. Leaving aside the bulk of the philosophy for a moment, it really comes down to one thing: Randian superheroes are idealized people who don't act like you and me (examples provided upon request).
If I want to see improbable superheroes doing improbable things in a movie, there are a number of comic book films coming out. At least most of those don't take themselves so darned seriously.
The Codex Menduri: http://mendur.blogspot.com
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Is Ayn Rand running for office ?
No ?
What gets me is that, most of those who attack her, are basically saying they are entitled to control the lives of others, via the Federal Govt. The more you squeal like stuck pigs over Objectivism, over Rand, and this movie, the more I'm inclined to take interest in them. There must be something really really right if Lefties get so pissed off over this stuff. 
I don't give a damn about her personal life, so your childish attempts to demonize the message of her books is falling upon deaf ears.
" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "
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Ya hear that everybody? Saying anything personal about someone is totally out of line..... if Rappy likes them. Even when their personal lives have direct bearing on the philosophy they espouse.
If he doesn't like them.... well, all's fair.
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
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Rap,
Hostility towards Ayn Rand comes from life experience with her proponents. I don't think this is partisan or political.
It's a little bit like the way a lot of people react when you say "Jehovah's Witness." Not saying it's the same, at all, but that's another life-experience based stigma.
Look at it this way: Each of us has known Ayn Randers, including some avid ones. Probably everyone on the board knows half a dozen of them. Everyone here has watched someone they know, possibly more than one, convert to Ayn Randism while they've known them.
Examine the social interactions that people have with the Ayn Rand crowd:
1) They love Ayn Rand. They can't shut up about her. This immediately attaches everything they now do to her. Scientologists are kinda like this with L Ron Hubbard. Whatever it is they do, he can't shake.
2) Ayn Rand followers are very self directed self motivated people, which is fine, but they tend to be useless to everyone else. They are always engaged in their projects, which they want you to help with, but they never want to help you with your project. It's mildly psychopathic, because it's almost as if other people don't exist to them outside of the framework of "what can this person do for me?"
3) The whine and bitch and moan when things don't go their way. Everything is an affront to them, because they are the most important people in the universe. If something went wrong, someone else must have screwed up, and screwed them over. There's a lack of introspection within the followers, as they tend to externalize faults, and internalize goals.
Now, picture that you are someone who wants to get something done. Everyone has goals they want to achieve, and most of us recognize that doing so requires cooperating and compromising with others, whom we recognize as having their own goals, ideas and aspirations, and with some recognition towards the idea that this person is devoting their time to helping us with our project.
Now you, yourself posted that work is not economically deterministic, and since work is by its very nature cooperative, then it stands to reason that anyone helping you with your work is also achieving their personal goals, which means that you have become a team through the alignment of mutual goals.
No such alignment can happen without mutual respect and recognition than other parties are people with goals as important to them as yours are to you, and that together you are more than the sum of your parts, which is the purpose of working together.
Now picture what happens when we are working on something and someone comes in and tells you that Ayn Rand is their favorite author. Based on past experience, we know exactly what to expect:
The will set their own agenda, and expect you to go along with it. Any compromise will be superficial, the only real work they will spend any real time doing is that which serves them. If called on it, they will aver that this is how things are supposed to be, and then berate you for calling them on it, assume you think just like they do, and then complain that they are only here to help you and this is what they get? And then if anything should go wrong, you can be sure that you will get all the blame.
Why would anyone work with such a person?
That's what you're really hearing. It's not to say that Ayn Rand didn't have any useful ideas, but that she created a lot of useless people. And that's what they are. They contribute nothing to the country, their communities, their corporation or govt. for which they work because they are far to busy attempting to serve themselves, and do not realize that any real accomplishment comes from collaboration of people towards a mutual goal, and that people other than themselves are capable of thought, have their own ideas, aspirations etc.
IMHO, Ayn Rand, as a net effect on society, goes right up there with Timothy Leary. Picture a primitive tribal society of these people, either one: Everyone would go off by themselves and try to learn to fish. If someone ca
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Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Is Ayn Rand running for office ?
No ?
Pretty sure she's not, her having been dead for nigh on 30 years now and all.
But quite a few of her followers are.
Are you claiming that one's followers can't be influenced by their philosophies?
So tell us all: Is Bill Ayers running for office? Saul Alinsky? Che Guevara? Are any of them running for office?
Quote:
What gets me is that, most of those who attack her, are basically saying they are entitled to control the lives of others, via the Federal Govt. The more you squeal like stuck pigs over Objectivism, over Rand, and this movie, the more I'm inclined to take interest in them. There must be something really really right if Lefties get so pissed off over this stuff.
So you agree that there must be something really really right with the idea of socialism, then? After all, why else would you get so pissed off over it? How about communism? What in it scares you so? Is it because it's so "right"?
Quote:
I don't give a damn about her personal life, so your childish attempts to demonize the message of her books is falling upon deaf ears.
So personal attacks are off-limits for your idols, but not for anyone else, eh?
As has been pointed out already, Rand's personal life informed her philosophy, and vice-versa. She lionized a sociopathic murderer, after all. Seems if she was a Democrat, you'd have enormous problems with that.
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill
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Anyone wanna bet this is the point at which Rappy bitches out of the thread?
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
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Quote:Liberal brains are different than Conservative brains:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Mike,
you're right: Critiquing is a pretty liberal thing to do with your life, it's probably natural selection, the way interior decorators are gay.
Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults, Current Biology 21, 677–680, April 26, 2011
PDF: http://bit.ly/lqLQn9 or Summary: www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982211002892
"In a large sample of young adults, we related self-reported political attitudes to gray matter volume using structural MRI. We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased [bullshit] volume of the right amygdala."
"Conservatives respond to threatening situations with more aggression than do liberals [1] and are more sensitive to threatening facial expressions [5]. This heightened sensitivity to emotional faces suggests that individuals with conservative orientation might exhibit differences in brain structures associated with emotional processing such as the amygdala. Indeed, voting behavior is reflected in amygdala responses across cultures [6]."
The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity," where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two
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Two,
That's just plain silly. I've known a lot of people who have switched sides, myself included, I doubt that a change in brain structure was involved.
Many years ago, I noticed that liberals were educated, and the educated were liberal. Later I figured out that was because the education was loaded with biased content. It could just as easily have been loaded the other way, and in religious institutions, it usually is. If there's a difference, I would say that conservatives are more skeptical of their fellow humans, and in time, I've become more skeptical. When you are skeptical enough, concepts like "social programs" cease to make sense because you no longer trust anyone with the management of anyone else's life. Similarly, "education" ceases to make sense on the same grounds, and "taxes" on a similar one: that you don't trust anyone with that much money. I think this goes hand in hand with the other thing I identify as a conservative trait: Cautious. If you're skeptical and cautious, you tend to be averse to change, and spend less, keep more, and try to hold to the values and structures that you have, and are probably just less impulsive as human beings. For a lot of people, this is probably a matter of personal experience: Has change generally treated you well? Or would you have been better off without most of the changes that have occurred?
My general assumption lately has been that any political or economic change happening now is being enacted by an elite group of thugs to steal as much as possible in money and power by squashing the masses, and so I'm skeptical of all of it.
Republican is no more likely to be conservative than democrat, IMHO. Republicans voice half a dozen conservative positions, but they rarely act on them. Conversely, Democrats voice about half a dozen liberal positions, but they rarely act on them.
That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.
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So tell us all: Is Bill Ayers running for office? Saul Alinsky? Che Guevara? Are any of them running for office?
Great examples. A violent terrorist, one calling for all out personal attacks on anyone who opposes collectivism, and a mass murderer.
And the great crime of Ms Rand ? That the ideas and rights of the individual should not be controlled by the state ?
Or, as Mal puts it...
" So me and mine got to lie down
and die so you can live in your
better world?"
SHAME !
Sorry folks, NOT GONNA HAPPEN.
" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "
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