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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (47961)	3/4/2014 6:13:21 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

"With regard to baboons it is simple instinct" That is not what you said. You said, "A male baboon will attack a leopard defending the troop knowing he will die" Being able to "know" consequences (and in particular "MORTALITY") is far beyond instinct! But more importantly, Rand never claims that reason is proper to the life or philosophy of baboons. Nor is Reason necessary to those who are content to live as brutes...

To: koan who wrote (47961)	3/4/2014 6:29:45 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

"But more importantly regarding Rand is she had a loveless upbringing and was a sad example of a person. So what does she have to teach us if her entire life was miserable. She was a pseed freak and a cigarette smoker who denied it caused cancer." I have never claimed she was always rational. Being rational, however, is not about the facts you know...but how you logically manipulate those facts. In her time, cigarettes were largely considered more like coffee (as a beneficial drug) rather than as a killer. I was a chain smoker for many years because the facts I thought I knew just were not so. I don't believe her entire life was miserable at all. I think she loved life and experienced both suffering and joy to a greater degree than most people do. Her novel, "We the Living" was somewhat autobiographical, and yes, it shows the suffering that innocent people go through. In my opinion, intelligent people suffer (or can suffer) far more poignantly that dullards. But all of this is irrelevant to whether or not her premises were sound. "or my world where people are happy and good and generous?" Rand knew several languages and was extremely well educated. You probably don't want to compete with her on anything unless you have a 52 card deck on the table! She was very generous with those she loved. And she was extremely happy a great deal of the time. Of course, when people choose to grapple with their world on a stage visible to all, then they must survive in a pressure cooker of information and cross purposes. She could have lived an invisible life like an internet troll (such as are swishing their tails around on this thread!)...but she viewed such evasion as the personal evasion of the gift of life. Nobody claims that Rand was a Goddess who lived without error or without misgivings or without emotion or without suffering. And in your world ("where people are happy and good and generous"), let me tell you...it is not quite like that. Unless you are a brute--you (and yours) will suffer the pangs of unhappiness and loss--just as we all must. Rand was a brilliant young girl who grew up with irrational dullards who made a mockery of human rights and freedoms. She could have become one of those nameless cretins who used force to dismantle her family and a million others. But instead she wrote about the brutes; and she formulated a philosophy to separate the brutes from those who would salvage the world and ensure the survival of our species. I find much to admire in that choice to fight back against the unprincipled savages...