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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (169261)	3/7/2021 9:28:25 PM
From: jazzlover2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217769

My thoughts are that Rand didn't really intend her writings to be a "novel" per se. She invented her characters to not be real people, with real human internal conflicts, but to be one dimensional actors in her play to introduce and explain her thoughts on her philosophy Objectivism. Imho she is an excellent writer and I loved her ideas, but sometimes readers just want to go on a journey, and not be lectured to. Correct me if I'm wrong, perhaps I misunderstood your reference to Peterson, but my interpretation was Peterson explaining why he didn't think Rand's writings were great literature, not that he disagreed with her philosophy as such.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (169261)	3/8/2021 1:27:42 AM
From: sense	Respond to of 217769

The criticism is not a strawman... Rather, it is the continuation of Rand's work... Ask it as... how does Rand prevent the over-whelming success of liberated capital... from imposing the opposite... once its success enables it in doing so ? She simply assumes it will not ? That, given success, it cannot help but to avoid the delusions that infect the rest of society ? Why ? Because she trusts human nature only when it has won the advantage of more wealth ? Reality intrudes... quickly... exposing that as an error in judgment... the origins of which I've correctly identified... while criticizing Rand in making smaller errors that her opponents share in vastly larger measure ? That is not surrendering anything to those who refuse to hear what she says ? It does force a recognition that the proper subject of our philosophy is elevating "people" and not the "material"... which we seek to understand and control as a part of that quest in elevation... Capitalism and communism... a false duality in relation to errors in materialism... capitalism having delivered greater economic success over time than communism... not addressing the issues in relation to capitalism versus a proper philosophy of freedom... that puts people first, ahead of the material. Objectivism... inherently makes people into objects... and that is error... despite its protestations that result is not its intent... which I accept as sincerely argued. But a more practical eye... sees the reality in result as a more compelling argument. Not that Randian philosophy is alone in objectifying people... as any primarily materialistic philosophy must. She's vastly closer to being right than her critics on the left... which doesn't mean she got everything exactly right... particularly in addressing the implementation of ideas... in a practical enough way that works, makes sense to people, and better avoids conflict... in a way that is more sustainable... while being sufficiently self correcting of errors and excesses that the extremes in the opposite are made irrelevant... How does laissez-faire... stop big money from deciding national socialism is the way to go... and imposing that ( as it has now in China)... or deciding instead, in other circumstances, that communism is the answer... and enabling or imposing that ? That's exactly what we see playing out in the U.S. now... as new money decides we've had too much free speech for too long... and now veers sharply left... having taken over control of some of the systems... now works at imposing the opposite of what the operating manual requires ? And, if that rogue capital finds a way to profit more by imposing one error or the other, here or there... in spite of what the rules require, the operating manual allows, or people might prefer ? It may do either, with equal aplomb... because what Rand defines as freedom is an alternative form of slavery to the material... certainly the capitalist stripe of that amoral materialism... which she claims as the necessary condition for the emergence of freedom... when it is the exact opposite that must be true... for freedom to ever be anything other than the whim at the limit of whichever overlord deigns to allow a small measure of it. She fails fundamentally in mistaking capital as freedom... or a good enough proxy of it... hence the chicken or the egg references in mine... and the cart before the horse in hers. Freedom... is the essential source of freedom... money follows it... in proportion to its allowance in our economic choices... without that result of it... dictating its successes are carved in stone, inviolable, and capable only of spawning ever more freedom... That wealth is shared in ignorance of its origins... is a danger to its survival... but, more critically, to our own... as the material is made the point of focus rather than the awareness of it as the byproduct. In China, today... as in the U.S., after a long trend in increase... the left are again seeking to reign in... not the achievement of economic success... but every other element of personal freedom.... as if the two are not related... which they simply fail to understand. The Chinese experience... conditioned by the example of Hong Kong... was built on a base that essentially created a blank slate as the product of the "success" of communism. Adopting national socialism as a compromise, certainly an advantage relative to its prior history... but that choice will not extend Hong Kong's advantages, rather than limit them. The five year plan... limits us to the imagination of bureaucrats... rather than to that of the writers of fiction. American's similarly as others before, have been subjected to the whims of capital... detached from any interest other than its own... the disconnect between Rand's morality, putting capital first, and her expectations of it in its impact on people... being proven in error once again. Mostly right... is not completely right... or a reason to ignore the nuance in the 00.1% of error that is the difference in the causes of engines exploding... Whether it is pointless to argue finer points of philosophical error and those elements in misunderstandings that have resulted in the house being set on fire... as a flaming engine has just crashed into it... while calmly seated in the living room as the house burns down... I will accept as also being not posing a strawman argument... But, the error on the right... in simply accepting 99.9% as good enough... when it clearly is not... ?