Hehehe, Jon almost loses it.

DFT, are you just picking a fight with iamstellar? You are a cruel, cruel man.

^Objectivists love to be oppressed by collectivist zombies. It defines them.

I am my own whatever you call it. Or I am part of what ever you call it.


Now get out of my head.



I thought this was a post where... we were supposed to make no sense.

http://libraryoflinks.blogspot.com/2007/06/smackdown-james-joyce-vs-ayn-rand.html

this is an interesting link if you want to know how retarded ayn rand is.

^Snubbing books that aren't regarded as high literature by literary academics isn't as condemning as it might seem.

“Isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but
precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies,
but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but
others think he’s honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-
hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own.
He knows himself to be mediocre, but he’s great in the eyes of others. The
frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less
endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. ... They’re
second-handers. ...

“They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They’re concerned only
with people. They don’t ask: ‘Is this true?’ They ask: ‘Is this what others
think is true?’ Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the
impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not
merit, but pull. What would happen to the world without those who do,
think, work, produce? Those are the egoists. You don’t think through
another’s brain and you don’t work through another’s hands. When you
suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness.
To stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of
reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which
divides one human body from another. Not an entity, but a relation—
anchored to nothing. That’s the emptiness I couldn’t understand in people.
That’s what stopped me whenever I faced a committee. Men without an ego.
Opinion without a rational process. Motion without brakes or motor. Power
without responsibility. The second-hander acts, but the source of his actions
is scattered in every other living person. It’s everywhere and nowhere and
you can’t reason with him. He’s not open to reason. You can’t speak to
him—he can’t hear. You’re tried by an empty bench. A blind mass running
amuck, to crush you without sense or purpose. ...”

“Notice how they’ll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They
recognize him at once. ... There’s a special, insidious kind of hatred for him.
They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie.
A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They’ve got to force their
miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The
independent man kills them—because they don’t exist within him and that’s
the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of
resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice
toward an independent man. ...”

>> ^imstellar28:
wall of text


Somehow all the crap you typed reminded me of this Andrew Ryan quote:

"A man chooses. A slave obeys." OOOBEEYYYYY

>> ^imstellar28:
blah blah blah

Oh grow up.

seriously imstellar you are starting to remind me of this girl i knew when i was 15 who would cut her wrists at parties and scratch feminist slogans into the wall.

what's funny is instead of forming your own argument you just quoted someone else's.

man it's real ironic shit. go read it back to yourself.

>> ^MINK:
http://libraryoflinks.blogspot.com/2007/06/smackdown-james-jo
yce-vs-ayn-rand.html
this is an interesting link if you want to know how retarded ayn rand is.


How does that show ayn rand is retarded? Even if you don't agree with objectivism as a whole it is hard to not feel inspired by its strong resonance with the entrepreneurial spirit and the american dream.

>> ^MINK:
how so?
In reply to this comment by chilaxe:
^Snubbing books that aren't regarded as high literature by literary academics isn't as condemning as it might seem.


Literary academics belong to a homogeneous culture that's isolated in some ways from much of the larger intellectual community. Freud is still taught in literature departments as if his ideas were a reasonable representation of the field of psychology, which hasn't been true for a number of decades.

Literary academics' culture values books like Joyce's Ulysses and Proust's In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past (which is a top contender in lists that include books in other languages), but to more utilitarian cultures, like those related to economics and science, these two books seem to be about how to live a mediocre, useless life (Ulysses) and how to live an indulgently nostalgic, useless life (In Search of Lost Time).

Books from readers' top lists like the Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged aren't written from or for that specialized academic literary culture, and we want thinking people from all of our sub-cultures to have reflective literary works that speak to their values.

(Please share your thoughts, anybody.)

so Ayn Rand is equivalent to L Ron Hubbard. OK i see your point, thanks for clearing it up.

imstellar28 said:
The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own.
He knows himself to be mediocre, but he’s great in the eyes of others.

But doesn't that describe the very nature and lure of Videosift itself? why do you hate siftbot so?

>> ^MINK:
so Ayn Rand is equivalent to L Ron Hubbard. OK i see your point, thanks for clearing it up.


Ha... L Ron Hubbard's books are indeed on that reader's choice list, but Scientology is famous for their organized campaigns to game best-seller lists and lists like this. Orwell's 1984 and Joyce's Ulysses are high on the reader's choice list as well, so Rand has good company.

And suddenly I'm thinking 2 things:

"Hurry up, Mr. B. Angels don't wait for slowpokes!"

and

"FILL YOUR CRAVING AT THE CIRCUS OF VALUE!!"

(It's got to be because I'm replaying it, though. I just got the PS3 version so my PC copy can have someone to talk to other than that schizo Orange Box. ;-) )

>> ^chilaxe:
>> ^MINK:

(Please share your thoughts, anybody.)...

I, for one, totally agree. Academia moves forward at glacier speed (remember? glaciers?), and the vaguer the field, the slower the progress.
No one asks the humanities to make any progress, because no outsiders know exactly what it is they're supposed to do - not many insiders either.

I'm almost done with my BA, and I still don't know.

Objectivism drives me insane almost as much as postmodernism.

^ At least Po-Mo hasn't (actively) promoted the fall of civilization with it's naivete of human nature.

wow imstellar, way to defend yourself. i mean you totally shut down the accusation that you are an emptyheaded quote machine there, by silently downvoting my comment. Awesome.

chilaxe, yeah you have a point about gaming the lists, and the isolation of academia, but i would still argue that the academic interpretation of "great" books is more reliable than the general public's. Otherwise you have to kinda deny the value of study altogether.

I haven't read any of the top ten "proper" books... but then... i am not a book lover. I also haven't read any of the top ten "popular" books, but then.... i am not a retard.

Mink, just wanna say, 1984 is very, very highly recommended. If you read one book this decade, that's a good bet.

Also, po-mo has totally too promoted the fall of civilization, in dozens of different ways - the active undermining of objective science, logic, and western civilization in general.
Also, it has a LOT more clout than objectivism, seeing as every museum and every arts department, and therefore the intellectual elite of many countries, is permeated by the weirdness of po-mo.
Objectivists just move to Montana and build cabins.

^I think objectivists believe they can contribute most to humankind by excelling at capitalism and building wealth, so they're not going to be very interested in just chilling, particularly in cabins far away from economic centers .

^"contributing to human kind"? really now, why would a heroic egoist want to do a thing like that?

modernism didn't fuck anything up then?

um, yes? but how is that relevant? At least modernism (as far as i understand it) is rational, and continues the tradition of Enlightenment... Po-mo culture has in many ways dropped the baton of western identity, leaving mine and the coming generations to reinvent it... unless we want to have the 70s as our foundation, which is a bit too... funky... for my tastes. Not to mention greasy.

well "enlightenment" has mainly provided more efficient methods of war and environmental destruction, and modernism didn't fucking work (otherwise why would we start post modernism?). so i guess i see it differently. but don't get me wrong, postmodernism is also a joke.

Enlightenment severely reduced religion's obstruction of scientific progress, and the upper class' monopoly on education, so yeah, it lead to massive scientific progress and industrialization, but I wouldn't say the effect was "mainly" death and destruction.

I know I wouldn't want to swap places with what passed for a lower middle class background back then, and I think the massive increase in population and quality of life in the developed countries in a way makes up for the extra lives lost from hi tech warfare.

Also, just wanna point out that postmodernism didn't start because we all agreed to shut down the project of modernism and start a different one.

My opinion is it's just a petulant counter-culture, riding on the wave of 70s rebellion. I hope it'll just go away soon.

The people that hate Ayn Rand mistake these two idiots for real news.

>> ^quantumushroom:
The people that hate Ayn Rand mistake these two idiots for real news.


How could anyone hate that poor girl, trapped in secret rooms all day, hiding from the Nazi's.

I haven't read her book tho, but I'm glad these two fine news gentlemen did a segment on her tonight!

> This video is no longer available
> due to a copyright claim by Viacom International Inc.

looks like you'll have to grab it from the official source

*dead for the moment

This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by my15minutes.

Awarding Gratefulmom with one Power Point for fixing this video's dead embed code.

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