The political media have only one vital role to play in any nation: protect individual rights.
That's it. Nothing else they do is absolutely necessary. Every single important story they report should explicitly or implicitly be connected to individual rights -- the protection of those rights. Any report on global warming or racism or trade or regulations or taxes or anything else should have individual rights as its foundation, its cohesion, its starting point and endpoint.
That is never the case.
Ironically, the media have absolutely no idea what individual rights are. It's like a baker not understanding baking, or a seamstress who's never worked with thread, or a composer who is clueless about what a chord or melody is. The media enjoy mentioning "civil rights" but not individual rights.
As Ayn Rand correctly identified, "rights" are the link between individuals and groups, between one's own life and life in a crowd (society), between morality and action among others.
A right, she said, is "a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in society". She clarified this concept further: "It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men".
Rights are the only proper reason for governments to have any existence at all. Without rights, there could be no good reason for government. Government's only job is to protect individual rights -- to one's body, property and freedom of pursuit, to prevent compulsion and coercion.
Properly speaking, governments are granted the conditional privilege to protect individual rights. The "condition" is that if they don't do their job, then they are rightly overthrown or run out of office by the very people they were allowed to protect with physical force, if necessary.
While governments are granted the privilege to use physical force to protect their citizens from those wishing to violate their rights, there is one private institution that should also have as its raison d'être the protection of rights, as I said in my opening paragraph: the political media.
While government has the power of the sword to protect us citizens, the media have the power of the pen, the power of information -- which is, as they say, mightier than the sword. It is information that moves people and governments to do great good or to commit horrible deeds (rights violations).
The media should find and use political information for only one end: to protect rights. "Political information" relates to human action in relation to potential government oversight, such as whether pollution rises to the level of violating property rights or whether racism rises to the level of coercive action against others.
When the media are in the process of protecting rights and are assessing the actions of citizens and governments, they should have in their minds a singular standard: "does this action violate individual rights?"
If they don't have this very clear and objective standard integrated and prominent in their minds, then foul play will be boundless -- resulting in the enormity of rights violations that we now see in modern America and around the world.
Not only does government violate rights openly and egregiously in modern society, but the media are complicit in the violations, often stoking the violations or complaining that the violations are not severe enough (regulations, taxes, minimum wages, entitlements, speech restrictions, gun restrictions, passive diplomacy, redistribution of income, taking of property, etc.).
The pen swings the sword.
The media have become the scribbling predators of individual rights.
They do not understand rights, as is shown in all of their articles in which human action is potentially under the purview of government action. They simply don't understand the rights standard. They are anti-conceptual, anti-objectivity, anti-rights.
They turn private racism (not baking cakes, biased company hiring, screaming obscenities, "hate groups") into an alleged political action under government purview, thereby violating the rights of property and speech. Instead of simply and properly condemning such private action as immoral, the media raise it to coercive action and repeatedly pens material to get the sword swinging, in violation of rights.
They state that CO2 emissions by businesses, ipso facto, are primarily a violation of "the Earth" and secondarily a violation of "civil rights", instead of recognizing that any alleged emissions pertain only to property rights, if at all. If a property owner in America believes his property rights are being violated by alleged "climate change" or pollution, then that property owner already has recourse in a court of law to make his case (which, of course, he cannot, on "climate change").
For the media, poverty is not self-induced. It is caused by capitalism, allegedly making the impoverished qualified to receive "give-backs" by the "privileged" and "greedy" and "one-percent" -- thereby violating the right to property (money) of millions of hard-working Americans.
The media are tinpot intellectual dictators.
They are, of course, people. They are people with a lot of education and very little conceptual integration of objective reality. To call them "intellectuals" is like calling beatniks "responsible". The media are anti-intellectuals, the dilettantes of whimsy and irrationality. What they learned in secondary schooling was how to rationalize their irrationality, their elitism, their desire to control.
They laugh when you tell them that the smallest minority is the individual. They don't recognize individuals. There is only the "social" in their social engineering. There's no room for individual rights; there are only "social rights", what's allegedly the "greater good" -- which means no rights at all.
So instead of being vaunted protectors of individual rights, they have become predators of individual rights, scribbling their diatribes against capitalists and gun owners and constitutionalists. They are Plato's philosopher kings run amuck. They won't leave you alone -- because YOU don't exist. You're just part of the social, of the "greater".
And, as they like to say, there is no "I" in "we".
Friday, March 03, 2017
Monday, February 27, 2017
There's fake news and FAKE news (SubNews)
There are two distinct types of fake people in life: the consciously fake and the subconsciously fake, though the former has the latter as well.
The former purposely (consciously) deceives others. They're outright liars.
The latter deceives himself -- and then others, unwittingly -- making of his life a lie.
They are both dishonest, either willfully or unwittingly. One knows the damage he's doing, and the other doesn't really, but has cowardly accepted ideas that are wrong in his mind and then acts on the misconceptions, creating deceptions he's not even aware of.
The former are people like Bernie Madoff and Hitler and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama and lying salespeople, using verbal legerdemain (outright lying) to achieve their ends. These people are eventually discovered and "outed", because their violation of reality is a house of unreal cards blown over by fact-checkers down the road.
The latter are intellectual bullies, abusive parents who rationalize physical punishment, people who use white lies to avoid confrontation and judgment, and media personalities who justify stories that execute their subconscious rage against the machine.
The latter are much more difficult to "out". Their deception is more fundamental, more philosophical, more rationalized, more habitual. The facts surrounding their personal deception go deep, go way back into childhood, go way back into history.
They number the vast majority of human beings. Here are some of their fake beliefs:
1) Religion
2) Altruism
3) Victimhood
4) Racial supremacy
5) "Sparing the rod"
6) Anthropomorphic global warming
7) Pacifism
8) Drug and alcohol "addictions"
9) Redistribution of wealth
10) Obedience to authority (parents, government, gods)
11) Awarding participation instead of excellence
12) Not judging others
13) "White lies"
I say "fake" on these beliefs because they are not connected to the facts of reality; they are irrational beliefs. They lead to irrational actions and thoughts.
1) Living by "faith" instead of reason, wrecking the rational faculty
2) Living for others, wrecking egoism and personal happiness and proper government
3) Seeing victims in life instead of solutions in life
4) Primitively assessing others by body features instead of (im)moral actions
5) Advocating violence against others to achieve a desired end in actions and thoughts
6) Punishing and controlling capitalism instead of honoring individual rights
7) Believing nonjudgmental inaction achieves peace
8) Focusing on physicality instead of irrationality on substance abuse
9) Believing wealth is achieved via devious or "privileged" means and must be "given back"
10) A skeptical perception of human efficacy, and therefore a need to obey to be good
11) A failure to acknowledge greatness in human action
12) The skepticism of human efficacy in making objective assessments
13) It's OK to be dishonest; in fact it can be good
The list is endless.
Interestingly, the outright fake people (the conscious ones like Obama) are perhaps more dastardly in their open flouting of propriety, fairness and humanity, but it is the second kind of fake people (the subconscious ones) who can be more pernicious and are more pervasive -- comprising the vast majority of humanity.
And it is the extremists of this second kind of fake who have taken over academia and the Mainstream News Media (MSM). They are the ones who've drunk the entire sink of Kool-Aid on bad philosophy, bad thinking -- ideas devoid of their relationship with reality. They are the worst kind of human beings -- bent, subconsciously, on the destruction of individuality, just as they've destroyed their own mental well-being.
They are run entirely by their subconscious conceptions on the "horrible" nature of humans and the world. Their MSM news is subconscious news -- SubNews. It is almost entirely FAKE news, whose propagation is fundamentally subconsciously activated, to satisfy irrational misconceptions instead of perceiving, explicating and broadcasting objective reality -- real news.
They believe, like Thomas Hobbes, that humans are nasty and brutish, incapable of governing themselves, and in need of a dominant overlord (Leviathan government) that is itself aggrandized and monitored by the true overlords -- the eminence gris, the "thinkers", the media, who believe themselves to be entirely immune from their own skeptical assessment of humanity's alleged "fall".
These people are "well-educated", which means, in truth, that they are well-indoctrinated. They exit high school as nearly full-blown SJWs (Social Justice Warriors), and then seek further "education" to intellectually rationalize their subconscious misconceptions of the world.
While billions of other people leave basic schooling to "get on with their lives" and get jobs and have families or actually seek "hard" secondary education to get a real job in the marketplace, these SJWs are learning where their spot will be in the modern-day Inquisition of the MSM and academia.
The most adept at dishonesty among them rise to the "top", at places like the NYT and Washington Post and the major broadcast networks. This is the creme (scum) of the intellectual cesspool that is the modern liberal mind. They are dug in. They are the Torquemadas. They are revered.
They have never given a single thought, most of them, to what individual rights are. They deride absolutes, while dishonestly denying their own Leftist absolutes. They are contemptuous of the masses (hoi polloi). They are stridently anti-greatness, which makes them stridently anti-capitalism. ("You didn't build that.").
And so their "news" does not revolve around individual rights, glorious capitalism, freedom of speech/guns/property, greatness of individual endeavor, and government limitations -- real news.
Instead they spout subconscious-driven "news", SubNews -- FAKE news. Red-herring news (global warming), subconsciously yanking viewers and readers away from the fundamental aspects of any subject (in this case, the individual right to production). No news, subconsciously avoiding real news (ObamaCare's grotesque violation of the right to make health decisions).
SubNews is ubiquitous, insidious and nearly invisible (to anti-conceptual mentalities), like the subconscious monster in The Forbidden Planet. It runs thousands of "invisible" fake stories each year -- stories that would not exist if the media were objective and reality-based. SubNews pretends these are relevant stories, real news:
1) Ominous talk of leaving the terrorist-ridden United Nations, which shouldn't exist
2) Black Live Matter being a legitimate "movement" instead of a terrorist organization
3) Campus tantrums being called "protests" instead of threats aimed at stopping free speech
4) Endlessly discussing fake "climate change" instead of dismissing it for what it is -- an attempt by Marxists to destroy capitalism and not honor property rights (the real news)
5) Endlessly discussing "violent crime" (with a conscious and subconscious attempt to eradicate the right to own weapons)
6) Assuming "welfare" is moral and an absolute entitlement of "victims" of "cold" capitalism
7) Blathering about "unequal pay for women" instead of honestly addressing the real news -- that no such thing exists
8) Droning on about "transgenders" and other "outcasts" and their "rights" instead of honoring a business's right to their own property and bathrooms
9) Concocting hundreds of stories about so-called "privileged" and "underprivileged" to accentuate fake class divisions and capitalism's alleged unfairness
10) Giving airtime and press space to SJWs around the world to further the SubNew's own agenda, instead of mocking and ridiculing the SJWs
11) Running puff pieces, pretending that Islam and other religions have something to offer the West, which the SubNews despises but can't explain rationally
12) Offering daily updates and graphics on drug crime, instead of thoughtful expositions on how humans have a right to their bodies and how drug laws violate that right (which would eventually end their fake stories)
13) Glossing over, ad infinitum, Obama's claims of hope and change, without demanding details from him and holding his feet to the fire of individual rights
There are thousands upon thousands of these types of fake SubNews stories, begun and extended by bad subconscious philosophy, by media scoundrels who never did what most of us decided to do -- Get a life. Think through assumptions. Get a job. Get happy.
Most of us "regular" people don't carry Stalin-statue-size chips on our shoulders. We want to be left alone, but the SJWs won't let that happen. They will insist on calling their SubNews real news, instead of fake news, red-herring news. They insist that we must be controlled -- by them, by the very people who dishonestly absorbed bad philosophy and didn't have the courage to re-assess it.
I worked within the SubNews for 13 years after college (yes, I was a "light" version of one of them), and saw first-hand the subconscious brandishers of nihilism and skepticism. Unlike "regular" people out in the world, they are entirely incapable of discussing ideas civilly. They are thoroughly suffused in their irrationality, having not only committed to it at a young age, but also taken the extra step to "validate" their malevolent worldview in college.
They're on a mission. They will acknowledge that openly. What they can't acknowledge is the dishonesty in their childhood and early adulthood that kept them from re-evaluating their mistaken and assumed beliefs, which now run them and their endless SubNews perorations.
This is the real fake news -- not the silly, transparent attempts by online nut-jobs.
The real fake news begins in the addled subconscious of the lifelong, intellectual miscreants.
The real battle begins with understanding and outing the real fake news -- the SubNews.
The former purposely (consciously) deceives others. They're outright liars.
The latter deceives himself -- and then others, unwittingly -- making of his life a lie.
They are both dishonest, either willfully or unwittingly. One knows the damage he's doing, and the other doesn't really, but has cowardly accepted ideas that are wrong in his mind and then acts on the misconceptions, creating deceptions he's not even aware of.
The former are people like Bernie Madoff and Hitler and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama and lying salespeople, using verbal legerdemain (outright lying) to achieve their ends. These people are eventually discovered and "outed", because their violation of reality is a house of unreal cards blown over by fact-checkers down the road.
The latter are intellectual bullies, abusive parents who rationalize physical punishment, people who use white lies to avoid confrontation and judgment, and media personalities who justify stories that execute their subconscious rage against the machine.
The latter are much more difficult to "out". Their deception is more fundamental, more philosophical, more rationalized, more habitual. The facts surrounding their personal deception go deep, go way back into childhood, go way back into history.
They number the vast majority of human beings. Here are some of their fake beliefs:
1) Religion
2) Altruism
3) Victimhood
4) Racial supremacy
5) "Sparing the rod"
6) Anthropomorphic global warming
7) Pacifism
8) Drug and alcohol "addictions"
9) Redistribution of wealth
10) Obedience to authority (parents, government, gods)
11) Awarding participation instead of excellence
12) Not judging others
13) "White lies"
I say "fake" on these beliefs because they are not connected to the facts of reality; they are irrational beliefs. They lead to irrational actions and thoughts.
1) Living by "faith" instead of reason, wrecking the rational faculty
2) Living for others, wrecking egoism and personal happiness and proper government
3) Seeing victims in life instead of solutions in life
4) Primitively assessing others by body features instead of (im)moral actions
5) Advocating violence against others to achieve a desired end in actions and thoughts
6) Punishing and controlling capitalism instead of honoring individual rights
7) Believing nonjudgmental inaction achieves peace
8) Focusing on physicality instead of irrationality on substance abuse
9) Believing wealth is achieved via devious or "privileged" means and must be "given back"
10) A skeptical perception of human efficacy, and therefore a need to obey to be good
11) A failure to acknowledge greatness in human action
12) The skepticism of human efficacy in making objective assessments
13) It's OK to be dishonest; in fact it can be good
The list is endless.
Interestingly, the outright fake people (the conscious ones like Obama) are perhaps more dastardly in their open flouting of propriety, fairness and humanity, but it is the second kind of fake people (the subconscious ones) who can be more pernicious and are more pervasive -- comprising the vast majority of humanity.
And it is the extremists of this second kind of fake who have taken over academia and the Mainstream News Media (MSM). They are the ones who've drunk the entire sink of Kool-Aid on bad philosophy, bad thinking -- ideas devoid of their relationship with reality. They are the worst kind of human beings -- bent, subconsciously, on the destruction of individuality, just as they've destroyed their own mental well-being.
They are run entirely by their subconscious conceptions on the "horrible" nature of humans and the world. Their MSM news is subconscious news -- SubNews. It is almost entirely FAKE news, whose propagation is fundamentally subconsciously activated, to satisfy irrational misconceptions instead of perceiving, explicating and broadcasting objective reality -- real news.
They believe, like Thomas Hobbes, that humans are nasty and brutish, incapable of governing themselves, and in need of a dominant overlord (Leviathan government) that is itself aggrandized and monitored by the true overlords -- the eminence gris, the "thinkers", the media, who believe themselves to be entirely immune from their own skeptical assessment of humanity's alleged "fall".
These people are "well-educated", which means, in truth, that they are well-indoctrinated. They exit high school as nearly full-blown SJWs (Social Justice Warriors), and then seek further "education" to intellectually rationalize their subconscious misconceptions of the world.
While billions of other people leave basic schooling to "get on with their lives" and get jobs and have families or actually seek "hard" secondary education to get a real job in the marketplace, these SJWs are learning where their spot will be in the modern-day Inquisition of the MSM and academia.
The most adept at dishonesty among them rise to the "top", at places like the NYT and Washington Post and the major broadcast networks. This is the creme (scum) of the intellectual cesspool that is the modern liberal mind. They are dug in. They are the Torquemadas. They are revered.
They have never given a single thought, most of them, to what individual rights are. They deride absolutes, while dishonestly denying their own Leftist absolutes. They are contemptuous of the masses (hoi polloi). They are stridently anti-greatness, which makes them stridently anti-capitalism. ("You didn't build that.").
And so their "news" does not revolve around individual rights, glorious capitalism, freedom of speech/guns/property, greatness of individual endeavor, and government limitations -- real news.
Instead they spout subconscious-driven "news", SubNews -- FAKE news. Red-herring news (global warming), subconsciously yanking viewers and readers away from the fundamental aspects of any subject (in this case, the individual right to production). No news, subconsciously avoiding real news (ObamaCare's grotesque violation of the right to make health decisions).
SubNews is ubiquitous, insidious and nearly invisible (to anti-conceptual mentalities), like the subconscious monster in The Forbidden Planet. It runs thousands of "invisible" fake stories each year -- stories that would not exist if the media were objective and reality-based. SubNews pretends these are relevant stories, real news:
1) Ominous talk of leaving the terrorist-ridden United Nations, which shouldn't exist
2) Black Live Matter being a legitimate "movement" instead of a terrorist organization
3) Campus tantrums being called "protests" instead of threats aimed at stopping free speech
4) Endlessly discussing fake "climate change" instead of dismissing it for what it is -- an attempt by Marxists to destroy capitalism and not honor property rights (the real news)
5) Endlessly discussing "violent crime" (with a conscious and subconscious attempt to eradicate the right to own weapons)
6) Assuming "welfare" is moral and an absolute entitlement of "victims" of "cold" capitalism
7) Blathering about "unequal pay for women" instead of honestly addressing the real news -- that no such thing exists
8) Droning on about "transgenders" and other "outcasts" and their "rights" instead of honoring a business's right to their own property and bathrooms
9) Concocting hundreds of stories about so-called "privileged" and "underprivileged" to accentuate fake class divisions and capitalism's alleged unfairness
10) Giving airtime and press space to SJWs around the world to further the SubNew's own agenda, instead of mocking and ridiculing the SJWs
11) Running puff pieces, pretending that Islam and other religions have something to offer the West, which the SubNews despises but can't explain rationally
12) Offering daily updates and graphics on drug crime, instead of thoughtful expositions on how humans have a right to their bodies and how drug laws violate that right (which would eventually end their fake stories)
13) Glossing over, ad infinitum, Obama's claims of hope and change, without demanding details from him and holding his feet to the fire of individual rights
There are thousands upon thousands of these types of fake SubNews stories, begun and extended by bad subconscious philosophy, by media scoundrels who never did what most of us decided to do -- Get a life. Think through assumptions. Get a job. Get happy.
Most of us "regular" people don't carry Stalin-statue-size chips on our shoulders. We want to be left alone, but the SJWs won't let that happen. They will insist on calling their SubNews real news, instead of fake news, red-herring news. They insist that we must be controlled -- by them, by the very people who dishonestly absorbed bad philosophy and didn't have the courage to re-assess it.
I worked within the SubNews for 13 years after college (yes, I was a "light" version of one of them), and saw first-hand the subconscious brandishers of nihilism and skepticism. Unlike "regular" people out in the world, they are entirely incapable of discussing ideas civilly. They are thoroughly suffused in their irrationality, having not only committed to it at a young age, but also taken the extra step to "validate" their malevolent worldview in college.
They're on a mission. They will acknowledge that openly. What they can't acknowledge is the dishonesty in their childhood and early adulthood that kept them from re-evaluating their mistaken and assumed beliefs, which now run them and their endless SubNews perorations.
This is the real fake news -- not the silly, transparent attempts by online nut-jobs.
The real fake news begins in the addled subconscious of the lifelong, intellectual miscreants.
The real battle begins with understanding and outing the real fake news -- the SubNews.
Saturday, February 25, 2017
"Work" and "privilege"
The 1940s Nazis had a deceptive phrase plastered above the entrances to their human-extermination camps for all the poor souls to read as they marched inside to their inevitable death and misery: arbeit macht frei.
"Work sets you free".
As gruesomely cynical was this usage in those abysmal, wretched circumstances, the phrase itself is entirely true -- for free people. Work DOES set us free, so to speak.
It frees our spirit, making it unencumbered by the guilt of parasites and the apathetic. It makes us proud of who we are, confidently circumspective about ourselves and our lives. It connects us and grounds us to reality. It makes the moments away from work more "free-spirited", allowing us to enjoy art and music and friendship and romance more fully.
It gives us identity. Work IS identity. It is who we are. It is our primary relationship with reality, our primary creativity, our primary challenge. It solidifies our being, occupies our thoughts, bolsters our confidence, giving us an emotional euphoria.
The immense satisfaction of good, hard, creative work does, indeed, set us "free" -- in spirit. There is no personal reproach over what we should be doing, or for mooching off of others, or for being lazy, or for not pursuing happiness, or for not being productive and responsible. We have purpose, and we are fulfilling our purpose.
In a free or semi-free marketplace, like most industrialized countries, there are thousands of different jobs available -- a veritable smorgasbord -- from which we can choose to actualize our own identity, our own preference in fulfilling work.
We can start our own business for these jobs, or we can even create a whole new line of jobs, as happened with hundreds of industries in our industrial/tech/capitalism era -- automotive, computers, programming, fashion design, movies, music, space, science, chemistry, planes, yoga, fitness trainers, nutrition specialists, writers, pharmacists. The list is endless.
The poorest child in the most abusive household can pursue his favorite job and become a billionaire, if he wishes (Starbucks' Howard Schultz; TV icon Oprah Winfrey). The richest child in a constructive household can do the same -- though he may already be a billionaire (Sam Walton scion).
In a free society, rags and riches are determined by only one thing: determination -- except for a very few who start out at or near the top of the money pile.
But the terms "rags" and "riches" refer to money -- not work, and not happiness.
The one thing that all people, rich and poor, have in common is that they have to actually figure out what kind of work will fulfill their identity -- what kind of work will "complete them". No amount of money supplants this personal discovery, and money does not buy happiness. Only good, creative work "buys" happiness.
The poor girl and the billionaire boy start out with exactly the same psychological potential. Each has to decide what their creative work will be. Ironically, this discovery can actually be easier on the girl starting from nothing because there is no peer pressure or family pressure for her to go into the rich family business. The up-and-coming Oprah specifically chose broadcasting work because it excited her.
It is work's soul-completion and the determination it takes to find the right job that belies the liberal propaganda about and obsession with "privilege". Privilege cannot help you choose your best job. It can perhaps help you get that job in some cases, but it can't help you with your soul-searching, with your career choice of optimum satisfaction.
There is no such thing as two people born with the exact same abilities and exact same economic status. Doesn't exist. Never has. Somebody somewhere always has some advantage (privilege) over us, even among twins born in the same home.
Phil Donahue allegedly had immensely more privilege than Oprah, but she ended up smoking him in the ratings, becoming 10 times more successful.
Small-town Southern boy Sam Walton was up against retail giant K-Mart and others with "privilege", but he smoked them eventually with determination and ingenuity.
There are millions of other untold stories of less "privileged" kids beating out their "superiors" in millions of jobs and college entrances throughout the world each year.
Privilege may gain you better and/or quicker access to higher education or higher jobs or higher connections in the beginning of your young adulthood, but it doesn't eliminate the primary aspect of the identity-filled life: finding the job that completes you as a person -- and going after it.
History is, unfortunately, littered with the corpses of rich kids who committed suicide or ultimately lived in abject poverty because of poor life-desicions and squandering, or became addicted to drugs and apathy -- because they never did the hard discovery of finding out who they are, finding out specifically which job completed them.
Privilege doesn't help one to think.
Have a lot of money or being a certain race or gender may, on occasion, help you or hinder you, once you've figured out what you want to do with your life. But none of these things can make you successful if you are not being rational -- or stop you, if you are being rational.
There is NO job that any person cannot attain, if they are determined -- whether they have privileges or not. Abraham Lincoln rose from the poorest conditions in a log cabin to the presidency of the United States, and Frederick Douglass rose from slavery in a racist society to be an esteemed writer, abolitionist leader, women's rights leader -- and to confer regularly with Lincoln himself.
Leftists and others who propagandize about "privilege" fail to understand this. They resent privilege and capitalism, and so they see only victims and disadvantages, instead of heroes and hard work. They are skeptics of human ability and industry. They pretend to want to help their victims, and their victims are often blind to the condescension of such help.
And they blank out the fact that privilege is most often the result of previous hard work by previous generations of determined people -- who deserved their "privilege".
The Left use "privilege" as a means to aggrandize government to "help" so-called victims, so-called "underprivileged". They willfully refuse to see that self-fulfillment in work is not a matter of where you start or how you're helped. It is about self-discovery and self-determination.
Human beings who take pride in their own minds, in themselves, don't care about where they start. They don't care about who's rich and who isn't. They wouldn't think of demanding that the government "even the playing field". Freedom evens the playing field, for the privileged and the underprivileged.
With freedom, we have the privilege, so to speak, to undertake any endeavor, any job, any discovery. With freedom, there are no victims of the marketplace. We are the captain and commander of our own destiny, just like Oprah and Walton and Schultz and millions of others. We find the work that completes us and gives us pride.
And sets us free.
"Work sets you free".
As gruesomely cynical was this usage in those abysmal, wretched circumstances, the phrase itself is entirely true -- for free people. Work DOES set us free, so to speak.
It frees our spirit, making it unencumbered by the guilt of parasites and the apathetic. It makes us proud of who we are, confidently circumspective about ourselves and our lives. It connects us and grounds us to reality. It makes the moments away from work more "free-spirited", allowing us to enjoy art and music and friendship and romance more fully.
It gives us identity. Work IS identity. It is who we are. It is our primary relationship with reality, our primary creativity, our primary challenge. It solidifies our being, occupies our thoughts, bolsters our confidence, giving us an emotional euphoria.
The immense satisfaction of good, hard, creative work does, indeed, set us "free" -- in spirit. There is no personal reproach over what we should be doing, or for mooching off of others, or for being lazy, or for not pursuing happiness, or for not being productive and responsible. We have purpose, and we are fulfilling our purpose.
In a free or semi-free marketplace, like most industrialized countries, there are thousands of different jobs available -- a veritable smorgasbord -- from which we can choose to actualize our own identity, our own preference in fulfilling work.
We can start our own business for these jobs, or we can even create a whole new line of jobs, as happened with hundreds of industries in our industrial/tech/capitalism era -- automotive, computers, programming, fashion design, movies, music, space, science, chemistry, planes, yoga, fitness trainers, nutrition specialists, writers, pharmacists. The list is endless.
The poorest child in the most abusive household can pursue his favorite job and become a billionaire, if he wishes (Starbucks' Howard Schultz; TV icon Oprah Winfrey). The richest child in a constructive household can do the same -- though he may already be a billionaire (Sam Walton scion).
In a free society, rags and riches are determined by only one thing: determination -- except for a very few who start out at or near the top of the money pile.
But the terms "rags" and "riches" refer to money -- not work, and not happiness.
The one thing that all people, rich and poor, have in common is that they have to actually figure out what kind of work will fulfill their identity -- what kind of work will "complete them". No amount of money supplants this personal discovery, and money does not buy happiness. Only good, creative work "buys" happiness.
The poor girl and the billionaire boy start out with exactly the same psychological potential. Each has to decide what their creative work will be. Ironically, this discovery can actually be easier on the girl starting from nothing because there is no peer pressure or family pressure for her to go into the rich family business. The up-and-coming Oprah specifically chose broadcasting work because it excited her.
It is work's soul-completion and the determination it takes to find the right job that belies the liberal propaganda about and obsession with "privilege". Privilege cannot help you choose your best job. It can perhaps help you get that job in some cases, but it can't help you with your soul-searching, with your career choice of optimum satisfaction.
There is no such thing as two people born with the exact same abilities and exact same economic status. Doesn't exist. Never has. Somebody somewhere always has some advantage (privilege) over us, even among twins born in the same home.
Phil Donahue allegedly had immensely more privilege than Oprah, but she ended up smoking him in the ratings, becoming 10 times more successful.
Small-town Southern boy Sam Walton was up against retail giant K-Mart and others with "privilege", but he smoked them eventually with determination and ingenuity.
There are millions of other untold stories of less "privileged" kids beating out their "superiors" in millions of jobs and college entrances throughout the world each year.
Privilege may gain you better and/or quicker access to higher education or higher jobs or higher connections in the beginning of your young adulthood, but it doesn't eliminate the primary aspect of the identity-filled life: finding the job that completes you as a person -- and going after it.
History is, unfortunately, littered with the corpses of rich kids who committed suicide or ultimately lived in abject poverty because of poor life-desicions and squandering, or became addicted to drugs and apathy -- because they never did the hard discovery of finding out who they are, finding out specifically which job completed them.
Privilege doesn't help one to think.
Have a lot of money or being a certain race or gender may, on occasion, help you or hinder you, once you've figured out what you want to do with your life. But none of these things can make you successful if you are not being rational -- or stop you, if you are being rational.
There is NO job that any person cannot attain, if they are determined -- whether they have privileges or not. Abraham Lincoln rose from the poorest conditions in a log cabin to the presidency of the United States, and Frederick Douglass rose from slavery in a racist society to be an esteemed writer, abolitionist leader, women's rights leader -- and to confer regularly with Lincoln himself.
Leftists and others who propagandize about "privilege" fail to understand this. They resent privilege and capitalism, and so they see only victims and disadvantages, instead of heroes and hard work. They are skeptics of human ability and industry. They pretend to want to help their victims, and their victims are often blind to the condescension of such help.
And they blank out the fact that privilege is most often the result of previous hard work by previous generations of determined people -- who deserved their "privilege".
The Left use "privilege" as a means to aggrandize government to "help" so-called victims, so-called "underprivileged". They willfully refuse to see that self-fulfillment in work is not a matter of where you start or how you're helped. It is about self-discovery and self-determination.
Human beings who take pride in their own minds, in themselves, don't care about where they start. They don't care about who's rich and who isn't. They wouldn't think of demanding that the government "even the playing field". Freedom evens the playing field, for the privileged and the underprivileged.
With freedom, we have the privilege, so to speak, to undertake any endeavor, any job, any discovery. With freedom, there are no victims of the marketplace. We are the captain and commander of our own destiny, just like Oprah and Walton and Schultz and millions of others. We find the work that completes us and gives us pride.
And sets us free.
Sunday, November 20, 2016
FreeCon ... How Free Are We?
Get your scorecards out, my friends!
Let's start scoring bad political ideas and bad political actions.
With the self-righteous media in America finally surrendering to academic Marxism, and with Leftists forcefully lecturing their bankrupt moralities to the rest of us Americans, and with the Right electing a guy who says he wants to cripple free speech and free trade, I thought it might be time for a qualitative assessment of just how coercive certain political ideas and policies really are or could be -- on both the right and left.
Let's end the smugness and self-righteousness of the politicians and elitists by declaring in concrete terms, with a Number, just how dangerous they and their ideas are.
All political thought and action can be measured in the societal realm by the amount of coercion they use or seek to use against individuals and businesses. Are they freedom-oriented or are they not? Every government policy affects someone! A Leftist insisting on the forceful funding of the arts or a Rightist seeking to forcefully ban abortions both seek coercion against individuals.
There can be no self-righteousness on either's part for the above coercive policies -- for forcing some people to do what they don't wish to do with their own money, or for preventing others from doing what they wish to do with their own body.
But how bad are those particular policies? How coercive is each one on individual rights? How much do they violate freedoms?
Perhaps we can attempt to measure this. Perhaps we can measure the amount of coercion of these two proposals and all other political policies and political ideas on a Freedom Condition scale.
FreeCon
FreeCon would give qualitative measure, on a scale of 1 to 5, to the amount of coercion being used or sought to be used against individuals via political policies and ideas -- with FreeCon 1 being total control of an individual's (or business's) action in a certain scenario, and FreeCon 5 being total freedom of action in a certain scenario.
This would give at least a general sense of just how coercive and dangerous some ideas are, so that we can carry that sense with us in conversation, judgment and political action. For example:
"Obama's executive action on punishing energy businesses via stifling pollution controls is FreeCon 3. It still honors the businesses' rights to run their own businesses somewhat, but violates property rights to a large degree and limits maximum production and other alternatives that may be essential for growth and prosperity. And it raises the price of energy for consumers."
The discussion just on the energy scenario could last for days, of course, with hundreds of facts determining a proper FreeCon number, pertaining to the violation of the right to property.
Because of the variables involved, there will not always be agreement on the FreeCon scaling on any particular political policy or idea, but the discussion helps give clarity to the concrete facts surrounding the idea, and the eventual FreeCon scaling itself.
FreeCon can also be used to give a general assessment of a country or the world, much like DefCon does in its realm of imminent threat to the U.S.
For example, a FreeCon 4.5 might've been given to a nearly-regulation-free America (with almost no taxes) in the 1890s. But with the weight of Progressive intrusion over the last 120 years, we might now give a FreeCon 3 or FreeCon 2.5 assessment concerning loss of rights, loss of freedom.
An overall assessment would include such areas as free speech, gun ownership, unbridled capitalism, taxation, property ownership, stifling fees and permissions, immigration/emigration, etc.
We could even give FreeCons to Supreme Court decisions, to media outlets, to particular reporters, to entertainers (Dicaprio gets FreeCon 2), to businessmen (Soros gets same as Dicaprio), to family members (hmm), to other countries, to politicians, to movements, to religions, to activists, etc.
Objectivists understand that the right to one's life, body and property is absolute, based on the fact that we are rational, volitional animals who must have that right (the freedom) in society in order to act in accordance with our own minds and values to be happy and productive. Governments and their policies cannot rightfully interfere with our right.
Government's only job is to protect individual rights -- to protect freedom. Anything else is intrusive, taking it below FreeCon 5.
All assessment on FreeCon assumes this objective fact about reality, humans and freedom. It assumes that humans have a complete right to their life, body and property -- so any political idea or policy that would violate that right in any way would bring us below the ideal of FreeCon 5.
Let the assessments begin!
Let's start scoring bad political ideas and bad political actions.
With the self-righteous media in America finally surrendering to academic Marxism, and with Leftists forcefully lecturing their bankrupt moralities to the rest of us Americans, and with the Right electing a guy who says he wants to cripple free speech and free trade, I thought it might be time for a qualitative assessment of just how coercive certain political ideas and policies really are or could be -- on both the right and left.
Let's end the smugness and self-righteousness of the politicians and elitists by declaring in concrete terms, with a Number, just how dangerous they and their ideas are.
All political thought and action can be measured in the societal realm by the amount of coercion they use or seek to use against individuals and businesses. Are they freedom-oriented or are they not? Every government policy affects someone! A Leftist insisting on the forceful funding of the arts or a Rightist seeking to forcefully ban abortions both seek coercion against individuals.
There can be no self-righteousness on either's part for the above coercive policies -- for forcing some people to do what they don't wish to do with their own money, or for preventing others from doing what they wish to do with their own body.
But how bad are those particular policies? How coercive is each one on individual rights? How much do they violate freedoms?
Perhaps we can attempt to measure this. Perhaps we can measure the amount of coercion of these two proposals and all other political policies and political ideas on a Freedom Condition scale.
FreeCon
FreeCon would give qualitative measure, on a scale of 1 to 5, to the amount of coercion being used or sought to be used against individuals via political policies and ideas -- with FreeCon 1 being total control of an individual's (or business's) action in a certain scenario, and FreeCon 5 being total freedom of action in a certain scenario.
This would give at least a general sense of just how coercive and dangerous some ideas are, so that we can carry that sense with us in conversation, judgment and political action. For example:
"Obama's executive action on punishing energy businesses via stifling pollution controls is FreeCon 3. It still honors the businesses' rights to run their own businesses somewhat, but violates property rights to a large degree and limits maximum production and other alternatives that may be essential for growth and prosperity. And it raises the price of energy for consumers."
The discussion just on the energy scenario could last for days, of course, with hundreds of facts determining a proper FreeCon number, pertaining to the violation of the right to property.
Because of the variables involved, there will not always be agreement on the FreeCon scaling on any particular political policy or idea, but the discussion helps give clarity to the concrete facts surrounding the idea, and the eventual FreeCon scaling itself.
FreeCon can also be used to give a general assessment of a country or the world, much like DefCon does in its realm of imminent threat to the U.S.
For example, a FreeCon 4.5 might've been given to a nearly-regulation-free America (with almost no taxes) in the 1890s. But with the weight of Progressive intrusion over the last 120 years, we might now give a FreeCon 3 or FreeCon 2.5 assessment concerning loss of rights, loss of freedom.
An overall assessment would include such areas as free speech, gun ownership, unbridled capitalism, taxation, property ownership, stifling fees and permissions, immigration/emigration, etc.
We could even give FreeCons to Supreme Court decisions, to media outlets, to particular reporters, to entertainers (Dicaprio gets FreeCon 2), to businessmen (Soros gets same as Dicaprio), to family members (hmm), to other countries, to politicians, to movements, to religions, to activists, etc.
Objectivists understand that the right to one's life, body and property is absolute, based on the fact that we are rational, volitional animals who must have that right (the freedom) in society in order to act in accordance with our own minds and values to be happy and productive. Governments and their policies cannot rightfully interfere with our right.
Government's only job is to protect individual rights -- to protect freedom. Anything else is intrusive, taking it below FreeCon 5.
All assessment on FreeCon assumes this objective fact about reality, humans and freedom. It assumes that humans have a complete right to their life, body and property -- so any political idea or policy that would violate that right in any way would bring us below the ideal of FreeCon 5.
Let the assessments begin!
Saturday, November 19, 2016
Where's the REAL Aaron Burr When You Need Him?
In case you've been on the non-planet Pluto for the last 18 hours, my friend, there's been yet another leftist protest.
This time the protestors were dressed up -- on Broadway. Yep. Yep. They consisted of boorish audience members who actually booed another audience member, who had his daughter and nephew with him to enjoy the wonderful play Hamilton.
No, it's true. It happened.
The audience member who was booed was then lectured to by the cast of the play after the play was over, as the audience member was trying to exit with his daughter and nephew.
If you've never heard of such a thing happening and find this altogether unsettling, please be patient. There's more. Yes, yes, I'll let you know who the audience member was in a moment. Yes, yes, his daughter and nephew are alright.
The Hamilton actor who did the lecturing -- let's call him Fake Aaron Burr -- insinuated that the audience member was a bigoted, narrow-minded, elitist, Earth-hating, rights-hating, racist pig who would hopefully be less of all those horrible things because he saw their great play.
Please stop laughing, it's true. I swear it. It's not a hoax. Yes, of course, only a leftist could call somebody despicable and then offer him hope of not being despicable because he was offered the opportunity to see the grand leftists perform. Yep, you just can't make that shit up.
I'll let you judge for yourself. Here's what Fake Aaron Burr said:
But that's what leftists do, right? They block our highways and roads and force us to listen to their tantrums and waste our time in our cars -- away from our loved ones or our jobs or the emergency room or wherever.
They just can't leave us alone!
They riot over elections but can't tell us why they're rioting, and they demand to be heard, even though they don't know what they want to say. They've got emotions, you know!
They tell us that we must work so they can have free college.
They tell us they must have safe spaces if we say anything back.
They and their representatives turn hard-working Americans into slaves of the welfare state.
They define people by race and class and disabilities -- and then call us the bigots and racists.
They have no understanding of what inalienable rights are -- to one's own body, property, money and time. But they will lecture about those rights to the soon-to-be second-most-powerful person in the world.
Oh, yes yes, I'm sorry. The name of the audience member was Vice President-Elect Mike Pence. No, he didn't say anything when Fake Aaron Burr lectured him. He just left with his daughter and nephew.
Yeah, me too. It's too bad that Mike Pence wasn't the REAL Aaron Burr.
Now that would've been a show worth watching!
This time the protestors were dressed up -- on Broadway. Yep. Yep. They consisted of boorish audience members who actually booed another audience member, who had his daughter and nephew with him to enjoy the wonderful play Hamilton.
No, it's true. It happened.
The audience member who was booed was then lectured to by the cast of the play after the play was over, as the audience member was trying to exit with his daughter and nephew.
If you've never heard of such a thing happening and find this altogether unsettling, please be patient. There's more. Yes, yes, I'll let you know who the audience member was in a moment. Yes, yes, his daughter and nephew are alright.
The Hamilton actor who did the lecturing -- let's call him Fake Aaron Burr -- insinuated that the audience member was a bigoted, narrow-minded, elitist, Earth-hating, rights-hating, racist pig who would hopefully be less of all those horrible things because he saw their great play.
Please stop laughing, it's true. I swear it. It's not a hoax. Yes, of course, only a leftist could call somebody despicable and then offer him hope of not being despicable because he was offered the opportunity to see the grand leftists perform. Yep, you just can't make that shit up.
I'll let you judge for yourself. Here's what Fake Aaron Burr said:
We, sir, we are the diverse America, who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. ... But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.Whoa, my friend, I don't think I've heard you use those words in a while. Please calm down. OK, you can stop throwing things now. Yes, of course I agree. Yes, of course it's condescending and insulting and pretentious and, ahem, fucking presumptuous. Yes, I know, I know, you just don't DO something like that to a person, ANY person, out for a nice relaxing evening of art and entertainment -- with his daughter and nephew, no less.
But that's what leftists do, right? They block our highways and roads and force us to listen to their tantrums and waste our time in our cars -- away from our loved ones or our jobs or the emergency room or wherever.
They just can't leave us alone!
They riot over elections but can't tell us why they're rioting, and they demand to be heard, even though they don't know what they want to say. They've got emotions, you know!
They tell us that we must work so they can have free college.
They tell us they must have safe spaces if we say anything back.
They and their representatives turn hard-working Americans into slaves of the welfare state.
They define people by race and class and disabilities -- and then call us the bigots and racists.
They have no understanding of what inalienable rights are -- to one's own body, property, money and time. But they will lecture about those rights to the soon-to-be second-most-powerful person in the world.
Oh, yes yes, I'm sorry. The name of the audience member was Vice President-Elect Mike Pence. No, he didn't say anything when Fake Aaron Burr lectured him. He just left with his daughter and nephew.
Yeah, me too. It's too bad that Mike Pence wasn't the REAL Aaron Burr.
Now that would've been a show worth watching!
Thursday, July 07, 2016
The New Untouchables
You remember the famous group of federal agents in 1930s-America who got the nickname "The Untouchables" -- because their integrity was beyond reproach, untouched by threats or the bribes of criminals.
They refused to be influenced by anything but the facts, which they acted on with force and conviction.
(Ponder incredulously on that for a moment.)
They did their job -- with élan.
Not so in modern America.
Federal officials and judges now wear lace panties while nibbling on the crumbs of Marie Antoinette.
The officials meet secretly with The Grey Eminence aboard planes. The officials pretend that years of egregious criminal misconduct was just a "golly-gee-whiz" lapse. The judges give a winking, grinning thumbs-up to unpardonable laws that force free people to buy medical insurance.
American officials are no longer protectors -- no longer The Untouchables.
The politicians are The New Untouchables -- in the Banana Republic formerly known as The United States of America.
The once-separate beds of government are now the King's incestuous mattress, with the feds and judges lying happily at the feet of the royalty.
"I will gladly meet with you aboard your private plane and be your wife's pit-bull for injustice and racism."
"Meet with me and I will pretend to interrogate you and then let you go free. As a bonus, of course, I'll pretend to not remember anything you said. When you are queen, please remember your humble servant as FBI chief."
"You can rely on me, Mr. President, to ensure that your legacy of forcing citizens to pony up is secure in this courtroom."
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and their ilk are solely without integrity and utterly without souls. Their bidding is the demand of hoi polloi officials. It is expected.
For The New Untouchables, the law is what they say it is, at best, and simply a nuisance, at worst.
Executive orders come from on-high, or, when testifying before Congress, they plead the 5th while polishing their nails, rolling their eyes and planning lunch with the Trotskys or the environmentalist Jetset.
The snicker is their raison d'être.
They are royalty to the millennial narcissists they've fostered on the public dime through 12 years of brain-altering "education".
They refuse to salute the brave security personnel who defend them daily -- though they will occasionally tell these defenders to "fuck off" and expect the defenders to be grateful to have briefly captured the eye of Caesar.
The erstwhile Untouchables are now The Undesirables. Comey and Roberts, like all sycophants, are universally detested, even by their own.
The politicians and "elites" whom The Undesirables get off the hook use them and despise them because, well, they are politicians and elitists -- and they love nothing but themselves. The New Untouchables respect only those who are professional gamers -- of the system.
The public doesn't like The Undesirables because the one job we give them to do -- ensure justice -- is clearly unimportant to them. It is, evidently, an undesirable job, whose only benefit is its intoxicating proximity to power.
Integrity is absent.
One gets the sense that these two punks -- Comey and Roberts -- cross their fingers behind their backs when they promise. You know, things like "I do solemnly swear (fingers crossed) that I will protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies ... blah blah blah."
"Yes, yes, yes, foreign and domestic, blah blah blah, move on, move on, move on! Let's get this overwith. I've got a luncheon with the Clintons, and Hillary does NOT like it when I'm late."
The Undesirables are criminals. They intentionally undermine the constitution they yawningly swore to uphold upon entering office. They should be in prison.
Sound extreme?
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue."
The "moderation" of Comey and Roberts isn't just a lack of virtue. It's treasonous. Roberts makes slaves of Americans, and Comey clears the path to the presidency of one of the most detestable and dangerous individuals in America. Each violated his oath, endangering our liberty. Let them cross fingers in prison.
The Undesirables have mastered one thing, though -- the straight face. Both of these men and their ilk get in front of cameras and show not a speck of shame about their criminal, sycophantic behavior.
What, do FBI directors and judges undergo a rigorous "straight-face" job-training program?
Maybe. Or it could be that they just learn well from their heroes -- The New Untouchables.
They refused to be influenced by anything but the facts, which they acted on with force and conviction.
(Ponder incredulously on that for a moment.)
They did their job -- with élan.
Not so in modern America.
Federal officials and judges now wear lace panties while nibbling on the crumbs of Marie Antoinette.
The officials meet secretly with The Grey Eminence aboard planes. The officials pretend that years of egregious criminal misconduct was just a "golly-gee-whiz" lapse. The judges give a winking, grinning thumbs-up to unpardonable laws that force free people to buy medical insurance.
American officials are no longer protectors -- no longer The Untouchables.
The politicians are The New Untouchables -- in the Banana Republic formerly known as The United States of America.
The once-separate beds of government are now the King's incestuous mattress, with the feds and judges lying happily at the feet of the royalty.
"I will gladly meet with you aboard your private plane and be your wife's pit-bull for injustice and racism."
"Meet with me and I will pretend to interrogate you and then let you go free. As a bonus, of course, I'll pretend to not remember anything you said. When you are queen, please remember your humble servant as FBI chief."
"You can rely on me, Mr. President, to ensure that your legacy of forcing citizens to pony up is secure in this courtroom."
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and their ilk are solely without integrity and utterly without souls. Their bidding is the demand of hoi polloi officials. It is expected.
For The New Untouchables, the law is what they say it is, at best, and simply a nuisance, at worst.
Executive orders come from on-high, or, when testifying before Congress, they plead the 5th while polishing their nails, rolling their eyes and planning lunch with the Trotskys or the environmentalist Jetset.
The snicker is their raison d'être.
They are royalty to the millennial narcissists they've fostered on the public dime through 12 years of brain-altering "education".
They refuse to salute the brave security personnel who defend them daily -- though they will occasionally tell these defenders to "fuck off" and expect the defenders to be grateful to have briefly captured the eye of Caesar.
The erstwhile Untouchables are now The Undesirables. Comey and Roberts, like all sycophants, are universally detested, even by their own.
The politicians and "elites" whom The Undesirables get off the hook use them and despise them because, well, they are politicians and elitists -- and they love nothing but themselves. The New Untouchables respect only those who are professional gamers -- of the system.
The public doesn't like The Undesirables because the one job we give them to do -- ensure justice -- is clearly unimportant to them. It is, evidently, an undesirable job, whose only benefit is its intoxicating proximity to power.
Integrity is absent.
One gets the sense that these two punks -- Comey and Roberts -- cross their fingers behind their backs when they promise. You know, things like "I do solemnly swear (fingers crossed) that I will protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies ... blah blah blah."
"Yes, yes, yes, foreign and domestic, blah blah blah, move on, move on, move on! Let's get this overwith. I've got a luncheon with the Clintons, and Hillary does NOT like it when I'm late."
The Undesirables are criminals. They intentionally undermine the constitution they yawningly swore to uphold upon entering office. They should be in prison.
Sound extreme?
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue."
The "moderation" of Comey and Roberts isn't just a lack of virtue. It's treasonous. Roberts makes slaves of Americans, and Comey clears the path to the presidency of one of the most detestable and dangerous individuals in America. Each violated his oath, endangering our liberty. Let them cross fingers in prison.
The Undesirables have mastered one thing, though -- the straight face. Both of these men and their ilk get in front of cameras and show not a speck of shame about their criminal, sycophantic behavior.
What, do FBI directors and judges undergo a rigorous "straight-face" job-training program?
Maybe. Or it could be that they just learn well from their heroes -- The New Untouchables.
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Francisco's Money Speech (Yawn)
The brilliant philosopher Ayn Rand was NOT a brilliant dramatist, often using set-up scenes to elaborate on her perfect philosophy of Objectivism -- to the detriment of flow and drama.
Romantic literature should move mellifluously, quickly, graphically, realistically, stylistically -- not have endless descriptions (Hugo and Faulkner) endless explanations (Dostoevsky) or endless speeches (Rand).
Concocted speeches may be somewhat interesting the first time you read a novel, but the rational reader will simply skip such speeches (if not the first time they read the novel, at least upon second reading) because it is simply preaching to the choir. We don't need to be told the meaning of money because we already know it, and the speech interferes with a fictional, experiential movement of character development, drama and suspense.
The Francisco D'Anconia "money speech" (brilliant for a book on capitalism) is just one example (the 70-page Galt "radio speech" being the worst example in literature of didactic drama-death).
With that said, here's one example of how the money speech could've gone down to add drama and flow -- and still get the point across:
(Man on stairs at party monologuing loudly on how money is allegedly the root of all evil. He is surrounded by fawners. Francisco and scores of others are on the floor below.)
(As man says the phrase "money is the root of all evil" ...)
Francisco (loudly with hilarity): Ha!
(Everyone looks at Francisco smiling and now sipping his martini)
Man (snidely): Did you have something you wanted to say?
F (acting a bit surprised): Well, yes, I suppose so. YOU, sir, are the root of all evil.
M (laughing and looking at those nearby): I am the root of all evil?! Ha! And how is that, pray tell?! (friends near him self-consciously laughing with him).
F (looking around the room with a slight smirk): How many of you burn your paychecks when you get them?
(Everybody shaking heads and laughing at the rhetorical question. Room is abuzz. Even some men and women on the stairs are smiling. Francisco waits for the room to quiet down as he sips his martini with a smile again.)
F: That paycheck. ... YOUR paycheck, my friends ... represents YOUR hard work? The company you work for traded THEIR money for YOUR hard work. That money is your life-sweat, your pride in your ability and productivity. You can now pridefully take that hard-earned money and go buy products produced by other prideful, hard-working people ... to help you and your loved ones live well. ... And this idiot (Francisco nods his head toward the Man without looking at him) tells you that that is evil. (Man's face turns serious and a shade of red)
M (eyes glaring, almost stuttering): I'm not ...
F: Look at him, folks. Look how he lurches at me. (men nearby hold man in place to keep him from running down the stairs)
M: NOBODY talks to me that way! I'll ...
F (looking around and nodding in the man's direction again): THAT ... is evil! Any man who says that our hard work, the thing we should be most proud of in our lives, is the root of all evil. ... His mind-hating irrationality is the root of all evil. ... There's some irony for ya, huh?"
(Man breaks free and catapults down the stairs toward Francisco, who calmly turns to the beautiful lady to his right)
F: Would you please hold this (martini) for a moment, love?
(lady, caught in whirlwind of action, absent-mindedly grabs glass and holds it exactly in place)
(Down the stairs, the man charges Francisco at full speed. People near Francisco move away, except for stricken lady, in Statue of Liberty pose.)
M: You son of a bitch capitalist ...!
(As the man nears Francisco, Francisco calmly and quickly takes a step to his left and launches a fist at the man's jaw, halting the man's momentum in mid-stride and sending him to the floor unconscious. Gasps are heard as everyone stares at the bloodied man. Francisco thanks the women to his right, takes the clear glass. He lifts the bubbling martini high, gazes at it longingly and sips again.)
F: Yes, my friends, money is good.
(People smile and laugh and raise their glasses and sip.)
Romantic literature should move mellifluously, quickly, graphically, realistically, stylistically -- not have endless descriptions (Hugo and Faulkner) endless explanations (Dostoevsky) or endless speeches (Rand).
Concocted speeches may be somewhat interesting the first time you read a novel, but the rational reader will simply skip such speeches (if not the first time they read the novel, at least upon second reading) because it is simply preaching to the choir. We don't need to be told the meaning of money because we already know it, and the speech interferes with a fictional, experiential movement of character development, drama and suspense.
The Francisco D'Anconia "money speech" (brilliant for a book on capitalism) is just one example (the 70-page Galt "radio speech" being the worst example in literature of didactic drama-death).
With that said, here's one example of how the money speech could've gone down to add drama and flow -- and still get the point across:
(Man on stairs at party monologuing loudly on how money is allegedly the root of all evil. He is surrounded by fawners. Francisco and scores of others are on the floor below.)
(As man says the phrase "money is the root of all evil" ...)
Francisco (loudly with hilarity): Ha!
(Everyone looks at Francisco smiling and now sipping his martini)
Man (snidely): Did you have something you wanted to say?
F (acting a bit surprised): Well, yes, I suppose so. YOU, sir, are the root of all evil.
M (laughing and looking at those nearby): I am the root of all evil?! Ha! And how is that, pray tell?! (friends near him self-consciously laughing with him).
F (looking around the room with a slight smirk): How many of you burn your paychecks when you get them?
(Everybody shaking heads and laughing at the rhetorical question. Room is abuzz. Even some men and women on the stairs are smiling. Francisco waits for the room to quiet down as he sips his martini with a smile again.)
F: That paycheck. ... YOUR paycheck, my friends ... represents YOUR hard work? The company you work for traded THEIR money for YOUR hard work. That money is your life-sweat, your pride in your ability and productivity. You can now pridefully take that hard-earned money and go buy products produced by other prideful, hard-working people ... to help you and your loved ones live well. ... And this idiot (Francisco nods his head toward the Man without looking at him) tells you that that is evil. (Man's face turns serious and a shade of red)
M (eyes glaring, almost stuttering): I'm not ...
F: Look at him, folks. Look how he lurches at me. (men nearby hold man in place to keep him from running down the stairs)
M: NOBODY talks to me that way! I'll ...
F (looking around and nodding in the man's direction again): THAT ... is evil! Any man who says that our hard work, the thing we should be most proud of in our lives, is the root of all evil. ... His mind-hating irrationality is the root of all evil. ... There's some irony for ya, huh?"
(Man breaks free and catapults down the stairs toward Francisco, who calmly turns to the beautiful lady to his right)
F: Would you please hold this (martini) for a moment, love?
(lady, caught in whirlwind of action, absent-mindedly grabs glass and holds it exactly in place)
(Down the stairs, the man charges Francisco at full speed. People near Francisco move away, except for stricken lady, in Statue of Liberty pose.)
M: You son of a bitch capitalist ...!
(As the man nears Francisco, Francisco calmly and quickly takes a step to his left and launches a fist at the man's jaw, halting the man's momentum in mid-stride and sending him to the floor unconscious. Gasps are heard as everyone stares at the bloodied man. Francisco thanks the women to his right, takes the clear glass. He lifts the bubbling martini high, gazes at it longingly and sips again.)
F: Yes, my friends, money is good.
(People smile and laugh and raise their glasses and sip.)
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Kids have rights, so what's a parent to do?
The American writer/thinker Ayn Rand was the first person in history to finally understand and explain what human rights are:
A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)
The Virtue of Selfishness, page 93
When Rand says "man", she means "humans" (all people), not just men, of course. Rand correctly said that people automatically have rights upon birth on page 58 of The Voice of Reason.
And here (all people):
Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times. Therefore, the rights of one man cannot and must not violate the rights of another. --
The Ayn Rand Column, page 84
She also correctly discovered that ALL humans have rights because they possess the mind's faculty of reason (unlike lower animals):
Her point in saying that all humans automatically have rights is that humans don't have to prove they are rational to have rights; they have rights by the simple fact that they are rational animals.
This same argument applies to infants and other children of all ages. Whether a human is capable at any given moment to exercise their rationality is of no consequence concerning rights. They STILL have those rights, whether they are comatose, an invalid, crippled, knocked out, asleep or just born.
(To read my blog entry on comatose adults and children's rights, please READ HERE)
Having a caretaker to help them with their lives does not obviate their individual rights. And the caretaker does not take on any position of absolute authority in relation to the person requiring care, outside of the implied or explicit "authorization" to act for them in a way that is objectively constructive (a way that would mimic the their own objective acts if they were capable).
The parental status is ONLY the caretaker status -- the caretaker of rights and safety. The caretaker guards the child until the child becomes better at running his/her own life through "self-generated" thought and action, until the child can determine what goals (values) he or she wishes to pursue, including information (education), careers, morality, hobbies, play, etc.
It is not the job of the caretaker (parent) to decide for the child what they "should' do: education, careers, morality, hobbies, play, etc. It is not the job of the caretaker to "direct" the child towards the caretaker's values: education, careers, morality, hobbies, play, etc.
As a caretaker of rights, the parent will ensure that the baby/child understands that rights are a two-way street: that nobody can coerce them (use force agains them unless they use force first) and that they can't coerce others. Staying on top of this ALWAYS is vital for a caretaker. Children should be treated in the exact same manner as we treat other adults, with complete and utter respect always for their rights.
All of the above is fundamental to a parent/child relationship based on rights. There are other aspects of being a caretaker that are very good for children but not obligatory:
1) Surrounding the child with things that are potentially interesting, so they can get to know their world better and faster, thereby making choices more easily on what they want to do.
2) Being involved and interested in their lives (which you should since you HAD them) and having terrific conversations.
3) Expressing yourself always, including your judgments of people.
4) Being a great role model by having an exciting career, being moral always, being entirely open with your thoughts and judgments, showing your affection, being emotional when you are emotional, being properly selfish always so that they see that your life means everything to you.
When we honor our children's rights for self-determination, parenting (care taking) is a piece of cake. They run their own lives. They never have a reason to rebel (there's no "authority" to rebel against). They are astoundingly moral, creative and self-motivated because they've seen your example and they know they are in full charge of their lives.
Then our children become our great friends.
A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)
The Virtue of Selfishness, page 93
When Rand says "man", she means "humans" (all people), not just men, of course. Rand correctly said that people automatically have rights upon birth on page 58 of The Voice of Reason.
And here (all people):
Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times. Therefore, the rights of one man cannot and must not violate the rights of another. --
The Ayn Rand Column, page 84
She also correctly discovered that ALL humans have rights because they possess the mind's faculty of reason (unlike lower animals):
The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.
For the New Intellectual, page 182Her point in saying that all humans automatically have rights is that humans don't have to prove they are rational to have rights; they have rights by the simple fact that they are rational animals.
This same argument applies to infants and other children of all ages. Whether a human is capable at any given moment to exercise their rationality is of no consequence concerning rights. They STILL have those rights, whether they are comatose, an invalid, crippled, knocked out, asleep or just born.
(To read my blog entry on comatose adults and children's rights, please READ HERE)
Having a caretaker to help them with their lives does not obviate their individual rights. And the caretaker does not take on any position of absolute authority in relation to the person requiring care, outside of the implied or explicit "authorization" to act for them in a way that is objectively constructive (a way that would mimic the their own objective acts if they were capable).
The parental status is ONLY the caretaker status -- the caretaker of rights and safety. The caretaker guards the child until the child becomes better at running his/her own life through "self-generated" thought and action, until the child can determine what goals (values) he or she wishes to pursue, including information (education), careers, morality, hobbies, play, etc.
It is not the job of the caretaker (parent) to decide for the child what they "should' do: education, careers, morality, hobbies, play, etc. It is not the job of the caretaker to "direct" the child towards the caretaker's values: education, careers, morality, hobbies, play, etc.
As a caretaker of rights, the parent will ensure that the baby/child understands that rights are a two-way street: that nobody can coerce them (use force agains them unless they use force first) and that they can't coerce others. Staying on top of this ALWAYS is vital for a caretaker. Children should be treated in the exact same manner as we treat other adults, with complete and utter respect always for their rights.
All of the above is fundamental to a parent/child relationship based on rights. There are other aspects of being a caretaker that are very good for children but not obligatory:
1) Surrounding the child with things that are potentially interesting, so they can get to know their world better and faster, thereby making choices more easily on what they want to do.
2) Being involved and interested in their lives (which you should since you HAD them) and having terrific conversations.
3) Expressing yourself always, including your judgments of people.
4) Being a great role model by having an exciting career, being moral always, being entirely open with your thoughts and judgments, showing your affection, being emotional when you are emotional, being properly selfish always so that they see that your life means everything to you.
When we honor our children's rights for self-determination, parenting (care taking) is a piece of cake. They run their own lives. They never have a reason to rebel (there's no "authority" to rebel against). They are astoundingly moral, creative and self-motivated because they've seen your example and they know they are in full charge of their lives.
Then our children become our great friends.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
School's Out FOREVER
School is a waste of time.
Oops. Let me rephrase that.
School is a COMPLETE waste of time.
There, that's better.
I don't mean just "primary" schools and "secondary" schools. I mean ALL schools, including colleges.
Rhetorical-question alert!
Does it REALLY take 12 years for kids to learn the basics of life: math, reading, writing?
Does it really take four or six or eight years to learn to be a surgeon or lawyer or architect or engineer or programmer or astronomer or chemist or fashion designer or journalist or WHATEVER?
Kids learn to read and write and do math in less than a year. I've seen it happen with my own child and dozens of other "homeschooled" children.
The rest of the crap they teach in school is just, well, CRAP.
Sociology? Really? Crap.
Social science? Really? Crap.
History? Snooze. Really? Crap (to most all kids).
Science? Really? Not necessary for those NOT going into science and a waste of time for those who can consume ten times the needed information at home in their own pink lounge chair.
"High" math? Really? Please read answer immediately above.
Literature? Really? A complete bore to virtually all kids for several reasons. They simply aren't interested. Or they haven't lived enough life yet to understand Shakespeare or Austin or Dumas or L.M. Montgomery or whomever -- AND they can read on their own time whatever they might want in the, yep you guessed it, the pink lounge chair.
And college? Don't get me going on that! OK, I'm already going, yes, I admit it.
WASTE WASTE WASTE WASTE WASTE!!!!!
Most of what you learn in college is not even CONNECTED to your primary career path. (well-known fact, of course). Waste!
And the stuff that IS connected you could easily learn much quicker and better in an apprenticeship -- which brings me to where we SHOULD be in this world, concerning learning.
Apprenticing.
All careers are essentially trades -- or "crafts," however you want to say it. All work is crafting. All work, outside of maybe a few intellectual jobs like psychologist and a few other "mental" careers, is hands-on. And the best way to learn is with your hands and your eyes and other senses.
The information you need outside of this hands-on learning is so little, you can learn it at night in your free time in, you guessed it again, your pink lounge chair -- even psychology (watching tapes, studying cognitive analysis, etc.)
At this point, many of you have just two words for me. ... No, not THOSE two words. These two words: Prove it!
OK, here goes.
Journalist: I got a college degree in mass communication (I know, I know, I'm embarrassed, too), with a specialty in journalism. I learned EVERYTHING I need to know about journalism by working at the college newspaper -- everything except some simple libel information, which basically boiled down to the following: you can't slander a politician because they put themselves in official "public" roles, but you better not say false things about private people or your ass is in trouble.
Programmer: all information used to be in books and is now on the Internet (let's call this the Internet Rule). There are some 12-year-olds making millions of dollars right now after teaching THEMSELVES programming and creating programs worth, yeah, millions.
(Let me stop here for a moment to say that careers could easily start at 13 or 14 years of age in a free society, unencumbered by "schooling." Kids who are homeschooled or unschooled usually learn quickly what they like to do, since they are not in a "school" wasting their time and trying to be obedient to the common core dictators.)
Chemistry: all substances, formulas and theories. Easily understood via Internet Rule.
Literature: all books and analyses. Easily accessible via Internet Rule.
History: all books and analyses and opposing opinions. Easily accessible via Internet Rule (By the way, it is hogwash to say that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. George Santayana, who penned that ridiculous phrase, didn't understand that one need only know the proper role of government -- to prevent and prosecute the initiation of force against another human -- to not "repeat" history.)
Architect: books, pictures, design, math, theories, calculus. See Internet Rule. (Google has a free starter architect computer program for beginners and intermediates that is KILLER!)
Surgeon: information on the body and medicines, watching it done, practicing under supervision, etc. Doogie should NOT be just fiction!
Pilot: information on air dynamics, plane makeup, watching professional in person, practicing in front of professional until proficient.
Need I go on? Please say NO!
The only science, the only INFORMATION, that absolutely everyone needs to be happy and have a happy and productive career can also be done in private: objective philosophy.
Rational (fact-based) philosophy guides everything we do because it is the broadest science and encapsulates every thought and action and emotion we have, since it has to do with the fundamentals of life: metaphysics (nature of universe), nature of humans (rational), epistemology (how rationality works), morality (virtues necessary for achieving things on way to happiness), and politics (proper role of government in a setting where two or more people are present).
My daughter is learning objective philosophy the way she taught herself to read and write and do math: by watching, listening, doing, judging, asking questions, evaluating (all outside of a "class"). She's beginning to consciously place the principals she's learned in the front of her mind, organizing thoughts and action from once-scattered ideas. That's the way it's done OUTSIDE OF CLASSES.
If you learned anything from this post, you did it OUTSIDE of a classroom -- and maybe in a pink lounge chair.
School's out!
FOREVER!
Oops. Let me rephrase that.
School is a COMPLETE waste of time.
There, that's better.
I don't mean just "primary" schools and "secondary" schools. I mean ALL schools, including colleges.
Rhetorical-question alert!
Does it REALLY take 12 years for kids to learn the basics of life: math, reading, writing?
Does it really take four or six or eight years to learn to be a surgeon or lawyer or architect or engineer or programmer or astronomer or chemist or fashion designer or journalist or WHATEVER?
Kids learn to read and write and do math in less than a year. I've seen it happen with my own child and dozens of other "homeschooled" children.
The rest of the crap they teach in school is just, well, CRAP.
Sociology? Really? Crap.
Social science? Really? Crap.
History? Snooze. Really? Crap (to most all kids).
Science? Really? Not necessary for those NOT going into science and a waste of time for those who can consume ten times the needed information at home in their own pink lounge chair.
"High" math? Really? Please read answer immediately above.
Literature? Really? A complete bore to virtually all kids for several reasons. They simply aren't interested. Or they haven't lived enough life yet to understand Shakespeare or Austin or Dumas or L.M. Montgomery or whomever -- AND they can read on their own time whatever they might want in the, yep you guessed it, the pink lounge chair.
And college? Don't get me going on that! OK, I'm already going, yes, I admit it.
WASTE WASTE WASTE WASTE WASTE!!!!!
Most of what you learn in college is not even CONNECTED to your primary career path. (well-known fact, of course). Waste!
And the stuff that IS connected you could easily learn much quicker and better in an apprenticeship -- which brings me to where we SHOULD be in this world, concerning learning.
Apprenticing.
All careers are essentially trades -- or "crafts," however you want to say it. All work is crafting. All work, outside of maybe a few intellectual jobs like psychologist and a few other "mental" careers, is hands-on. And the best way to learn is with your hands and your eyes and other senses.
The information you need outside of this hands-on learning is so little, you can learn it at night in your free time in, you guessed it again, your pink lounge chair -- even psychology (watching tapes, studying cognitive analysis, etc.)
At this point, many of you have just two words for me. ... No, not THOSE two words. These two words: Prove it!
OK, here goes.
Journalist: I got a college degree in mass communication (I know, I know, I'm embarrassed, too), with a specialty in journalism. I learned EVERYTHING I need to know about journalism by working at the college newspaper -- everything except some simple libel information, which basically boiled down to the following: you can't slander a politician because they put themselves in official "public" roles, but you better not say false things about private people or your ass is in trouble.
Programmer: all information used to be in books and is now on the Internet (let's call this the Internet Rule). There are some 12-year-olds making millions of dollars right now after teaching THEMSELVES programming and creating programs worth, yeah, millions.
(Let me stop here for a moment to say that careers could easily start at 13 or 14 years of age in a free society, unencumbered by "schooling." Kids who are homeschooled or unschooled usually learn quickly what they like to do, since they are not in a "school" wasting their time and trying to be obedient to the common core dictators.)
Chemistry: all substances, formulas and theories. Easily understood via Internet Rule.
Literature: all books and analyses. Easily accessible via Internet Rule.
History: all books and analyses and opposing opinions. Easily accessible via Internet Rule (By the way, it is hogwash to say that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. George Santayana, who penned that ridiculous phrase, didn't understand that one need only know the proper role of government -- to prevent and prosecute the initiation of force against another human -- to not "repeat" history.)
Architect: books, pictures, design, math, theories, calculus. See Internet Rule. (Google has a free starter architect computer program for beginners and intermediates that is KILLER!)
Surgeon: information on the body and medicines, watching it done, practicing under supervision, etc. Doogie should NOT be just fiction!
Pilot: information on air dynamics, plane makeup, watching professional in person, practicing in front of professional until proficient.
Need I go on? Please say NO!
The only science, the only INFORMATION, that absolutely everyone needs to be happy and have a happy and productive career can also be done in private: objective philosophy.
Rational (fact-based) philosophy guides everything we do because it is the broadest science and encapsulates every thought and action and emotion we have, since it has to do with the fundamentals of life: metaphysics (nature of universe), nature of humans (rational), epistemology (how rationality works), morality (virtues necessary for achieving things on way to happiness), and politics (proper role of government in a setting where two or more people are present).
My daughter is learning objective philosophy the way she taught herself to read and write and do math: by watching, listening, doing, judging, asking questions, evaluating (all outside of a "class"). She's beginning to consciously place the principals she's learned in the front of her mind, organizing thoughts and action from once-scattered ideas. That's the way it's done OUTSIDE OF CLASSES.
If you learned anything from this post, you did it OUTSIDE of a classroom -- and maybe in a pink lounge chair.
School's out!
FOREVER!
Saturday, May 31, 2014
The Sound and Fury of Human Shadows
Sometimes I have a month of work and personal interaction with people whom only Shakespeare can sum up:
For these people, "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Ah yes, so Shakespeare had idiots! "Sound and fury, signifying nothing." Yummy.
Three weeks ago I had to fire a relative who lied to our customers and didn't do his job -- and then he yelled at ME! HE was upset! Why? Who the fuck knows. He was innocent, by damn. He went into a litany of furious charges against me (none true) in which he simply transformed reality to his own liking -- and then he BELIEVED the new reality he'd just created.
It was almost like a thief, caught red-handed, saying: "Hey, dude, why are you looking at me like that. I just put my hand in your back pocket, but I didn't steal your wallet. Yeah, your wallet's in my hand, but I didn't do it. I don't know how it got there. Oh, yeah, I remember, YOU put it in my hand. Why the fuck did you put your wallet in my hand?!"
Surreal. Sound. Fury. Shadows.
Reading Shakespeare, I realize that altering reality to one's own purposes is nothing new, and the sound and fury are nothing new.
Two weeks ago, a friend called me up and accused me of not being friendly anymore at a business meeting we were at that morning. I didn't know what he was talking about. He said that when he saw me, when we hugged, the hug wasn't real. Told him I had no idea what he was talking about. He wouldn't have it. He started yelling on the phone, out of nowhere. When I asked him for facts, he said, "Oh, facts, yeah, David, you're all about the facts. You ALWAYS have to be right!"
I said bye and hung up. He tried to call back with more sound and fury and more of his reality-altering monologues. I finally answered the phone and said, "Look, if "bye" is too short of a goodbye for you, let's try this: Fuck you."
He hung up. I drank a glass of wine.
Four days ago, my almost-11-year-old daughter was at her friends' house. A babysitter was at the house for the 3 year old who was there, but the babysitter was not sitting for my daughter. The babysitter starts telling my daughter and two other older kids what to do and not do, out of nowhere. My daughter told the babysitter she wasn't doing anything the sitter said. Sitter got furious and told the parents of the 3 year old that if my daughter came to their house, the sitter wouldn't sit for them when that happened. (That babysitter got fired the next day by my friends.)
When I called the sitter and asked for her view of the events that happened, she changed her story several times and got so furious at my calm questions that she screamed, "I don't want to talk about this anymore! If your daughter comes over, I won't be around! She makes me nervous!"
The sitter is 19 years old, an idiot telling tales, full of sound and fury.
Yesterday, in a big conference meeting, I had to fire my company's marketing group in New York City for lack of performance. The group's CEO denied the lack of performance, despite my laying out the facts of the nonperformance. She then went on a several-minute tirade accusing everyone in my company and outside my company for the faults that were hers. At several points, she blatantly lied in front of several people whom she should've known knew the truth, but it didn't stop her from lying anyway. Reality was what she made it. She threatened a lawsuit against our company for alleged breach of contract, while I was firing her for breach of contract. She demanded payment for nonperformance.
Sound, fury, shadow, tales.
All the above reminds me of a quote by Ayn Rand in her 1974 essay, Selfishness Without the Self, in which she says that the person who has no solid sense of self "finds ... reality a meaningless term. His metaphysics consists in the chronic feeling that life, somehow, is a conspiracy of people and things against him, and he will walk over corpses -- in order to assert himself? No, in order to hide (or fill) the nagging inner vacuum left by his aborted self."
Shakespeare gives us his singular images, and Rand explains it.
The popular metaphor for such people is zombies, but I like Shakespeare's shadows. They are empty, dark, even ominous in their unpredictability.
And they are loud!
For these people, "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Ah yes, so Shakespeare had idiots! "Sound and fury, signifying nothing." Yummy.
Three weeks ago I had to fire a relative who lied to our customers and didn't do his job -- and then he yelled at ME! HE was upset! Why? Who the fuck knows. He was innocent, by damn. He went into a litany of furious charges against me (none true) in which he simply transformed reality to his own liking -- and then he BELIEVED the new reality he'd just created.
It was almost like a thief, caught red-handed, saying: "Hey, dude, why are you looking at me like that. I just put my hand in your back pocket, but I didn't steal your wallet. Yeah, your wallet's in my hand, but I didn't do it. I don't know how it got there. Oh, yeah, I remember, YOU put it in my hand. Why the fuck did you put your wallet in my hand?!"
Surreal. Sound. Fury. Shadows.
Reading Shakespeare, I realize that altering reality to one's own purposes is nothing new, and the sound and fury are nothing new.
Two weeks ago, a friend called me up and accused me of not being friendly anymore at a business meeting we were at that morning. I didn't know what he was talking about. He said that when he saw me, when we hugged, the hug wasn't real. Told him I had no idea what he was talking about. He wouldn't have it. He started yelling on the phone, out of nowhere. When I asked him for facts, he said, "Oh, facts, yeah, David, you're all about the facts. You ALWAYS have to be right!"
I said bye and hung up. He tried to call back with more sound and fury and more of his reality-altering monologues. I finally answered the phone and said, "Look, if "bye" is too short of a goodbye for you, let's try this: Fuck you."
He hung up. I drank a glass of wine.
Four days ago, my almost-11-year-old daughter was at her friends' house. A babysitter was at the house for the 3 year old who was there, but the babysitter was not sitting for my daughter. The babysitter starts telling my daughter and two other older kids what to do and not do, out of nowhere. My daughter told the babysitter she wasn't doing anything the sitter said. Sitter got furious and told the parents of the 3 year old that if my daughter came to their house, the sitter wouldn't sit for them when that happened. (That babysitter got fired the next day by my friends.)
When I called the sitter and asked for her view of the events that happened, she changed her story several times and got so furious at my calm questions that she screamed, "I don't want to talk about this anymore! If your daughter comes over, I won't be around! She makes me nervous!"
The sitter is 19 years old, an idiot telling tales, full of sound and fury.
Yesterday, in a big conference meeting, I had to fire my company's marketing group in New York City for lack of performance. The group's CEO denied the lack of performance, despite my laying out the facts of the nonperformance. She then went on a several-minute tirade accusing everyone in my company and outside my company for the faults that were hers. At several points, she blatantly lied in front of several people whom she should've known knew the truth, but it didn't stop her from lying anyway. Reality was what she made it. She threatened a lawsuit against our company for alleged breach of contract, while I was firing her for breach of contract. She demanded payment for nonperformance.
Sound, fury, shadow, tales.
All the above reminds me of a quote by Ayn Rand in her 1974 essay, Selfishness Without the Self, in which she says that the person who has no solid sense of self "finds ... reality a meaningless term. His metaphysics consists in the chronic feeling that life, somehow, is a conspiracy of people and things against him, and he will walk over corpses -- in order to assert himself? No, in order to hide (or fill) the nagging inner vacuum left by his aborted self."
Shakespeare gives us his singular images, and Rand explains it.
The popular metaphor for such people is zombies, but I like Shakespeare's shadows. They are empty, dark, even ominous in their unpredictability.
And they are loud!
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