Dragon Ball Z as it Parallels to America

Sometimes when I write what I consider to be a really good article I never truly stop thinking about it, even years later after I've published it. My best and most careful writing is in veins of thoughts I revisit on a regular basis. Why I Like Dragon Ball Z is one of those articles. After having published it I continued making more philosophical identifications about this series, which has continually increased my admiration for it. For instance, I've realized that every major villain in the series has extreme self-esteem issues. Frieza pursues immortality because he's afraid someone will best his great strength and kill him; Cell actually attempts suicide when he gets hopeless about his abilities; Majin Buu wails and screams like a child whenever he has difficulty beating someone. I could go on and construct a large list if I sat down to do it.

Succinctly, the reason why I like the series so much is because it presents heroes that are actually worth admiring and displays the good as immensely more powerful than evil. There may be lots of mysticism involved, but this view of the nature of good and evil is enough to hook me as it has. What I've recently realized is that the three separate parts of the series actually deal with different relationships between good and evil, and furthermore those relationships actually parallel with America's own happenings quite uniquely, and gives a good metaphor as to where America is right now culturally. Of course, as I cite those parallels I'll explain the series for those lacking in background information.

The first part of the series deals with the heroes fighting a powerful alien from space, a dictator and leader of an army. Here the relationship of the two sides of ethics is that of strength; that is, how strong each is in comparison to the other. The reason why the heroes had a hard time defeating the alien, Frieza, is simply because they weren't as strong as him, allowing him to kill and commit genocide with little challenge. However, after becoming morally outraged at the murder of his best friend, the main hero, Goku, unlocks a state of hidden strength called super Saiyan mode, which made him so powerful that Frieza was about as strong as a child to him thereafter. Any further obstacle and challenge from there was imposed by Goku himself. He could have easily killed Frieza within moments of achieving that state, but through innocent error he believed in the notion of mercy and that Frieza could redeem himself, so he chose to stay on a planet about to explode because he wanted to punish and shame Frieza.

I'm not very sharp on history, but this makes me think of the American Revolution. During the time in which the yet-to-be-established United States was trying to break from monarchy, it had the philosophical premises to challenge its suffocating dictatorship, so it was only a matter of physical might to gain independence. It was probably a tough battle, just like the Goku's against Frieza, but eventually we triumphed and developed ourselves into the most powerful nation in the world, the political equivalent of a super Saiyan. Now physically the U.S. is virtually undefeatable: If we waged all-out war on another dictatorship like Iran, they'd be annihilated like Frieza was by the super Saiyan hero.

In the third part of the series -- I'm saving the second part analysis for a little later -- the main villain was a mystical genie name Majin Buu who was a demented monster who destroyed and killed for its own sake. It's weird of think of it this way, but Buu was never really much of a threat to the heroes. Instead, it's the heroes' own intellectual errors that allowed him to *actually* develop into a threat, whereas proper thinking early on could have stopped him before he did anything considerably bad. Here the relationship changed into that of the good doubting the potency of true evil, believing itself to be so strong as to not be concerned about it. Buu was pure evil and devastatingly strong, and the heroes were right in believing themselves strong enough to handle him without a sweat, but through their intellectual errors they allowed him to become dangerous. Goku could have defeated Buu when he first confronted him, but he held back his strength and eventually abandoned the battle since he wanted the other heroes to have a shot at him. This lead to Buu eventually splitting into good and evil halves, and the evil half absorbing the good (magically) to make himself even stronger than the original. Goku's son, Gohan, had his own inner strength unlocked and was able to flick around this new Buu as punishment for all his crimes, but since he abstained from immediately destroying him Buu absorbed three other heroes which allowed him to best Gohan's strength and gain the upper hand again. Goku tried to solve the problem by attempting to fuse with his son, but Buu got weaker since two of the heroes he absorbed weakened him within a half hour. (They were fused, and the fusion wore off.) Goku then decided not to fuse, again viewing Buu as a null threat . . . which allowed him to absorb Gohan and become even stronger. Ridiculous, isn't it? Well, Goku then managed to fuse with another hero, Vegeta, to become a fused being call Vegeto, which allowed him to once again flick this Super Buu around like a piece of lint. Rather than dispatching him -- yep, again -- he decided to be absorbed by the monster to rescue his absorbed friends, which caused the fusion to be nullified. Vegeta then decides to destroy the earring which they need to fuse, thereby preventing them from fusing ever again. After rescuing their friends they pull out an essential person -- the good Buu first absorbed -- which causes Super Buu to retrogress back into his original and most dangerous form, Kid Buu. Kid Buu blows up the planet and forced the heroes into hiding. Once again they're given the means to fuse and effortlessly defeat Buu, but they destroy the earrings again, thereby artificially boosting the difficulty of the situation and making it so they only defeat Buu by the skin of their teeth.

If they had just taken things more seriously, then Goku could have stopped Buu at their first confrontation, but continuous overconfidence and amusement in the situation held everyone back from taking the right steps. They had all the strength and power they needed right from the beginning: They just didn't take the situation seriously enough to employ it, which is what led to things getting so bad, right up to the human race becoming nearly extinct and earth getting exploded.

In parallel to America, I view this as the insidious process by which bad philosophy took over the culture after the United States was born. Most Americans, I think, doubted the power of evil to the point that they didn't take bad ideas seriously or at least didn't really believe their logical conclusions, such as how even minor government involvement in the economy can lead to the acceptance of statist principles, making a full-blown dictatorship possible down the road. Evil is weak for sure, but it can't be ignored or brushed aside if it's to be defeated. I think this is what Americans did out of naivete, which led to bad ideas making more headway into the philosophical soul of the nation and bringing us to today's point of near dictatorship and economic collapse. If every bad idea were taken on with full intellectual force, then maybe we'd be a dozen times better off and in a fully free society. Soul-wise, America has super Saiyan strength, as mentioned in the Frieza section, but it wasn't used to its fullest extent against evil as it could have been, whether at war or in the minds of men, and now we're in this totally unavoidable and unnecessary crisis.

The second part of the series I think is most relevant to how America is today. In this part, an android reminiscent of a parasitical insect absorbs people and two other powerful androids (by the means of his tail, not magic) in order to reach his most "perfect" form; that is, of the most powerful and nearly indestructible being in the universe. He's the ultimate Peter Keating in that he's trying to pursue "greatness" by genetically stealing other people's strength, abilities, knowledge, and techniques without cultivating them on his own, and his aim beyond that is to kill everything he views as lesser than him. The heroes, like with Frieza, were enormously weaker than the villain at start, but with special training they once again achieved more than enough strength to render him a nearly null threat. But unlike with Buu, the main obstacle was not that they didn't take him seriously; rather, there were moral obstacles towards defeating him. At this point Gohan was the one to defeat the android, but he thought that using his full strength would lead to him losing control and destroying all that he valued. In battle he could have defeated the android rather promptly, but his moral conflict led to him taking a near pacifist-like stance. In response the android taunted and teased him, and even tried torturing him psychologically by producing smaller androids to try and kill Gohan's friends and family. It wasn't until Gohan gained moral strength and self-confidence that he used his full power, and in doing so he beat the android like a puny thug and killed him by incinerating him into ashes. The android became so distraught at one point that he tried to commit suicide by turning into a bomb.

I view this as the state of America today, and the parallels are uncanny. Politically and morally we have all the strength we need in order to triumph. We could heal our economic problems very quickly, though with lots of discomfort, if we recognized the morality and power of real capitalism (not mixed economies), and started employing it. Our foreign enemies wouldn't be a problem since our most dangerous ones happen to be the most dilapidated in structure from the nationwide poverty statism causes, so if we used the full strength of our army things would be taken control of in a hurry.  And if we recognized proper and objective law, and started enforcing it rigorously and meticulously, then criminals would plummet in number and be castrated in their abilities. Intellectually, we have everything we need to start employing this within our lifetime, except for one thing: A proper code of morality and moral confidence in it. America could succeed and be great once more . . . but Americans are stuck in intellectual conflicts that leave them desiring one end, such as economic progress and foreign safety, while at the same time they're holding onto a morality which prevents that from being achieved, such as altruism and foreign appeasement. Gohan was not entirely consistent in his refusal to fight that android: He recognized that it needed to be defeated, but he was morally resistant to employing the proper means of achieving that. It's the same with America too: We know what ends we want and what means will get us there, but have moral resistance against actually putting those means into action.

The parallel is uncanny on multiple levels. Gohan is metaphorical in that his super Saiyan strength is representative of America's power and greatness, and his internal conflicts match that of America's contradicting ethical premises. The android can be considered a representation of -- who else? -- Barack Obama! They're both second-handed: The android is trying to hinge his greatness on stolen abilities and strength, while Obama is obsessively concerned with how people perceive him and is viewed as great only because other people have touted him as such, not because he has authentic accomplishments. (For instance, I've read he sat on the board as an editor for a Harvard paper, but never actually made a contribution. Also, I've read that during his time in Senate he was very politically inactive, instead known for only documenting that he attended the meetings.) To elaborate, even their attitudes match: The android was smug and cocky in his behavior during his destruction, the same that has been observed of Obama's temperament during significant political periods, such as the passing of Obamacare.

Like the super Saiyan Gohan did with the android, we have all the strength and knowledge we need to repudiate Obama's statist nature, vote him out in 2012, and start getting on the right track, but those moral hangups are stopping us. It's uncertain whether or when we'll triumph, and right now we at least have the satisfaction that essential issues are being brought into discussion and argued about, rather than having the nation go down the statist path without protest. And who knows, maybe once the tide turns -- once we reach that tipping point in philosophical change -- we'll flourish as dramatically as the super Saiyan strength overwhelms any evil power. Perhaps once enough Americans are on the good side of philosophy changes will be made dramatically and rapidly, rendering the statists impotent in action and arguments. It's taken statists and collectivists about two hundred years to bring us philosophically and materialistically where we are today; with full moral endorsement and confidence we can perhaps undo most of their work in two decades. Will we do it? I don't know, but I'm hopeful and optimistic, though know the battle yet still needs to be fought. Given the battle over the debt right now that tipping point may be coming in a few short months, I speculate.

Revisiting the third part of the series, we also can learn that even if good triumphs over evil our work still isn't done. As Thomas Jefferson said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." After winning we'd have to keep propounding our philosophical ideas and challenging bad ones, lest they make headway and eventually take over again. A quote by Ayn Rand: "The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow."

Here's to hoping the super Saiyan strength of the nation shines through in time.

Quotes That Guide My Life

Everyone, in some form or another, appreciates a good quote. A quote becomes appealing when it condenses down the essentials of the views of someone holds, allowing them to hold in their mind very pregnant ideas in a very economical form. While, as par the norm, people tend to appreciate quotes as they come by them, I've been making an effort for a very long time to decide upon which quotes are most essential to the way I view how life should be lived. At one point I even took to collecting quotes and writing them all over the place to serve as constant reminders and inspiration, but I wrote down so much that appealed to me that the writing became too great to keep track of or check on a regular basis, so from there I struggled to pare down the list to the bare essentials that drive my being. I think I finally reached that point, and would like to share that list in hopes of inspiring you to comment with yours, and perhaps motivate you to decide upon your essential favorites.

So here are my top four favorite quotes in reverse order of personal importance, which I consider to be the driving force behind everything I do. Those with asterisks might be paraphrased, not exact quotes.

4.) * "Do something you would do for free and someone will pay you well for it." - Mary Kay

This has molded my view on my career. Certainly I'm greedy and would like to make a lot of money, even become filthy rich one day, but this quote helps me keep in mind what is the most fulfilling and practical route to riches. To become materialistically wealthy should not be my aim. It shouldn't even really be on my mind. My emphasis should be on becoming the best I can possibly be in the career field I love and have chosen to dedicate myself to for life. The material rewards I reap should not be sought after, but rather be a natural consequence to how well I've done to cultivate my skills and be the best I can be.


The culinary profession isn't a high-paying profession by its nature, but I'm not worried about that. My ultimate aim is still not totally clear at this point, but I'm thinking about taking an ultimately intellectual and entrepreneurial route in my career, for which training as a chef will assist me in that matter. If I want to make a million, or even a billion dollars, then my concern is becoming worth that as a person, not directly pursuing it.

I do well at my job because I love it, even as a mere dish washer . . . not become I'm chasing dollars. The payment is the consequence and reward, not the goal.

3.) "Judge, and prepare to be judged." - Unknown

While growing up, passing moral judgment was inexplicably avoided and done with extreme inaccuracy when practiced on occasion. When giving praise my elders would often detach their compliments from the known facts of reality and give statements that were totally unbelievable and false, and any vices and immorality often went unacknowledged and ignored, leaving people to suffer endlessly in relationships they refused to acknowledge were rotten. I never consciously avoided moral judgment, but my inability to make precise judgments in my youth led to me having terrible relationships with other people all the time, continuing associations that should have been terminated promptly, and having malformed estimates of myself due to bad standards of judgment. I suffered greatly due to not having good thinking methods for judgment.

Once I learned how to pass objective moral judgment, my relationships improved dramatically, as I knew better which people were worth associating with and who should be cut off from contact, and underwent a drastic self-improvement spree once I identified the standards I wanted to strive to and starting holding myself responsible for my habits. I continue my self-improvement endeavors to this day since I hold myself to the same moral standards which I use to judge other people I interact with. My life has become infinitely better because of that.

This quote keeps in mind three things: That it's important to judge others (lest you suffer bad associations), that it's a logical corollary to submit yourself to others' judgment (so that you become comfortable with your public status and make changes where appropriate), and that you, most importantly, judge yourself. Doing this has helped me treat people with objective consistency based on their deserts, feel comfortable on hearing others' views about myself, and evaluate myself when trying to determine where I'm pursuing my ideals or need to make changes.

2.) "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle

This one is important to me more for moral reasons rather than, say, the optimization of talent. Building upon the last quote, another problem in my youth is that people often judged each other on the basis of isolated and rare incidents, often in the face of consistent evidence that flagrantly proved that things were otherwise. For instance, some people would take a consistently angry and malicious person and characterize them as happy and benevolent on the basis of one act or incident that made them feel good, such as observing them smiling once or doing a single good deed, despite the fact that 99 times out of a 100 that same person would act to the contrary. It's like these people were pretending the other 99 times didn't exist. As a result, once again, many bad relationships were continued even though they were generally and consistently bad, all because on seldom occasion things would be "good." You need to judge people on their consistent behavior if you want things to consistently be good, not the other way around.

Furthermore, this quote also emphasizes to me that it's most important to judge a person by their acts, not their intentions or emotions. Have all the good intentions you want: It's not going to qualify you as having a heart made out of gold unless you perform the deeds to match them. I've seen some truly awful persons characterized as practically saints all because they had good intentions on occasion, even if they did nothing in practice to put their intentions in action, and building on the above paragraph this would again be another thing which would be very rare and seldom to a particular person, thereby being an obscene dropping of the context.

In comparing practices with preaching it is the actions that ultimately matter more, if one were to weigh them in isolation, but it totality it is of course how a person's actions match up with their preaching that matters most. In this case I've even seen terrible hypocrites judged as good even as they seldom, even rarely or never practiced their stated ideas, all because they preached the right things. What a detachment from reality!

This quote has helped me be more patient and meticulous in how I judge people, and helps me make sure I'm keeping the entire context of their being and am paying attention to and weighing the right things. Unless a person has done something unforgivably bad, I try to avoid hinging my estimate of someone on the basis of an isolated incident, and use my memory to full advantage to collect and store incidents that I believe give indication of someone's moral status, and use the pieces to form a coherent picture which I'll use to form a moral judgment. But even after forming the judgment I still try to keep it open-ended to continue adding pieces of evidence which will either intensify my estimate of someone (such as by observing repeated virtue by a person I view as good) or cause me to change my estimate if the pieces of evidence start tilting the scales the other way, such as a virtuous person repeatedly indulging in moral failings or a bad person consistently working towards redemption. It keeps my relationships in a semi-fluid state to better enable me to treat people according to their deserts, depending on the totality of the context of their being I have observed.

And, of course, I hold myself to that same standard. It helps keep me straight and avoid making the justification that certain things are an exception to the rule of my being. For instance, if I'm exhausted and take a day off from my efforts to rest, then I'll judge it as a deserved exception to my usual strivings. However, if I chose to rest and laze about for three days in a row, then I'll judge that I'm dangerously close to becoming a lazy person in nature and will make the appropriate corrections.

1.) "A giant is as a giant does." - Rod Serling, from the Twilight Zone episode *Last Night of a Jockey*

Almost as soon as I heard it it became my favorite quote of all time. Anywhere I can post a quote online, like in my e-mail signature, this is always the one I choose, and I read it virtually everyday, never forgetting it. It's very similar to the last Aristotle quote, only I like this one for its emphasis on substance.

Another difficulty in my childhood is how concerned everyone was with appearances, most often in total divorce of substance. For instance, people around me were more concerned with looking happy to other people rather than cultivating an actual life of contentment, and knowing them in private I learned that their smiles were mere muscle flexing, as inwardly they lived a stale and discontent, and even downright miserable existence.

And what reward do they get for focusing so much on appearance, on how they look to others? Nothing. No spiritual contentment, material satisfaction, healthy relationships . . . jack squat. This obsession with appearance was only to ease the discomfort they felt in being seen by other people, and avoiding discomfort and pain is not the same as gaining inner peace and happiness.

Plus, this episode of the Twilight Zone shows how an obsession with appearances can actually ruin oneself. (SPOILERS) In it, a jockey (a horse racer) gets permanently discharged from his beloved profession and has to cope with not being able to engage in it ever again. A spiritual entity within him starts speaking to him and offers him a wish as his last possible resort to rising up and living a good life. The jocky wishes to be big, and the entity makes him into a literal giant. The jocky then goes into a kind of euphoric ramble about how amazed people will be by his size and how he'll be admired. He calls a girl up to ask her out on a date, but she turns him down even as he frantically boasts about how "big" he is. He's irritated until he suddenly gets a call from the jocky club, learning that they've decided to give him one more chance. He's relieved that he gets another chance at his beloved profession, but after the spiritual entity taunts him he quickly realizes that he's too big -- he can't fit into his clothes, sit on a horse, get out the door . . . his concern with altering his physical stature, his appearance, lead to him ruining his life because he thought greatness meant looking great to others, not being great. His concern with appearance over substance made him sacrifice his only chance at a fulfilling life. (/SPOILERS) 

And that's what I've observed with other people in my life too. People concerned more with how they look rather than how they are have given up the values they most wanted to achieve, all for the empty gain of receiving approval from others. The people I've observed that have lived this way have led lives with empty relationships, mediocre careers, undeveloped talents, shallow romances, and so on.

This quote keeps me concentrating on what the actual value of my efforts and practices are in regards to pursuing my goals, rather than how people perceive them and in spite of their disapproval. Deeper still, it keeps me focused on living a life of substance, of being a good person rather than trying to look like one, of cultivating my mind rather than sounding intelligent, of being authentically respectful rather than using fake manners, and more. The quote continues to help even beyond this, such as by helping me judge whether a practice is really beneficial to my life (e.g. a study technique), how deeply I value a particular person, if the entire context of my habits lines up with my ideals, and endlessly on. It's been a way long time since I've last seen this TZ episode, but I do own it on DVD and should watch it again soon, and probably won't ever forget it. I anticipate I'll be holding onto these words for the rest of my life. If I want to be a great person, then the substance of what I do needs to be great. We are what we do. A giant is as a giant does.

* * * * *

These are the quotes that have the strongest influence in my life and in the molding of my being. It took an extremely long time to get to the point I could pare down my list to this, but it helps me in every single facet of my life, from how I treat people, how I exert myself at work, how I utilize my free time, how I judge myself, etc.

However, I'd like to have for a top five. One thing I don't think I keep in mind often enough is how finite my time is here on earth. You and I are probably not going to live forever. Am I living as richly as I could and making the best use of the limited minutes I have alive, however many billions of them? I'd like to have a quote that essentializes how preciously finite life is, but haven't seen any. Could my readers suggest one?

While we're at it, what are your favorite quotes? And I'm not asking for a hodge podge list either: what are the quotes that really mean something to you? That may guide your life as the above four guide mine?

Maybe once I do gather a top five I'll print and laminate them, so that I may read them everyday.      

More on the Economic Collapse: Possible Benevolence?

A while ago I wrote a post that mused upon how the U.S. might respond to an economic collapse. Will things get terribly dangerous and violent as they have in hyperinflation situations elsewhere? Or do we have a chance at the nation going through the disaster with relative peace? I don't think I did a good enough job explaining why this question is worth contemplating, so I'd like to share some deeper thoughts.

Simply put, the way a country handles a particular problem on a sense-of-life level depends on the philosophy inherent in its people. A good or mostly good philosophy will help a citizenry prevent and avoid significant problems while giving them the mental strength to bear what bad things do occur, as a good philosophy will be reality oriented and be able to offer guidance on the world before us. A bad or mostly bad philosophy will lead a citizenry into disaster and prevent them from being able to deal with it constructively or gracefully, and so will lead to a malevolent people whose natural state is that of disaster. A bad philosophy isn't oriented towards reality, so it can do little to address the laws of the world before us.

I think the reason why countries that have gone through hyperinflation have become terribly violent and malevolent is because that's the ultimate sense-of-life consequence of the philosophies that brought the economic crisis to existence. The elements that encourage evasion in these philosophies lead these people to search for scapegoats rather than recognize their own guilt in the matter, which causes them to become a nation of flagrant criminals. It's very destructive psychologically to judge oneself as immensely immoral or even evil, so anyone immoral enough to engage in the acts to earn him that status will logically be prone to the signature immoral act, evasion, which he'll use to avoid acknowledging his own character.

It's hard to sort through the clusterflop of the multitude of reasons that can be used to summarize the situation, but in short I think that, economically, any particular hyperinflationary nation won't recognize that it's killing the goose that lays the golden egg, and at each step of strangling it will wonder what's wrong with the goose rather than the actions being taken to extract its gold. After the goose dies the moochers are left seething that they didn't get what they're "owed" and become vicious. They shoot themselves in the foot and blame other factors endlessly, even as they continue to fire unto themselves.

As far as I know, no economic disaster thus far in recent history has lead to a nation going into a significant turn-around. I'm not knowledged enough in history to know exactly what happened here, but I know for certain that these crises haven't led to any nations freer than the United States. The philosophies that lead to their economic problems, by and large, remain intact even after the crisis.

It's this particular factor that leads me to wonder whether the U.S. might be able to handle an economic disaster more gracefully than other countries have. Objectivists haven't won the war of ideas yet, but I think we've succeeded in making the nation question its philosophical premises. By doing that we've not only increased our odds of winning, but in also changing the nature of the people. If we manage to go so far as to change the direction of the tide before the serious economic collapse, then could that not change entirely how the U.S. will respond? Or in other words, if we change the philosophy the U.S. enters the collapse in, then won't we also change the sense-of-life results that will spawn as a reaction to the situation?

I think other nations have descended into violence because they were a nation of moochers and looters to begin with, and in dealing with the results of their parasitism they go hysterical. If the U.S., however, were to recognize at a majority level that the government is at fault for our economic troubles, then perhaps U.S. anger will be more directed at the polls, voting booths, and city halls, rather than at each other?

This is why, in my above linked essay, I think the most important safety consideration for an individual is where he lives, as the different political atmospheres of different states and cities are determined by different philosophies. Therefore, I think the U.S.'s response to a collapse will vary greatly from location to location, depending what people view as the source of the problem. In such a statist place as my old home of Michigan, I can visualize it becoming a very dangerous place to live, not even allowing for a safe walk at night. The people were already somber and irritated as I left them, and in no way ready to recognize they're responsible for supporting the politics that continues pushing the state to ruin. My new home of Texas, however, I could visualize as becoming risky, but not frighteningly dangerous, as the people are noticeably lighter in spirit and more at peace.

I'm still not sure, and probably won't know for certain until the major event happens, but perhaps the best way to bring up the question is that the United States is a unique nation that's going through a unique phenomenon during a unique period in history. Is it not reasonable to assume that the U.S.'s response to collapse will also itself be unique? Benevolent, I hope.

Intellectually I recognize that it's still best to prepare oneself as strongly as possible, whether it be stocking up on medicine or ammunition, but emotionally I am somewhat anticipating Americans remaining a respectable citizenry during the worst of times. Hopefully so. I say prepare for disaster and plan for prosperity.

Addendum to "You Can Only Hate What's *There*"

Recently I've actually had one of my posts critiqued, the one about emotions and hatred of the good. It was quite thought provoking, but Mr. Stotts' response in the comments section to my comment has made me realize where I may have gone wrong in my reasoning.

I think, in short, that my error in that post is that I made an illogical leap by trying to deduce a conclusion with an improper conceptual chain. While it may still be possible that people use false philosophical justifications to help them indulge in hatred against others, I cannot deduce that conclusion directly from the fundamental metaphysical axiom that existence exists, which is the essence of my argument. The type of conclusion to be drawn needs to be derived from a conceptual chain stemming from a combination of ethics and psychology, not metaphysics.

Or in word graphic form, I should reason like this:

Axioms - concept - concept - concept - concept . . . > conclusion about psychology and ethics

But did this:

Axioms - conclusion about psychology and ethics

With the axiom that existence exists and its attached partner that everything has identity, I could directly conclude, say, that the world outside my house won't disappear just because I close the door and a granny smith apple can't turn into a goblin, but conclusions about psychology and ethics are higher up in the conceptual network. As such, I consider my argument in my linked article to be wrong and misguided.

It's healthy debate like this that helps one advance forward in thinking. I thank Mr. Stotts for his critique.

Condemning Condemnation?

A particularly irksome question I've stumbled upon lately is why some people seem to only be intolerant of moral condemnation, and not any other specific immoral acts themselves. It's a little different in my case that they're not saying things such as "don't judge," but are rather becoming provocative and hostile when I explicate a firm moral stance against something in particular. At the same time the person will evade a great swath of obscene things that are incredibly immoral, and their only issue is that I've called it out. What makes these people provocative to these kind of stances?

My hypothesis is that by condoning certain acts and ideas that are known to be wrong to some extent in a individual's knowledge they want to evade that knowledge so as to feel comfortable with what they're doing and sanctioning, which makes it so that anyone with convictions becomes their enemy by way of not allowing the evasions to persist. I know, for instance, some particular persons who associated with a person who was blatantly immoral and malicious, and yet they maintained contact with him out of a sense of "duty." When I acknowledged that person's immorality he got a pass on all his behavior while I faced vitriolic hatred for my stances. It's incredible hypocrisy.

Now I know in particular why a person might be afraid to pass judgment, for he may fear facing hostility and judgment in return, so it is only the flimsy stance against passing judgment that confuses me, where a person will vaguely recognize a lot of wrongdoings but only become upset when someone opposes them on principle. What's going on here?

You Can Only Hate What's *There*

Lately I've been thinking about the Objectivist tenet on how things such as income distribution, anti-trust laws, and the like are evidence of hatred for the good for being good, and I think I've made an identification that makes this point a little clearer.

By "hatred of the good for being good" Ayn Rand meant that these people of this kind hated good people -- talented artists, successful businessmen, geniuses -- because they possessed human values and practiced virtues which they did not, and they hate specifically those qualities. In practice, her logic continues, this will amount to seeking out to undermine or destroy these things, such as by upholding "abstract" art, taxing and regulating businessmen, and labeling geniuses as nut jobs. They'll mostly do it under an intellectual guise, such as arguing how abstract art is actually great or why businessmen are immoral, but at root the motivation is hatred of the good for being good.

The specific thing that confused me is how such a large body of people as a society could be malice driven like this but state their motives as being otherwise. Is it not possible that they could believe their justifications with total sincerity? And I think degrees are relevant here, as I believe someone could be conflicted by believing partially his justifications while being motivated at root by another, so here I'm adding emphasis on total sincerity.

What clarified things for me is remembering that only existence exists. That which does not exist cannot have an impact on reality, and anyone who claims to deal with things that don't exist, such as supernatural entities, are only dealing with content within their mind. Since the thing doesn't actually exist, they can't interact with it, or even direct their emotions towards it.

So for things such as society decrying the acts of honest businessmen, I think the reasons why they hate them for their ability and success are imaginary because the misdeeds they're accusing businessmen of are largely nonexistent. They don't rise prices arbitrarily, force consumers to purchase from them, steal from voluntary transactions, and so on, so when people claim to hate businessmen for these acts they're almost solely dealing with content of their minds, as the facts by and large don't exist. Since these facts largely don't exist, that means these people can only direct their hatred towards that which does exist, and what is it that exists of great businessmen in general? Success, wealth, ability, and more. People hate those attributes because those are the attributes that actually exist, not price gouging, stealing from willing consumers, and being overall menaces.

To give another example, imagine having a craving for a granny smith apple, and contrast two different scenarios in which a granny smith apple is present and not present. In the latter situation, a person cannot justifiable claim to crave the apple on the table before him because the apple isn't there. He knows physically he craves an apple, but so far that desire remains physical, emotional, and rooted in his mind because there is no such apple around to be the object of his desire. And so it goes with businessmen: Since, in general, the evil doings they're accused of don't actually exist, what these men are hated for is what actually exists, what can be objects of people's hatred, which is talent, money, etc. Of course, I recognize that some businessmen are and have been evil, such as the peanut manufacturer that last year deliberately processed and sold spoiled peanuts, but they're the exception to the rule, not part of a trend.

Only existence exists, and all we can interact with is existents. If a person is unable or unwilling to recognize that something doesn't exist, then instead he'll interact with actual existents in a totally misguided way, right down to believing he's dealing with something that actually something totally different.

Mistakes

I wonder: How much of a trend could it possibly be that people will assume a person is innately incompetent or ignorant if they make a mistake, no matter how much they demonstrate that they have corrected themselves? I'm thinking in terms of things like forgetting directions to a place or performing a work task incorrectly, not immoral stuff.

Lately I've noticed I've been nurturing a rather irrational premise about mistakes that has been making me fearful of people watching me cook. I don't mind the prospect of accidentally ruining my meal and learning from my errors, I just don't like it if there are witnesses around, and I think that it may be due to some irrational ideas regarding the nature of mistakes itself.

In the past whenever I would make a mistake it was treated with near absolute disbelief that I was capable of learning or correcting my ways, as when I would err the people around me would then endlessly try to correct and guide me, way beyond reasonable or rational expectations. For instance, if I previously had difficulty remembering the directions to a certain location the person guiding me there would then ceaselessly give me directions to it and quiz me upon it for weeks, even months, longer than ever needed, and they would outright ignore my improvement and correction and continue on with their guidance. In other words, after having made a mistake I would commonly find myself being treated as I weren't capable of learning from that mistake. Thus, I tend to fear people observing my mistakes because I fear it's going to lead them to try and correct me upon it nearly without end, and ignore any proof that I have learned. For goodness sake, some people have even taken to offering me directions to a place I've traveled to literally over a dozen times.

It's okay to offer constructive criticism, but beyond a certain point it becomes insulting. One needs to keep a watch on the evidence that the person is either improving themselves or have totally corrected themselves, otherwise you're ignoring their ability and treating them unjustly.

The reason why I wonder whether this part of a trend in the philosophical culture is because it has a nature as an idea: That mistakes are somehow evidence of a person's inability to perform or learn. And that in effect may be related to another philosophical idea: That ability and talent is innate and outside of one's capacity for development; you either have it or you don't. Given that, a person with that idea might be overly disturbed at their mistakes since they might believe they have no natural capacity to do otherwise, and a like person witnessing someone make mistakes may assume that a person needs to be forever guided in that endeavor otherwise they'll unavoidably fail on their own.

Have you noticed this trend in your own life?

My Coming to Objectivism

In the past weeks I have read some accounts of other people's journey to Objectivism and atheism and have been inspired to write my own account. It's interesting to see how people come to take such strong ideological stances as these, for if these transformations were documented in a story, they'd be a dramatic turning point in the plot. Besides, I notice some people are often interested in some alternative ideas but are afraid to give them thorough thought for fear of how they might affect their relationships or put obstacles in their way, so I'd like to demonstrate that any hardship endured as a consequence is more than worth it.

For the most part, the reason why I've become an Objectivist is because I spent the majority of my life suffering from the bad philosophical ideas that Ayn Rand repudiated. My elders are ideologically blank and adopted the ideas that form their character with unthinking absorption and no intellectual interest, so I adopted the same ideas by observing their practices and grew up very miserable as a result, made worse by the fact I often didn't know why I thought life was so horrible. The majority of my childhood was spent either playing video games, watching television, or daydreaming, as ceasing any of those activities would make me aware of how terrible I felt deep-down.

A lot of my pain was derived by not only accepting bad ideas in unconscious terms, but also by not having any stance in important areas and therefore being plagued by uncertainty. I had pro-capitalist emotions in my teen years, but absolutely no political views while growing up, for instance, as my elders never talked about politics or took any kind of political stance. I even had a terrible stint where I doubted the validity of my sensory perception and believed I was doing evil things beyond my awareness, as one time a kid maliciously and falsely accused me of a crime without having evidence or witnesses, and yet most all the adults seized on me and with much rage urged me to "confess," despite the consistency with which I denied committing such an act and didn't even remember coming in contact with the kid. Their "certainty" in my crime made me think my memory was somehow unreliable, so I was terrified that I might be a horrible person and not know what acts I committed.

Even though my philosophy was adopted without thinking, it can still be identified in explicit terms now that I'm wiser. Metaphysically, I struggled with a mystical, religious universe in combination with one that had an identity separate from anyone's consciousness, as I both believed in God and an atheistic, scientific reality. I always had doubts about God, but since my elders didn't take my questions seriously and instead brushed me off my questions simply went unanswered, but they ultimately never left my mind since they were never refuted either. My ethical premise that thoughts themselves can be evil prevented me from thoroughly thinking about those questions however, as I thought even the slightest doubt in God could sentence me to Hell, so I actively refused to think about those matters.

Epistemologically, I adopted secular faith. While I was religious, it was primarily an intellectual position I held to, but largely paid lip-service to. The extent of my family's religious beliefs were that there is a God and he gave ten commandments, but nobody read the Bible, went to church, or took any other aspect of religion seriously. They just said they believed in God, maybe prayed at night, and otherwise lived their lives in contradiction to their supposed beliefs. I was never taught how to learn things or by which means to identify that something was true, so I developed a "somehow" mentality in which I was expected to believe in things because my elders "said so," "just know" it's true, and so on. I was perpetually uncertain, but had no thinking tools in which to fully address these premises.

My ethics were probably the most developed and destructive. It consisted of altruism, that thoughts can have moral status, and second-handedness. On the first, through whatever means I gained the belief that one should sacrifice for others, but in the end it caused me much pain since not only is sacrifice painful, but also because I grew up largely without friends and therefore without recipients for my sacrifices, and I didn't want to sacrifice anyhow since my life was spiritually painful enough as it was, so I lived with perpetual guilt. On the second, since I lived with an elder who was emotionally unstable, unpredictable, and even explosive, I gained the belief that thoughts can have moral status given how hysterical they would react to some things I said, so I thought even the mere contemplation of a "bad" thought can make one evil. I resorted to suppression, which made the bad thoughts worse and therefore me more grieved. On the last, I had another elder who was literally obsessed with what other people thought of them, so watching how they were constantly petrified at other people and always trying to cater to them made me believe it must be ethically necessary to be concerned with others, so I too became immensely worried about what other people thought of me. My self-esteem ended up being eroded since I was heavily bullied, had few to no friends, and had mostly teachers indifferent to my problems, so, granting weight to other people's thoughts, I lowered my opinion of myself. All three tenets combined made me endlessly guilty that I was not doing my altruistic duty, distraught at my mental processes, and avoiding people for fear of what they thought of me.

And politically, as stated before, there were no views. I'm not sure if my elders even voted while I was growing up. No subject of any political nature was ever brought up, and to this day I have no idea what most of my family's political affiliations are. I think they were too afraid of the slightest strife to be able to take a stance on anything, so they avoided endorsing or condemning anything, if they had any political beliefs at all, in order to get along with other people. In my teens I developed pro-capitalist emotions since I somehow arrived at the conclusion that other people should not force their beliefs on others. This didn't grow to a full political belief, however, as I still didn't know how to think in ideological terms.

The philosophy as a whole consequently made me grow up in a miserable. My metaphysics and epistemology made me confused and constantly doubtful. My ethics made me view myself as an evil person who deserved to die and was resentful at other people's perception. And my absence of any sort of politics left me ideologically powerless to society's laws since I had no conception of how men should treat each other. A lot of philosophical stances were actually something I potentially leaned towards, like atheism and rational egoism, but the ethical tenet that thoughts can be evil made me refuse to think about them, and I could hardly think in explicit terms anyhow. I played video games, watched television, and daydreamed endlessly to avoid thinking or even acknowledging the reality my life, and got depressed otherwise.

I adopted all of these ideas from my elders, who were (and still are) largely unaware of them themselves, and at the same time they hardly participated in my spiritual raising. They entertained me with material goods and fed me, but I could never have deep talks with them nor engage in any meaningful activities that would allow me to spiritually bond and nurture a love. My mother's emotional instability established my misery, made me afraid of her, and made me avoid her since I couldn't predict her behavior. My grandmother just gave me a lot of presents and material goods, which I enjoyed, but cannot appreciate her character on the basis of since her personality if of a different nature. My grandfather sat around and drank soda all the time, and eventually I became afraid of him when he one day lifted me by the front of my shirt collar, looking like he was going to hit me, all because I had a bad day at school and provoked him by looking sad, so from then on I avoided him for fear of danger. I was left to my own devices then, and could do practically whatever I wanted, whether it meant playing video games for an obscene amount of hours, guzzling a quarter of a twelve-pack of soda, or eating an entire package of pudding. The rules were mostly lip-service, as even gentle asking would make them cave and backtrack, leaving me with little parental influence. I spent the vast majority of my time alone, doing my own thing.

As time went on my philosophical premises made me feel worse and worse, to the point I became suicidal. My life was only protected by a lack of motivation, however, as my most distressed and suicidal moments were accompanied by a great fear and lack of motivation to do anything about it. I spent well over five years nurturing suicidal thoughts and intentions. My relationship and trust with my elders was destroyed when they totally ignored me when I outright told them about this, as they refused to talk to me about it or get me any kind of help. The friends I consulted with didn't help me either, as it turned out they just used me to vent themselves, so they didn't care to give my serious problem any attention. I was shocked that the people I trusted the most in my life could betray and abandon me like this, so from during that period I stopped trusting and "loving" these people and kept to myself. I was alone with my problems. It's especially bad since I almost went through with the act one time, and was only saved because I had a calming mood swing on the long car drive to get materials from the store.

Ayn Rand came in about 2006, which is when I was already vigorously interested in philosophy, thinking about it often. Some time back I had discovered Anthony Burgess through A Clockwork Orange and The Doctor is Sick, and loved his writing, which inspired me to start entertaining philosophy. Burgess primed my consciousness, so to speak. One day I was just randomly splurging at the bookstore on some books when The Virtue of Selfishness caught my eye. I read Athem in school previously and hated Rand's writing style, but a valued friend at the time mentioned that she loved it, so I thought I'd give Rand's non-fiction a thought to see if it was any better. Although the title is intentionally provocative, I didn't see anything different about it, as my unexplicit ethics said nothing persay about selfishness being evil, so this was a random purchase that didn't really rouse my interest.

But did the reading ever rouse me.

I was immediately blown away from the first article on, and Rand wrote in a clear style that helped me consciously call to attention ideas I couldn't speak about explicitly before and yet was having my life dictated by. Her words hit my intellectual core and made me see for the first time in my life my own system of morality, the morality I had been living by my entire life. She made me see how such a belief was destroying my life, making me miserable and reclusive. She made me see that rational selfishness was not evil, that it didn't consist of hedonism or hurting others for your "interests," but rather trading values with others. She made me see that it was not bad to be alone, and that it was not right to place other people's thoughts above your own. I was only about two essays or so in before I entered a state of intense euphoria that lasted for hours, rendering me incapable of reading any further until I had calmed down. That day was a turning point in my life.

I didn't desire to immediately take to other of Rand's works yet, but she did set off a vicious storm of thinking that drastically morphed my character and how I began thinking. I became incredibly philosophical and contemplative. The philosophy I detailed above quickly became uprooted in favor of integrating Objectivism, and it's amazing how quickly I took to it, almost as if I had been a potential Objectivist all my life. I think the doubts I had about certain positions, like about God, would have led to me integrating Objectivist premises quickly if I had fully addressed those doubts, but since I believed thoughts could be evil I didn't do that thinking, thereby leaving the stances I hold now only as a potential. Very quickly I lost the desire to maintain my evasion techniques such as playing video games, as I soon began building my self-esteem and self-love, and favored perusing intellectual forums on the internet to further develop my philosophy. I don't think I ever actually valued video games, as the habit was broken nearly instantaneously and abandoned since; now I've sold all my games and systems, and there is only a single arcade collection installed on my computer that I seldom use.

The first things I started to do were read more vigorously than I already was, have philosophical talks with my friends and some elders, and, most importantly, consciously alter my behavior to match my new ideas. For instance, I recognized and was disturbed by how second-handed I was, as I was constantly faking my personality in order to garner approval from others, so I undertook my first major self-improvement endeavor to stop being dishonest in my actions. From then on I wasn't going to give lip-service to my ideas: I was going to preach and practice them.

Rand didn't convince me on her atheism however, so I was at first the well-known contradictory "Christian Objectivist." Her idea that evasion was evil penetrated my mind, however, so I could no longer allow myself to keep evading thoughts about religion, even if I did fear it as evil. I watched an episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit! that talked about contradictions in the Bible, so that convinced me to convert to deism and not adhere to any specific religious. I kept thinking more and more about Rand's objections to not only Christianity, but religion in principle, and eventually integrated her conclusion that it was contradictory, logically impossible, and epistemologically unjustified, so about five months from having read the VOS, July 2006, I became a full-fledged atheist and stopped praying or believing in any God. As my philosophical beliefs changed, my mental health just kept improving and improving, making me grow happier and happier -- for the first time in my life. I took the objective status of my character seriously, was an overall better person, pursued learning more intently, and more. It was nearing the end of my teenager years, but my life was finally getting better.

My elders were largely indifferent to this development, unfortunately, and didn't take much interest in the books I read or that I was even reading at all. They treated me as if I was going through a stage and sometimes mouthed acceptance to the alternative ideas I stated that contradicted theirs. I briefly tried to argue with them, but I near-instantly understood that it was a mistake to try and philosophically convert them, so I largely left them alone, except in times in which they either provoked challenge or stated their beliefs in a way which made me need to voice mine lest they mistake my stance. I was my most ideologically sensitive at this point in my life, but they didn't pay attention and continued leaving me to my own devices, so they had absolutely no input in the ideas I entertained, adopted, or rejected. While I was materialistically taken care of, I consider myself as having raised myself from childhood and an entirely self-made man since my elders played no role in my spiritual development. I was growing increasingly antipodal to their ideology, but it didn't present any problems until I took some major actions to establish my well-being. You're probably already familiar with the scenario, as this is where my family troubles started brewing, eventually culminating in my current status where I moved to Texas without telling them and have excommunicated.

As part of my self-improvement I was striving to be more honest by acknowledging reality for what it is rather than what I believed it to be, and one aspect of that was my supposed love for my family. Yes, I deplored many of my elders, particularly those who didn't help me after I told them I was suicidal, but those conclusions were primarily in emotional terms only. In paying attention to the actual reality of matters it struck me as odd that I habitually said "I love you" to certain people even though I felt inwardly indifferent, so in order to reveal to myself how I truly felt towards these people I resolved never to say those words unless I actually felt love. To my utter surprise, I never said those words to my family again. When I introspected on the past I realized I almost always felt this way towards them, and was always mouthing words to deceive myself. I noticed I felt particularly strong negative emotions towards my mother. When she temporarily moved to Florida I suddenly felt immensely better and took more control over my life, eating a better (though not Paleo) diet, cleaning the house because I valued it, and being more at peace with myself. The lack of parental rules were still the same, so I didn't clean the house or ate better because I was told to -- they didn't even encourage me to -- but rather because I authentically valued the practices and maintained them of my own will. I hardly missed my mother. When she came back from Florida the negative atmosphere returned, I was stressed and in my room all the time, and refused to continue any of my regular chores. When she left again, contentment returned. One aspect of my inner peace of course could have been due to my philosophical development and desire to live life on my own terms, but it became explicitly clear that I held strong negative emotions towards my mother when I took a terrible vacation to Florida to visit her, which I hated everything about the entire trip, only relieved when I was home alone again. (My father wasn't in my life.)

I made the entirely calm dedication to never speak to my mother again whenever I should happen to move out the house, as I detested her the majority of my teenage years for her self-destructive behavior; unpredictable, unstable, and hostile emotions; and her refusal to recognize her problems or change herself. Objectivism gave me the thinking tools to reach this estimate by integrating evidence from the past and present to gather a sum of what her actions state about her character (we are what we repeatedly do), and my long-range thinking made me identify that her fluctuating behavior and refusal to change would mean that I would always be unhappy in dealing with her, which is why I chose to cut her off entirely rather than, say, merely move away and maintain correspondence. I don't think I would have been able to reach this conclusion if my psycho-epistemology hadn't been changed by Objectivism. Never at any point did I jump to a conclusion on the basis of emotion; the evidence told me this relationship would always be entirely unhappy, so I planned to disassociate entirely accordingly.

And of course, at this point you might know what happened. During my college days my mother kicked me out for knocking on her bedroom door too loudly, which is when I moved to my grandmother's and enacted the plan I constructed years prior. My family begged me to talk to my mother, but in response to my polite and extensive explanation for my stance, one I reached through hours of thinking, they gave me arbitrary conclusions they refused to give evidence for or prove, yelled at me, intimidated me, called me names, and so on. Eventually my grandmother got in the way of me living my life the way I wanted to as well, so I started the Project which culminated in me moving to Texas and cutting off a greater portion of my family. I have a super long essay here about what problems existed in my family, what I did about it, and what philosophically gave rise to my conflicts, as well as what you should do if you get in the same position.

Succinctly, I was taking great steps to vastly improve my well-being, but my elders refused to acknowledge the roots as to why I was getting so much better, so they encouraged me to reestablish the relationships and habits when led to my deterioration in the first place, so when I understood our conflicts could not be worked out by reason, I abandoned them since I was (and still am) unwilling to sacrifice my objective well-being for what they "feel" will be "good" for me.

As for friends, I still took an irrational attitude towards how I maintained many of my friendships given familial stress and leftover irrational premises, but ultimately I valued my friends less and less since I was growing more philosophical while they took another path. For instance, I hung out with people who played video games as intensely as I once did, but since I lost interest in the habit I lost the major thing I had in common with these people. I was becoming more interested in ideas, learning, and striving to realize the ideal, whereas they weren't, so we grew separately and apart. While my philosophy made me more friendless and unpopular, especially in college where my peers resented me, I didn't mind the aloneness since I had self-love and realized I wouldn't objectively like or love people with such contrary natures.

Sure, Objectivism has made me encounter a lot of obstacles, such as strife with my family, elimination of friends, hostility from others, and so on, but the hardship has been worth it to gain what I have today. I'm no longer suicidal, but rather am eager to live, more content, more respectful and nice to others, more intelligent, and more. And it is indeed Objectivism that has bestowed these benefits on me. I would never have been able to establish self-love if I hadn't repudiated altruism and the notion that it's a moral obligation to be concerned with what others think. I would never have been able to identify my family problems and solve them as I have, giving me a peaceful environment. I would never have been able to achieve my current physical health if I didn't have the courage to go against popular nutritional opinions and go Paleo. I never would have been able to identify my purpose in life and become the culinary-inspired, chocolate-reviewing person that I am today. I simply wouldn't be who I am today if I hadn't changed my philosophy, thinking habits, and how I evaluate ideas. If I kept going on the other path, I don't think I'd be alive today honestly, because the pain would just have kept getting greater.

I have definitely been scrutinized and unjustly treated for my views, such as my family getting angry at me for not talking to my mother despite her atrocious immorality, but what contentment and inner peace I have achieved has more than made up for it, and it eliminates any temptation to compromise on my ideals on the delusion that it'll somehow make things easier or make me happier. I've stuck to my convictions, and have been rewarded justly in spirit.

The way I've stumbled upon Rand's fiction by chance makes me contemplate the Butterfly Effect, how a seemingly small factor can lead to a massive chain reaction, such as a butterfly's wing flapping eventually initiating a hurricane. What if I didn't see Rand's book that day when I was out shopping, or didn't purchase it? What if I didn't read Anthony Burgess and became interested in philosophy through him? Maybe I would be an entirely different person, or maybe I would have still become an Objectivist by having the psychological makeup receptive to those ideas. I don't know, but I'm immensely glad I stumbled upon Rand's work when I did because I was intellectually ready for her at the time, and her philosophy has diverted me off a destructive path that would have only grown worse with time. Now these days I'm always concerned with expanding my mind and learning ever more, and with improving my character more and more to match that of what I view to be my ideal self. Life is worth living now. This is my story on how I became an Objectivist.

Italy Does a Grave Injustice to Seismologists

 I can't believe this. The Italian government is seriously considering charging some seismologists with manslaughter because they happened to fail to predict an earthquake. Is Italy going back to the dark ages?

Many sciences haven't advanced yet enough in order to allow scientists to be able to make perfect predictions, and broader still there's the plain fact that humans are fallible and will honestly reach mistaken conclusions, no matter how hard and rigorous their thinking is. Man is not omniscient, so it's unavoidable that he'll err here and there in his thinking. To punish anyone for that is to flat-out evade and disregard that fact of nature and be monstrously unjust. If the Italian government is successful, then these scientists are going to receive a lot of suffering they simply don't deserve. Disgusting.


Unless this principle of thinking -- that men can and should be punish for honest intellectual errors -- is stopped in its tracks in the political realm then Italy has a lot to lose. What scientist is going to want to keep working under the stress that an innocent slip is going to put him in grave danger? Why should he work so hard, only to have it all taken away just because he's not superhuman? And further still, what if Italy applies this to not only other sciences, but also other realms of business where mistakes inevitably happen? Atlas will shrug, I believe.

I always had some kind of impression that Italy was a civilized country, but I'm starting to have doubts.

Edit: Changed "infallible" to "fallible." What a considerable mistake! Goes to show you how fallible I am. . .

A Good Example of the Practicality of Pacifism

Pacifism annoys me in a particularly unique way. Unlike other philosophical ideas, it's suicidal in the most naive and quickest way, and I cannot project what kind of rationale pacifists maintain to hold such a belief. I argued on my other blog in my essay Dr. Dolittleism in Foreign Policy why such a belief is so dangerous, and was prompted by an example I saw in a Saturday morning cartoon. Since then I've noticed an even better example in the Japanese anime One Piece.

The scene involved Franky, a man who turned himself into a cyborg after being nearly fatally injured and left for dead in a garbage dump. In the present, he had been abandoned in a wintry place called "Genius Island" and was in danger, for his supply of cola -- he's fueled by cola -- was running low. Surgeons managed to restore him by restoring him with tea, but comically it changed his personality from a rambunctious surfer to proper gentlemen, which his rescuer didn't like. In an attempt to return his old personality the person threw him out into the wild to confront dangerous animals, in hope it would bring his high-energy personality back.

Strangely, as part of his gentlemanly nature Franky had become a pacifist as well. When a cyborg gorilla started beating him up Franky only resorted to talking to him, ignoring that the animal was not open to reason. As the fight went on Franky kept getting constantly punched in the face, having his sentences interrupted and peace negotiation efforts cut off again and again. The gorilla simply did not respond at all to Franky's words. Eventually Franky became infuriated, the tea inside him boiling, and he swung around the gorilla like a mace at the surrounding vicious animals, thus promptly ending the violent confrontation in one fell swoop.

I wish this scene had been animated by the time I wrote that essay for my other blog, for it would have made a much better example. It illustrates how nonsensical attempts at calm and respectful peace negotiations are when your enemy isn't open to reason, and how quickly and more rationally the problem is solved when your opponent leaves you no other option. 

I forgot who said this or what the exact words were, but to paraphrase a saying: If the notion that violence begets more violence were true, then we'd (Americans) still be fighting the Japanese and the Middle East would be peaceful. The opposite is true, and Americans are going to keep dying in our present wars until that is fully understood.

The Good Political Themes of *One Piece*

In becoming an adult I've found that my enjoyment of certain cartoons has taken on a new pleasure, where I enjoy them now with an intelligent and thoughtful eye rather than the mindless, empty staring I used to do as a kid. Now when watching such shows I continually think about its merits and the effort that went into it, and am impressed when I identify traits of good aesthetics. Thanks to the power of power of Hulu I have been rediscovering and restarting some shows I began watching in my youth but fell out of, and of particular interest lately is the Japanese anime One Piece. Like with Dragon Ball Z I've started to notice philosophical elements that have escaped me before, and appreciate it more as a result.

The story is about a young pirate named Luffy and his crew on a journey to pursue their dreams, his being the finding of a legendary treasure that will make him king of the pirates. Along the way they fight other pirates doing evil to other people and in the pursuit of the same treasure, and, most significantly, battle an evil worldwide government that is after them solely because they oppose its corrupt ways, not because they committed any actual acts of evil. A major attribute of the series is a mystical class of food called devil fruits that grant its consumer a special trait, such as making their body made of sand or enabling them to slow down time, and constitutes a fatal weakness in characters by rendering the user unable to swim in ocean water, as the god of the sea disapproved of these power modifications and cursed devil fruit users consequently. Luffy himself is made of rubber after eating the gum-gum fruit, and he has various devil fruit users in his crew, such as a reindeer who ate the human-human fruit to gain a human mind and a skeleton who regained life by eating the revive-revive fruit.

I like this show for primarily two reasons. The first is that the main cast of characters is portrayed as phenomenal in their areas of expertise, such as the ship cook being a master of all cuisines and the musician being able to play any instrument. It's a little cartoonish how talented everyone is in this regard, but it places a positive value on human ability, best since all the characters are self-made and worked to develop their talents. Everyone is so competent in their skills that the ship only needs one of every type of crew member, from sniper to doctor, though the musician happens to be a secondary swordsman. The show is very political, so it's possible they may represent a blossoming business with a growing team of talent, all working towards the same profitable end point. They're only pirates in name only, as they don't rob or murder people, but rather fight injustice where they see it and earn their wealth.

My favorite attribute of the show is its anti-statist premise, as it shows the World Government as cruel, unjust, and an aggressor to its constituents, condoning official corruption, participating in slavery, executing prisoners on whim, and labeling good people unjustly as criminal evil-doers. They even have established relationships with certain pirates they deem as warlords, for in exchange of cooperating with the government in certain ways they turn a blind eye to their crimes, even murder. Despite all the men in clean white and blue uniforms, they're obviously supposed to represent evil, gang ridden dictatorships. Luffy got a bounty on his head just because he opposed a corrupt official who cooperated with a gang and allowed them to control a town in exchange for a portion of their loot. Other crew members got their bounties for opposing the government in the similar ways, and Luffy's crew is the only pirate crew sought by the government on the grounds that they oppose the World Government morally.

They don't just stop at government themes either, for they attack in general anything that constitutes dictatorial authority, whether it be a rogue gang controlling a town or a pirate killing his own crew. The story even touched on religious themes by having Luffy's crew travel to an island in the sky and fight a dictator who was calling himself God, who had the power of a kind of omniscient and the ability to control lightning as per his devil fruit power.

There are some minor vices, however. For one, it's possible that in the long-run the show may endorse anarchy rather than a properly limited government that protects its citizens, but it's still unclear at this point where it's going to go. Secondly, on aesthetic grounds, it tends to lack a lot of drama since the characters are sharply cartoon-like, which makes it hard to get emotionally involved, but it's still enjoyable on an adult level given the mature content and philosophical themes. At worst, they're just way too protective of good characters, as good characters will often survive the most devastating blows. A man, for instance, once experienced a bomb explode at point-blank range, and yet he was able to walk home the next day as if he only had minor burns. It hard to feel sympathy or fear for the characters' well-being given the expectation that everyone will survive any damage no matter what.

But all in all, it's a good series, one I'm glad to have rediscovered and reincorporated into my life as a value along with Dragon Ball Z Kai. A lot of episodes are available on Hulu, but not the entirety of the series, though perhaps they're working to incoporate every episode. I strongly suggest watching the original Japanese language version with English subtitles, as the English dub has terrible and uninteresting voicing. The Japanese care more about anime than Americans do, so they take more care in their work than American companies do in trying to market here in the U.S.

Don't miss out.

When the Environment Destroys Itself?

A question recently occurred to me about the nature of environmentalism, and while I know that it inherently points out the illogic in their philosophical system I still wonder if this question has actually been addressed before. Now we know that environmentalism holds that it is wrong for man to alter nature to suit his needs, such as burning fuel or felling a forest, since this would constitute destruction of the environment. However, how do environmentalists view the phenomenon of the environment destroying, well, itself?

For instance, volcanoes spew smoke and pollute the air, don't they? Environmentalists get mad when men pollute the air, so why not volcanoes too? Surely that kills birds. And what about natural oil reserves leaking from the ocean floor into the water and polluting it? Man need do nothing for that to occur, and surely that kills oceanic life. And heck, how about how celestial bodies treat each other? What if the sun goes supernova in a few billion years and destroys earth, eradicating everything we currently call the environment? Are people waging protests on how the sun may be violating earth's rights? And let us not forget that wild animals kill other wild animals, that it's possible for one species to drive another out of existence without man's help.

The environment, in one form or another, hurts itself and can be made inhospitable to life. Man has the mental powers and technology to improve things so that life flourishes, so that environmentalists concentrate so much on preventing man from doing this reveals a dishonest intention.

United States' Response to Collapse?

[NOTE: This was already published and commented on, but for some reason the website crash took it down and returned it to scheduling mode, so I'm merely putting it up again.]

To tell you the truth, there's really only one thing I fear about economic disaster coming to the U.S., and that's how its people are going to respond to it. Given my optimism for the future I think we'll ultimately end off for the better politically and start on a better path, so mainly my concern is how people will react behaviorally.

Reading the accounts of what happened in various other countries during economic disaster, such as Germany and Argentina, have been very disturbing. Spiritually broken people sniping off rooftops, regular kidnappings, violence, and more. I could tolerate a food shortage in a civil society . . . but I wonder if the U.S. would remain a civil society during such bad times.

It's a perplexing question because this phenomenon is happening in a culture that is significantly different, at least for now, from those of a collapsed Argentina or Nazi Germany. I at least know that Nazi Germany at that time adopted a very malevolent and duty-based philosophy, and facing the destruction that philosophy wrought would logically drive those people to the worst kinds of malice, one incident including a guy who stood on a roof and shot at people indiscriminately. That philosophy thinks the worst of human nature, so the provocation of all the economical pain would obviously be enough to push these people to lash out.

However, I hypothesize that the U.S. is in the process of questioning its premises and root philosophy. No choices, of course, have been made between altruism and selfishness, statism and capitalism, and so on, but I think Americans are thinking about the alternatives, which gives America a fighting chance for survival. Even this state of questioning, I think, would alter America's character enough that she would react differently to things such as hyperinflation/deflation. It's also possible that a cultural shift could happen during these times, and that America will have to suffer economic consequences from the inertia of previous bad ideas, meaning that the America that suffers would have a different character than the one that inflicted the troubles.

My hypothesis is that things will vary from state to state since there are such variants in the senses of life given birth to by the various parts of the political spectrum. In other words, I think a Democratic state would react one way and a Republican one another. Here in Texas, I think, a more gloomy atmosphere would come about, which I think would be quite tolerable. People are very hospitable and civil around here, and I can't imagine them erupting into thuggery. My previous home of Michigan, however, I can totally visualize as becoming very violent. It's a very bleak atmosphere already, and the people seem to have a certain air of resentment around them. I detailed a sampling of people I've dealt with there before, and I think that such malevolence is more or less common in the whole area, in differing degrees and practices. The economic conditions are already frustrating enough over there, so the devastation the U.S. might go through might push them past the breaking point and make for a very, very, hostile atmosphere. Then again, I don't know.

Of course, to be logically strict it may not be guaranteed that the U.S. will even go through such bad economic times. I think it's still possible to turn around, and it's possible the culture could save itself before then, but it's one of those "fat chance" ordeals where we might as well treat the probability as a certainty already given the momentum, so I mention this to make clear I'm not speaking of events definitely guaranteed to occur.

Anyhow, what do you think? Whatever ordeal we may go through, I hope I can come out respecting the present humanity in the end.

How Far Do False Ideas Reach?

Now I grant that certain ideas on a mistaken basis can be fully and sincerely believed, but when ideas are extremely, if not totally, detached from reality and have underlying evasions, then just how far can a person go in fully believing them? Is it possible that, given an idea of intense enough arbitrary or falsity, a person can never totally believe a certain set of ideas even though they live their life by them?

Let's take pragmatism for example. Part of pragmatism's metaphysics is that existence takes on a different nature at different times, such as things being one way today and another the next. For instance, water might freeze at below zero Fahrenheit today, but melt tomorrow at the same temperature because its nature changed. Logically, a pragmatist would have to concede that a candle flame would burn him today but might do something different tomorrow. If we were to conduct a survey, how many pragmatists do you think would agree to stick their finger in a candle flame every single day to see what happens? I'd wager none. While they may believe metaphysical reality may change from day to day, you don't see people burning themselves repeatedly in hopes of obtaining some pleasure, or eating rocks to see if they have nutritional value all of the sudden. Largely their beliefs are practiced contradictorily: They cherry-pick what they believe to be metaphysically flexible and what is absolute.

Given this, is it perhaps true that when an idea or set of ideas is of a certain falsity like the pragmatic metaphysics above that they can't dig their roots that deeply into a person's mind, that they'll never be able to fully believe it? After all, uncertainty is evident when a person suddenly shouts at an innocent question about their beliefs, no matter how insignificant.

Why Does Evasion Cause Pain?

When I speak of evasion I am speaking of an epistemological-psychological phenomenon in which one chooses to either ignore or pretend certain facts of reality don't exist, such as pretending (to oneself) that one doesn't know something that actually is known, or taking a certain course of action even though the available and known facts demonstrate that a different course is proper. Evasion is wide-spread in our culture, and exists everywhere in everything from politicians to significant others.

One thing I haven't thought to ask up until now is why the act of evasion causes pain. Have you ever exposed an evasion to someone in a certain issue and witnessed them become emotionally unhinged, doing everything from becoming hostile, panicking, and running away from the discussion? It's happened to me countless time.

For instance, once I was having a political discussion with someone -- and they left themselves open to the possibility since they expressed political opinions -- and the topic that sparked it was the practicality of unemployment benefits. When the other person expressed relief that a certain family member had received an extension of their benefits, I noted that unemployment benefits actually create unemployment. When they asked me why, I noted that it was funded by the government, and they know where government gets its funding, don't they? Here's where the evasion comes in: The person then said in a very meek tone that they didn't know. Given their old age I thought it was absurd, but I humored them nonetheless and began to explain coercive taxation, how it involves the confiscation of money from one person and giving it to another. A few sentences into my explanation the other person then flared into anger and then snapped that I should be grateful for all the things the government does, and when I continued to explain the impracticality of those measures the person panicked, got up, said they couldn't do anything about it, and left the room.

This kind of thing surely happens frequently, and I'm certain you've come across it. It could be just a key word or sentence, and the next thing you know your conversational partner is falling apart.

Why does evasion cause such intense discomfort?

So far I only have a hypothesis. I think it has to do with how painful it can be to pass negative moral judgments on oneself. It's easy to judge someone else as evil and to feel intense anger towards them, but directed towards oneself the same evaluation can be devastating. It can generate emotions so intense that it may sap one's motivation to pursue values, to remain active, or to even continue living. If you judge yourself to be evil, then you won't believe yourself worthy of values or living.

With knowledge comes the responsibility to act on it, and to act contrary to it is to be guilty of acting in ways you know you shouldn't have. By knowing something is wrong, one is impelled to take responsibility for those actions, or to at least feel terrible about such behavior. However, when someone wants to indulge in an emotion or whim that encourages contradiction to one's knowledge of proper living, one must evade that knowledge in those contexts in order to be able to "comfortably" engage the whim, and the whim can only be emotionalistically indulged so long as the evasion stands. When other people expose those evasions, such as I have in the above conversation, then the person will feel impelled to acknowledge the true nature of their stances and judge themselves accordingly. But again, to judge oneself as evil is very psychologically destructive, so any human foul enough to be evil is going to be motivated to evade the issues so as to avoid making that evaluation. In an attempt to avoid judging oneself or feeling guilty, the evader then acts like the problem resides outside of their being, they externalize it, and instead does such things as get angry at the people who exposed the evasion(s) to begin with, thus piling evasions on top of each other. That means that in my above conversation the person was trying to avoid feeling guilt about their unthinking endorsement of employment benefits, and instead resorted to another evasion by pretending the problem was with me, a person who questions those premises.

The solution to all these problems, of course, is not to evade to begin with. Evasion is probably the cause of uncivil debate. People in those circumstances haven't thoroughly thought out their beliefs, so they're trying to cover up their evasions and construct new ones by becoming hostile in those conversations. Shouting, for example, could be an instance of a person trying to shout down their inner voice and silence it, rather than direct it at the people in the conversation.

As for me, I've found that becoming an Objectivist has done wonders for installing a resistance to evasion. Nowadays I can only tolerate evasion almost just momentarily. The problem is not that I struggle with evasion, but that it takes me a short time to recognize that I'm doing it, and my philosophical premises, that evasion is evil, is what keeps me on track by making me uncomfortable whenever I should carelessly fall victim to it.

Bearing the Bad Times

Times are undoubtedly getting bad. Not only for the United States, but for the entire world. The economy is quite bad off, and with current political actions it's probable, if not certain, that a bout of intense inflation (or hyperinflation?) could come our way and eradicate everyone's savings. US foreign policy is a mess, with our enemies largely being ignored and unimpeded in their murderous endeavors, leaving the possibility for devastation in the future, while American soldiers engage in fruitless combat in obscure locales for obscure purposes and clear-cut failure. Laws are getting more dictatorial and ambiguous, eroding freedom more rapidly ever before, and the assault is going to continue for years yet. With things as difficult as this it can be easy to get depressed in assessing the situation, and that's probably the mindset of most of the people in the US today, particularly Objectivists, who with special emphasis pay attention to the culture at large.

These past several weeks this is what has been upsetting me, mostly, as I hate viciously problems I have to deal with that are not of my own making or moral failure. I am thoroughly attached to the notion of living by my own judgement and living or failing by that alone, so to suffer due to someone else's evil is downright infuriating. But I must, as we all, deal with it, for it's a problem already long here, with no other option than for me to tackle it. While it's easily to speculate on the matter of degrees, it's hardly contestable that things are going to get worse. Life -- true life: full happiness -- will be delayed for all of us.

But I have come to terms with this negativity, and aside from recognizing it I am learning to cope with it. It can be easy to despair over such issues and to sense that things are hopeless. If they truly were, however, then wouldn't you be dead? Without any prospect of anything to live for, wouldn't you cease maintaining your life? Your sustained living shows you're still here on earth for a reason. I myself still believe life is worth living, and beyond that I believe there's still reason to be objectively hopeful for the future.

Even as terrible as things are, I still maintain the same optimism I had in 2009, and recent happenings are strengthening my case. It's too easy to lose hope for the future and happiness when a terrible piece of legislation is passed, such as mentioned in that post, or when a disaster happens, such as the earthquake in Japan, but we must remember to introspect on the entire context and to take a bird's eye view of things, waiting to arrive to conclusions until after a distressed mood passes. Additionally, I think there are also some methods to maintain some base level of contentment during the meanwhile, to bear the stress during the bad period.

The best sign of positive change is on the cultural front regarding ideas. As I've noted elsewhere, people are more and more starting to discuss and debate alternative ideas to long-held dogmas, which indicates that the battle of ideologies have already begun. You know how Galileo, the scientist, was arrested by a church and sentenced to lifelong imprisonment? (In his own home, I believe.) He was in a legitimately hopeless situation. His mind was so potent that he was identifying aspects of nature that nobody else had before, making him the only man in the world, at his time, to have knowledge of such facts. (I don't know much about Galileo, except that arrest was his fate.) That situation can be summarized as one man literally against the world, and in his own personal realm it was a battle in which he was overwhelmingly outnumbered and could not win in his lifetime, though at least passed on his ideas to other generations. Given the impossibility of his situation -- judging from the limited context of his personal happiness, not his cultural impact -- despair would be the logical and inevitable response of any person in his shoes, and reasonably so. But this is far from the situation today -- far, far, far away. It's not the case that only one or two people are holding positive ideas against a crushing world of opposition, but rather that there are thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of people who hold better ideas to combat the ones being practiced today. And I don't mean just strict Objectivists either; in addition to those people, there are also helpfully sympathetic people who are, while not fully adhering to the philosophy, do agree with some of its most important aspects (e.g. the capitalist politics), and furthermore there are still good people who are neutral or innocently mistaken and can still be reached with honest and respectful debate. Even counting Objectivists alone is a sign of hope, as they are many and still sufficient to greatly offset any "one man against the world" scenario.

Besides that, many of the advocates of bad ideologies have self-defeating behaviors which thoroughly limits the reach they have. Evil ideas have bad and evasive epistemology at their root, so most, if not all, of these people who operate on these ideas have not thoroughly or honestly thought about them before accepting them, so their potency in persuasion is limited. People who are not honest usually ignore alternative ideas in debate, become hostile in their behavior, run away from challenge, and so on. Let's just think about these three behaviors. If they ignore alternative ideas in debate, then how can they strengthen their arguments to take into account the alternatives that are being given? Their opponents are made all the more powerful by such evasions. If they become hostile in their behavior, then what type of people are they going to appeal to or repulse? They'll likely garner the weak-willed afraid of disagreement and people who already agreed with their conclusions, and the honest and respectful people will listen more attentively to those who not only present their case calmly and respectfully, but also take into account alternative ideas and modify their positions to acknowledge them. And if evil apologists decide to run away from challenge, then what's going to stop the good guys from spreading their ideas? Fewer challenges mean fewer impediments, and with continued evasions the evil guys could wake up one day with a culture past its ideological tipping point. Truly the battle of ideas must be fought against the inertia of old ones, as the evil advocates of rotten ideas don't put up a competent fight and only have the advantage of pre-established traditions and habituated thinking.

Concretely, we can see good ideas are getting mentioned more and more all the time. Our politicians may be stuck in their thinking and destructive courses, but it seems the American people aren't staying mentally idle. Opposition to current politics is being sustained and strengthened by the continued destruction. Just look at how the Ayn Rand Institute is flourishing. In just a span of two or three years, they've been making more television and radio appearances, putting out newspaper columns and blog articles, giving frequent lectures, getting increasing donations and support, building new offices in various states, and there's probably more I'm not aware of. To see this dramatic increase of life in the institution in just a span of a few short years is impressive, and we can expect to see it increase its impact for a long while yet, especially given the sales spike of Atlas Shrugged due to the newly released movie.

In the meanwhile things are just going to have to get bad since cultural momentum has driven us to this point, and yes it will be painful. Aside from looking at the facts that justify objective hope for the future, there are ways to grin and bear the frustration in the meanwhile. As difficult things are, I've been thinking about what facets constitute thorough happiness in human beings, and I think that if we were able to just at least satisfy the very fundamental needs of our psychology in the meanwhile, things would be more tolerable during the period they must be bad.

My thinking is hardly in depth at this point, but I've been introspecting on how such a small thing as being back to work has satisfied me. I value my career to the point that I don't think I'll ever retire from working, unless it meant moving from one field to another, and being back to work has satisfied me on a deep level. During my labor-intense shift I noticed I was actually getting increasingly relaxed and started doing refreshing exhaling. Given my view on the role of work in one's life I have a psychological need to work, and working satisfies it. I don't even think all that much about the money; just whether I'm doing my job well. If things go to hell and we're all poorer, I would still be satisfied if I were still minimally employed, scraping by. I may not be able to pursue my fullest happiness given economic restrictions, but it would at least basically satisfy the need.

Another facet I've been thinking about is the need for valuable friendship. I tolerate alone time quite well and even enjoy it, but I'm starting the feel the pain of being alone spiritually. Given complications from my past life, I've seldom had satisfying relationships with people who share my worldview, and I crave to meet those people so as to add value to my own life and keep before me the good that exists in this world. If I were to satisfy that need, then my contentment would increase and my life would be richer, making for another facet of my being that has been satisfied.

What I'm trying to say here is that one's psychological needs is composed of various facets which have requirements for satisfaction, and to leave any one unsatisfied is to reduce one's satisfaction with life and bring on uncomfortable, even painful longings. I'm not sure how many facets there are, but I can at least think of career and friendship as two. I assert that if one were to satisfy the barest basic requirements of all these facets, then a deep-down contentment can be nurtured and render one more resistant to the stresses of the world. Without these general satisfactions, then the pains of the world will intensify in their stressful nature. To paraphrase Atlas Shrugged, with inner satisfaction set then pain will only go down so far, never succeeding to erode the fundamental contentment. I'll have to do more thinking about what other facets there are to be tended to, but I'm starting to take steps and am planning on leading a more active social life, including attending an Objectivist Society here in Texas.

The bad times are here to stay for now, but I don't think they will be permanently. There are many objective signs for hope for a better future, and we shouldn't let our emotions get the best of us and decide everything is hopeless just because a single bad event has happened. And even while the bad times are here there will still be some values untouched and available to pursue, contributing to the happiness of one's life, so while the bad times must be endured it is these values one should concentrate on.

If you or I really judged things to be hopeless, then I don't think either of us would continue living. Why would we? And yet, here we are. I think life is still worth living all the way to its natural end, and I think you do too.