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Only the moral individual is fully human. Only those who choose to take responsibility for their own lives, neither desiring or seeking anything in life but what they have achieved or acquired by their own effort, fully confident in their own ability and competence to live happily and successfully in this world, gladly bearing the consequences of their wrong choices, and proudly enjoying the rewards of their right ones, neither needing nor wanting the agreement or approval of any other individuals, always seeking to the be the best they can be in all things, mentally, morally, and physically, are fully human and worthy of the name and worthy of the life. Anything less is immoral and subhuman.
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A Dream of Daring
1/26/13 | What happens when a man thinks for himself, and what he thinks is not like anything anyone else thinks, and what he does is not like anything anyone else has ever done before and everyone both fears and hates what he thinks and what he has done? |
Notes On Tathagatagarbhaianism
1/24/13 | Most Tathagatagarbhaianists are, in spite of their great seriousness, rather casual about terminology. Except when writing academic papers, an event so rare there is no record of it ever having happened, most do not refer to themselves as Tathagatagarbhaianists, but rather as Tathists, based on the diminutive of Tathagatagarbha, Tath. |
The Wisdom of Tathagatagarbha, The One True God
1/21/13 | I've been accused, more than once, of being an atheist. I'm not an atheist. I just don't believe in your God. |
Twenty Children Killed By the Stupid, Ignorant, and Superstitious
1/21/13 | I've been reluctant to write anything about this, because I've looked at the pictures of all those children, so many times, and never without tears and anger, because everyone of those who claim to be so concerned about children, have no concern at all about children, except in how they can use them, and are the very ones responsible for their deaths. |
Nobody Wants To Know The Truth
1/19/13 | I'm not surprised, really. Perhaps I'm a little disappointed, but not in the way I might have been if I had expected or depended on it. Fortunately I've long been immune to any need for anyone else to be anything other than what they are. Still, it would have been nice to find more than the handful of individuals I've come to know who really want to know the truth. |
Morality
1/18/13 | Individualism is the expression of morality in a social context, but morality pertains only to individuals, not societies. |
The Benefits of Obamacare
8/1/12 | I recently read an absurd aritcle entitled, "Why Obamacare is Bad for America."
I do not care what is "bad for America," "good for America," or "indifferent for America." |
The Tramp Stamp Versus The Smile
7/17/12 | I keep looking, expecting to find, "USDA Certified Prime Tramp," and though the color is usually the right blue, all I see is designs, flowers, butterflies, and occasional obscenities or inanities. |
What About Other People?
7/20/12 | It was a very warm morning when Ray arrived, and since I never use air conditioning, Ray found the kitchen uncomfortable, so we had breakfast on the patio. |
What Is Existentialism?
6/27/12 | Existentialism is sometimes treated as a school of philosophy like empiricism or idealism, but it is not really a school of philosophy at all, because it does not deal with any of the fundamental issues of philosophy like metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, politics, or aesthetics, except peripherally.
There is also no way to generalize what existentialism is philosophically, because there are is nothing more to existentialism than a handful of common themes shared by those writers who are today classified as existentialists, even though most of them never heard of existentialism, or, with the exception of Jean-Paul Sartre, repudiated the label. |
What's Normal?
6/21/12 | I had the maid make up some creamcheese and olive sandwiches for our luncheon date on Friday. Raymond loves creamcheese and olive sandwiches. The reason for this visit, if you remember, was to answer Ray's last question, why I think homosexuality is not normal. He came forearmed. |
Clear Thinking
6/23/12 | Most people's thinking about most things is pretty muddled. They are clear enough on some things, (they know when the clerk has short-changed them) but about many things, especially issues of right and wrong, life and happiness, romantic love, even honesty and decency, they are very confused. They will be adamant about their opinions on these things, but being certain about one's ideas does not mean those ideas make good sense or are reasonable. The certainty most people have about things is not based on the clarity of their thinking but the strength of their feelings. |
Roger Stories
6/4/12 | I've been writing in one form or another for very close to 60 years. I am probably not quite as old as that makes me seem, since I started writing while very young. The first things I wrote were about philosophy. It was very mistaken philosophy, but a twelve-year old has not yet learned about rationalism and is easily tempted to make everything up in his head--a temptation most philosophers never learn to resist. |
Objectivist Frauds, Feuds, and Facebook
6/3/12 | It is unfortunate that two of the most common and devastating of human diseases are not acute and fatal, but instead are tragically chronic and persistent, leaving their victims to suffer them throughout life, not only ruining the lives of the afflicted, but bringing misery to all those associated with them. The diseases are almost always found together: they are commonly known as gripes and brags. |
The Missionary
5/15/12 | There was a knock at the door. It always annoys me when anyone knocks at my door. I don't mind visitors, but there is a perfectly good doorbell and why people refuse to use it is beyond me. I was not in the best frame of mind when I answered the door. |
A Queer Kind of Liberty
5/15/12 | Raymond LePage is a libertarian, "small 'L,'" he always emphasizes, and an Objectivist, but, "not a Randite," he always insists. He believes he is a fighter for individual freedom and belongs to several freedom-oriented organizations and supports various freedom movements, though the organizations and movements seem to change fairly often. |
The Perfect Human Diet—More Food Nonsense
5/1/12 | Just to avoid confusion, by, "Perfect Human Diet," I do not mean a diet of humans, but a diet for humans. I'm not an advocate of eating long pig.
And, before we go much further, I want to state up front there is no such thing as a perfect human diet. The idea that there might be comes from the title of an article by Karen De Costa, "Searching for the Perfect Human Diet." |
Never Has, Never Will
4/30/12 |
"Oh," I said. "Another
save the world scheme, and you can be part of it--for just $120 a year."
"It's not a, 'save the world scheme,' my friend said somewhat indignantly."
"Then what does this mean? 'We are going to change history with this Club. It's a new world ...,'" I emphasized, reading from the article at the link."
"You're just opposed to any movement that seeks to establish freedom," my friend said accusingly.
"I'm not opposed," I said, "I just have no use for movements because they are, by their very nature, collective efforts and I oppose collectivism in all its forms, and every so-called freedom movement is actually an attempt to establish some kind of social order in which it is believed there will be freedom. I'm opposed to all forms of social engineering as well, even libertarian social engineering. None of these movements has ever made a single individual free or ever will." |
Decadence and Decency
4/30/12 | For some independent thinking individuals there is a kind of perverse fascination with the decadent, the criminal, and even the insane. That fascination is easy to understand; such people are, in their own way, exceptional and interesting, just because they are not commonplace.
The independent individualist is himself a kind of misfit. As Ayn Rand describes him, he is the one that does not go along, the one who thinks and travels in directions opposite to the rest of society.
There is, however, a profound and important difference between the exceptionalism of the decadent and that of the independent individualist. The exceptionalism of the decadent is the result of psychological flaws, a weakness of character, or a profound mistake in reasoning. The exceptionalism of the independent individualist is the manifestation of a fully integrated psychology, strength of character and ruthlessly sound reasoning. This article is about the inability to distinguish between these two kinds of exceptionalism. |
Food Fools
2/29/12 | I hate to bring up a subject which you certainly do not want to even think about, but I must. You are going to die! Oh, I don't mean right away, like tomorrow, although you could, I just mean it is absolutely certain you are going to die sometime, and based on your current age, you can know when that time is. Subtract your age from 80, and call it, "d-time." Now you know you will die in d-time years, plus or minus 5 years. It's not absolutely perfect; there are some rare exceptions; but, unless you are one of those, you know about when you are going to die. |
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