Ayn Rand...

[aislynslaine]

The more I am reading Ayn Rand's philosophy, the more I am enjoying it. It's more in depth than Terry Goodkind's base level which is described more through actions of others than through the verbalized meaning of those actions. While I am still puttering through the literary fiction and haven't had a chance to read other novels or works by her yet

Comments

[vonsac]

I think that 'Objectivism' (as bastardizing as word-meaning-definitions are) has many practical applications, but it has long since had it's time in the spotlight.

Since the birth of modernism with Cartesian dualism, the common western worldview has has shifted it's gears of understanding into a very one-sided and heavy handed derivative - one of empirical sciences (quantitative, mechanistic), reason and rationality, atheism, dualism (namely, subject-object distinction, mind-matter) and so on. These things have all been critical in the direction human kind has taken over the last several centuries, and necessary for human thought to progress out of less-refined and fantastical suppositions about existence into an era of unrivaled scientific and technological advancement.

However, extremism in this field has pervaded (especially in the past century) to the point of blindness and often arrogant disregard to anything outside of what is conventionally acceptable by its terms, and in this has disenchanted any meaning out of human life and the cosmos. With this, there is no 'life' - there is only casual, physiological/chemical process; Earth is simply a rock floating in the cold dead of space, human life has no relevance to the cosmos and is ultimately meaningless, our mind is only a byproduct of neural activity, and so on. To give a shoddy analogy, these perceptions are very 'left-brain,' while mostly if not totally neglecting any aspect of the 'right-brain' - imagination, meaning, spirituality, soul, creativity, emotional validity, etc.

It is high time that people understand that these biased worldviews need to change - not to any exchange of polarities, but of a greater integration and more encompassing, holistic approach. There is already a wealth of such elaborations and perspectives, primarily originating from the work of Carl Jung.

There is more to truth than science, and there is certainly more to the cosmos than what is explainable within the context of reason alone. However, there is an important distinction to be made in this regard - that there are those people who misconstrue this understanding and use it as an excuse to neglect reality and personal responsibility in favor of whatever fantasy (polarization in the opposite end of the spectrum, 'right-brain' i.e your room mate,) and those who see both sides of the yin-yang as equally contributing parts to an ever greater whole.

[aislynslaine]

I must be all over the place, today, because I can't seem to formulate a single coherent thought on the entire matter of any of what is being said to me by either of you. I've been trying to type this for the longest time, and still haven't been able to form a solid/concrete thought on it.

I think that, ultimately, Isaac proves a good point, and that I tend to agree that when we rely on science alone to explain everything, it tends to take a sort of magic out of living, that when we go forward to understanding something in our world in the ways that science explores, it tends to create a large gap between the physical person and the spiritual person. Life does, in essence become meaningless. I think that while science can explain to us on some level some of the physical aspects of our lives, it does become very limited of use in terms of the intellectual, spiritual and other less 'tangible' aspects of our lives...

I feel like there is more to come...

[zarathrusta]

Well said. i myself tend to be more right brained and have used it a lot to justify self destructive or lazy behavior as you point out later in your comment. i've gotten better.

there are some things that do not need to be explained away, or if they are, it's necessary to re-forget them. after all, without a bit of madness here and there and some passion things become too dull. the best things in life are adventure, food, sex, connecting with others and creation. taking the magic of all of it out and being too logical and analytical ruins it, and i see the tendancy sometimes. it leads to a sort of literal nihilism.

i'd have something more articulate to say but im pretty hungover. hah.

[aislynslaine]

And you know, it might be the guide in me, I really enjoy the study of the earth, and ecology and geology, and find that it's intriguing the way that the earth operates, interacts and is so interdependent; and even to a degree how people once assumed a great earthquake was once considered upsetting the gods... yet when it comes to things like for example love, or "chemical reactions" in the human body, I tend to sort of lean away from it.

I watched a documentary on ghost stories, and they had made mention of something called infrasound which gives one an ominous feeling and can cause people to see things in the corners of their eyes, have their hair stand on end, so to speak. It was interesting, but it doesn't explain where the sound comes from, it just says that it could be the cause of so called sightings and such. Oversimplification, maybe?

And I whole heartedly agree about adventure, food, sex, connecting with others and creation. And I would even venture so far as to say that inner reflection and observation is a few other things on my list of some of the better things in life. Connecting with others plays a huge role, too. Sometimes I find myself sinking into a sort of depression when I can't express myself in ways that others can remotely relate to.

But that connection we feel with others, to explain it so much as a chemical reaction I find to be interesting. I wrote another journal, and I may have made it private as I sometimes do when my thoughts are too random to be coherent, but there's the possibility that the feeling of love is caused by a chemical reaction, or that it could be possible that love causes the chemical reaction.

I know that I don't just get angry unprompted, usually. I don't feel angry and then think of the things that make me angry, I think of the things that make me angry and then that's when I begin to start feeling angry.

Go articulation.