Religion is such an exact science*

In the beginning, there was absence. There was an absence of all things positive and an absence of all things negative. There was even an absence of absence. This was called God. By it's very nature, god engendered the end of absence. This was called creation.

There were, and are, certain unalterable rules, as fundamental and real as God itself. These are the laws of limit, change, duality, and time. The law of limit is that there is a certain amount of existence, or God, and a certain amount of absence. These amounts can never change. The law of change is that everything changes, always. Matter- existence and energy- change into one another, and change even into different kinds of matter and energy. The law of duality is that everything is composed, at the most base level, of God, (existence), and absence. According also to the law of change, the balance of existence and absence in any area is constantly changing. The law of time is that all reality is transmitted through the medium of time.

So God changed, becoming energy and matter, and suffusing absence. These new composites of absence and existence made spheres, down to the most infinitesimal string of matter and the smallest drop of energy. On at least one of these spheres, an anomaly occured. Composites began to resemble God, as fellow creators. This new kind of composite was called 'living'. These living composites converted and rearranged the composites around them, 'creating' more of themselves and crafting new composites in their image. There were two things these living composites could create that nothing else could: living composites and a new kind of energy called 'thought'. The significance of these new composites was that, unlike other matter that was at it's most ubiquitous level pure matter encased and coalescing about absence, the most reducible form of the living composite was the 'individual'. This form was a composite of absence and existence, the only ubiquitous object to be so. As such, 'living' composites created in a way that would have never existed in the nonliving world of purity.

I figure this is my Genesis. I'll skip a bit of the storytelling, though.

* that's sarcasm, friends

Ugh. Thought.

Has there ever been any aspect of philosophy more dry than thought? Linguistics, thanks to Chomsky Mcbrilliant-ideas-that-translate-roughly-in-text-form.

Thought, as all good little boys and girls learned in their freshman philosophy course, is the action, and any tangible, physical action is merely the direct object, if you will, of that thought. The point where this becomes difficult is at the point where action is eventual, for, while it creates in the form of material effect, it does so in an almost roundabout way. What is thought, then, as an intrinsic action? Is it merely that which causes action? What of animals, whose actions are instinctual? Wouldn't the conditions of any given situation fall under the category of thought? Is thought then the only action? How is thought created, that it is the sole impetus in the universe? Does this prove intelligent design? That which inspires action could be even the influence of those around you, as almost 'voices' in one's head, could it not? To avoid a three page discussion on free will, I'll skip ahead to my conclusion: thought, being the intrinsic action, is not a decisive force, but the limiting out of all other possible forces. In a very real way, then, the action, (being the thought) is the exclusion, not the thing itself. The resulting material manifestation is the instinctual habit of the body as the thrall of the mind. The action is the negative, or projection, of the action. To throw the ball is the result of the mind limiting out all other possibilities except for throwing the ball, et cetera et cetera.

Color

I've been thinking a lot lately about color

My first thought was about what color is. Color, as you will find if you talk to anyone of science, is a result of the reflection of the majority of frequencies in the light spectrum, (for example, the plant is not green, the plant is every color EXCEPT green, which it rejects and spits contemptuously back in your eye). The world around us is actually the opposite of the world we perceive.

My second thought was to consider the ramifications of this junior high, universally realized fact of reality. Our perception of any given object is in all actuality the one quality that it ISN'T. We see the world in terms of its absences, its lack. What a rude awakening! The world we see is the reverse of the world in reality. Everything is its antithesis. Maybe I'm waxing poetic, but I'm beginning to believe that the tragedy of genius so well documented, particularly as great minds age, in the form of madness is nothing more than a select few of us being able to see reality as it truly is.

My final thought was for the adaptability of humanity. Viewed from a spiritual perspective, this fundamental truth is a natural lie. Who knows! Maybe the original lie. Maybe this is the innate quality of the human condition that doomed, (or blessed?) us with deceit. Evil has often used color. Look at the great contemporary thinker Benton's depiction of the sea pirate's color scheme. Darker=lesser, providing the happy pillagers with all the justification they needed for world domination. A system resulting in the oppression of the ‘darker’ peoples, when in reality it was the lighter of skin who were simply rejecting more light, more of what was perceived as good, just and pure. Maybe it was jealousy that lead the shiny man to enslave his less ambitious fellows. An envy of their internalized light felt by they who pushed light out, and were left dark inside.

Objectivism unfettered

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Objectivism

My first thought is that many will, as with most genius, misinterpret the idea. Just as the ideals of Nietzche's 'Superman' were misinterpreted and misunderstood, misused and mistreated, Rand's selfishness is liable to be likewise manhandled, mismanaged, and co-opted. Let me make this perfectly clear: the objectivist is the man who sustains himself internally, and only internally. The difference between the selfish and the 'second hander', or altruist, is that his center, his identity, his life and his being are, self-created, self-sustained, self-empowering…self. His interaction with others is distinct in that it is a complete choice, entirely unnecessary, and thus pure and wonderfully, beautifully true. The purpose in life for one who is selfish is to pursue that which brings them true happiness, that which their (objectivist, individual and un-bullied) morals dictate. Such a world as that of the objectivist would be a world of empowerment, of self-actualization. A world of truth, of growth and of peace.

My next thought was of the misuse and abuse of this ideology right in front of our faces. Friends and fellows: OBJECTIVISM DOES NOT EQUATE TO CAPITALISM. This (for some reason) unchallenged logical fallacy is one of the greatest farces in intellectual thought since the arguments of the three stooges that indicted Socrates¹. Let us review the exact logic of this little connection: objectivism means furthering and relying on one’s self and capitalism means working for your own advancement and profit. Both have to do with individualism and relying on yourself, so they are one and the same, capitalism being the economic system of objectivism. Bernstein, in his much-lauded Capitalist Manifesto^2, pedantically expressed the same delusion: “Egoism exhorts the pursuit of values – and is based on the nature of living beings, on their need to achieve values. The principle of individual rights that forms the essence of capitalism is simply the application of an egoistic ethics to politics.” Apologies for any blunt trauma or cranial hemorrhaging brought on by exposure to that distractingly unkempt, overweight verbiage. Here’s why this is a hasty generalization: objectivism is a redefining of social interaction by means of redressing the unnatural and malevolent house of cards that the human psyche had become. Capitalism is a system of absence, in which all trade occurs without intervention. The spirit of this system is claimed to be individualism, and self-reliance, as each man does only what he wants to and works only for his own advancement. The truth of it is that capitalism is a way of entangling individuals in the web of interdependent humanity, enmeshing them with their own desires. If one individual goes down, it hurts the capitalist system as a whole, even if it does leave an individual or two more room to spread out in the net. It is a system of voluntary interdependence. And what makes men volunteer? Money. Money is the key of the capitalist system, and the reason capitalism is NOT the application of objectivism. Money is a symbol, useless as a material and valuable only in it’s importance to other individuals, (for which I point of the phenomenon of the ‘value of the dollar’, and something used as empowerment. To have money is to be able to make things happen. Money is POWER. Rand herself scorns the capitalist system in fountainhead. Gail Wynand is the millionaire with vast power, huge networks and the fear and respect of his fellow man. This all collapses on him with the slightest breeze, (just as any house of cards would), as the people relinquish his importance and destroy him utterly, merely by turning their backs on him. The capitalist system is as repudiated by objectivism as the barbaric, childish power squabbling of statism. The fact of the matter is: objectivism is not reducible to individualism, self-reliance, or any other useless ideal floating around and waiting to be pinned haphazardly to this cause or that. Objectivism is it’s own system: a methodology, not an ideology

My next thought was of nit-picking and practical troubleshooting. Objectivism does not imply that leadership is impossible, as the work of a leader is the action they love, and their relationship with others is only that others help further their work. This is, of course, the ideal, and any leader can easily become a politician. My point is merely that a humanitarian is not necessarily a 'second-hander'. If what gives one true happiness is improving one's society, building and improving it just as Howard Roark, the protagonist of Rand's Fountainhead, builds and improves buildings, this does not necessarily have to be an Altruistic perspective. The important difference would of course be that the person in question has a passion for helping people, improving them and guiding them, and not a feeling of obligation to do so, or of power in doing so. Just as social interaction is still feasible, leadership and working with people can be objectivist. Like I said, Objectivism can be easily misinterpreted, so analyze with precision the fundamental elements of the critique: altruism, objectivism, egoism.

The same greatness of humanity that Rand worships could logically be applied by one to mean that the human, in his advancement, is the object of one's efforts. While objectivism is an indispensable contribution to the understanding of the human psyche, the cultural limitations of this philosophy must be taken into account.

My last thought is the other side- that this philosophy must be considered in terms of application before being fully adopted³. Obviously, one cannot simply choose whether to believe or disbelieve anything, much less how strong of an effect it will have, but projections of it's application as seen in the Fountainhead clearly illustrate some serious flaws, which are made less apparent due to the writer's license. The constant need for a middleman, one to deal with altruists, shows one flaw. This inability to engage is accentuated in the court trials of the story, particularly the second, as well as the need for Roark’s friends and clients to arrange for more contracts and spread his name. At the point where a paradigm shift is necessary for the Objectivist to reach the Altruist, there's the problem of communication breakdown. And yet, there's no reason that a moral of selfishness is intrinsically incapable of communicating with a second-hander. Roark's ability to identify the ideology, and even the history and development of, the altruistic paradigm shows his ability to interact with them, if only in a superficial way: in all reality, the objectivist ideology in not necessarily, (or even at all, really) mutually exclusive with dishonesty. It is therefore inconceivable for successful interaction with the real world to occur without the ability to operate with the altruist on 'their level', which leaves us with the problem of escaping a paradigm within it’s own language. Reframing paradigmatic consensus from within the system is one thing, but this is like trying to win chauvinists over with ‘women can be useful’ and ‘why damage your own property?’. Not very helpful.⁴

¹ Except for social darwinism, (not worthy of capitalization) which was about the same thing. The two bear shocking resemblance: both are stories of powerful, spectacular advances in thought that should have revolutionized secular, ethical, and philosophical thought, and were instead hijacked, nickel-plated, and put up on shrines for the capitalist circus, admission $5 for adults, $3 for kids.

² copyright 2005 by University Press of America, Inc. All rights reserved. Any and all legal pandering left out that is necessary to keep me out of jail is implied, a fact reinforced by me taking the time to type up this legal stuff and rediscover how to superscript stuff and add in symbols.

³ I suppose some may raise objection to the idea of considering ethics in terms of their practical application. I suppose if you like we could have that one out. It actually sounds fun, when argued from the standpoint of objectivism.

⁴ Hey, I get the whole ‘within system reform’ thing, but this isn’t an issue of reform vs. revolution. It’s an issue of having to be altruistic to interact with second handers. There seems to be no way to bridge the gap. Then again, here are these books that have successfully persuaded many people. Then again, the whole idea was co-opted into capitalism, so maybe any expression of objectivism will be rejected or turned into something altruistic… See my problem?