SelfAdoration.com

[I grew up in a grimy little industrial town called Danville, Illinois. It wasn’t until I was four years old that I stumbled onto an atlas and discovered why I had felt so much out of place from the day of my birth. I graduated from Danville High School two years early — and left town the very next morning. My sister was in that same graduating class, but she has never felt herself to be anything but comfortably at home. She got as far away as the University of Illinois in Urbana, forty miles west, then came back to teach Shakespeare to the college-bound minority of Danville High School. She throws in one Ibsen play a year, and I wrote this essay as a hand-out for her classes. –GSS]

 
The latter half of the nineteenth century was a time of amazing progress for the West. Average life-expectancy doubled. Infant mortality was halved. The fruits of science and industry were spreading to even the poorest of the poor — hygiene, sanitation, bountiful harvests, rail and sea travel, the telegraph and the telephone, abundant cheap fabrics from the much-maligned mills of England and America. The simple innovation of gaslight, precursor to Edison’s bulb, effectively extended human life by half. The year of 1848 was the year of triumph for the Enlightenment, and monarchies fell all across Europe. The ideals of Voltaire and Jefferson were everywhere ascendant and humanity emerged, dazed and wan, from the prison of tyranny, seeming to dance in the clean, sweet air of liberty.

The latter half of the nineteenth century was a time of joy and beauty and purpose in life and in art, and this is one of the best kept secrets in the history of the West. Marx convinced the world that people who lived twice as long and no longer lost half their children in infancy were not just worse off but much worse off. The philosophers and artists who had brought the Enlightenment to full flower fell into disrepute and images of dark foreboding overtook the leisures of the theoried classes. In the life of the (more…)

If you can’t indulge your self, who can you indulge?

It’s not mine. Frank Zappa has it with yourself as one word. But it seems like a fine idea to me, in every respect. I’ll give you the best of me, you give me the best of you, and to hell with trying to second-guess our best.

I have more.

Jim Klein asks libertarians, conservatives and especially philosophers, Where is Man Alive! wrong? I have posted my own challenges, including this one, still unanswered. Meanwhile, in the world of newspaper news, Paul Ryan cannot run fast enough to get away from his past infatuation with Ayn Rand.

As a matter of fact — not opinion — your life is yours to do with as you choose. That sounds like an “ought” — an expression of hope or desire or whim — but in reality no one but your self can cause your purposive behavior. Your enemies will insist that your avid pursuit of your own values is evil and selfish and wrong, but they do this precisely because only you can control your actions. If they could drive you like a car — or even like a horse — they would have no need to hector or wheedle or threaten you all the time.

This is the fact that Paul Ryan is unwilling to uphold. The sad part is that, most probably, he fears the savagery of the Marxist collectivists less than the scorn of religious collectivists. In any case, the entire libertarian/conservative movement is unwilling to defend the self — not as a matter of fact, nor even as a matter of right. In consequence, they cannot but yield to collectivism in any conflict. The collective (which does not exist) cannot control individual people (who actually do exist), but if those individuals lack the philosophical rigor and the intellectual vigor to defend the undeniable facts of reality, everyone involved will affect to make believe to pretend to renounce the self — which is what Ryan is doing.

Sez who? Ayn Rand:

When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side.

To make things even easier for the folks who can’t bring themselves to take a stand on this issue, below I am quoting from the last half of Chapter 6 of Man Alive!

If you really, really (more…)

Money quote: “Five hundred days from today, we could be living in a different world.”

This is more from this week’s video/podcast.

In this clip, I discuss the idea of evangelizing egoism. Here’s why it matters:

The typical libertarian/conservative strategy of lamenting everything in high dudgeon is useless. It’s preaching to the choir, but, much worse, it serves mainly to convince the choir that things can only get worse.

This is completely false. Any problem created by the human mind can be solved by the human mind. But that tautology illuminates the path we must take, doesn’t it? It’s not the state we need to change, nor the legislature. It’s the people.

Human liberty is the consequence of individualism, but individualism is the politics of egoism. We will not turn socialists into libertarians by yelling at them or about them, but we can turn anegoists into egoists — and hence collectivists into individualists — if we can show them why self-adoration offers a better way of life for every human being.

That’s where Man Alive! comes in. People who understand the value of the self can work out everything else on their own. People who do not are frail converts at best, doomed to be burned out in short order by all the bad news libertarian and conservative pundits constantly spew.

If you want to change the world, evangelize egoism. Nothing else that you do will even slow — much less reverse — the tide of tyranny.

My friend Richard Nikoley, who runs FreeTheAnimal.com, turned me on to Call Recorder for Skype. I’ve had Skype on my iPad since I got it, but I’ve never played with it. And I tried to make video-interview-style broadcasting work a few years ago, with limited success. For one-on-one calls, at least, Call Recorder seems to be a big win.

What I’d like to do is record video conversations by Skype and then make the recordings available here. Think of it as talk radio with moving pictures. Big commitment on your part, since I’m a no-holds-barred kind of guy. But I think it could be illuminating for everyone involved.

So are you game? You’ll need a free Skype account plus a webcam and some kind of audio input. If you have a recently-made computer, all of that is probably built-in. Hit me by email if you’d like to give it a try.

I took up the fundamental immorality of abortion last week, and I addressed some additional issues in this week’s video/podcast. That particular chunk, about twelve minutes, is shown in the YouTube clip below.

In the video, I focus on specious pro-abortion arguments, in particular those put forth by Ayn Rand. I link this back to a bogus idea called the “prudent predator,” illustrating why both claims are essentially equivalent — and equally invalid.

I am thus a very mixed blessing for the self-anointed “students of Ayn Rand.” I take away the pain inflicted upon their minds by an argument they could never answer, but at the cost of ripping away a bit of their holy writ.

A special note for the followers of Ayn Rand’s intellectual errors heirs: Where am I wrong? If they won’t illuminate their disagreements with Man Alive!, the logical inference to be drawn is that they can’t. The emperor is naked. Now everybody knows.

As with everyone reading here, if you find you like my arguments better than the ones you’ve been reciting so far, there’s a reason for that: I’m working from an accurate understanding of human nature, not trying to shoehorn humanity — and your mind — into an arbitrary dogma.

Watch me work:

“Lamenting vice is not virtue.” Greg wrote that, and I wanted to argue. But of course, he’s right. Here’s more — lamenting anything is not virtue; only virtuous action is virtue. Duh.

OTOH, doing something about vice can be virtuous, at least if that vice somehow interferes with your life. Greg likes to speak of a “calculus of loss,” whereby each choice of an alternative is negative on the number line. I can go along with that, but if one is faced with such an alternative, surely choosing the “least negative” is an instance of virtue…assuming there’s no choice available that’s actually positive on the number line.

I mean, we have to live in this universe, after all. So this is not about lamenting, but about doing. Take a gander at this, and tell me if this has anything to do with your life — if it puts you in the position of having to make some tough choices going forward. H/T to commenter Ellendra here. Feast your eyes on what others are doing with your life…

http://regulations.gov

I know, I know…”What can I do about this?”

My answer? Start simple. Learn who you are, and start that by learning what you are. Read the book and understand. Once you have your mind, you’ll know what to do.

I started this morning with a link to this post. In it, I see that my post, “Where Is He Wrong?” is linked. Why? According to the title, “Right-wingers mistake humorous Audi ad for Obama policy; embarrassment should follow.” It’s about a link to here, that I got from here, concerning Federal policy with regard to “environmental justice,” and it was one of seventeen distinct links in my post above concerning the sorry state of our current society, caused largely by government encroachment into private lives.

So what does the author say? Nothing, of course. Like everything else in the world babbling from the mouths of “thought leaders,” it says nothing, or it says lies. This is exactly what Greg’s book deals with, and one could hardly ask for a better example. Words are thrown out there, declarations are made, conclusions are implied, but no facts.

I could write a whole essay just on the title. “Right-wingers”…moi? No right-winger here, just a guy looking to live his own life. Maybe that’s “right-wing” compared to the commie-libs who want to live everyone else’s life, but I think that just makes me a person.

“Mistake”? What mistake? The link was to a site which I believe was the source of this story, but it wasn’t the story itself. The story is in a pdf document, put out by the government. No mistake — the document exists and it says what the source says it says.

“Humorous Audi ad”? The story, nor the pdf document, is about the Audi ad; it’s about government policy and it’s a direct cite of government policy.

Get it? Even in the title, words are bandied about as if they create reality, rather than reflecting reality. Here we have another “profound thinker,” who will tell you what to think, the facts be damned. Check out some of this “support” in the essay…

“…dull, run-of-the-mill document out of the Department of Homeland Security.” See, there’s nothing there, so move along folks. It’s just a “dull, run-of-the-mill document.” Well, what does that mean? How many people — how many millions of dollars — were involved in this? (more…)

This week’s video and podcast are linked below. The headline summarizes the content fairly well. With respect to the subjunctive, I’m hitting four ideas fairly briefly: Wanting, dreading, fearing the disapproval of other people and trying to have efficacy in the past. I mention a post I wrote at SplendorQuest.com called How you came to be enslaved — and how you can free yourself:

You live your life cowering in terror of one imaginary catastrophe after the next, but every one of those supposed disasters really is the same one fear: You live in horror of being on the wrong side of someone else’s bad opinion of you. You can come up with as many names as you like for that horror — shame, guilt, fear, embarrassment, mortification — but these all come down to the same thing, to be the object of public opprobrium — any disapproval at any time, from anyone or any group of people. Your only real hope for safety is to become one with the group, whichever group you happen to be in at that moment. If the massed force of collective scorn is to be deployed, your furtive hope is to be among the folks doing the sneering or snickering, not the poor sap being held up to public ignominy.

Here are links to other posts cited in the video:

Evangelizing egoism.

The morality of abortion. There is a link within that post to a google search of “prudent predator” arguments.

The works of Richard Mitchell.

And with that, on to the show. The audio-only version of this video is lined below, or you can find it on iTunes.

I stole that title from here. I don’t like plagiarizing, but that’s all I want to know. Man Alive! has been online for a baker’s dozen days now, and the silent response is deafening.

Get it? That’s all I want to know. Where is he wrong?

I’m a bad hero-worshipper and I don’t worship Greg Swann. He’s been a good friend, plus he’s a productive businessman, an honest guy and just generally a man of integrity overall. So am I, and this is why I give him the credit he’s due. As I’ve written elsewhere, Crick & Watson discovered the nature of DNA and Greg Swann discovered the nature of the self. That’s all. Yes, it’s extremely important and yes, it can change the world…but to me, it’s just a simple identification and that’s about the size of it.

The function of our minds it to identify things. Our eyes are to sense wavelengths of light, our ears are to hear audible sounds, our noses are to smell various chemicals, and our minds are to abstractly classify that which we sense and that of which we’re aware. How tough is that? Is this not obvious?

Here’s how I really wanted to title this post…

Chicken-Shit Philosophy

Thousands of people have now seen Man Alive!, including a whole host of supposed “thinkers” and “philosophers.” And while there have been some overwhelmingly flattering comments to Greg, mostly in email, there’s been nary a public word from these “philosophers,” formal or otherwise.

Well, why the hell is that? Are there falsehoods in the book? If so, let’s see ’em. Set ’em out. I don’t want to go around believing any falsehoods, especially about stuff this important. There’s a link right up top just for that, but nothing appears.

Does this mean all these thinkers understand that Greg is exactly right? Then why no comments about that? Is it too obvious, too minor? If it’s so obvious, then how come nobody else has ever written or expressed these ideas? Sure, many people have come to similar conclusions…all the way back to Epicurus and as recently as Ayn Rand. But none of them hit (more…)

This weblog and Man Alive! both continue to suffer from a dearth of inbound links. That’s shameful, even if it’s completely predictable.

My name may be unfamiliar to you, but I am very well-known to net.connected libertarians, as is Jim Klein, my partner in this adventure. Silence from the state, the church and the academy are to be expected. They won’t know what’s hit ’em until our war is already won. But the silence from the libertarians is simply disgraceful.

We actually lost a link this week. Apparently Jason Stotts got yelled at for linking to Psalm in last week’s Objectivist Round-Up. Very sad, considering that the essay Stotts spiked was the best short rendition of the existential experience of self-love I have ever written. Sadder for Stotts and the “students of Objectivism” that their proudest expression of intellectual independence is to stick their fingers in their ears.

They have worse troubles. I destroyed every pro-abortion argument this week, including Ayn Rand’s anti-egoistic political mis-directions. Since it is based in actual human nature, the moral philosophy presented in Man Alive! dispenses with every boojum under their beds, but the price of entry they must pay is very high: They have to stop aping Rand and her intellectual errors and learn to think for themselves.

None of this matters in the long run. Man Alive! will surely be the most popular piece of samizdat in the American gulags, if things come to that. But I don’t want for things to come to that. Very much the contrary. And that’s why it is disgraceful that libertarian pundits are not linking to the book. Egoists — human beings who fully understand the idea of self-adoration — are the only people who can stem the tide of tyranny, and Man Alive! exists to massively increase the number of egoists. If you are not working help people become egoists, you’re working for the enemy by default.

So what can you do?

Very simple: Link. Linking free slaves, because linking is the way we share the riches of the internet with the people we know and love. Here are three very easy linking (more…)

Man Alive! doesn’t have a dust-cover, but if it did, that headline would make the perfect jacket blurb. It comprises a pocket summary of what the book is intended to do: I want to show honest people how to more perfectly express their until-now-stunted self-adoration, and I want to drive the enemies of the human self out of their minds.

Meanwhile (memewhile), the pretend-friends of human liberty are forming an echo-chamber orchestra to play and replay a smarmy video called “If I wanted America to fail.” I have no idea who is behind this funereal lament. The putative web site doesn’t resolve. If I had to guess, I’d say the money to pay for the video came from oil and mining interests, but I suppose that comes down to (oil)well-poisoning.

But that doesn’t even matter. Here’s why:

If I wanted civilization to fail, I would devote my life to pissing and moaning about the collapse of civilization. I wouldn’t do anything at all, and I wouldn’t say anything except to bitch that no one else is doing anything, either.

Do you want to know what Starnesville looks like? Take a long hard look in the mirror.

If you don’t like what you see, at least you know what needs to be fixed if you want civilization and America and your life to succeed.

We don’t need more Republicans. There are plenty already, and they’re useless. The Libertarians are doubly useless: Ineffectual and pedantic. What we need are more egoists. Each one of us is indomitable as a manifestation of human nature. But egoists know they are indomitable.

Do you want to change the world for the better? Start by changing your self. Once that project is begun, take up The Conversation with your spouse, your kids, your parents and siblings, your friends, your net.friends, the people at work.

In other words: Don’t mourn. Proselytize.

Everything starts with you. If you want civilization to succeed, succeed.

And if you want it to fail? Just keep pissing and moaning. It worked in Starnesville, and it will work for you, too.

04/23: Kicked this back to the top of the blog to highlight the irony of it all. Hundreds of people have seen this post, perhaps thousands more by echos and emails. Cum taces, clamas. The silence of Libertarian pundits, bloggers and activists is a concession by default. See the movie-of-the-week to find out what it all means to you. –GSS

 
I swear to god, for the first time in my life I cannot seem to make an enemy on the internet!

As a matter of strategy, this is what Man Alive! seeks:

To disintermediate the ruling class.

Disintermediation means cutting out the middle-man, and, by teaching you a new way of thinking about human nature and about your own unique self, the book puts you in charge of your own philosophical affairs. You no longer have to turn to so-called “thought leaders” — most of whom are frauds anyway — for answers — which answers are almost always contrary to your own interests in any case.

My objectives are precise and concise:

I want to take the claim of justice away from the state, the mantle of epistemic authority away from the academy and the experience of reverence away from the church. I want to put all of those things back where they belong — in your mind. There is no middle-man on truth.

If you didn’t catch all that in the book, you need to read it again. My own practice is to read any serious book at least three times. Like this: 1. What is the argument? 2. What are my questions? 3. How are those addressed?

I don’t much care for the way thoughtless “thought leaders” squeal, squawk and squall when you call “Bullshit!” on ’em, but I thought for sure they would at least rise to the bait challenge I’ve laid down. What do I hear, instead? Crickets.

I know we’ll be hearing from those folks in due course. When they come to notice that the traffic at the door is all one-way, outbound, they will find plenty to hate on these pages.

But I was expecting that the libertarians would be all over Man Alive!

Why? Because it’s the magic (more…)

Episode Two of the podcast. You can find the video version here.

Here is the link to the iTunes page for the podcast.