Checkered Premises

I'm an Objectivist. What does that mean? It means that my fundamental belief is in reality. It also means a lot of other things, but that's the main thing. It also means that most people on Earth disagree with me. Some people believe in reality but say a supreme being created it and could change it whenever he wishes. That means their fundamental belief is in the supreme being — not reality. Others claim it's naïve or dangerous to attempt to say anything about "a reality" we all share, especially that we all share it. With these people, whenever you say "reality" they feel the need to ask "Whose reality?" as if there can be no reality that is not a personal attribute. They take comfort in believing that their reality is not mine. People who disagree with me think "a reality" belongs to someone. They think that "each reality," as such, is created by its owner. That's the idea I firmly reject. Instead, I hold that reality...

There is truth, and there is bullshit. The truth may not be easy to find, but with effort, one can distinguish it from bullshit. Honesty is the dedication to truth and the rejection of bullshit. Dishonesty is the dedication to bullshit. Dishonest people promote bullshit, and they hope others will accept it. Dishonest people fear the truth. They repel or attempt to defeat or even destroy truthful people. Dishonest people want respect for their bullshit, and they despise anyone who rejects it. Honest people can mistakenly accept bullshit. They may err, but they seek evidence for their positions and will observe contrary evidence, so they can ultimately discover and reject the bullshit they have fallen for. A dishonest person denies evidence presented against his bullshit, and he's satisfied with his position as long as he can repel, defeat or destroy anyone who disagrees with him. An honest person seeks truth and doesn't wish to harm those who disagree with him. He wants to persu...

Music communicates an emotional experience through sound. Sometimes that experience is happy or triumphant. Sometimes it is sad, dreadful, or angry. Just like great fiction, music has happy and sad moments. I'm not going to define "music" here, but for now, I wish to include a broad range of works of organized sound, from songs to movie music to symphonies to pure percussion works. I'm talking about sound organized (composed) by people for human consumption. Such work serves lots of purposes, but the overarching purpose is to communicate an emotional experience to the listener. One can question why the particular experience is being communicated, i.e. why the composer/producer considers the experience important enough to communicate in a given context, but I hold that the greatness of music as such lies in how effectively an experience is transmitted through the sound. Quality music is integrated for the sake of the emotional purpose at hand. Anything that distracts t...

In a famous scene from the first of Tom Cruise's  Mission Impossible  movies, disavowed CIA agent Franz Krieger uses a harness, a carabiner, and four pulleys (one of them is arguably better called a "pushey") and rope to lower agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) through the ceiling of a room at CIA headquarters in order to steal something. It's a fun and suspenseful scene to watch, but here I want to talk about how silly this pulley system is. Franz is lying down in a narrow air duct above the vent through which he is lowering Ethan. The vent is near his feet, and he's slowly releasing line through a pulley (kept out of sight) that is mounted above him, and closer to the hole. From that pulley, the line comes back toward him, through a pulley that is attached with a carabiner to a harness on his chest. The line then goes back toward the hole, but up again to a different (visible) high-mounted pulley, then it descends toward the hole and over a "pushey" mounted...

I recently watched Wonder Woman (2017), and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020), both starring Gal Gadot. I remember when these movies came out. Everybody liked Wonder Woman, and most people did not like Wonder Woman 1984. Both of these movies have their share of silliness, and I admit that the first movie, Wonder Woman, stands up better. But even though Wonder Woman 1984 has some big things going against it, including a villain who is transparently a stand-in for Donald Trump (cheap shot, Hollywood), and some anti-wealth overtones, it has one surprisingly important thing in its favor: the theme is the danger of wishful thinking. It's a metaphysical theme. What's more, it's a true theme. The movie is a morality tale that uses a physical artifact to symbolize the human temptation to long for what is not over what is. In the movie, the artifact, in granting wishes, always exacts a hidden cost. It's hard not to salute such a well-conceived device to dramatize the theme that wishing ...

Should you want to live? Read that again. Should  you want to live? It's not an obvious question. It's a fishy  question. The term "should" implies a moral basis for an action. For an Objectivist, the purpose of morality is enjoyment, long-range, i.e. life. The whole problem of morality is that we often want to do things detrimental to  that goal . Moral thinking reveals the ideas and the courses of action that further our interest , rather than our immediate pleasure or satisfaction. If you don't want to live, moral arguments are irrelevant, because you've given up what moral argumentation  appeals to: the desire for durable joy . The choice to live is pre-moral. Morality is about how to live. Before you can care about morality, you must choose to live—to pursue happiness. Morality cannot make the choice for you. Some think that because "man's life" is the standard of value in Objectivism, bare survival is all that Objectivist morality invol...