A simple connection

Of course *palm-forehead-smack*! I just realised - leftists look at the world of business and think it is a larger version of their tiresomely cliche` view of the schoolyard as seen in movies: brainless jocks at the top of the pecking order hoarding all the resources for their own interests, always bashing down the weaker but smarter kids, teachers/politicians dealing with insufficient funding unless they work in relation to the jocks' interests, etc etc etc. Heck, there's even at least one whiny song I know of explicitly about it - Simple Plan's "High School never ends".

Update: second *palm-forehead-smack*... the Comprachicos. Simple Plan don't know the half of it.

These movies and song etc are of course of the creations of other leftists, working from previous incarnations of the same mentality that set their premisses, and they so experience an echo-chamber that acts as psychological and psychepistemological reinforcement. That's the same lunatic mentality seen when they prattled on about how that the fake military letter about Bush at the heart of Rathergate was something that "bespeaks a truth" or whatever that commentary was even after the fakeness was demonstrated.

Question: is there any connection of the above to the hateful reaction to the Atlas Shrugged movie (which I haven't seen) that is more than just about the sociopolitical content? Specifically, I am wondering if they instinctively realise that the Altas Shrugged movie - however poor it may or may not be as a stand-alone piece of art - could hinder that echo-chamber mechanism at the unspoken psychoepistemological level. I am not in any position to find out, at present. This question must therefore one more thing for others, more immersed in concretes than I, to follow up on if they judge fit.

JJM

A question and a dare

A question for various segments of alleged atheists (they know who they are):

If you consider yourself truly to be atheist, why do speak and act as though emotions were some magical connection to an infallible source of truth and goodness that reason is impudent if it dares question?

Don't say I am not looking at you: all those who posit subjectivism - of either the individual or social variety - are as guilty as sin in this regard.

Emotions are essential for human life, without which life is neither worth living nor even capable of being lived. But emotions are not tools of cognition - they are not means by which one can determine "this is true" and "this is good". So, certainly, they have pride of place in human life - but cognition is not that place.

Here's the dare:

Find out how emotions arise. Then go find a standard of value without committing that sin in any shape or manner. And, once you've done that, question every value judgement you've ever made.

JJM

Flaming June

Peter Cresswell has an image of Frederic Lord Leighton's "Flaming June" up. I have a print of this on my bedroom wall, approximately 2' by 3', which I got from the Art Gallery of New South Wales in the Domain in Sydney. He writes:

I think we need some beauty to remind us why life is worth living.

Amen.

JJM

I write like...

I found this on Myrhaf's old website on the off-chance he'd written something new there:

I write like
Jonathan Swift

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

This is after me plugging in the first half dozen paragraphs from my chapter on value. I haven't read anywhere near enough of Swift (I think I read Gulliver's Travels, oh, twenty years or so ago as a child) to say whether I am tickled or irritated by the comparison, but I must say I do like this line from his epitaph: "Go forth, Voyager, and copy, if you can, this vigorous (to the best of his ability) Champion of Liberty."

JJM

Another JJM returns

Cool - JJ McCollough is back making more toons!

JJM

Avatar

I saw it (in 2D) last Tuesday, and I've now got the time to do a quick response.

Agora

This movie looks as though it could be brilliant. It is a rendition of the story of Hypatia, an influential philosopher and mathematician who studied and taught at the Library of Alexandria, Egypt, near the end of the (Western) Roman Empire in the early fifth century. Ostensibly it seems to be about the concrete event, but it is much more than that.

(update: hat-tip goes to CiceroSC)

I haven't seen it myself (I will probably have to buy a copy from Amazon, it being highly unlikely to be shown out in the Australian bush), so I am going by the trailer and the bits and pieces I have picked up from the web, along with what I know about the history itself (note: Carl Sagan's relation of her story in Cosmos seems to be a tad off, according to some). Warning: spoiler for those who don't know the story.