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

PBI

When starting to read this article I was ambivalent at first - I'm skeptical of modern psychology, but I also know they're not all bad. I certainly don't know enough to make a definitive statement, but my understanding is that a fair proportion of psychological problems arise from bad methods of thought and bad content. For all I know, Dr Seligman might have had legitimate improvements on these to offer soldiers. He is certainly quite right to connect the phenomenon in soldiers with the same for everyone and connect it to the broader question of how we approach life as such and deal with problems in it.

But then I read this: