"Need" as the Ultimate Justification

I believe the liberal mind is a more socially accepted version of the criminal mind. Both justify taking other people's money and property for their purposes.

The human condition at bottom is that one must traverse the gap from "need" to "value produced" which satisfies the need. The need is generated by a living organism using its energy to maintain its life. That process, life, gives rise to needs which must be fulfilled if the life is to continue.



The blue arrow is "the gap." To mature as a human being means that one is able to navigate that gap and provide for his needs in a way that works while at the same time doesn't undermine his continued ability to provide for his needs.

The criminal mind and the liberal mind emphasize "need" as a lack - ultimately a lack of stuff or status. They think it unfair that the needy are not provided for. They believe that it is fundamentally unjust that everyone is not provided for - that it is some kind of cosmic injustice and that the world, because of this, is basically unfair. Because this is unjust, they say, they feel justified to correct this injustice and that is why they can, with a straight face, advocate taking your stuff, destroy a country such as America that has a system that allows people to traverse the gap of being human and create value, giving away other people's values (money) to poor people and poor nations, etc., etc.

Every time they open their mouths, they reinforce the "goodness," the "appropriateness" of being needy. When Obama brings some poor person or crippled person or in some way needy person onto the stage with him, he wants to hear about their neediness - the more needy the better - and he adds importance to their being needy. (I find this embarrassing for the person he is using.) He gives them his ear and kindness, attention and ultimately some money or goods. The one thing he doesn't do is talk about how they resourcefully went from need to results that satisfied their need. To focus on that would mean he would have no reason to exert his power over us and take our stuff.

Because Obama and Michelle, the current point people for this view, and the rest of the liberals do this, I consider them and their kind the embodiment of evil in mankind. (I'm not talking about evil in the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments manner. Because man possesses volition, he chooses his course of action. He can choose to get across that gap, using his talents and mind to do that or not and this is his fundamental choice - to live as a human being or not.) There is nothing evil about having needs. We all have them by virtue of being alive. Granting them ultimate status and holding them aloft rather than supporting getting across the gap - by being creative and productive - is evil.

The ultimate joke, though, is on those that hold aloft need as the ultimate in importance. Although evil appears potent because it counts on fear and causes havoc in human lives by destroying their values and it always seems pleasurable in the short run, it is ultimately impotent. That is because it is not about developing the means for producing real value and satisfying needs. To continue, the mind besieged by evil must feed off the people who do traverse the gap since they are the ones who know how to get from need to value produced. (Frederick Douglas made clear that taking care of the needy for its own sake provides nothing lasting: "A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing.")

When I hear/see Obama, Michelle, the Pope, mother Theresa when she was alive, Pelosi, Schumer, Reid, Weiner, Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and thousands of other such people, I see evil incarnate. They foster a world that doesn't and cannot work, and they work to create parasites wherever they go. There is nothing more hideous that that. (If you think Mother Theresa was humane, she had millions of dollars and would not spend a frickin' dime on having the dying people she cared for have some measure of comfort as they went through the dying process. She could have conditioned the air because she could have easily have afforded it. Why? Because she thought suffering was the way to becoming whole - and holy, i.e., coming to know god. Source: The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens.)

The criminal mind is always justified to commit his crime. Why? Because to his mind, the world is not just and did not treat him fairly for him to properly mature when he was dependent on others. To him, this shouldn't be. (I wonder if some portion of humanity is pissed because their God or their ancestors' God threw they out of the Garden of Eden? There everything was provided. Now they must work for the values they need.) He stays needy rather than find a way to clear away his fears and his grievances such that he become a value producer.

A person stuck in need ends up hating the good (value production) for being the good. (The good is value production and virtue is action which produces value.) Hating the good for being the good is envy and this mental orientation is sourcing the destruction of values now upon us.

So how do we get through this? Create and produce value. In everything you do. You will love it and will feel so nourished by it.

The torch represents the value you seek to produce that
lights your way. The stiffened arm is your moral strength
to get on with it and produce the result!

The New Hero

Only the heroes of the human spirit are able to take the circumstances as they come and mold them into triumph. Morally certain of their talent, their dedication and their right to be great, Olympic champions are true heroes.


Phelps Faces the Strain Of Making Waves
By Sally Jenkins. Sports columnist, Washington Post
Photo credit: Paul Gilham/Getty Images
Wednesday, August 13, 2008

BEIJING

After a while this gold medal thing can wear on a guy, even one with Michael Phelps's seemingly non-biodegradable constitution. It suddenly all seemed tiring, the cycle of eat-sleep-swim, the ice baths, the thousands of meters of warm-ups and warm-downs, the constant carbo-loading. Phelps stood in the pool after winning his fourth gold medal of the Summer Games, ripped off his water-filled goggles and chucked them over his shoulder as if he was sick of wearing them. He looked at the clock, unsmiling, and grabbed at his side under the water, as if the race had given him a stitch, instead of the all-time mark for Olympic bullion.

It was Phelps's fifth straight day of competition at the Water Cube, and suddenly the strain showed. It was apparent that this pursuit of eight golds is not as automatic as we, watching with our feet propped up, might think. With one goggle mishap, Phelps could have seen the end of his Olympic record quest through a pair of bloodshot eyes.

As soon as he dived in the water at the start of the 200-meter butterfly, his goggles tore away from his face and water poured into them. "They filled right up," he said.

By the 150-meter mark he couldn't see the wall. Phelps had won three previous gold medals by eclipsing world records in each, and he had every expectation of doing so again in the 200 fly. He has owned the fly record since 2001, when he was a slack-jawed, mouth-breathing teenager who had to ask his coach, Bob Bowman, "Who is this Mark Spitz guy, and why does everybody keep asking me about him?"

But Phelps wasn't thinking about a world record as the chlorine stung his eyes. "I was just hoping I was winning and hoping I could get my hand to the wall first," he said.

For the first time in the Beijing Games, he swam as if it was effortful. Half-blind as his goggles sloshed with water, he searched for the black T on the bottom of the pool, and tried to gauge his distance to the wall by counting his strokes. His time of 1 minute 52.03 seconds barely clipped Laszlo Cseh of Hungary (1:52.70) at the touch. It was his closest individual finish so far, and a second slower than he wanted, and he was clearly dismayed. "It's fine," he said unenthusiastically.

This is the point Phelps has reached at these Olympics: He is now discerning between great gold medals, and the merely mundane ones.
It was only when Phelps's irritation at the goggle malfunction had worn off, and he stood on the medal podium with yet another ornament slung around his neck, that the realization hit him: He had just broken the all-time career total for Olympic gold medals with 10, surpassing the nine held by the likes of Spitz and Carl Lewis.

"I was in the awards ceremony for the 200 fly when I started thinking about it and that's when I started tearing up," he said. "To be at the top with so many great athletes who have walked in the Olympic Games, it's a pretty amazing feeling."

Phelps's relentless rhythm of excellence is in danger of robbing him, and us, of proper appreciation for what he might accomplish here. The goggle mishap was evidence of just how fragile his quest really is, all of his painstaking preparation and magnificent effort could have been undone with one fluke.

But it was also evidence of what a towering mental giant he is. It was 10:23 in the morning when got out of the pool with a sour face after swimming the fly. At 11:20 he hopped back in it for the 4x200 freestyle relay -- and won his fifth gold medal of the Games, this time with the sort of lofty world record performance he wanted. Phelps swam the leadoff leg in a spectacular collective assault on the world mark with Ryan Lochte, Ricky Berens and Peter Vanderkaay, who combined to shatter it by 4.68 seconds. That's no typo. Phelps, Lochte, Berens and Vanderkaay swam nearly five seconds faster than any team ever, cutting so fast through the water that the other teams seemed to be swimming in another pool.

Phelps won his first gold five days ago with a world record in the 400 individual medley that is widely regarded as one of the great swims of all time, a collectible. From then on, something spectacular has been expected of him every day -- his teammates have predicted that he is on his way to an epic meet. "He's gonna be on fire now," Aaron Peirsol said. "He'll be hard to stop."

As record after record has fallen, evidence has mounted that he could be on his way to the greatest Olympics ever -- a tsunami of records that will wash over and eradicate all other accomplishments. "And it ain't over yet," said Eddie Reese, the U.S. men's swimming coach.

Phelps is now more than halfway to the eight, and his greatest individual challenge has been a pair of busted goggles. We're beginning to take his performances for granted, to expect the same from him that he expects from himself. The trick, as Phelps turns the corner in his chase for eight golds, is to properly admire his last few attempts. Let's not forget to sightsee along the way, to stop and stare at an athlete who is one of the great wonders of the world. Otherwise, we won't fully realize what we got to see.

The New Slavery

Obama Reveals What Change Means



The video was produced by http://www.nakedemperor.com/,
a media organization dedicated to unmasking the shibboleths
and platitudes of our culture.

The race is on and the task of critically thinking people is to learn about our candidates and what they hold as dear, in their character and in reality, that will affect our lives. It requires sorting through the information and identifying the fundamental values important to you for producing a political climate in which it is possible for any human being to surive and thrive to the extent that he is rational.

In my opinion, Obama is a divider when it comes to "all people." He advocates programs which take from one and give to another, not because of a justice based on the right of every individual human being to his life, but based on the facts of particular human beings which are not primary to human beings as a species. This error produces division and fighting among men.

Of what importance is one's economic status at the moment? For many being poor is the spur to make something of themselves and acquire wealth through honest trade with others. Of what importance is one's skin color? Many of all the skin colors of humanity have made something of themselves and reached the pinnacles of their chosen fields. Of what importance is one's gender, one's sexuality or one's handicap given that women, gays and the blind have become supremely successful at what they have chosen to do in life. None of these are essentials.

Politically, the law should be blind to all of these non-essential aspects of individual human beings otherwise it is not a just law. Law is not a primary based on any old ethics whether it be from a philospher, the Bible or some concensus of society. A just law is grounded in the metaphysically eternal nature of human being and cannot violate that nature.

McCain is also a divider (in the basic sense I refer to above and not in the sense that people are going to have differing and often opposite opinions on a particular issue) in some issues of his campaign. No national leader at this time is able to express the principles on which this nation was founded. Some on the Right try to say that we are Christian nation. Some on the Left say that freedom is about equal opportunity and circumstances. Baloney. That's NOT the essence of the Constitution, as it so ably clarified. It's about one's individual right to Life, Liberty, Property and the freedom to pursue that which has him Happy.

At best our political leaders have been able to express that underground sense of life that most of us share as American. I look forward to the day when these values find public expression and exist in full sunlight.

The culture of this nation is playing out the errors of the past. There is a philosophy which lays out the basis of a rational and just foundation for living a human life, a life possible for human being in his noblest sense. It is Objectivism.