From Taleb's recommendation in Antifragile, I read Moral Letters to Lucilius - Letters from a Stoic by Lucius Annaeus Seneca. (Maybe I thought he said it was "overrated." :-) )

Seneca was a philosopher born in 4BC who moved to Rome and tutored emperor Nero (hence his relevance to Taleb's pseudo-realistic plot). He spent many years of exile in Corsica and corresponded with Lucilius, a Roman knight.

The content of his letters proved to be less about the specific and more about general philosophy, and these letters are sort of a mini-handbook for life. I was impressed to see him talk about a number of quite "advanced" topics that were ahead of his time period, such as his plea for the equality of the sexes, the sanctity of marriage, and the humane, almost equal treatment of slaves.

I found myself agreeing to a lot of his points, especially about not wasting time and about envisioning (and living out) one's worst fears in order to realize that they aren't that bad. We can be aware of risks and dangers, but we should not be ruled by worry for all the things that may one day happen. I liked his plea for rationality and individualism, and I can see all the ways his philosophy inspired and gave a foundation for many of Taleb's points.

Below are my notes on the book, which is divided into 65 of his letters to Lucilius.

1 on saving time
All we have is time
Do not waste it and live each moment for purpose

2 discursiveness in reading
Well ordered mind can remain in one place and linger in its own company
Cannot shift so much between authors or countries
Want friends not acquaintances
Read standard authors
Digest each thoroughly
Contented poverty is an honorable estate
Proper limits of wealth: first to have necessary then to have enough

3 on true and false friendship
True friendship when can trust another man like self
Don't misuse the word
Treat men as loyal so they will be

Letter four on the terrors of death
No man can have a peaceful life who only thinks about lengthening it
There's nothing to be dreaded about death
Need to know how to die
No good thing renders happiness unless can reconcile with its loss
Encourage and toughen spirits against mishaps
He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich
Possessions make us threadbare

5 on the philosophers mean
Avoid perverted forms of self display to draw comment
Philosophy gives sympathy for all men
Live according to nature
Do not torture body
Philosophy calls for plain living but not for penance
Cease to hope and you will cease to fear
Fear follows hope
A mind that is in suspense about the future
Should adapt ourselves to the present instead of sending our thoughts along to the future
Beasts avoid the dangers in front of their eyes and once they're past them they cease to care
But our memory recalls dangers and our foresight anticipates them

Letter six: on sharing knowledge
No good thing is pleasant to possess without friends to share it
Begin to be a friend to yourself

Letter 7: on crowds
Horrors of roman death games
Withdraw into yourself and only be around those who can make you a better man
One man means to me as much as a multitude and a multitude means to me as much as one man
I write this not for the many but for you; each of us is enough of an audience for each other
Scorn the applause of the audience

Eight: on the philosophers seclusion
Withdraw from men and work for later generations
Treat body rigorously so it is not disobedient to the mind
Eat and drink just to relieve hunger
If u enjoy real freedom then must be slave to philosophy
Gifts of chance are not to be regarded as our possessions

9: on philosophy and friendship
Wise man is self sufficient but desires friends
Can do without them but desires not to
Desires friends for practicing friendship
Natural context and not his own needs draws ppl to friends
Easier to conquer tribe than one man

10: on living to oneself
Pray for sound mind and health

11: on the blush of modesty
Shyness and public speaking
Choose a master to help regulate character

12: on old age
When man has been able to say I have lived then every day is extra gift
Best ideas are common property
Many quotations from Epicurus

13: on groundless fears
There are more things that can frighten us than can crush us
Don't be unhappy until the bad stuff happens
We are in the habit of imagining sorrow
Look forward to better things
Stop getting ready to live all the time

14: on the reasons for withdrawing from the world
We should not live for the body but we cannot live without it
We fear want, sickness, troubles from the stronger
Have nothing others can snatch from you
Avoid hatred jealousy and scorn
The Wise man regards the reason behind his actions but not the results which are in fortunes hands
He who enjoys riches least enjoys riches most

15: brawn and brains
Must study philosophy to be well
Limit the flesh
Do short exercises to tire body quickly
Some weights and jumping
Come back quickly to exercising mind daily
Mind can take break

16: philosophy the guide of life
If you live according to nature you'll never be poor
If you live according to opinion you'll never be rich

17; philosophy and riches
Poverty is contented in fulfilling pressing needs
Live simply
Start studying philosophy now instead of first acquiring living
Study while acquiring
Learn to endure hunger
The acquisition of riches is a change of troubles and not an end
Ends letters with a "gift": quotes from Epicurus (who advocated pleasure??)
Malady goes with the man's mind not the riches

18 festivals and fasting
Stop toga
One may holiday without extravagance
Train body and soul for crisis before it comes
Set aside certain days to have the scantiest of fare
Begin having business relations with poverty

19: worldliness and retirement
Reflect with whom eating more than what

20: practicing what u preach
See if ur dress and ur house inconsistent
Persist and do not jump tracks
Wisdom is always desiring the same things and always refusing the same things
Poverty will keep for u ur true and tried friends
He is truly great who can be poor amid riches

21: renown my writings will give u
His name will last
Do not add to his honors/pleasures but subtract from his desires

22; futility of halfway measures
Do not attempt anything until suitable time

23: true joy from philosophy
Do nut find joy in useless things
Learn to feel real joy
Rejoice only in that which comes from ur own store
They live ill who are only beginning to live
Must be able to live as if already had complete life

24: despising death
Don't anticipate trouble by worrying about future
Assume all trouble will happen and then estimate all fear and realize not significant
Death is the last but not the only death

25: on reformation
Prefer to lack success than lack faith to try something difficult
Live life in spiritual company of great man like Epicurus
Only time to withdraw into solitude is when in crowd

26: old age and death
Getting ready to pass judgment on self
Body getting tired but mind still sharp
Think on death
No slavery for one who can die

27: the good which abides
Admitting to lucilius his innermost thoughts
Cannot buy or borrow a sound mind

28: travel as cure for discontent
Thoughts follow u wherever u go
U flee along with self
Let aside burdens of mind
The person u are matters more than where u r
See entire world as ur country
Knowledge of sin is beginning of salvation

29: critical condition of morcelinus
Do not advise men who are not ready
Never cater to crowd for what I know they do not approve and what they approve I do not know

30 on conquering the conqueror
Equality of death
Think on death to not fear it

31 siren songs
Stop up ears
Do not toil for no reasons
Good is the knowledge of things

32 progress
Be unknown to most ppl

33 futility of learning maxims
Don't chase after choice extracts
Full texts as important and great 
Make extracts not memorize others'
One thing to remember and another to know
Investigate and don't just follow

34 promising pupil
Proud of lucilius

35 friendship of kindred minds
Friendship vs love

36 value of retirement
Young man must store up
Old man must use

37 allegiance to virtue
Reason as ruler
Not impulse

38: quiet conversation

39 noble aspirations

40: proper style of philosophers discourse
Real trace of absent friend
Speech should be composed
Eloquence flows gently and slowly
Ease rather than speed

41 on the gd within us
Man as reasoning animal
Live in accordance with his own nature

42 on values
See how much we must pay in non cash for various things
Often pay of ourselves
He that owns himself loses nothing

43 relativity of fame
Don't regard yourself based on how others see u or gossip

44 philosophy and pedigrees
Promotion based on work and noble mind
Rejecting no one

45 sophistical argumentation
Exercises wit to no person
Useless word plays

46 a new book by lucilius
Eloquent book
Reading twice

47 man and slave
Really equal
All men treated same by fortune
Good to dine with slaves
Slaves talk about their master
See in slave a freeborn man just as u can be seen as a slave
Treat your inferiors as u would ur betters
Let Slave talk and live with u
Good material stands want of an artist
All men slaves to fear

48 quibbling as bad for philosopher
Prefer frankness and simplicity

49 shortness of life
Infinitely swift is passage of time
All in memory
Point of time infinitesimal
Don't waste time on superfluous things
Silliness of dialectic poets
Good in life does not depend on length but on fullness
Nature gave us reason
Truth is simple; don't over complicate language

50 our blindness and its cure
Nobody sees them self as blind
But the blind ask for guides
Learning virtue means unlearning vice
Virtue is according to nature

51 morals
Avoid resort town
Choose austere living place

52 choosing our teachers
Learn from ancients
Watch acts not words of teacher

53 faults of the spirit
Study philosophy

54 asthma and death
Death just nonexistence and had that before life and was not uncomfortable
Condition before birth is death

55 villa
Carried by ppl for better health on beach

56 quiet and study
Heard noises from bathing house below him
Words distract more than noises
Force mind to concentrate

57 trials of travel

58 on being
Words become molded with age
Substance and life
Genus
Dividing existing things
Plato idea
Pattern
Form

59 pleasure and joy
Accept no flattery from others

60 harmful prayers
Support ourselves instead
He really lives who makes himself useful

61 meeting death cheerfully
Live every day as if it were a full life
Ready to depart
Dying well
Make ready for death like making ready for life

62 good company

63 grief for lost friends
Good to weep but not to excess
Greedily enjoy friends now
Time heals
Reflect on own mortality and that of loved ones

64 philosophers task
Ancients discovered cures for body and spirit

65 first cause
Cause/Reason and matter make everything
Beginnings of all things
Everything made of matter and gd

For the last 2 months, my mind has been blown on a daily basis by the book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

This is the longest and deepest I've gotten into a book since high school, and I found pretty much every chapter thought-provoking and lifestyle-questioning. I already felt like my mind had been blown, and that was just after finishing the prologue.

"Antifragile" is the word that Taleb coins for the concept of gaining from disorder (the real opposite of fragility, which is not the same thing as "robust"). The book covers the topics of philosophy, finance, math, statistics, lifestyle, food, fitness, education, and history, and it applies various strategies and concepts to finding ways to live more naturally and with more antifragility.

I can see how many people will be angered and offended by the direct manner in which Taleb denounces the professions of consultant, banker, economist, academic, business school professor, soccer mom, and tourist. I think books that question a lot of fundamentals are the only ones that bring actual progress to our lives as human thinkers, and this book does exactly that.

Overall, I took 47 pages of notes on the book (see below), and that sheer quantity is enough to show how much I liked it. It's not easy to distill these into a few bullet points, and I will be trying over the next couple months to come up with some concrete suggestions and techniques to put the book's ideas into practice in my own life. Here are just a handful of lessons and broad concepts that come immediately to mind:

• There are important nonlinearities in life that many professionals and advice-givers totally ignore but which make a much bigger difference over time than the first-order obvious effects.
• Many human interventions in health and government come with really bad iatrogenic effects.
• Things that are in nature are right until proven wrong; things that are human-made are wrong until proven right (which only time can show).
• Don't be a turkey, and avoid sucker problems. That's 95% of being successful.
• Via negativa: Focus on what to avoid and remove instead of what to do and add.
• Find ways to make your life antifragile in the sense of having limited, small downside and high potential upside.
• Be an adventurous flaneur. Live life to take advantage of new, unforeseen opportunities and volatility.
• Entrepreneurs are the unsung heroes of antifragility and deserve way more respect than politicians and other non-practitioners and non-risk takers.
• Innovation is antifragile.
• Use barbell methods to manage investments and black swan risks. Focus on your exposure (f(x)) instead of trying to predict some variable (x). Predicting or following averages is for suckers.
• Study the classics, eat and drink the classics, and avoid the media hype or technology for its own sake.

Below are the rest of my notes. I really want to discuss some of this stuff with other readers, so let me know what you think.

I'm slowly making my way through Antifragile (slow because I've been busy and slow because the wisdom density [wisdom per page] of the book is extremely high, so I'm taking the time to process and examine it). In the middle of this slow and steady progress, though, I spent a couple hours going through Taleb's shorter book of aphorisms, which was a real delight and made me laugh out loud (and really question a lot of things) several times.

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Procrustes is named after an owner of an inn in Greek mythology who wanted his guests to sleep in a perfect-fitting bed; those who were too tall had body parts cut off, and those who were too short were stretched. The book of aphorisms (pithy sayings that need little explanation) is about the various Procrustean bed reductions we make as humans because we're limited in our knowledge and prone to lapses of rationality. We resolve the tension of uncertainty by just making the world look simpler to us (to make us feel better) instead of embracing the uncertainty and benefiting from it (which Antifragile is all about).

Below are a sampling of my highlights from the book. I liked how the author found Procrustean reductions in all parts of life and offered funny and poignant observations of how foolish we are about certain things and how hard it is for us to sometimes just get out of our own way.


few realize that we are changing the brains of schoolchildren through medication in order to make them adjust to the curriculum, rather than the reverse. 

it’s mostly that inverse operation of changing the wrong variable, here the person rather than the bed.


PRELUDES 

The person you are the most afraid to contradict is yourself. 

An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion. 

To understand the liberating effect of asceticism, consider that losing all your fortune is much less painful than losing only half of it. 

To bankrupt a fool, give him information. 

Modernity’s double punishment is to make us both age prematurely and live longer. 

An erudite is someone who displays less than he knows; a journalist or consultant, the opposite. 

If you know, in the morning, what your day looks like with any precision, you are a little bit dead—the more precision, the more dead you are. 

Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment. 


COUNTER NARRATIVES 

The best revenge on a liar is to convince him that you believe what he said. 

If you want people to read a book, tell them it is overrated. 

Nothing is more permanent than “temporary” arrangements, deficits, truces, and relationships; and nothing is more temporary than “permanent” ones. 

The opposite of manliness isn’t cowardice; it’s technology. 

You remember emails you sent that were not answered better than emails that 

It is as difficult to avoid bugging others with advice on how to exercise and other health matters as it is to stick to an exercise schedule. 


THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE 

People used to wear ordinary clothes weekdays and formal attire on Sunday. Today it is the exact reverse. 

To mark a separation between holy and profane, I take a ritual bath after any contact, or correspondence (even emails), with consultants, economists, Harvard Business School professors, journalists, and those in similarly depraved pursuits; I then feel and act purified from the profane until the next episode. 

The book is the only medium left that hasn’t been corrupted by the profane: everything else on your eyelids manipulates you with an ad.

it is easier to fast than diet. 

To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers. 


CHANCE, SUCCESS, HAPPINESS, AND STOICISM 

Modernity needs to understand that being rich and becoming rich are not mathematically, personally, socially, and ethically the same thing. 

I went to a happiness conference; researchers looked very unhappy. 

Read nothing from the past one hundred years; eat no fruits from the past one thousand years; drink nothing from the past four thousand years (just wine and water); but talk to no ordinary man over forty. A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty. 

Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee. 

The fastest way to become rich is to socialize with the poor; the fastest way to become poor is to socialize with the rich. 

People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels—people you don’t want to resemble when you grow up. 

Preoccupation with efficacy is the main obstacle to a poetic, noble, elegant, robust, and heroic life. 

They are born, then put in a box; they go home to live in a box; they study by ticking boxes; they go to what is called “work” in a box, where they sit in their cubicle box; they drive to the grocery store in a box to buy food in a box; they go to the gym in a box to sit in a box; they talk about thinking “outside the box”; and when they die they are put in a box. All boxes, Euclidian, geometrically smooth boxes. 

Another definition of modernity: conversations can be more and more completely reconstructed with clips from other conversations taking place at the same time on the planet. 


CHARMING AND LESS CHARMING SUCKER PROBLEMS 

It seems that it is the most unsuccessful people who give the most advice, particularly for writing and financial matters. 

Rumors are only valuable when they are denied. 

There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same. 

Over the long term, you are more likely to fool yourself than others. 

For so many, instead of looking for “cause of death” when they expire, we should be looking for “cause of life” when they are still around. 


THESEUS, OR LIVING THE PALEO LIFE 

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary. 

My only measure of success is how much time you have to kill. 

If you need to listen to music while walking, don’t walk; and please don’t listen to music. 

Men destroy each other during war; themselves during peacetime. 

Sports feminize men and masculinize women. 

Technology can degrade (and endanger) every aspect of a sucker’s life while convincing him that it is becoming more “efficient.” 

The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free. 

You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits. 

With terminal disease, nature lets you die with abbreviated suffering; medicine lets you suffer with prolonged dying. 

We are satisfied with natural (or old) objects like vistas or classical paintings but insatiable with technologies, amplifying small improvements in versions, obsessed about 2.0, caught in a mental treadmill. 

Only in recent history has “working hard” signaled pride rather than shame for lack of talent, finesse, and, mostly, sprezzatura. 

Their idea of the sabbatical is to work six days and rest for one; my idea of the sabbatical is to work for (part of) a day and rest for six. 

What they call “play” (gym, travel, sports) looks like work; the harder they try, the more captive they are. 

Most modern efficiencies are deferred punishment. 

I finally got through my friend's recommendation Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist by Tara Smith. It was a dense, long read, but it was a great overview of all the major virtues in the Objectivist philosophy, including a lot of subtleties of how they can be misunderstood or misapplied in various real-world situations.

It is precisely the real-world situations I was most interested in, and I wish that more of the text could have been devoted to that. I could immediately tell that the book was written by an intellectual and a professor: the writing was immaculately clear and precise, with over 15% of the book's volume devoted to footnotes and citations. At times the language seemed excessively formal, and I would not recommend this book to someone just starting out in this area of philosophy; OPAR seemed much more palatable (in its writing style) for a beginner.

After reading this book, I now have a much better grasp of the ethics Rand proposes, and I enjoyed all the connections and comparisons the author made between some of Rand's fictional characters as well as other philosophers and works on related subjects. I can see just how deeply researched this book was.

Below are some of my main takeaways and highlights from the book.


Intro

This book explains the fundamental virtues that Rand considers vital for a person to achieve his objective well-being: rationality, honesty, independence, justice, integrity, productiveness, and pride. 

goodness is determined by what is beneficial for the organism

It is only by leading a morally upright life that a person can be happy and it is for the sake of having a happy life that a person should be morally upright. 

last book, Viable Values, is the case for egoism by examining the nature of morality itself, probing the fundamental nature and validation of values, from which moral prescriptions follow. Here, turn from the questions of what it is to be moral and why such prescriptions are necessary to how to be moral. 


Rational Egoism

Because egoism is widely perceived as reckless, self-indulgent whim-worship  and the selfish person as thoughtless, unprincipled, and inconsiderate  of others, the suggestion that egoism can demand the disciplined adherence to a moral code will itself be surprising to many. 

Values are intelligible only in relation to a living organism's struggle for its life. Nothing is valuable to or for inanimate objects. 

the standard of value is life. 

values are neither intrinsic (simply embedded in certain things in the external world) nor subjective (inventions projected by consciousness), but objective. 

life as the standard of value, we must understand her to be speaking of a flourishing life rather than a minimal, bare bones subsistence. 


Rationality

Rationality is the acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge  and fundamental guide to action. 

rationality consists of fidelity to facts. 

Because things in external reality are what they are independently of an individual's thoughts or wishes about them, because we control whether and how we use our minds, and because, as fallible  beings, our beliefs are not automatically correct, human beings must exert a concerted effort to base the thinking that guides our actions on the way the world actually is. This is what rationality enables its to do. 


Honesty

honesty as the refusal to fake reality. 

honesty's requirements that a person renounce self-deception, develop an active mind, and act on his knowledge. 


Independence

Independence, as Rand understands it, consists in setting one's primary orientation to reality rather than to other people. 

In contrast to the parasite, the independent person accepts full responsibility for making his way in the world by forming his own judgments, adopting ends that he deems valuable, and acting to achieve those ends. 

In order to reap the substantial objective values that human beings can offer one another, in other words, individuals must exercise first-handed judgment of reality. 


Justice

Rand understands  justice to consist in judging other persons objectively and treating them accordingly by giving them what they deserve 

person's characteristic posture as that of a trader who neither seeks nor gives the unearned. 

evaluating others objectively, by reason rather than emotion; judging individuals as individuals,  taking into account salient features of their particular circumstances; treating others as they deserve through an array of both modest gestures and more significant rewards and punishments. 

support from the good is evil's only lease on life. It is wrong to sanction evil, in short, because it is ultimately self-sabotaging. 



Integrity

integrity, which Rand defines as loyalty in action to rational principles. 


Productiveness

Because our survival depends on goods and services that are not found, ready-made, in nature, we must create the material values that sustain us; we must give physical reality to ideas that can advance human life. 

Neither rational thought that is not given some material incarnation nor physical labor that is not guided by rationality can further a person's life. 

adopt productive work as his central purpose. 

Because a person's proper goal is his own happiness (objectively understood), there is no limit to how good - how secure, how comfortable, how enjoyable - he should strive to make his life. Correspondingly, there is no limit to how productive a person should be. 


Pride

pride as moral ambitiousness, an energetic dedication to being one's best. 

A person must believe that he is worthy of values and that he will be able to achieve them, in order to act in the ways necessary to flourish. 


Other virtues

When an act of charity would be a sacrifice, requiring the agent's surrender of a greater value for a lesser value, it would be antithetical to egoism. In cases in which no such sacrifice is involved, however, charity is fine. In some such cases, it can even be obligatory 

Unlike charity, generosity is not necessarily a response to need. Generosity  consists in giving in excess of what custom or morality requires; 

does not require self-sacrifice and is extended to an appropriate beneficiary, generosity is morally permitted. 

kindness  consists in acting out of consideration for another person's well-being. 

He does something, however minor, to cheer or assist another person. 

He can love a person for his character, that is, rather than for some narrow utilitarian purpose (such as access to a club) or for no particular reason, as some analysts of love have urged. 


Rational Egosim

Morality, Rand writes, "is a code of values to guide man's choices and actions - the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life."

A value is "that which one acts to gain and/or keep. "

Life makes values possible insofar as nothing can be valuable to nonliving  things. 

at the bottom of all of our ends rests a single alternative: life or death. 

life makes the achievement of values necessary. Living demands the pursuit of life-sustaining ends. If an organism is to survive, it must achieve the values that its nature requires. 

Life is a process of self-generated, self-sustaining action, 

Their physiology rules; they are "deterministic value-trackers," 

the moral guidance justified  by this explanation of values is egoistic. 

each person's primary moral obligation is to achieve his own well-being and he should not sacrifice his well-being for the well-being of others. 

The reason to be moral is selfish.

The crucial feature of Rand's theory is that value is objective. What is good for a person - what is in his interest - is not simply a subjective projection of that person's beliefs, attitudes, tastes, or desires, for those are not adequate guides to meeting his life's requirements. 

The objective theory holds that the good is neither an attribute of "things in themselves"  nor of man's emotional states, but an evaluation of the facts of reality by man's consciousness according to a rational standard of value.... 

The objective theory holds that the good is an aspect of reality in relation to man - and that it must be discovered, not invented, by man.'6 

Objectivity allows for a range of values  that can vary (within limits) between different individuals. 

What is good must be good for someone in particular, but what makes a thing good is its nature and impact on the person's life independently of anyone's beliefs or wishes about what that impact is. 

not simply breathing, but thriving. 

An organism must act as its nature demands (qua dog, qua seal, etc.) in order to survive. 

needs are correlative to the ideal of flourishing and that flourishing is relative to the kind of organism in question. 

living requires living as man's nature requires. "Life, for any living creature, means life as that creature, life in accordance with its specific means of survival," 

The maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are not two separate issues. To hold one's own life as one's ultimate value, and one's own happiness as one's highest purpose are two aspects of the same achievement. Existentially, the activity of pursuing rational goals is the activity of maintaining one's life; psychologically, its result, reward and concomitant is an emotional state of happiness.° 

She defines happiness as "that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values." 

Serving one's interest requires action guided by the recognition of certain constant, fundamental facts. These facts are the basis of moral principles. 

Rational egoism is not about besting others, but about making one's own life as rewarding as possible. 

individuals' genuine, rational interests do not stand at odds. One person's enhancement of his well-being  is not achieved through injury or loss to others. Human welfare is not a zero-sum game.

The disappointment of a person's hopes is not a setback to his actual condition. 

My being turned down for a job I sought does not leave me worse off than I had been. 

Moral principles are both based on and intended for radically different circumstances. The actions necessary  to sustain a person's life in atypical conditions cannot be used as the basis for moral principles that are to guide us in everyday living or for conclusions about the relationships among individuals' interests. 

Human beings, by contrast, live by the mind. We do not survive simply by consuming what we find in our environment; we must create life-sustaining  values (clothes, shelter, medicines, etc.) through the use of reason. 

Because human beings produce values rather than seize them from a fixed pool and because the fundamental fuel of production is not a finite resource, one person's  objective gains pose no threat to others. 

Given the enormous value that human beings can offer one another, a policy of preying on others would be self-defeating rather than self-advancing. 


Rationaltiy

A virtue, Rand maintains, is "the act by which one gains and/or keeps" an objective value.' 

virtue "consists of a man's recognizing facts and then acting accordingly."6 

virtuous action is action that deliberately adheres to rational moral principles. 

Genuine virtue involves taking the proper action with a certain spirit and inclination. Hursthouse maintains that an honest person, for instance, does the right thing "readily, eagerly, unhesitatingly, scrupulously." 

Without facing continual battles over whether to take the appropriate action, a person will more efficiently act in ways that advance his happiness.  And the less of a struggle he must wage against resistant emotions,  the less strain in his days and the more agreeable his experience. 

The most basic virtue, in Rand's view, and the source of all others, is rationality.

reason to be "the faculty that identifies and integrates  the material provided by man's  

It is essentially a matter of grounding one's thinking in reality, of reaching conclusions by observing and respecting relevant facts. 

The essential nature of rationality is seen most vividly by contrasting it with alternative modes of using one's mind: forming beliefs or making decisions on the basis of emotions, for instance, or on the basis of desires or faith or authority or consensus or tradition or prejudice or astrology or intuition. 

to think is an act of choice... man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. 

Consciousness is a faculty of awareness  of that which exists, not a faculty of manipulation of that which exists. 

Such changes are possible, however, only by acting in recognition  of things' nature and devising effective means of altering things, within the parameters set by things' nature. It is only by respecting the primacy  of existence, in other words, thatwe can make constructive changes. It is only through rationality. 

Focus The core of rationality's demands is stated in a passage we have already cited: "The virtue of rationality means ... one's total commitment to a state of full, conscious awareness, to the maintenance of a full mental focus in all issues, in all choices, in all of one's waking hours." 

To be rational, a person must seek to know his own purposes and motives - indeed, all of his beliefs, desires, and feelings - as clearly as possible.

A person evades when he chooses not to know, not to find out, or when he pretends not to be aware of something that he knows warrants greater weight in his thinking or at least, further investigation. 

commitment  to the "constant, active expansion" of one's knowledge.

The aim of rationality is not knowledge for its own sake, but knowledge for its practical value. 

rationality requires action that is faithful to a person's rational conclusions, adherence to reality in action as well as in thought. 

"irrationality turns one's consciousness from the task of perceiving reality to the task of faking reality." 

A person's commitment to rationality must be absolute, however, because reality is absolute. The nature of reality cannot be merely an intermittent concern, flickering in and out of significance. 

An emotion is a state of consciousness with bodily accompaniments and intellectual causes, Peikoff writes.65 

whether a person feels an emotion and what emotion he feels will depend on his beliefs about a particular object and on his evaluations of that object. 

emotions are the voice of values in one's consciousness. 

One can take feelings into account, however, without granting them the final say. 


Honesty

honesty as "only another name for rationality, the loyalty to reality, the `being true to truth."" 

If rationality essentially consists in the commitment to reality, Peikoff explains, then honesty is the obverse: the rejection of unreality, the recognition that only existence exists.4 

honesty means not pretending.' 

Because things do not wear their value on their sleeves, it can seem easier to fake values than facts. 

A thing's value to a person depends on the role that it plays vis-a-vis his long-term flourishing. 

Through dishonesty, a person makes himself dependent on others - on their standards  and on their ignorance. 

He has chained himself to what they think. Even the "successful" liar is trapped, in other words, in the never-ending need to maintain the facade. 

It is not, fundamentally, relations with others that necessitate honesty, she argues; it is reality. 

Others' perceptions do not dictate reality any more than one's own do. 

This requires that a person develop an active mind, seek knowledge in order to act oil that knowledge, and refuse to fake any item in his mind.28 

"constantly expanding one's knowledge, and never evading or failing to correct a contradiction. This means: the development of an active mind as a permanent  attitude. 

The motivation for the acquisition of knowledge should be action. 

A person stands under no moral obligation to divulge his knowledge to an inquiring Nazi.35 

an urgent threat to major values. The immediate and rational goal in such circumstances is to escape the threat and minimize the damage. There would be no point, in such cases, in adhering to principles that are designed to aid us in radically different conditions. 

Morality ends where a gun begins ... in such emergency situations, no one could prescribe what action is appropriate. That's my answer to all lifeboat questions. Moral rules cannot be prescribed for these situations, because only life is the basis on which to establish a moral code.° 

"illness and poverty are not metaphysical emergencies, they are part of the normal risks of existence.") 46 To frame the contrast from a different angle: In a natural emergency, a great value is at risk; in a metaphysical  emergency, a person's very mode of survival is immobilized. 

It is in these natural emergencies, I think, that the basic principles of morality remain the same, 

The application of morality in this type of emergency sanctions one person's taking another's property and demands making it up to him, after the crisis has passed. 

Honesty is not intrinsically virtuous or a categorical imperative, to be blindly obeyed regardless of circumstances. Honesty is a practical means of furthering a person's objective values and thus his life. Virtue cannot be properly demanded when it would work against that end, however. 

lying in order to placate another person makes emotions the standard of value.52 

Lack of candor also carries a further negative consequence: It infuses artificiality into individuals' relationships. 

the liar leaves the other person unaware of his actual opinion. The opportunity to put him straight about something-expectations  about his job performance, one's taste in clothes, whatever - is lost. 

a person should either tell the truth about an issue or refuse to discuss it. 

The liar acts as if that person is childishly dependent on his opinions, such that that person's fragile psyche must be protected from the shattering truth. In fact, as Rand observes, telling a man the truth is a form of respect.56 

Honesty is the refusal to fake reality. It is the refusal to pretend that things are other than they are, either to others or to oneself. 


Independence

"one's acceptance of the responsibility  of forming one's own judgments and of living by the work of one's own mind."

independence as a primary orientation  to reality rather than to other men.

neither his direction,  his conclusions, nor his satisfactions from the views of others. He does not act for the sake of others in anyway. Others are not his compass. Reality is. 

The exercise of independence requires a belief in one's own basic worth, a quotient of self-esteem that enables a person to view his judgment as capable and his ends as worthy. 

the person who is ruled by thoughts of what he is "supposed" to do ("what is expected here?" "what would others  think?"), 

While a person often should engage others in order to advance his well-being, what is essential for independence - and for his ultimate flourishing - is that a person learn the reasons behind others' opinions rather than accepting them at face value, without question. 


Justice

Justice is the application of rationality to the evaluation and treatment of other individuals. 

`Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men just as you cannot fake the character of nature," 

treating others as they deserve means responding to positive conduct or character with rewards and to negative conduct or character with punishments. 

it is important to judge others' character, as far as one is able, because character governs the use that a person will make of any more specific attributes that carry potential impact on other people. 

This means that others' virtue contributes to an environment from which I stand to benefit. The more virtuous other people are - the more rational and honest and productive, and so on - the more constructive companions they are to learn from and to trade with. 

The way to advance one's life is to be honest about the others one encounters - honest in accepting the need to judge them, in how one judges them, and in 

The way to advance one's life is to be honest about the others one encounters - honest in accepting the need to judge them, in how one judges them, and in how one subsequently acts toward them. 

justice forbids fence-sitting, pleading  ignorance or retreating into agnosticism. 

Thanks largely to Rawls, differences have been put on the defensive. 

egalitarianism underlies admissions policies whereby certain state universities  accept the top x percent of applicants from all high schools in that state, regardless of how bright or prepared those students are. This, it is argued, serves the goal of equal access, which trumps other goals and any other understanding of justice in student selection. 

An important practical demand of justice, in Rand's view, is the refusal to sanction evil. 

the support of the good is indispensable to the existence of the evil. Drained of that support, the evil would collapse; 

Through restitution, reform, and so on, he manifests his judgment that what he did was wrong and not representative of the kind of person he wishes to be. In the absence of his meeting these conditions,  however, forgiveness would sanction the wrong and leave the victim vulnerable to more of the same. 

Forgiveness, then, must be earned, on Rand's view. A person should not forgive others on faith or out of blind "good will" 

To temper justice with mercy is to inject injustice into one's dealings. Doing so is wrong for the same basic reason that is by now familiar: Faking others' character does not change their character or its impact on one's life. 

By their nature, had actions create burdens and do damage. Mercy lets those who cause the damage off the hook (the hook being the need for compensation). If the guilty do not pay the compensation, as Rand observes, then the innocent must. 

Freedom is the absence of other people's interference with a person's ability to govern his own actions. 

Freedom is necessary  for rationality, Rand argues, because a mind cannot be forced. 

A person deserves things because of what he does, as a response to his conduct and character. A person possesses rights, by contrast, simply in virtue of his nature as a human being. 

The question of what a person's rights entitle him to, however, is distinct from the question of how another person should treat him 

Because a person's values stand to be helped or harmed by the conduct and character of other people, a person needs to assess others' probable impact on his values and to treat others accordingly in order to promote his long-term flourishing. 


Integrity

Rand describes integrity as "loyalty to one's convictions and values; it is the policy of acting in accordance with one's values, of expressing, upholding  and translating them into practical reality."' 

one must "never sacrifice one's convictions to the opinions or wishes of others."' 

Peikoff refers to integrity as "the principle  of being principled" because integrity reflects the realization that human beings need principles to guide us. 

it is frequently the fear of some unwanted social repercussions that overtakes a person's commitment to his values. 

To commit to a principle is to decide in advance how one should act when confronting certain kinds of choices. 

integrity demands a conscientious effort to identify the principles that should guide a person's life. 

Self-confidence (the relevant  type here, although I will henceforth refer to it simply as "confidence")  is a person's positive assessment of his capacity to manage his affairs. It is the conviction of his ability to attain his goals and achieve his happiness. 

Integrity requires confidence inasmuch  as confidence fortifies a person to remain faithful to his convictions. 

An additional practical requirement of integrity is courage. Courage is a matter of acting on behalf of one's values in especially dangerous or fearful  circumstances. 

Fear is a feeling and as such, not within a person's direct, immediate control. The experience of fear could not, therefore, be either virtuous or vicious. What distinguishes the courageous person is his refusal to allow the sheer experience of fear or perception of danger to deter him from the pursuit of his values. 


Productiveness

productive work should be the central purpose of a person's  life. 

Productiveness is "the process of creating material values, whether goods or services."' 

productiveness as "the adjustment of nature to man," 

What makes a material value material and what makes a material value valuable are two distinct attributes. A thing's value depends on the relationship in which it stands to an individual's long-term survival. We do not need to know anything about a thing's value to know whether it is material, however. The only consideration needed to establish that is whether the thing has physical existence, nonmental reality. If it does, it is material. 

Productiveness  refers to one particular type of life-advancing action: the creation of material values. 

Productiveness is the process "by which man's consciousness controls his existence," "by which man's mind sustains his life." 

"Every type of productive work," Rand maintains, "involves a combination of mental and physical effort: of thought and of physical action to translate that thought into a material form." It is simply the "proportion of these two elements [that] varies in different types of  Like 

union of both intellectual and physical effort is needed for any productive work. 

Productive work is not simply an element of a good life; it is the central element. 

A person's central purpose is the paramount end by reference to which that person  can determine the importance to assign to other things in his life; it is the anchor and standard for a rational hierarchy of values, allowing him to prioritize various ends and, correspondingly, to be rational in his pursuit of them. 

Rich or not, to drive his life materially (even if not financially) and spiritually - to attain the various spiritual values that productiveness uniquely makes possible - a person must invest in some productive activity that his life is about. 

The breathless, ceaseless reaching for more that precludes the enjoyment of one's life (and which is all too common) defeats the point of productiveness. It is not what Rand is endorsing. The point of exercising any virtue is to achieve the best life possible for oneself. 

Both material and spiritual fuel are vital to human life, thus it would be a mistake to condemn the pursuit of either, as such. Although either material or spiritual values can be pursued irrationally, neither is by nature base or unworthy of us. 

Productiveness is the process of creating material values. Like the independent  person, the productive person accepts responsibility for making his own way in the world, refusing to attempt to live off of others' achievements. 


Pride

pride is "the commitment to achieve one's own moral perfection."' 

Because the essence of morality is rationality, moral perfection,  in turn, consists of an "unbreached rationality."

pride as a policy of action and regards the feeling of pride as simply a by-product of a person's abiding by such a policy. 

pride is not simply an after-the-fact satisfaction (justified as such satisfaction might be), but a forward-looking ambition that drives a person to act as morality requires. 

"As a rule, a man of achievement does not flaunt his achievements,"  Rand observes, and "he does not evaluate himself by others - by a comparative standard. His attitude is not `I am better than you' but `I am good.""

pride is necessary for self-esteem, and self-esteem is necessary for human life. 

Because human beings choose our actions, what we choose forges our individual characters. 

The pivotal fact that gives rise to the propriety of pride is our need for self-esteem and the essential role of pride in building it. 

pride demands doing one's best. 

ambition consists in the systematic pursuit of challenging goals and of constant improvement in regard to such goals. 

A further means of being morally ambitious lies in the refusal to coast or vegetate. 

One means of doing this is by assigning himself specific projects of moral improvement. 


Other virtues

Lending help in response to a person's need can be appropriate, but need by itself never makes it appropriate. 

When a person is in a position to be generous with someone whose success he values more than he values alternative uses of the relevant resources, to fail to be generous would be hypocrisy. 

Rand does endorse generosity only when it represents a rational trade. 

A person could give others more than they have reason to expect while still gaining value from doing so. The insistence that he cannot is baseless. 

That an agent gets something out of a generous action - or even that he does it because he believes that he will get something out of it - does not eradicate its generosity. It does not erase the fact that he is giving another person more than that person can reasonably expect. 

Unlike charity, kindness is not restricted to giving aid and is not necessarily a response to another person's need. 

First of all, kindness is a means of furthering the agent's values. To the extent that a person cares about the people to whom he is kind, he is helping those individuals by making their path, if ever so slightly, smoother. 

the experience of others' kindness often does have the effect of putting people in a more hospitable mode. 

if a person finds a kinder environment congenial, his own kindness can help to bring that about. 

kindness can offer definite value to an egoist and therefore will often be appropriate. 

Kindness, in short, is an affirmation  of value - of a particular recipient's distinctive value, when the agent knows the recipient, or of the value of human life as such, when he does not. Accordingly, if a person values his fellow human beings and has no reason to think a particular individual unworthy of kindness, it is fine to perform acts of kindness on suitable occasions. 

rational egoist should be kind selectively and nonsacrificially. 

While charity, generosity, and kindness concern a person's relations with others, temperance concerns a person's management  of his self-regarding desires.75 

the proper ideal for a rational egoist is not to mute or moderate his desires, but, when determining whether to act on them, to recognize the full context. 

temperance is proper, and it is so because it is an exercise of reason; it is never a good in itself. 

neither charity, generosity,  kindness, nor temperance qualifies as a virtue, on Rand's theory. To deny that these are virtues is not to condemn them as vices. Each is compatible with rational egoism, under the right conditions. 


Conclusion

The code that Rand prescribes does not call for the conquest of others.  Nor is it hedonistic, materialistic, or emotionalistic. 

human being's flourishing requires his adherence to rational principles. Rationality  reflects the respect for reality that is a prerequisite of human survival. 

The egoist who emerges from Rand's theory is a person of principle who exercises the virtues of rationality, honesty, independence, justice, integrity, productiveness, and pride. 


Appendix

LOVE IS SELFISH 

To love another person is to value him highly. 

One person loves another for specific qualities that he possesses, such as his inquisitiveness or playfulness or idealism or ambition. 

"Concern for the welfare of those one loves is a rational part of one's selfish interests. If a man who is passionately in love with his wife spends a fortune to cure her of a dangerous illness, it would be absurd to claim that he does it as a `sacrifice' for her sake, not his own, and that it makes no difference to him, personally and selfishly, whether she lives or dies." 

I am better off when a person I love enjoys some significant success (a major achievement in his career, for instance) because the flourishing of someone who is of value to me strengthens my own capacity to flourish. 

Friendship increases our stake in the world and thus our capacity for emotions; it makes us feel more, she writes, and enables us to have life "more abundantly." 

"Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional responses of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man's character. 



LOVING A PERSON FOR HIMSELF 

The ideal of unconditional love, in other words, is fraudulent. Love rests on reasons. Only certain causes will generate love. 

loving a person for his own sake does not mean loving him for no reason, without grounds. Rather, it means loving him forwho he is as an individual, for his thoughts, actions, and character. 

The basic idea applicable to friendship is that when one person loves another, he loves that individual for specific qualities that he possesses. 

he loves a person because of who that person is; the person's character is such that it gives the egoist pleasure. 

"The Objectivist does not say `I value only myself.' He says: `If you are a certain kind of person, you become thereby a value to me, in the furtherance of my own life and happiness.' 

That self-interest is the egoist's overriding concern does not entail that it is his exclusive concern. 

rational egoist can love another person for himself in the sense that is crucial for such friendship. Loving a person for himself does not mean offering love as a sacrifice, which obviously would contradict the prescriptions of egoism. It means, rather, loving a person for his specific character - not for no reasons, as some urge, and not for incidental reasons that are inessential to his character. The egoist will love another person because that person isvaluable to him and because of who thatperson is.

The first book I finished this year was We the Living by Ayn Rand. It's actually the first novel she published, and it's a strong statement against communism, collectivism, and the horrible conditions individuals faced in Soviet Russia. I know that I enjoyed this work less than her other fiction (it seemed to drag somewhat and the plot turns were somewhat random, with less clear explanation). However, for me, the most interesting aspects were actually the details of Soviet life, like ration cards, propaganda slogans, and bribery techniques. I got a really rich sense for how horrible things were.

I drew a lot of parallels in the general tone of the work to 1984, which was similarly a description of drab and at times unbearable life in a socialist state.

I also saw inklings of a lot of the individualistic philosophy she would later expound on in other works a lot more clearly. The heroes definitely displayed a lot of similar traits and behaviors as in other works, like clarity of mind, focus, attention to posture and how they used their bodies, and generally an orientation that's aiming towards life rather than death. I also found it interesting how much the heroes and plot focused on love, and the power of love to carry someone through unimaginably difficult experiences. Kira, the main character, is at the same time inspirational and hard to really believe.

Foreword
Life in soviet union
Desire for life
Romantic school, human values, choices men should make
Evils of any dictatorship or collective system
Man existing for sake of state
Autobiography in loose sense, of an idea
Protagonist ideas are hers but plot different

Part 1
Ch 1
Kira
Train ride
Separate social classes
Nationalization of factories, confiscation of private safe deposit boxes
Petrograd

Ch 2
Proletariats of world unite
Wants to be engineer
Doesn't believe in duty to society definition 
Line of zeroes is still zero

Ch 3
Spirit physical, body spiritual 
Geometric precise movements
Learned as child joy of being alone
Your own life, a reason in itself
Likes rising bridges, skyscrapers
Got communist passport
Loved joy and art

Ch 4
Bribe to get apartment
Long lines for food
Some private stores allowed
Inflation
admitted to tech institute
meets man on street whom she understands

Ch 5
Just studying something because she likes it not for toil for proletariat

Ch 6
not living for sake of state or others
Living for sake of self
Things inside us that are precious because they're ours
Ok to do something just because want to when know its right
Soviet Men existing for plumbing not plumbing existing for men
Just want to be left alone to live
Sacrificing the best for less capable masses
People aren't born with equal abilities 

Ch 7
Private enterprises failing

Ch 8
Andrei student communist but not really
Complex family background

Ch 9
do u believe in gd or life
If put highest thing u care for above ur life then u don't believe in life
runs away with Leo, counter revolutionary

Ch 10
Moves in with Leo
Two fighting against the country and the century
Confidence in what she does

Ch 11

Ch 12
Music John gray
Studying philosophy because most useless to communists

Ch 13
Can't get job unless party or union member

Ch 14
Need communist connection to get job
Foreign or bourgeois or capitalist stuff best and smuggled but considered evil

Ch 15
Desire to live, inner fight even with outer suffering

Ch 16
Questionnaires on social origin
Reverse discrimination against achievers
Kicked out of college because not children of proletariats but of business owners

Ch 17
Leo tuberculosis, getting money for sanitarium


Part 2

Ch 1
Petrograd became leningrad
Lenin applied marx communism to soviet situation
Communism taught as logical maturation of capitalism
Petrograd as monument to spirit of man
Beautiful city, designed by man

Ch 2
Love of andrei communist friend who is not real communist but real life-lover
Leo returns
Strength of Kira's love

Ch 3
Living for what you think is right with objective your own joy

Ch 4
Fantasy of abroad
Illegal business when legal not possible

Ch 5
More oppression than under the czar except now boot is red and senseless

Ch 6
right to own happiness
Counterrevolutionaries

Ch 7

Ch 8
all about influence and connections
Party loyalty over family 

Ch 9
Leo losing his self to drink and wasting money and parties

Ch 10
Ppl double crossing and trying to make money secretly

Ch 11
Leo investigations

Ch 12
Andrei arrests Leo
Kira torn between lovers
Soviet is on premise of death not life

Ch 13
Live for that which you want
Kira inspires andrei
andrei does speech for living finally
No one can tell men what they must live for
Man's mind and his values
Living still for your own cause
Cannot enslave man's mind
Cannot sacrifice the living for apparently the living

ch 14
Leo released due to andrei
Leo gets freedom but doesn't want life
Wants to be let to fall into mire
andrei tells him to get a life
Andrei thinks will be thrown out of party
He is grateful now
Understanding between Kira and andrei
andrei transferred to be librarian
andrei realizes no hope for soviet life
Burns Kira's stuff in fireplace, black chiffon
Said no one is to be responsible for his death and commits suicide when realizes nothing left to live for

Ch 15
party lauds him as tribute of party work, totally fake message
party hero
Why does Kira keep loving Leo?
Kira comes to funeral
"Communist party spares no victims in its fight for mankind"
"Gave all u had for ppl u loved"
"most evil of human words: I"
Only honor is of serving the collective
unselfish service of the collective
Kira wondered whether she had killed him or the revolution or both

Ch 16
Leo drinking too much
Silence between them
Her fight was lost
Kira was his last hold on self esteem
Loses belief in sublime of human being
Through with attempt for life
Leo decides to go away with richer lady even when Kira loves him
Kira against 150M people but she lost
She still loves Leo and andrei even when they die or go away
Walks away in dignity
Kira decides to leave abroad, only goal to get out

Ch 17
Kira trying to leave illegally when denied foreign passport

Ch 18
Running away through snow in white clothes
shot by border patrol
Last thought at death of life as what could have been possible, potential of human being

I've had Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig on my reading list for a while, and I didn't even know it was all about philosophy (nice coincidence with some of other stuff I've been reading). It definitely approaches the material from a different angle, so it was interesting for me to compare and contrast this with other things I've recently read.

According to the intro, it's the "most widely read philosophy book ever." I think that if I hadn't recently read a lot of meaty philosophy, I would've been pretty lost because the book tackles a lot of subjects pretty directly and without much background or help to the reader.

I enjoyed that the book read throughout like one long poem. At times, this made the philosophical parts difficult to understand, and I think that when it got really theoretical, the story elements went way into the background (very few details and plot elements in those parts). I'm comparing this book to Atlas Shrugged which also used a fictional story to teach philosophy, and I think Atlas managed to do a much better job at staying purely in the realm of the story to get the message across. Nonetheless, Pirsig's book also did a good job at having the story parallel the philosophical discussion.

At various points, I was a bit lost and wondered which story was the "real" story (I'm guessing some of this confusion was on purpose), and what really happened with the author. I did like the discussion of reason and the works of Aristotle and the importance of peace of mind and getting your hands dirty with reality and "maintenance" as opposed to just throwing your hands up in the air when technology doesn't work for you. The book also continuously made me wonder where the author stood in the end on the question of reason vs. non-reason. My understanding is that the author's point is that the concept of quality precedes that and is more useful than staying stuck in the dualistic world of reason vs. not. I just still don't have a great grasp at what he means by that in the end. He compares his monistic "quality" concept to other religious concepts like the Buddha and the Tao, but I don't think he's directly a fan of these.

Overall, the book definitely made me think (and want to go ride a motorcycle). Apparently, there's a forum at moq.org where people can learn more about the metaphysics of quality.

Intro (by author)
First person narrative
Divided personality in I: author, narrator, reader
social values vs new ideas
Heretic
Villain as real intellectual 
Phaedrus
Based on true story

Part 1
Ch 1
In car ur passive watcher of tv
On cycle ur part of it all
Being aware of surroundings and meditating on them
Not in hurry
Monotony of daily shallowness
Stream of national consciousness too broad and fast but not deep
What is best?
Not dogma
Birds tie thoughts together
Chautauqua: deep story
How much one should maintain one's own motorcycle vs competent mechanic?
Dripping faucets and suppressing anger
Some people technologists who can deal with things and fix and some don't want to think or get hands dirty and just get irritated

Ch 2
Road trip across destination
Point is the travel, not the destination
The machine
The cycle
Mechanics are sometimes sloppy, living with tech but with selves detached
Spectator to life vs caring about what you do
Not in the instruction manual
Relationship between you and life and cycles

Ch 3
Rain and storm on cycle
Do scientific principles exist? No matter or energy
Exists nowhere except in heads just like ghosts
Education as mass hypnosis
Newton's laws invented by humans
Logic and numbers exist only in mind
All existence is a ghost
Common sense is voices of past ghosts
Ideas stolen from Phaedrus

Ch 4
Packing list for road trip
4 categories: clothing, personal stuff, cooking/camping, motorcycle

Clothing
2 underwear
Long underwear
2 shirts and pants: Army surplus fatigues
1 sweater and jacket
Unlined leather gloves
Cycle boots
Rain gear
Helmet and sunshade
Bubble
Goggles

Personal stuff
Combs
Billfold
Pocket knife
Miranda booklet
Matches
Flashlight
Soap and plastic soap container
Toothbrushes and toothpaste
Scissors
APCs for headaches
Insect repellant
Deodorant
Sun burn lotion
Band aids
Toilet paper
Wash cloth in plastic box
Towel
Books
Loose paper for writing

Motorcycle
Shop manual
Children's motorcycle troubleshooting guide
Thoreau walden
Large adjustable wrench
Machinists 

Camping equipment
Sleeping bag
Ponchos and ground cloth
Rope
Usga survey maps
Machete
Compass
Canteen
Army surplus mess kits
Collapsible Sterno stove
Aluminum screw top tin
Brillo
Aluminum frame backpack
machinists hammer
Cold chisel
Taper punch
Pair of tire irons
Tire patching kit
Bicycle pump
Can of molybdinum disulfide spray for chain
Sae 30 engine oil
Impact driver
Point file
Feeler gauge
Test lamp
Spare parts: plugs, throttle, clutch and brake cables, points, fuses, headlight and tail light bulbs, chain coupling link with keeper, cotter pins, bailor wire, spare chain

Care about old driving gloves
Pick up certain feel and personality each machine has
Some depend on and Value technology but don't know how to deal with it and get angry at it

Ch 5
Camping
Son mental illness
Goethe father son ghost story

Ch 6
Phaedrus story
Purpose to bury him forever
All understanding in terms of underlying form
Mode of discussion vs appearance
Platform problem for discussion
Classical vs romantic understanding (science vs intuition)
Motorcycle maintenance vs riding
Masculine vs feminine
Control vs freeform
Two worlds growing apart
Rational
Motorcycle invented by classic minds
Power assembly: engine, power delivery system
Running assembly
Engine: housing, power train, fuel air system, ignition system, feedback system, lubrication system
Power train: cylinders, pistons, connecting rods, crank shaft, flywheel
Fuel air system: gas tank and filter, air cleaner, carburetor, valves, exhaust pipes
Ignition system: alternator, rectifier, battery, high voltage coil, spark plugs
Feedback system: cam chain, cam shaft, tappets, and distributor 
lubrication system: oil pump, channels
Power delivery sys: clutch, transmission, Chain
Supporting assembly: frame, foot pegs, seat, fenders, front and rear shock absorbers, wheels, steering assembly, control levers and horn, speed and mileage indicators, lights

By function
Normal operating functions and specially operated functions
Normal: intake cycle, compression, power, exhaust

Mode of understanding
Object of discourse
Can be dull (romantic face of classic)
Observer is missing
No value judgements
Way knife defines the categories is important

Ch 7
Phaedrus knife
Way of dividing the world and structuring it
Division of conscious universe into parts
Sand sorting vs contemplation of unsorted sand
Figure that is sorting is critical
Which part of the cycle is the Buddha? Everywhere
The one doing the analytic thought
Death birth continuity of analysis
To see insane man, own opinions get in the way
Phaedrus pursued ghost of rationality
Loved logic
High iq
No close friends
Always felt alone
No one really knew him
But did have emotions
New personality after previous personality got him into mental hospital
Old personality killed by electrical therapy

Part 2
Ch 8
Tuning machine
Should be in cool and in morning when brain fresh
Study of motorcycle maintenance is study of rationality
Not a knack
Precision instruments
Control and underlying form
Instruments designed to achieve an idea of perfection
See ideas and concepts in cycle parts
Divisions, sums of components
Hierarchy, basic structure
System
Most attack effects instead of causes
Real system is rationality and thought processes
Too much talk of "the system" and too little understanding
Motorcycle primarily mental
Steel can be in any shape you want
All shapes out of someone's mind
All nature has is potential for steel
Ghosts, all in mind
Photographic mind mechanics

Ch 9
Logic is way to navigate system
Inductive and deductive
Formal scientific method for most complex problems, lab notebook
Problem
Hypothesis
Experiments
Predicted results
Conclusions
To ensure u don't misinterpret nature
No logical slips allowed
Don't overstate what u think u know
Physical labor is much smaller piece than mental effort and model, underlying form

Ch 10
how hypotheses come into mind
Number of hypotheses growing
Lifespan of truth getting shorter
Lost faith in science
Sometimes better to travel than to arrive

Ch 11
Remembering past memories
Theoretic and aesthetic
Philosophy as highest branch of knowledge and science
Higher levels of how science works
Riding in high mountains like high country of thought
What is truth and how do I know it
What is meant by meaning
Sole agent of progress is reason
Kant critique of pure reason
Hume: if one uses logic will result in confusion
Child with no senses, innate thoughts
Hume Empiricist
But all knowledge just in head
Says knowledge doesn't arrive out of experience
A priori knowledge: time (Kant's intuition)
A priori concepts
If substance doesn't exist and only sense data, then no logical substance in knowledge
Kant rescues: a priori motorcycle concept in head
Sense data confirm the cycle but are not the cycle
Copernican revolution
Not Aristotle tabula rasa

Didn't like kants aesthetics
Reason itself ugly to him

Ch 12
Benares Hindu university
Lots of exposure
Latent images
Thou art that
Lack of division from subject and object
Didn't believe in illusory nature of life
Gave up
Abandonment of inner goals

Ch 13
Archaeological redigging of old memories
Taught at school church of reason
Church vs location
University vs building
Ppl only fanatic about that which they doubt and don't know for sure

Ch 14
Not tech that's scary but what it does to people
One does it vs one talks about how one does it
Peace of mind comes from good maintenance
Cycles aren't right or wrong
Test of machine is just ur own mind: how satisfied u r
Instruction manual writing
Not just one way to construct something; involves user and object and world
Art and technology not that different
Inadequacy of existing forms of thought
Not about abandoning rationality but about expanding its ability
Newton invented new form of reason to deal with instantaneous change
Now we need new form of thought to deal with tech ugliness
Need to expand at the roots
Topsy turvy times require expansion of reason
Present reason method is like flat earth
Classic reason inadequate for some ppl who go to mysticism and other bs
Phaedrus was Greek rhetorician at founding of reason
Like when Columbus discovered new world

Ch 15
Taught rhetoric to students
Ghost as the reality
Wanted to teach rhetoric like logic not mysticism
What is quality? How to define it?
What is the betterness?

Part 3

Ch 16
Nonmetaphysical phase first
Idea of seeing directly for self
Break evil of immigration
Comes later as result of school
Stops traditional grading
Working for Education vs degree
Those who earn good grades are often less interested in them
Grades give excuse to teachers
Creative expression in classroom vs authoritarian didactic teaching

Ch 17
Climb the mountain between restlessnness and tiredness
Each step after a while is momentous with observing every detail 
The top is what defines the sides
What does it mean when u really want to know
Taught students via experience elements of quality in rhetoric by having them vote for pieces they thought had higher quality
Each individual's internal creative goal defining what to do for self
Why should an irrational method work when rational ones clumsy?
Ego mountain climber vs selfless mountain climber

Ch 18
Aesthetics branch of philosophy
What is beauty
Refusal to define something irrational
Second wave of crystallization
How to have quality without defining it
don't need to define something if can live in world without it just the same; but can't without quality, art
Quality exists
Realism
Absence of quality is squareness
Soul is quality?
Lateral drift
Hip vs square, romantic vs classic
Find point of common understanding between both
Quality is point of cleavage between worlds
Real understanding of quality tames it and makes it useful
Reads sentence of Thoreau to son, son asks questions, then reads another sentence

Ch 19
Son trying to relate to dad
Metaphysical layer
Does quality exist in object or in mind?
Dilemma: two premises
Subjectivity, objectivity, or finding better label
Easy escape of mysticism, zen
Why can't scientific instruments detect quality
Not "just" what you like
Obeying authority vs what u like
What u like not bad as system wants u to think
Classical formalism
Emotional understanding
Scientific realism broken by reductio ad absurdum
Creation of number 0; not derived from mass and energy
Cannot exist independently of subjective considerations
People disagree about quality because some people just see and some use broader knowledge
Classic quality and romantic quality
Quality itself cleaved into two
Quality neither a part of mind nor matter but third type

World composed of Mind, matter, and quality
Three headed reality
Usually just monism or dualism
Quality in relationship of subject and object
Quality is an event Of awareness of subject of object
Subject and object subordinated to quality, created by it

Ch 20
in trinity view then tech is fun
Metaphysics is good if improves everyday life
Quality as parent of mind and matter
Copernican revolution
Present is our only reality
Only have thought from seeing tree after time delay and tree is in past
Two time aspect of quality: short and long term
Student choice of quality different based on him, previous experience, analogs
Quality response of organism to its environment
Quality is what lets us create the reality we accept
Not metaphysical trinity but absolute monism
Not hagle absolute
Not mystic entity
Like Tao from Tao te ching
Like fountainhead of all
Central generating force of all
Realizing this Phaedrus lost control

Ch 21
Practical side of the theory
Relevance to valleys of world and jobs
How to assimilate into rationality the things that seem irrational but which we yearn for

Quality is the Buddha unifies religion, art, and science
Quality base of all three
Gd and good have same root
science is not value free

Ch 22
Jules Henri pointcare
Scientist and philosopher
1854-1912 professor in Paris
Classic physics shattered by theory of relativity
Euclid's postulate of points
Proof of his postulate impossible
Lebochevsky showed there are non Euclidian geometries
Riemann geometry
Which is truth?
Math became uncertain
Axioms of geometry not self given but conventions
Which geometry true? Question had no meaning
Only question of convenience
What are facts
Which ones will u observe
Infinite hypotheses
Hierarchy of facts
Facts that are simple and likely to reappear
Seek it in the infinitely great (space) and infinitely small (cell, atom)

Ch 23
Vision of death

Ch 24
Care and quality two parts of same thing
Person who sees quality and gets it from work cares
What causes lack of hope in technology is lack of perception of quality
Quality is the Buddha and the goal of art
How to study this and make it practical? Repair of old motorcycle
Writer's block
Mind gets stuck when try to do too much at same time
Just make list of all things to say and later worry about putting in order
Mental stuckness accompanying physical one
When just don't have hypothesis, sci method doesn't help
0th moment of consciousness/stuckness
Up against great unknown
Sci method doesn't tell where ought to go or what hypotheses to try
Don't analyze stuck cycle screw with scientific method
Analyze sci method with stuck screw
Traditional method says to he objective and not include our personal evaluations but maybe including them us the key and a different form of objectivity
Subliminal choice of which facts of infinite to observe
Scientist has to care to select right ones
Not divided reality between subject and object
When just in subject object world u lose sense of quality which is what guides u in choice of decisions and hypotheses
Regain quality and regain care for tech as craftsmanship
Romantic knowledge is cutting edge of train of knowledge and leads train along quality track
Reality as dynamic, ideas that grow as you grow
Must have sense of quality and what's good in ur work to carry you forward
Not just based on intuition or innate talent but real contact with reality quality which dualistic reason misses
Government should change in response to quality
If one thing doesn't work try something better
Beginners mind, blank, stuck, at front edge of train of knowledge (good state)
Egoless acceptance of stuckness important

Ch 25
Romantic parallel to badness of traditional reason
Ugliness of technology traditional reason produced
Techne in Greek means art, never was separate
Quality doesn't reside in subject or object but in the relationship between producer and object and consumer and object
At moment of quality no subject and object separation, but unity
Getting with it
Craftsmanship
Feeling sense of identity with object
Not about exploiting nature but about combining with it and relating to it in a new way
Transcendance of separation with technology
Sharpening a knife, sewing a dress, fixing a chair
Not about just adding stylized layer that makes thing look phony
Not about overlaying romantic but about uniting it with classic
Peace of mind is not side result of work but it is the entire thing
Cultivate inner quietness so piece of mind comes through
Fishing, going for walk
Just sitting in zen
Just fixing in cycle maintenance
Calm to lose separateness of subject and object and really care about what you are doing, identification with it
Peace of mind produces right values, thoughts, actions, and proof for others of quality
Place to start for improving world is your own thoughts and actions
I just want to fix a motorcycle

Ch 26
Gumption
Memories combining with Phaedrus
Enthusiasmos: filled with gd, quality
Psychic gasoline to fix cycle and keep going
After vacation and fishing ppl often return with more gumption
Autos automotive guide: general shop manual
Critical gumption relationship between mechanic and machine
Gumption traps: anything that causes one to lose sight of quality and enthusiasm for what one's doing
2 sources: external setbacks and internal hang ups
Out of sequence complex assembly: when u miss one small part of complex job and need to redo it all
Solution: keep notebook of all steps done and details that might cause trouble later; left hand/right hand and up/down orientations of parts, color codings of wires
Spread newspaper on floor and lay out parts left to right, top to bottom
Take breaks
Watch out for gumption desperation when try to hurry up and make up for lost time
Intermittent failure, short circuit
Correlate intermittents to find cause and effect
parts setback, pricing, incompatibilities
Take old part with you to compare
Machine your own parts with lathe and welding
Internal traps
Those that block affective understanding called value traps
Those that block cognitive understanding called truth traps
Those that block psychomotor behavior called muscle traps
Value rigidity: difficulty revaluing based on rigid old values
Value creates facts; if too rigid can't learn new ones
Premature diagnoses
New fact discovery wonderful
New facts like inventions frequently discounted at first until u become value loose enough to realize new value
Track of quality preselects the facts we pay attention to
If stuck in value rigidity, slow down
Stare at the machine
Try to understand it for its own sake
Nibbles on fishing line, fishing for facts
Motorcycle scientist when get interested in details for their own sake
South Indian monkey trap to hold monkeys hand in
Tell monkey to revalue freedom over bait
Ego internal gumption trap
Isolates u from quality reality
Attentive and skeptical
Derive pride from quality not ego
Take up modesty even if not natural
Anxiety opposite gumption trap of ego
Fixing what doesn't need fixing
Read every book you can on the subject to calm down
Goal is peace of mind, not fixed cycle
Boredom gumption trap, lost quality track
Stop what you're doing, sleep
Turn routine things like cleaning into a ritual
Just sitting
What is it at center of boredom that not seeing
Impatience is first reaction
Allow an indefinite tile for new work
Scaling down: work on nuts and bolts
New perspective on patience
Put tools away neatly
Recognize value trap when in it

Truth traps
Data
Yes no logic trap
Mu Japanese term for nothing, no class
Unask the question
Buddha residing in something is not yes or no answer
Power off condition of computer makes voltage readings neither 0 nor 1 but mu state
Context of question too small for natures answer
Mu is phenomenon inspiring scientific progress and new experiments
Check your tests and restudy your questions

Psychomotor traps
Inadequate tools
Tool catalog
Bad surroundings, adequate lighting
Avoid out of position work
Mechanics feel, kinesthetic
Different forces for finger tight, shut, and fully tight
Handle precision parts gently
Live right then just paint naturally

Part 4
Ch 27
Dream of death
Phaedrus coming back
Mind divided


Ch 28
Author and Phaedrus switch places
Person guiding car dead
Dreams about himself losing to Phaedrus
Paths to ancient Greece
Systematic philosophy on quality
Phaedrus admitted to university of Chicago to study
Concept of substance and method doesn't have room for quality just like subject and object
Omits Aristotle
Revolt against Traditional education
Hutchins, Adler, Buchanan, chairman
aquinas
Aristotle as rational animal whose purpose is own life
Hutchins believed in quality and aristotelian position to define values
Phaedrus studied Greeks then condemned
Mythos (cultural traditions and myths) over logos (logic)
Man created by religion
Mythos and insanity
To understand quality would have to go insane and be outside normal mythos sanity
Mythos as collective human knowledge
Outside it is terra incognito
The mythos is insane not him
Greeks caused us to accept reality that makes feel insane

Ch 29
Loneliness highest where people closest
Physical and psychic distance
Technology gives people attitudes of loneliness through objectivity but the devices are not to blame
Dualistic view is to blame
Technology can be used to fix the problem and evil by focusing u back on quality like through cycle maintenance
Make your job an art
Quality fanning out from your work to others to world
This is how further improvement of world will happen
Return to individual integrity, self reliance, gumption
Reason subordinate to quality and not value free
Stop tendency to do what is reasonable when it isn't any good
Can't put quality under reason
Not finding massive evil in Aristotle though
Aristotle said rhetoric is system of proof with hierarchical methodology
Blind, rote education of relationships and names
Fighting with classics prof teaching Aristotle
Dialectic and rhetoric
Dialogues using logic to arrive at truths
Platonists vs Aristotelian
Find Buddha in facts vs spirit
Dialectic only usurps and controls and doesn't lead to real truth
Immortal principles, one truth, gd, numbers
Divisions of mind and matter invented later
Immortal ghosts of modern mythos
As much a creation as anthropomorphic divinities
Arguments of cosmologists
Sophists
Man as measure of all things
All relative
Independent truth, knowledge
Phaedrus hates sophists and yet quality fits sophists more
Relationship between man and his experience
Virtue implies ethical absolute
Duty to himself
Herite: Greek hero excellence
Dherma, virtue of Hindus
Greeks were teaching quality before reason
Medium of teaching was rhetoric
Excellence in Greek
Respect for oneness of life, not separate efficiency

Ch 30
Phaedrus name for dialog character
Young orator
Means wolf
Poetic imagery in speeches
Dialectic came first
Empty cement and neon of Chicago, no grass like Montana 
Crosses lonesome valley into insanity by himself
New reality as dream
Son misses old self

Ch 31
Mind divided against itself
Heretic
Just pretended in order to get out of hospital
Feels insanity coming back and wants to send son away because scared
Phaedrus comes back
Dreams of glass door in hospital
Not really insane

Ch 32
His son knew sad wasn't insane
Son was real reason to leave hospital
Having the right attitudes is the hard part

Afterword
Greek view of time
Future comes up from behind
Past dominates ahead
No deeper motives of author
Swedish word culture bearer
Bears culture on back
Written accidentally
When culture changes
Attitudes towards insanity
Involuntary shock treatment
Alternative proposed goal broader than material success
Offered what culture was looking for
Son got killed
Son he missed isn't object but a pattern
Ghosts as ideas, patterns searching for body, not weird ectoplasm
Had daughter with new wife
Pattern continues even when bodies change
Working on sequel
Children teach lessons
Approach messes with calm

I'm a big fan of the magicians Penn & Teller and really enjoyed Penn's previous book about religion, life, and magic. When I heard he had a sequel filled with more juicy stories and philosophy called Everyday is an Atheist Holiday , it went right to the top of my reading list.

I found this installment just as funny and thought-provoking as the first, and I was grateful for the chance to hear more about Penn's family and how he manages the craziness of his own personal life with respect to his devotion to his children, their upbringing, and their morality. I applaud his openness and willing to share, teach, and make fun of himself.

Below are some of the synopses and tidbits that were memorable for me amongst the many stories he told.

Hates "exception proves the rule"
Joy the world song: not joy in the world
No joy in holiday songs
Not much joy in new testament, just in afterlife
Where is joy in this life
Atheists have joy every day of the year

Sometimes a sheet is not just a ghost
James randy modern Houdini
Learn how to lie to reveal the truth
fetish balls for Halloween
Made his own ghost costume, looked like kkk
Loves kids dearly

Canadian thanksgiving
Equal opportunity offensiveness
Making fun of racists
profanity usage
Name in vein

Celebrity apprentice
Hawthorne effect
Dancing with the stars
Doesn't care about trump

Nov 9, 1909: everything in the world is enough
Can be polite and honest at same time
Just cuz want to believe something doesn't mean should
Religious view is more scary than atheist
Pierce Morgan radio show
1909 when his mom born
Life is time
Desire for something impossible doesn't make it possible
Death is nothing, not afraid of nothing
But afraid of time passing and not enjoying kids like now
Everything in world is enough

Defy jails of world to hold son
What Houdini said
Being happy with his own success so doesn't need son to do anything for him

Kevin/hugh jackman/Houdini movie

Thanksgiving
No religious overtones, just enjoying life

Magician stands lazily naked on stage
Purpose of art is to do that
Poet does this too
He and teller only ones to do full frontal naked in show

Telephone conversation with gottfried

New years days: gyms, whorehouses, mornings with prostitutes
Gives gifts to kids and presents
Art is life
Drones are death
Sports: everyone has a plan until u get hit
Magic trick during his brain surgery
Loves baths
Best to say when his mom died on new years day: I'm sorry for your loss
He doesnt drink or make resolutions or work on new years or watch sports
Celebrates new years day by remembering mom

Mlk day
separation of church and state
I have a dream speech has no religious references in it
Bible sets a low bar for compassion
King Chooses to include instead of exclude
Magic word Christian created by politicians to get elected
Thinks Obama really atheist
Thinks Mlk a hero

Groundhog day
No such thing as magical thinking
Don't have to worry about what to wish or hope for, just what to work for
Magic is intellectual art form
Teller was teacher and very determined
Penn was juggler, clown training
No one in show biz works as hard in life as someone with a real job in one day
Did roadshows with teller when started
Show is same every night
Groundhog day: try to do perfect each time
The art is groundhog day

Sick days
Blackmail against him
Worked with lawyers and FBI
Didn't want to care but did care
If ever blackmailed go straight to FBI
Just have to take sick days sometimes
Go with sickness, go through it

April fools day
penn and teller get killed movie
They don't do practical jokes
Teaches scientist to tell dirty joke at Ted conference

Happy birthday
Central planning doesn't work
He's libertarian
Disney wouldn't allow plaque that said no god or dog gone backwards

Chiquita banana Wednesday
Ash Wednesday
Puts Chiquita banana sticker on forehead to show love of life

Have a nice Easter
Book of Mormon best play, says written by atheist
Deepest insult is just truth/identity of target

Easter is hollow chocolate rabbit
Gospel Christian magic

Hitch and tommy
Song poems by everyday people pure expressions of passion
Legacy after life less important, eventually all forgotten, but during life feels like will remember forever
Focus on this life

Fathers day cards
Will never be able to send and receive fathers day cards at same time
He got married late, one kid ivf, other natural

Graduation day
Got himself voted for every category of yearbook by convincing class

Arte
The who
Passion and art
Ron Jeremy
Celebrity apprentice
Blue man group
What art can mean

Fourth of July 
Joseph Campbell, plot abstraction, hero
"things happen"
Transformation
Production
Object in impossible location
Restoration
Animation
Trips to India, china, Egypt
Cultural differences
America only country founded on ideas, not cultural heritage
Worries we're losing sight of the ideas and becoming just a sports team

My son's morality does not come from gd
Gay marriage
Right and wrong are separate from authority
Son chooses moral actions from inside and from young age
Morality above religion

Thanks
Crying with happiness

To help me dig deeper into Objectivism, a good friend recommend Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff, so that was next up on my reading list. I enjoyed how it systematically built up a hierarchy of concepts and applied them to many areas of life. I found a lot of the material reinforced stuff I saw before in The Virtue of Selfishness and Philosophy: Who Needs It.

This book, by contrast, was not written by Ayn Rand herself but by her "best student and chosen heir." It's based off his lectures on the subject.

I'm finding that a lot of this philosophy resonates with my own recent experiences and outlook on life -- focus on productiveness, self-esteem, and reality and existence as primary over consciousness. I feel like I suffered from many of the "faults" and irrationalities as described in these texts, and I think I'm slowly starting to recover. It's fascinating to me when a book causes me to question so many "everyday" verbal expressions and mindsets that seem so "popular" or "natural" but which in fact are not reality-based and don't stand their ground upon careful analysis. I've also been struggling to understand why I never encountered philosophy or ethics in the way it's structured in Objectivist texts in any of my education.

1 reality

• Philosophic system is integrations from reality
  
• Ur choice is if u define it rationally or whimsically
  
• One must know it to make practical use of it
  
• 5 branches
  
• Metaphysics
  
• Epistemology
  
• Ethics
  
• Politics
  
• Aesthetics
  
• Concept of existence
  
• This Is
  
• Existence exists
  
• Consciousness: there exists something of which I'm aware
  
• Faculty of receiving that which exists
  
• Law of identity: a thing is itself, a is a
  
• That which it is
  
• Cannot have cake and eat it to
  
• Existence is identity, can't separate when
  
• There is something I'm aware of
  
• Axiomatic concept: primary, implicit in all facts
  
• Axioms perceptually self evident
  
• Causality as consequence of identity
  
• First existence known as baby
  
• Then integrated into identity and concept of entity
  
• Entity, identity, action concepts and then learns causality
  
• Action is action of an entity
  
• Entity acts in accordance to its nature
  
• Existence not malleable to mental contents or consciousness
  
• Kant: human mind creates existence
  
• Groups and societies can bend reality, group introspection leading to truth
  
• Primacy of existence vs primacy of consciousness
  
• Objectivism rejects latter by saying existence exists
  
• Metaphysically given vs man made objects and laws
  
• Metaphysically given is absolute but man made are all by choice
  
• Creativity is power to rearrange natural elements to combination that hasn't been there before
  
• Actions must conform to metaphysically given reality
  
• metaphysically simply are and aren't right or wrong but standard of right or wrong
  
• Man made products and choices must be judged rather than accepted simply
  
• Rewriting reality is what religion does by saying creator made world and can change it via miracles
  
• Reject all supernatural that breaks existence and nature/reality
  
• Soul not ticket to other realm but very this-worldly and natural
  

2 sense perception and volition

• Epistemology studies human knowledge
  
• Cannot just accept ideas without understanding and just on feeling
  
• Man unlike animals needs to find rules to follow since mind fallible
  
• Concepts integrations of perceptual data 
  
• Tabula rasa at birth
  


• Validity of senses as axiom
  
• required by consciousness
  
• Senses do not censor or think
  
• Mind interprets and can make mistakes
  
• Color is interaction between object and individual's consciousness
  
• Consciousness has identity, not characterless mirror, and exists
  
• Kantian consciousness is non-entity
  
• Man perceives reality directly through senses
  
• Every part of knowledge involves what do I know and how do I know it
  


• Perceptual level as given
  
• First, sensation is irreducible, lasts as long as stimulus
  
• Perception integrates sensations into entity concept
  
• Sensation only what infants know at first
  
• Perception is primary, not sensations, because can't go f
  
• Integration of percepts into concepts
  


• Volition
  
• Primary choice of whether to focus or not
  
• Human freedom when have choice between at least 2
  
• Consciousness is active process, not passive
  
• Man who waits does in vain
  
• Freedom of choice whether to use thinking machinery and reason or not
  
• Lungs automatic but mind not
  
• Visual focus automatic as adults but can see blur too
  
• Same choice in thinking
  
• Focus on conceptual realm
  
• Goal-directed mind ready to grasp reality
  
• Full awareness is not omnipotence
  
• Vs passive, drifting mind
  
• Focus is readiness to think, not necessarily problem solving
  
• Demands constant attention and maintenance
  
• Primary initial choice is whether to be in focus or not
  
• Evasion of focus is vice that underlies all evil
  
• Evasion of focus is switching I wish for reality
  
• Man chooses the causes for his choices and has free will
  
• Man can act in accordance with his values or not
  
• Can be pushed by random urges and feelings or by reason
  
• Mental and physical drifting
  


• Volition as axiomatic
  
• Self evident that can make choice to use mind or not
  

3 concept formation

• Animals don't generalize
  
• Man can know facts beyond what has experienced himself
  
• Differentiation and integration
  
• Implicit concept of existent
  
• Entity concept
  
• Specific entity vs others: identity
  
• Specific to general: relationships among entities like similarities and differences
  
• Concept of unit: Entity as unit of some groups
  
• Classifications of units by criteria
  
• Analysis and synthesis
  
• Language as tool for integration
  
• Words as symbols to represent mental concretes
  
• Language as way to convert symbols to concretes
  
• Word is completion of integration stage
  
• Measurement is what entity being measured and unit of measure
  
• Measurement and conceptualizaton connected
  
• Brings universe into range of human knowledge
  
• Both methods relate concretes by mathematical/quantitative means
  
• Concept of length: objects differ simply in magnitude; integrate concept of length without storing the specific value of the measurement
  
• Must exist in some quantity but can exist in any quantity
  
• Distinctive shape concepts: omit all measurements of specific object and remember relationships between supports/form
  
• Interdependence between measurement and integration
  


• Conceptual common denominator (ccd): feature used to differentiate entities (shape, size, etc)
  
• Mathematical basis of concept formation
  
• Concept is integration of units with distinguishing characteristics omitted
  


• Men are living beings with rational faculty
  


• Perception like arithmetic and concept formation like algebra: can take any quantity but must take some quantity
  


• First level concepts from senses like entities
  
• Higher level concepts as concepts from concepts
  


• Abstraction as measurement omission
  


• Definition
  
• To distinguish a concept from others and tie them to reality
  
• Concepts of consciousness
  
• Definition isolates a concept's units and formalizes its essence
  
• Definitions contextual
  
• Definition is not the same as the concept
  


• Concepts as space savers/data compressors to allow cognition over wider sets of data
  
• Capture essence
  

4 objectivity

• Thinking should be grounded in reality
  
• Objectivity is volitional adherence To reality by method of logic
  
• Knowledge is grasp of an object through reality based process chosen by the subject
  
•  Must define proper method of doing this process correctly
  
• Method based on facts and logic
  
• No shortcuts or giving up and turning inward ignoring reality
  
• Logic is this method
  
• Art of non contradictory identification
  
• Consciousness is faculty of discovering identity
  
• Existence is identity. Consciousness is identification
  


• Knowledge as contextual
  
• Concepts formed by context and relationships with other concepts
  
• Otherwise taking quote out of context
  


• Knowledge hierarchical
  
• Ranked in order of dependence on one another and distance from axioms and sensory data
  
• Can't jump to higher level content without fully grasping intermediate levels
  
• Can't skip the effort
  


• Esteem is when man sees in another values with high moral value
  
• Friends feel esteem and affection for each other and genuine benevolence
  


• Conceptual reduction back to primaries
  
• Anticoncepts are those that can't be connected to something at perceptual level
  
• Doesn't need to be observed with eyes but has to be shown in evidence
  


• Rand's razor
  
• Name your primaries first instead of starting philosophizing without primaries and hierarchy
  
• Rejects skepticism
  
• Can't just base on previous generations of philosophy 
  
• Check your premises
  


• Intrinsicism, Platonism, nominalism
  
• Just knowing, intuition, divine revelation
  
• External entity creating mental content instead of sense data
  
• Subjectivism: primacy of consciousness
  

5 reason

• Faculty that integrates material from senses
  
• Reason organizes facts from senses using logic
  


• Emotions as product of ideas
  
• Feeling is response to object
  
• Person must identify the object
  
• Second person must evaluate the object
  
• Estimate the object in accordance with one's values
  
• Sensations independent of ideas
  
• Emotions product of content of mind
  
• Steps
  
• Perception
  
• Identification
  
• Evaluation
  


• Reason as only source of knowledge
  
• Emotions automatic consequence of past conclusions, whether volitional or not
  
• Emotions not method of cognition
  
• Reason only method of cognition
  


• Arbitrary statements should be ignored since have no relation to evidence or reality or logic
  
• Neither true nor false
  


• Onus of proof on those who claim a positive not a negative
  
• Cannot prove nonexistence of something
  
• Only existence exists, not non-existents
  
• Agnosticism is ignorance but rife with fallacies because considers arbitrary claims
  
• Cannot even consider arbitrary along with rational
  
• Can say I don't know only when issue actually cognitive
  
• Otherwise refuse to discuss
  


• Certainty as contextual
  
• Human knowledge always limited but can't just throw out all conclusions
  
• Something can be absolute and also contextual
  
• Relationships are not enemy of absolute but what supports it
  
• Modern definition of absolute is jaded
  


• Possible, probable, and certain
  
• Probabilities contextual
  
• Certain when evidence in favor conclusive and validated by evidence
  


• Can't just say anything is possible when have no data towards that
  
• Man's general capacity to err doesn't warrant that conclusion without any evidence for that in this case
  


• Knowledge is grasp of reality acquires through observation or reason 
  
• Contrary to skepticism man can grasp reality (definition of knowledge)
  
• Contrary to mysticism, this grasp only acquired through observation or reason
  


• Mysticism just accepts all
  
• Skepticism just rejects all
  


• No compromise between emotionalism and reason
  

6 man

• Living organisms as goal directed and self-generated
  
• Life as opposite of inert/nonliving
  
• Acting to sustain self
  
• Organism faces alternative between life and death
  
• Table and pebble don't self repair
  
• Life is motion
  
• Stillness is essence of death
  
• Reason as man's basic means of survival
  
• Goods we need must be created and reshaped by men
  
• Mind body dichotomy false
  
• Tie between science and wealth and innovation and life quality
  
• Reason is practical not spiritual
  
• Man indivisible between matter and consciousness
  
• No such thing as pure thought or pure action
  
• One is dead body and other is ghost
  
• All life quality and life span increase in industrialized world because of reason
  


• Reason as attribute of individual, not group
  
• Learn from others by understanding and grasping for self what others learned
  
• Knowledge is product of thinking which each person does independently; can't do thinking collectively
  
• No such thing as collective consciousness
  
• Not all contributions to progress equal; usually moved forward by a few great individuals
  
• Man self created, self propelling, and self responsible
  
• Self made soul
  
• Man chooses if will think
  
• Each man master of own destiny
  
• Not a pawn to instincts or puppet or fate or supernatural
  
• Nature vs nurture: both deny rational being nature
  
• Instead man is responsible
  

7 the good

• Ethics and morality not only describes but prescribes
  
• For what end to live
  
• By what principle to act
  
• Who should profit from his actions
  


• Ultimate virtue is life
  
• Method is reason
  
• Profiteer should be self
  


• Ethics not arbitrary or subjective
  


• Life as essential root of value
  
• Man needs to judge and select values
  
• Value is that which one acts to gain or keep
  
• of value to whom and for what
  
• Requires entity exists and can act and has alternatives
  
• Need valuer and alternatives
  


• Organisms only entities that can pursue values because have fundamental alternative of life or death
  
• Remaining alive core of all values
  


• Morality instruction manual for human self preservation
  
• Moral values are chosen in fundamental level
  
• Also aesthetic and political values
  
• Man must act long range because sets goals across time span
  
• Weighs consequences
  
• Animal not long range and all impulses short term and pro lifel
  
• Evaluate new situations based on past experiences and principles
  
• Principle is general truth upon which other truths depend
  


• Rationality of proper virtue
  
• 3 basic values
  
• Reason
  
• Purpose
  
• Self-esteem: certainty that mind capable to think and his life worth
  


• Mind can't tolerate a little bit of irrationality; subsumes others due to integration and logic
  


• Can't just hope for what want without working for it
  
• Can't also just want effect without cause or cause without effect (consequence)
  
• Can't place I wish above it is
  
• Don't be Whim worshipper
  
• If feeling conflict between ideal and emotion, delay action until can resolve or stay with ideal
  


• Ethical standard is principle to guide choices of man to live rational life
  
• Egoism: pursuit of self interest
  
• Concerned with own interests = selfish
  
• Man's life as virtue means egoism makes sense
  
• Living entities act for own sake
  
• Self-sustaining animals don't have choice but man does
  
• Man's self-sustaining not automatic and must decide to accept life as primary goal
  
• Self sustaining as act of choice and matter of principle
  
• Otherwise man as means to end for others
  


• I swear by my life and love of it that I will not live for another man nor let another live for me
  
• Man's life as incompatible with sacrifice or collecting sacrifices
  
• No conflicts of interest among rational men who live and trade by choice
  


• Society over individual provides knowledge and trade as benefits
  
• Value to one's own life of values one finds in others
  
• Selfless disinterested love is contradiction
  
• To say I love u, must first know how to say the I
  
• Must not help enemies or random ppl one doesn't know or value if involves any cost
  
• Create values not give away
  
• May not accept role of sacrificial animal
  
• Altruism is placing others above u always
  


• Values as objective
  
• Values require valuer and act of valuation
  
• Primacy of existence not consciousness
  

8 virtue

• 6 derivative virtues
  
• Independence
  
• Integrity
  
• honesty
  
• Justice
  
• Productiveness
  
• Pride
  


• Independence as primary orientation to reality not other men
  
• Accepting responsibility to accept one's own judgments and live by one's own mind
  
• Creator vs second hander/parasite
  
• Focus on work not working through others
  
• Learn from others and work jointly but core work is his own thinking
  
• Others not source of self esteem
  
• Second hander works to avoid thinking and seeks authority to make decisions for him
  


• Integrity as loyalty to rational principles
  
• Principle of being principled
  
• Changing views when find out ur view is wrong
  
• Can't fake reality or ur consciousness
  
• Loyalty to knowledge not whims
  
• Can't compromise between evil and good like between food and poison
  


• Honesty as rejection of unreality
  
• No faking
  
• State of full focus
  
• Only existence exists
  
• Lying evil even white lies or those to protect others
  
• Ok to lie if saving child or fighting evil (context always important)
  


• Justice as rationality in evaluation of men
  
• Grant to those that which they deserve
  
• Necessary to judge others
  
• Moral neutrality blinds from reality
  
• Judge and prepare to be judged
  
• Not about psychologizing
  
• Judge facts like juror
  
• Justice is primarily admiring the good and fighting to support it, not just about punishing evil
  
• Justice through trader principle
  
• Give something to receive
  
• Love as recompense for good
  
• Causeless love wrong
  
• People hate the good and envy the capable
  


• Productiveness as adjustment of nature to man
  
• No limit to man's need of wealth and productiveness
  
• No such thing as transcending need of progress as long as man's life is standard of value
  
• Values must be conceived and created not mooched
  
• Productiveness requires thought/knowledge and action
  
• Creation of material values
  
• Knowledge not for its own sake
  
• Always should be brought to material wealth and practicality
  
• Source of today's wealth is industrial revolution
  
• Cause was reason and actio
  
• Liberated human thought
  
• Productive ability is moral value
  
• Need of purpose as moral value
  
• Principle of purpose and being goal directed in all activities
  
• All goals must be integrated and interrelated
  
• Hierarchy among goals
  
• Must define central purpose
  
• Ruling standard of man's daily actions
  
• Cannot substitute people for work
  
• Productive not social work
  


• Pride as moral ambitiousness
  
• Achievement in self of best possible state
  
• Moral perfection
  
• Unbreached rationality
  


• Initiation of physical force as evil
  
• Cannot force a man's thought
  
• Should not force kids career or marriage
  
• Initiation of force evil but retaliation in self defense right
  

9 happiness

• This is Good man's experience of life
  
• Only purpose of life
  


• Virtue as practical
  
• To be moral is to be practical and is to do what you want rationally
  
• Sanction of the victim
  


• Happiness is normal condition of men
  
• Success in getting values is pleasure
  
• Happiness is noncontradictory joy
  
• Barometer of life vs death
  
• Don't blame problems on reality; just fight them
  
• Happiness as natural state
  
• Sex as celebration of self esteem and benevolent universe conviction
  
• Meaning is metaphysical
  
• Relationship between man and reality
  
• Reflects mind and body integration
  
• Brings love into physical reality
  
• It is moral, profound value
  
• End in itself
  
• Selection of partner according to values you care about
  
• As expression of reason
  
• Love not blind but driven by values and rationality
  

10 government

• Politics normative
  
• Defines proper social system
  
• Politics rests on ethics and not primary
  
• Individual rights as absolutes
  
• Moral concept guiding founding fathers
  
• Rights means of subordinating society to moral law
  
• Right to life: liberty, property, pursuit of happiness
  
• Liberty: to choose what to do
  
• Property: right to gain and maintain values
  
• Pursuit of happiness: pursuit of self value
  
• Don't need permission of anyone for these rights
  
• Human rights vs property rights: no property rights means competent work to feed incompetent
  
• Rights cannot force others to do something or have duty to u
  
• Free milk for some is slave labor for others
  
• No other types of rights (economic, collective, animal, fetal, etc) besides above
  


• Govt as agency to protect rights
  
• Servant of society not its ruler
  
• Defends country against invaders
  
• Monopolist of force
  
• Govt of objective laws not men
  
• Govt as automaton acting on laws
  
• Only services are police, army, and courts
  
• Everything else is criminal
  
• Govt inherently negative
  
• Enforcement of contracts and impartial resolution of disputes
  
• No involvement in virtue or truth or education or trade or economics
  
• Let ppl choose to do what want even if harmful
  
• Mixed economy in west contradiction advocating rights and no rights
  
• Capitalism best
  
• Protects individual rights and property
  
• Govt hands off
  
• Virtues
  
• Independence: individual rights, not social driven
  
• Only producers are consumers
  
• Pyramid of ability
  
• Those at top get only material reward and no mental benefits from creations of those below
  
• Those on bottom get to work and survive and depend on mental inventions of those above without contributing anything to those above them
  

12 art

• Art need of man as thinker and valuer
  
• Animals have no art
  
• Art as concretization of metaphysics
  
• Art as end in itself
  
• Art is selective recreation of reality based on artist's metaphysical value judgments
  
• Art as concrete embodiment of some philosophy
  
• Allows people to grasp philosophy as percept
  
• Concept integrates percepts
  
• Art integrates concepts
  
• Style of work reveals artist's psychoepistemology
  
• Reveals level of mind the artist feels most at home
  
• Confirmation of consciousness
  
• Art not didactic, to show not teach (philosophy teaches)
  


• Romanticism greatest achievement in art history
  
• Romantic lit: Dostoevsky, Hugo, schillet, Edmond rostand?
  
• Driven by man as having volition and not determinism
  
• Plot is logical progression of events towards purpose
  
• Poetry more important than history
  
• Art as fuel for soul and romanticism as model of life as ought to be
  
• Aesthetic judgment important
  
• Style: must be clear, subject matter choice important, must be integrated
  

Epilogue

• Aristotle vs plato
  
• Analysis of history through philosophy
  
• America created due to enlightenment
  
• Then Kant made good the object of hate 
  
• Must keep fighting for the good and for reason even if world not perfect
  
• Spinoza: all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare

I just finished Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness, and I really liked its short essay format covering lots of different topics. I liked how it built upon the topics I saw in the previous fiction and nonfiction books.

The point of the title essay is that "selfishness" has a bad rap and corrupted definition, and the true view of selfishness and individualism is in fact congruent with living a moral life.

Below are my notes on each essay.

0 Intro

• Selfishness definition corrupted
  
• Real def: concern with one's own interests
  
• Altruism provides no moral code and just says sacrifice
  
• Purest evil because does not allow man to work for own survival
  
• Industrialist equated with robbers
  
• Man needs moral code
  
• Man needs to be beneficiary of own moral actions
  
• Man has right to moral existence
  
• Must act for rational self interest and be beneficiary of own actions
  
• not about following whims
  
• About using reason to decide actions consistent with explicit moral code (which is absent in altruism)
  

1 The objectivist ethics

• Code of values to guide man's actions
  
• Why we need such a code
  
• Mysticism, good as "good of society" is circular vague definition; who is society
  
• Ethics viewed as outside of reason, as subjective to man's whim
  
• Value is something to gain or keep, defined for whom and for what in the face of alternatives
  
• No alternatives means no values
  
• One fundamental alternative in universe: existence or nonexistence
  
• For inanimate matter, this is unconditional
  
• For living matter, constantly need to do action to promote existence, life
  
• Only to a living entity can something be good or evil or have value
  
• Ultimate value for organism is life; its life is its standard of value
  
• Other values are lesser values derived from value of life
  
• Man first becomes aware of values and good or evil concept in sensations of pleasure and pain
  
• Sensations are first way of learning evaluation
  
• His life is the standard that determines what will make him experience physical sensation of pleasure or pain
  
• Consciousness is basic means of survival
  
• Animals and plants have automatic code of values and their lives are standard of value; know what actions to take that are good and furthering their lives; cannot destroy themselves
  
• Man has no automatic code of values for survival and many more choices
  
• Man's consciousness uniquely volitional
  
• Man's survival requires perceptual values (which animals have but plants don't) and also conceptual values (which animals lack)
  
• Conceptual knowledge not acquired automatically
  
• Senses become percepts automatically but percepts don't become concepts automatically
  
• Sense is just automatic reaction to stimuli with no memory; percept is grouping and memory of those that animals have
  
• Faculty that directs conceptualizing manual process is reason; process is thinking
  
• Reason is act by choice; man can just drift semiconscious without it. Thinking requires full active awareness and concentration
  
• Man doesn't have instinct for providing food; needs to produce it through thought and action
  
• Nature gives man the potential and the material to run it but man must supply its spark plug; the machine is consciousness and man must supply his own starter and direction
  
• He has to discover how to use it and keep it in constant action
  
• Man must choose between rational being and suicidal animal. Man has to be man by choice.
  
• That which is proper to rational being's life is good; that which opposes is evil
  
• Two essentials of method of survival proper to rational being: thinking and productive work
  
• Those who choose not to think and understand their work and instead just imitate and mimic are parasites of those who did do the work
  
• Looters live off productive men and use force, method of animals. Cannot survive and will destroy themselves
  
• Standard of value = man's life
  
• Purpose = his own life
  
• Value is that which one acts to gain or keep
  
• Virtue is the act by which one gains it
  
• Values: Reason, purpose, self-esteem
  
• Virtues: rationality, productiveness, pride
  
• Productive work is the central purpose of rational man's life; reason is the source and pride is the result
  
• Rationality is basic virtue
  
• Basic vice is unfocused mind, refusal to see
  
• Commitment to active mental focus at all hours
  
• All values and goals based in reality
  
• Constant expansion of one's perception and knowledge
  
• All convictions derived from process of logic
  
• Commitment to live by product of one's own mind (virtue of independence)
  
• Accept the responsibility to form own judgments
  
• Never sacrifice one's convictions to wishes of others (virtue of integrity)
  
• Never attempt to fake reality (virtue of honesty)
  
• Never grant the unearned and undeserved (virtue of justice)
  
• Never seek to get away with contradictions
  
• Rejection of all mysticism
  
• Productiveness virtue is recognition that productive work lets man's mind sustain his life and make his background fit him
  
• Fullest and most purposeful use of his mind, regardless of ability or scope
  
• Virtue of pride recognizes that man is self-made soul as self-made wealth
  
• Moral ambitiousness
  
• Earn right to hold yourself as your highest value by achieving your moral perfection
  
• Never accepting code of irrational values
  
• Never accepting unearned guilt
  
• Never resigning to your character flaws
  
• Never placing any concern or fear of the moment above one's self-esteem
  
• Rejection of role of sacrificial animal
  
• Social: man as end in itself, life as ends, not means for others
  
• Never sacrificing yourself for others or others to yourself
  
• Achievement of own happiness is man's highest moral purpose
  
• Emotions are automatic results of value judgments integrated by subconscious to judge happy or suffering
  
• Emotional mechanism starts as tabula rasa and unlike physical mechanism of pleasure/pain it must be programmed by the values his mind choose
  
• Man must feel good or evil but what e considers good or evil or love or hate depends on his standard of value
  
• Happiness is the state which comes from achievement of one's values
  
• Happiness is no contradictory joy that comes to man with rational values and actions
  
• Happiness can be the purpose of ethics but not the standard
  
• Not hedonism because then just emotional whims
  
• Not true that one man's happiness requires another's sacrifice
  
• Human good does not require sacrifice like brutes
  
• Humans deal with each other as traders, giving value for value
  
• Trade is justice
  
• Men as independent equals
  
• Love, friendship is payment for pleasure one man derives from virtues of another
  
• To love one must have rational self-interest and self-esteem; must value self first 
  
• Benefits from living in human society: knowledge and trade via division of labor
  
• Only rational, productive, independent men can live in human society
  
• No man can initiate the use of force against another
  
• No man may obtain values by force
  
• Self defense not obtaining values
  
• Only Moral purpose Of govt is to protect man's rights, from physical violence, to his property and pursuit of happiness
  
• Capitalism pure laissez faire
  
• Separation of state and economy like state an church
  
• Altruism holds death as ultimate goal
  
• The mystic about supernatural dimension, the social theory about the collective in place of gd, subjectivism about negating reality: all are ethics of altruism and death
  

2 Mental health versus mysticism and self-sacrifice by Nathaniel branden

• Control over reality and mind
  
• Self-esteem
  
• Commitment to reason, no contradictions
  
• Anxiety and guilt are opposites of self-esteem
  
• Conviction of Fundamental efficacy and worthiness
  
• One is right for reality
  
• Impossible with normal morality of faith and self-sacrifice
  
• Faith is feelings = knowledge
  
• Can't have shortcuts of ideas into knowledge without logic or grounding in reality
  
• Reason must be absolute and cannot have its domain while faith has its
  
• Self esteem requires control of reality; can't happen if assume supernatural and ghosts and world haunted house
  
• Only one reality: that which knowable by reason
  
• Going mindless or zen no-mind is death
  
• Take pride in power to think and live
  
• Humility is evil; pride has to be earned through effort
  
• Life and self-esteem require loyalty to one's values, mind, and judgment, not self-sacrifice to anyone who wants
  
• Self sacrifice is mind sacrifice; surrender of higher value for lower one
  
• Mental illness is distorted value structure
  
• Not about renunciation of this earth but focus on it
  

3 The ethics of emergencies

• Altruism as purely self sacrifice leads to bad places
  
• Valuing another person doesn't mean self sacrifice
  
• Can love and enjoy another person for own enjoyment, not as blank check to loved one for sacrifice
  
• Help to others is not man's moral duty
  
• Here focus is on nonsacrificial help to others, which is possible and good
  
• Must have a defined hierarchy of values and never sacrifice higher one for lower one
  
• Love and friendship is personal, selfish value: expression and assertion of self esteem, response to one's own values in the person of another
  
• One gains selfish, personal joy from existence of person one loves
  
• Concern for welfare of those one loves is rational part of one's interests
  
• Payment to cure wife of Illness done for husband's happiness and not a sacrifice because his wife's health gives him higher value than other things
  
• Save your wife instead of 10 others u don't know
  
• Whether one should help another should always be in reference to one's own self interest
  
• Only save drowning stranger if danger to one's own life minimal; can't value stranger's life above self
  
• Willingness to save increases in proportion to how much one values the other
  
• If life unbearable without wife, then can give life to save her
  
• Helping those one loves is integrity not selflessness
  
• Incorporate the welfare of your friends into your hierarchy of values and act accordingly
  
• Grant to strangers generalized respect and good will of a human being until he forfeits it
  
• Other men of potential value to u
  
• Respect and value of others comes from valuing of self and seeing self in others; egoistic in good way; I value them because they are same species as me
  
• View men as innocent until proven guilty
  
• Generalized respect is why one helps strangers and only in emergencies
  
• Emergency is temporary unexpected situation incompatible with life like flood and fire
  
• Only in these should one volunteer to help strangers but not at expense of own life
  
• Poverty, ignorance, illness not emergencies
  
• Maintain life by one's own efforts
  

4 The conflicts of men's interests

• Can there be conflicts between men's interests
  
• In choosing goals and values, man guided by thinking, not feeling
  
• Cannot hold contradictions
  
• All values and interests taken in context always
  
• Context is short and long term spanning his lifetime; doesn't change spur of moment and doesn't do short term stuff to lose long term value
  
• Does not hold desires he cannot achieve with his own effort directly or indirectly
  
• Trades value for value
  
• Deal only with those who are rational, never sacrifice judgment or standards for irrational ppl
  
• Take responsibility for your wishes and their fulfillment instead of empty wishes
  
• can't evade responsibility by saying someone should pay for it or somehow something should work
  
• Somehow always means somebody and that doesn't work
  
• Effort required to produce all benefits and that one man's gain is not another's loss; not static global values or fixed pie
  
• A man's achievement not earned at expense of those who have not achieved it
  
• Never leave interests at mercy of any one individual or one specific concrete thing; never imagines he has unearned claim on any other human
  
• Achievement not due to luck or only chances; no such thing as single opportunity; only thing irreplaceable is ppl u love
  
• Love is not fixed pie but an unlimited response to be earned; love for one doesn't remove love from another
  
• In free society one can just avoid those who are irrational
  

5 Isn't everyone selfish by branden

• Value: to whom and for what
  
• Egoism: beneficiary of action is man himself; altruism: beneficiary others
  
• Man's life as purpose in itself vs as means to end for others
  
• Selfish = motivated by one's self-interest
  
• Selfishness needs hierarchy of values and never sacrificing lower or non value for higher
  
• Other men may benefit but his own benefit is his primary aim
  
• Selfishness determined by why one acts, not by whether he wants to do it
  
• Cannot be called selfish when acting against long term interests
  

6 the psychology of pleasure by branden

• Man needs pleasure as emotional payment and incentive for continuing
  
• Represents value of life
  
• His values that he chooses determine what pleasure is to him
  
• Man programs his values into emotional computer; only by changing his values can emotions change
  
• Values reflect his view of himself (level of self esteem he has) and of existence (whether universe open or closed to his action)
  
• 5 areas allowing enjoyment of life: productive work, human relationships, recreation, art, sex
  
• Productive work: gains sense of control over existence and efficacy
  
• Human relationships: company of intelligent ppl with integrity and self esteem and same standards
  
• Desire for pleasure is celebration of control over reality; irrational pleasure is escape from reality
  
• Recreation: enjoy party when there are activities that are enjoyable like seeing ppl u like and having worthwhile convos
  
• Boredom pleasures vs demanding pleasures/vacations: demanding means using mind
  
• Art can give huge pleasure and what one responds to depends on one's values
  
• Art can be projection of heroic, intelligent, enjoyed through pleasure of admiration of great values
  
• Favorite play cyrano de bergerac vs waiting for godot
  
• Loves person who reflects deepest values, attracted to ppl he can admire, those with self esteem
  
• Pride for self plus admiration for another combine in romantic love
  
• Pleasure as escape vs pleasure as end in itself
  

7 doesn't life require compromise?

• Compromise is adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concession
  
• Both must have valid claim and value to offer each other
  
• Must agree on basic principle but can compromise on particulars
  
• Example: sales price of good means agree on principal of trade
  
• Can't compromise with burglar with unilateral concessions (us foreign policy)
  
• Cant compromise by giving some govt controls; once lose any individual rights give up on concept of inalienable individual rights (us domestic policy)
  
• No compromise on basic principles on fundamental issues
  
• Desire or whim is not moral primary that demands compromise
  
• Cannot compromise moral principles, between food and poison, good and evil, truth and falsehood, even temporarily
  

8 how does one lead a rational life in an irrational society

• One must never fail to pronounce moral judgment
  
• In society today, not allowed to make moral judgments or pronounce someone or something good or evil--moral agnosticism
  
• Man is judged by judgments he makes
  
• Are they rational or not
  
• Can't be afraid of responsibility to judge
  
• Must be able to answer why, to judge every person and situation, and to make one's moral evaluation available to others when appropriate
  
• Cannot keep silent when values attacked or denounced
  

9 cult of moral grayness

• "no black or white, just white"
  
• No justification for choosing any part of something one knows is evil
  
• Moral guilt, fear of moral judgment, plea for blanket forgiveness
  
• Gray prelude to black

10 collectivized ethics

• Shouldn't one help the poor vs shouldn't one be forced to help the poor
  
• In free society, only individual chooses whether he wants to help another, not society
  
• Is Medicare desirable? Out of context yes, but must consider not only desire but also means (usually fogged up) and costs
  
• In private dealings with other individuals, you can't dictate their lives to suit your desire, so why allow this in public
  
• Human life as fodder for any public project
  
• Progress and science can only come from men's surplus, those who produced more than they consume and can venture out into the new
  
• Cannot fund science or space by stealing labor and money of men who can't afford shoes
  
• Cannot do public projects unless get everyone's voluntary participation
  
• Should we wait until man's death to cut out his eyes when others need them?
  

11 the monument builders

• Socialism
  
• Abolishment of property and govt control of production
  
• Tried on all continents
  
• Not movement of benevolence but motivated by power lust for the unearned of matter and of spirit (prestige)
  
• No such thing as "the public"-- just that interests of some men sacrificed for others
  
• Some gangster says the public is him and defends at point of gun
  
• Building of public monuments wasteful and just way to make mystic seeker of greatness happy
  
• Greatness achieved by productive efforts, not monuments of prestige
  
• Pyramids, marble subway, state dinners just symbols of prestige built by forced labor and extorted money
  
• American monuments not public: skyscrapers built by individuals
  

12 man's rights

• Individual rights define link between moral code and society
  
• Required or else just code of altruism and self sacrifice applicable only to individual and not society
  
• Rulers exempt from moral law and interpret it as wish
  
• USA achieved finally subordination of society to moral law, as opposed to monarchy of France, Rome, nazi Germany, socialist Russia
  
• Limitation on power of state, subjugation of might to right
  
• First moral society
  
• USA held man as end in himself not means to end for others or society
  
• Only moral purpose of govt is protection of individual rights
  
• Right to life is right to do actions to further one's own life and happiness (right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness)
  
• Right to life requires property rights; can't produce if product disposed of by others (slave)
  
• Rights are required conditions for man's survival on earth
  
• Govt serves only to protect men's rights by protecting from physical violence
  
• Govt as servant not ruler
  
• Democratic party of fdr and in 60s changed word rights to include things that are man made like education, medical care, etc without considering the question at whose expense
  
• Any right of one man that takes away from another creates slave labor and is not a right
  
• Man has right to pursue happiness, not right to happiness
  
• Rights are freedoms to action that don't impose obligations on other men
  
• Anything done in group requires voluntary consent of all
  
• Bill of rights protection against govt actions, not private ones
  
• No private action can be censorship, just govt
  

13 collectivized rights

• Subjectivism in ethics is collectivism in politics
  
• Replacement of rights of man with rights of mob
  
• Rights only can be individual, not of group
  
• Individual rights should not be subject to vote by majority
  
• Invasion of enslaved society reasonable when establish there a free society with individual rights
  

14 the nature of govt

• Govt is institution that holds exclusive right to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a geography
  
• Men must deal with each other by reason and voluntarily not by force
  
• Force only for self defense
  
• Can't leave forceful protection to individual choice or else all go armed and attack each other
  
• Task of government is to protect people and their individual rights through force applied by objective rules
  
• Govt is means of placing retaliatory control of physical force under objective control and objective laws
  
• Govt hold monopoly on legal use of physical force so govt must be controlled and completely an automaton based on objective laws and no whim
  
• Private individual may do anything unless legally forbidden; govt official may do nothing unless legally required
  
• American concept of government of laws and not men
  
• Only requirement for man to enter into rational society is to renounce use of force to govt
  
• Subordination of might to right
  
• Separation of force and whim
  
• Govt as arbiter that settles contract disputes among men
  
• Man must plan ahead and use contracts to develop unlike animal or savage
  
• Breach of contract, fraud, extortion all indirect uses of force
  
• Police to protect men from criminals
  
• Armed services to protect from foreign countries
  
• Law courts to settle disputes among men according to objective laws
  

15 govt financing in a free society

• Taxation (payment for govt services) should be voluntary
  
• Rational individuals would pay for it because would want the services like insurance
  
• One method: govt lottery
  
• Another: contracts can be insured by paying fixed percentage of sum involved to the govt and govt only recognizes insured contracts and individuals free to enter verbal agreements if don't want to pay
  
• Credit transactions are all contracts and involve huge sums so percentage to govt would be tiny
  
• Government must be viewed as paid servant whose services are not gratuitous
  
• It's ok if less able benefit from indirect benefits like police force as long as nonsacrificial and no redistribution of wealth
  
• Ppl pay in proportion to their level of economic activity so poor would pay little or nothing yet still get benefits
  

16 divine right of stagnation by branden

• Biologically inactivity is death
  
• Transform environment through productive work
  
• Need of thought never ends as quality of life increases
  
• Must keep learning new skills
  
• Not supporting those who want to just remain as is, not learn new skills, those who think they've thought or learned enough
  

17 racism

• Lowest form of collectivism because ascribes mind to physical chemistry and ancestors
  
• No such thing as collective or racial achievement
  
• One man's crimes or achievements don't rub off on another
  
• Racism is quest for automatic judgment to bypass moral evaluation of another person or quest for automatic self esteem
  
• Racial quotas and special treatment absurd; should be color blind instead
  
• Stand on individual rights but don't violate others' rights
  

18 counterfeit individualism by branden

• Individualism is not just doing what u want regardless of others' rights
  
• Individualist loyal to his own mind and fact-centered
  
• Individualism is not subjectivism or defiance or nonconformity
  

19 the argument from intimidation

• Stating that only immoral would fail to see some argument as false
  
• Arbitrarily claiming argument is false
  
• Like emperor's new clothes story
  
• Entire modern art movement is example
  
• When disapproval of others is most important thing to avoid
  
• One weapon against it: moral certainty

Next up on my philosophy reading was Philosophy: Who Needs It by Ayn Rand. This was a non-fiction survey of a number of philosophical, political, and cultural issues from the perspective of Objectivism.

My biggest takeaway is the idea that philosophy affects culture and psychology at a profound level, in a way that we don't think about consciously and take for granted. The many catch phrases and colloquialisms we all use are grounded in the type of philosophy we inherently accept. This raises the importance of paying attention to one's language and listening carefully to what others say. It also makes philosophy a subject that's vitally important to everyone's understanding and living a good life -- not just a purely intellectual subject that's all about abstractions (the more common view of philosophy).

The book spent a lot of time explaining why the philosophy of Kant is evil. I haven't personally read Kant, but I want to read it in the future to better understand this author's point of view. Overall, the book spent a lot of time in a negative tone, using strong negative words (the author apparently loves the words "bromide," "dribble," "louse," and "tripe" -- I think those words are funny too). I thought there was a bit too much time spent critiquing others' work and philosophies and not enough actually teaching/explaining her own. Nonetheless, I did learn a lot about how she thinks and what her philosophy represents (especially from the earlier chapters).


Intro

• Salesman of philosophy
  
• Primarily advocate of reason and its supremacy
  
• Reason requires capitalism and objectivism
  
• Man needs philosophy and for practical purpose
  
• Wants to know which ideas are right
  

1 Philosophy: who needs it

• Most men live life evading 3 questions: where am I, how do I know it, what should I do
  
• Usual answer to last is whatever everyone does
  
• Philosophy answers these 3 questions
  
• Branches of science are for topics; philosophy the soil of the tree
  
• Metaphysics study of existence; where am I 
  
• Epistemology: study of knowledge, how do I know it, means of cognition
  
• Ethics is technology, morality to define code of existence
  
• Politics: principles of proper social system
  
• Aesthetics: study of art, refueling of man's consciousness
  
• In order to deal with real life problems, need philosophy
  
• Platitudes of convos/colloquialisms come from old philosophers
  
• Integrate experiences into conceptual integrations
  
• All ppl use abstract ideas to deal with life better than infant
  
• Integrations through philosophic system
  
• Need to know root of system to know how I integrate
  
• Either u define philosophy u use carefully or u use one that's grabbag of notions
  
• Ur conscious mind programs ur computer or ur subconscious will do it by chance
  
• Emotions are hourly printouts from computer of how reality meets values
  
• Garbage in to computer, garbage out
  
• Emotions not tools of cognition
  
• Under Kant, trend towards abandoning reason
  
• Approach philosophy as detective story
  
• Why and how: ask about each philosophy u study
  
• Want to be Proud, disciplined, and in control of body and mind
  
• Army of free country to defend free rights
  

2 Philosophical detection

• Bad catch phrases
  
• Examine and break down until get to irreducible primary 
  
• "it may be true for you but not for me": breaks law of identity
  
• Analyze catch phrases literally
  
• Emotions are not irreducible primary; must look deeper for cause
  
• Introspection: what do I feel, why do I feel it
  
• Rationalization makes reality meet emotions, cheats you
  
• Active mind not open mind
  
• Stolen concept fallacy
  
• Essentials:
  
• Metaphysics: law of identity
  
• Epistemology: supremacy of reason
  
• Ethics: rational egoism
  
• Politics: individual rights, capitalism
  
• Aesthetics: metaphysical values

3 metaphysical and man made

• Power of choice and volition means there are things man can change
  
• Premises of existence and consciousness
  
• Premise of existence
  
• Existence exists, universe exists independent of consciousness
  
• Package dealing messes up philosophy
  
• Creation is rearrangement of natural elements of reality
  
• Accepted in regards to physical sciences but not in humanities and how man deals with man
  
• Metaphysically given not questioned; man made should be
  
• Must differentiate from one to the other; metaphysically given not right or wrong but just standards
  
• Premise of consciousness believes that all determined by consciousness not natural reality

4 the missing link

• Stories of ppl giving views without reasons and logic
  
• Anti conceptual mentality
  
• Passivity in regard to process of conceptualizaton
  
• Brain feels it has enough and stops caring further
  
• Absence of concern with why and what for kills of past with causality and future with purpose
  
• Results without worrying about causes
  
• Substitution of men for ideas and man made for metaphysical they can't understand
  
• Tribalism
  
• Caste systems
  
• Racism
  
• Ancestor worship
  
• Gangs
  
• Motion not acting
  
• Feeling not thinking
  
• Focusing on now not tomorrow
  
• Collectivist
  
• Men should associate with others based on ideas they share not accident of birth or force
  
• Missing link between animals and man: anticonceptual mentality
  

5 selfishness without the self

• Man needs personal values
  
• Needs to judge self against objective standards
  
• I'm good because...
  
• Love is a response to values
  
• Must be loved for something instead of just being loved for self
  
• Take ideas seriously
  
• Ideas of personal importance to each
  
• Dread responsibilities and thinking
  

6 an open letter to Boris

• Letter to chess master
  
• Requires big intellectual capacity and planning ahead
  
• Metaphysical absolutism of game and exact rules
  
• Players devise long range strategy
  
• Leads to game where players can play for real
  
• Real world rules in soviet union unbearable if had to be chess game
  
• Chess as escape from reality for one who thinks but doesn't get men
  

7 faith and force: the destroyers of the modern world

• Mysticism, collectivism, altruism
  
• Mysticism killed in renaissance
  
• Collectivism killed in WW2
  
• Altruism is what must be killed
  
• Need of others is not ur first purpose
  
• Man can exist just for self
  
• Only mysticism called upon to justify altruism
  
• reason vs mysticism
  
• Progress vs stagnation
  
• Mysticism is acceptance without proof
  
• Mysticism ruled dark ages
  
• Kant most responsible
  
• Kant wanted to save altruism through mysticism
  
• Constructed wrong definition of reason
  
• Straw man argument
  
• Soviet Russia, nazi Germany, social England examples of socialism destruction and collectivism
  
• Soviet Russia best example of altruism
  
• Men can deal with each other with reason or with guns/force
  
• Animal cannot act to destroy itself
  
• Man has constant choice to make between living and dying
  
• Has power to act as own destroyer
  
• Must learn his own knowledge
  
• Must discover values and live them by choice
  
• Man's life as standard of morality
  

8 from the horse's mouth

• Modern philosophy professors who advocate kant have it wrong
  
• Philosophy is not bridge between religion and reason
  

9 Kant vs Sullivan

• Idea that perceptions not needed for science is wrong
  
• Knowledge cannot enter brain without senses or through ghost
  
• Helen Keller play miracle worker Annie Sullivan 
  
• Words critical to knowledge, contain the world
  

10 causality vs duty

• Duty is anticoncept
  
• Kills legitimate concept
  
• Different than obligation
  
• Duty cannot be for self interest or virtue; driven by parents and church and government
  
• Duty from Kant
  
• No absolute obligations except life or death
  
• Everything else choice for man
  
• Causality not duty in rational man
  
• Weighs task against cost and chooses if does it
  
• Kant duty creates guilt and fear in deciding to give up work rationally
  
• Only obligation that matters is personal promise
  

11 an untitled letter

• Biggest enemy is man of ability
  
• Shooting down strong members to help incompetent due to envy
  

12 egalitarianism and inflation

• Looseness of definitions kills writing
  
• Inflation hard to understand and biggest crime
  
• Hunting
  
• Then agriculture
  
• Time, savings, production key concepts
  
• Everything requires savings by time
  
• Money is tool of exchange and saving to get delayed consumption and saving
  
• Must save stock seed
  
• Gold coins
  
• Payments in promissory notes on future production breaks down
  
• Only govt can mortgage ur future without ur consent on ur production in future via tax receipts
  
• Creates inflation
  
• Keynes wrecking
  
• Only producers not consumers matter because producers are the consumers and demand and supply must be of the same people in the market
  
• Investment capital is lending of stock seed and unconsumed earned goods to someone else
  
• Only finances means of production
  
• Credit does not create production but consumption
  
• Juggling debts
  
• Financing for welfare
  
• Subsidies to foreign consumers
  
• Govt consuming this country's stock seed
  
• Stagflation
  
• Inflating stops working
  
• Stops production
  

13 stimulus and response

• BF Skinner book very influential in psychology
  
• Attack on autonomous man
  
• Mystics of spirit and of muscle
  
• Of spirit want consciousness without existence
  
• Of muscle: existence without consciousness
  
• Both destroy muscle
  
• Skinner is mystic of muscle
  
• Doesn't prove anything and doesn't give definitions, just metaphors and small talk
  

14 establishing an establishment

• Govt funding grants for ideas creates orthodoxy an establishment
  
• Should have no role in ideas
  

15 censorship

• Statism
  
• Supreme court rulings criteria for obscenity
  
• Average person using community standards
  
• More power for govt to judge value of artistic work
  
• First amendment
  
• Conservatives reject reason for faith
  
• Liberals reject reason for emotions
  
• Mind body dichotomy kills mind and reason
  

 16 fairness doctrine for education

• Cannot be applied fairly
  
• Fairness of airwaves that public owns and fairness of teaching all ideologies in public institutionsdescribed her ideal curriculum as “Aristotle in philosophy, von Mises in economics, Montessori in education, Hugo in literature”
  

17 what can one do

• Teach men the right philosophy first
  
• Changes come from minority intellectual movements
  
• Develop own convictions
  
• Speak on any scale u can
  
• Express views on issues
  
• Write letters to media and congressman
  

18 don't let it go

• 3 areas to judge individual:
  
• Present course of action
  
• Convictions
  
• Sense of life
  
• Can judge country same way 
  
• Nation has sense of life
  
• Lifestyle taken for granted
  
• Culture sum of intellectual achievements of men others accept
  
• Dominance of ideas determined by many factors or by default
  
• Product of minority
  
• In europe much more statism and less individualism
  
• Fight for reason and man as rational being
  
• Fight for American sense of life