Today’s Judaism is Pharisee teaching.
(Wikipedia makes no bones about it)
Few Christians know that.
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Ayn Rand is universally panned by “intellectuals” but she was smarter than most 14 brilliant truths from Rand: https://memod.com/jashdholani/ayn-rand-5938/part-1 Find inside: • 3 signs your society is going downhill • The motivation of real artists • How sex is tied to the soul And more
Only Ayn Rand was smart enough to predict that incompetence and an ENVY for excellence will lead to dystopian social outcomes. Orwell thought we’d need total mind control, Huxley thought we’d need a permanently drugged populace, but Rand knew: all you need is resentment
Very few people in history wrote 1000+ page books, sold 10 million+ copies, were loved as much as hated, and became more influential after dying. Ayn Rand is one of them. Discover the 3 signs your society is doomed, why loving money is NOBLE, and more insights from Rand
Money is not evil but its opposite - a “token of honor.” The moochers take your labor “by tears.” The looters use “force.” But money embodies the noble idea that “the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods.” Money makes us human.
Ayn Rand wrote that you will know the real artist by his “love for truth.” The subjective, “art for art’s sake” artists pretend to channel “higher mysteries” but their work comes out like “vomit out of a drunkard.” Real art takes effort, discipline, and “tension of mind.”
Ayn Rand on what money CAN’T do : “Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent.” Money is a tool to realize your values and achieve your purpose. It will never tell you WHAT to value or which purpose to seek
Money earned via compromise is self-defeating: “Did you get your money by pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy."
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Ayn Rand’s hero John Galt lists the three signs that mean your society is going downhill fast:
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Men who produce need “permission from men who produce nothing”
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Money flows to people dealing not in goods but “in favors”
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Men “get richer by graft and by pull than by work”
Rand on what loving money means : “To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you - a passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men.” Money makes possible an Exchange Of Excellence between voluntary peers
Ayn Rand nails the difference between the gold standard and fiat : “Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it."
Ayn Rand’s villains? People who live second-hand. People who don’t “want to be great, but to be thought great.” People who don’t “want to build, but to be admired as a builder.” People who put the “the impression of doing” over actual blood and bones action.
The Fountainhead hero Howard Roark on what it’s like talking to someone who is living FOR AND BY social approval : “The second-hander acts, but the source of his actions is scattered in every other living person. It’s everywhere and nowhere and you can’t reason with him.”
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I hate to think that 1984 is becoming a reality, but it looks that way.
Today’s politics is straight from the book, and what’s at the base of the diabolical system is the total surrender and ignorance of the sheep.
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Its almost like life imitating art but in a twisted irony. We are often warned but we never listen while enjoying the comforts of our complacency!
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History remembers Edmund Burke as the father of conservatism
BUT few know about a philosophy book he wrote at 27: The Sublime and Beautiful (1757)
A masterpiece that touches on:
• Differences between men & women
• Aesthetics
• Self-help (from an unexpected angle)
1/ What is beautiful? For Burke, the beautiful is small, delicate, smooth, and has “graduation variation” Small babies and little kittens are beautiful - and easy to love Also note that people in love give each other “diminutive epithets” They call each other baby and darling
2/ Beauty is a relaxant
But notice how compared to total stillness, we find “a gentle oscillatory motion” more relaxing
From beach waves to musical notes
Infants appreciate the “rising and falling” sensation too:
“Rocking sets children to sleep better than absolute rest”
3/ The world you know is impossible without beauty Beauty’s utilitarian value is incalculable Beauty pleases, leads to love, and incentivizes social cohesion. Burke: When people “give us joy in beholding them…they inspire us with sentiments of tenderness and affection”
4/ The Beautiful v/s The Sublime according to Burke
Beauty pleases, the sublime terrorizes
The beautiful is small, the sublime is vast
Where beauty leads to love, the sublime leads to pain
And yet encounters with the sublime are all important for us
Why?
5/ The importance of pain
Pain is like heat from fire - a signal that you are too close to something destructive
While beauty is a relaxant, the terror of the sublime acts as a necessary wake-up call
Jünger: “Tell me your relation to pain, and I will tell you who you are.”
6/ Seek out terror - it exercises your mind
Burke writes that “if pain and terror are so modified as not to be…carried to violence,” then they fortify us
An optimal amounts of physical strain strengthens the muscles
An optimal amount of mental strain strengthens the mind
7/ While beauty invokes love, the sublime brings out awe and reverence. While we love what we know, we admire what is outside the power and scope of our knowledge. Edmund Burke: “It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration, and chiefly excites our passions.”
8/ Burke on the “wide difference between admiration and love”
While we love what is pleasing, we admire what is powerful, great, and terrible
Burke writes:
“We submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us.”
9/ Men and women are passionate about each other, but in different ways While women admire men, men love women The feminine spirit is delicate, the masculine spirit is dangerous and capable of causing pain Women have potential beauty, men have potential sublimity
10/ Beauty nudges us toward rest. Rest, while pleasant, can slowly rot our body and brain’s faculties. This is why we also need manageable encounters with the sublime - too much rest produces “many inconveniences” such as “melancholy, dejection, and despair.”
11/ While beauty is found inside civilization, the sublime is found outside of it - the untamed sea, the uncharted space, and everything vast and unknown. Whatever is “conversant about terrible objects” is sublime. Burke writes: “Terror is…the ruling principle of the sublime.”
12/ Civilization beautifies everything, CUTS OUT the sublime Civilization smoothens out difficulties, turns the unknown wild into the known world, increases comforts, minimizes pain, eliminates danger, and makes each waking moment relaxing On the horizon: Nietzsche’s last man
13/ But life loses much when it loses all sublimity. The terror of the sublime keeps us sharp, invokes admiration, and forces us to actualize our potential. The beautiful might make us happy; it’s the sublime that pushes us forward.
On this day in 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte reestablishes slavery in all French colonies. The move reverses its abolition under France’s revolutionary regime in 1794. It will take until 1818 for France to finally outlaw the slave trade; abolition won’t be reimposed until 1848.
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When does the sex part come?
LOL
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I was asking the same question that is why I posted this! Lol!
Click bait. Most wouldn’t watch if not for the title. 
I don’t think so. If you watched the video you would know why its a beautiful irony!
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America was supposed to be Art Deco.
These are the 20 most iconic Art Deco buildings in the United States
- The American Radiator Building, New York City (1924)
2. Boston Avenue United Methodist Church, Tulsa (1929)
3. Union Terminal, Cincinnati (1933)
4. The General Electric Building, New York City (1931)
5. Rockefeller Center, New York City (1939)
6. The Niagara Mohawk Building, Syracuse (1932)
7. The Eastern Columbia Building, Los Angeles (1930)
8. Buffalo City Hall, Buffalo (1931)
9. Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles (1935)
10. The Chrysler Building, New York City (1930)
11. Paramount Theatre, Oakland (1931)
12. The Empire State Building, New York City (1931)
13. The Guardian Building, Detroit (1929)
14. 30th Street Station, Philadelphia (1933)
15. New York Telephone Building, New York City (1927)
16. The Fisher Building, Detroit (1928)
17. The Carbide & Carbon Building, Chicago (1929)
18. The Genesee Valley Trust Building, Rochester (1930)
19. The Nebraska State Capitol, Lincoln (1932)
20. Bullocks Wilshire, Los Angeles (1929)
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I like Ayn Rand, but as with many of these great thinkers, she developed a following and got too full of herself, developed her complete way of thinking into an insufferable pompous “system.”
A funny anecdote from the beginnings of the internet: around 1994, I got online and started poking around. Yahoo was one of the first aggregators, and I found a discussion forum on Ayn Rand. I went and started checking it out, watching text exchanges between people. Then a new character appears, calling himself “cyberfuck” looking for sex chat. Such is the way of things.
We have come a long way from those days huh? Now AI threatens all of humanity and Ayn Rand is but an after thought of some author everyone has forgotten about whose books collect dust in a musty or perhaps dried out attic somewhere.
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Thanks for this, Doc. Especially that photo that I think is from Woodstock. It’s the catalyst that has crystallized my thinking into a totally complete system, entirely consistent, at least internally. However, I like conciseness, so it will be published as a small fold-out of 10 postcards.
Saying number 1: There’s always a jittsy out there
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These are some nice pieces of architecture in America especially of the art deco era. There is many more world wide that should be on this list .
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Isn’t is funny how the ignorance shines through and is masqueraded through passive aggressive behavior? He has no idea or appreciation in what is being discussed in this thread, he is too dumb!
American architecture in the Art Deco era was some of the best work ever produced in the history of the country.
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