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PROPEL(TM) Universal Club Brochure PROPEL™Passionate Rational Objectivists Promoting Exuberant Living™Refueling Your Human Spirit In Local Clubs Worldwide http://www.PropelObjectivism.com Who Is an Objectivist? An Objectivist is anyone who shares the comprehensive philosophy of life called Objectivism that novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand discovered and developed in the mid-20th century. She explained that “sense of life” through her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged as well as her nonfiction works such as For the New Intellectual and The Virtue of Selfishness. Unlike the philosophies and religions dominating our culture today, our philosophy of reason sees the individual human being as an end in himself, not as the means to the ends of a so-called “Higher Cause” such as “Society” or “Environment.” Thus, arguments for voluntary or compulsory self-sacrifice and servitude in the name of any “Higher Cause” fail to convince in the face of an Objectivist’s “sense of life.” Higher Causes: The collection of ideological bombs ready to explode in the face of those who accept them. Major Points of Our Philosophy of Reason Here are the key terms necessary to understand our world view. These represent the five major branches of philosophy and the “Big Questions” they ask: Metaphysics: Where am I? Epistemology: How do I know it? Ethics: What should I do? Politics: What may I do? Esthetics: What might and ought I become? Dominating views like Socialism, Postmodernism, Theocracy, and Radical Environmentalism offer these oppressive answers: Metaphysics: Higher Cause Epistemology: Mysticism Ethics: Self-Sacrifice Politics: Tyranny for Higher Cause Esthetics: Envy Justification Our view, by contrast, offers these flourishing answers, known as the “Five Rs”: Metaphysics: Reality Epistemology: Reason Ethics: Rational Egoism Politics: Rights Esthetics: Romantic Realism Which answers make more sense to you? Ethics and the Four Basic Human Needs Imagine yourself stranded alone on a deserted island. Neither prayers nor charities nor welfare nor family nor lovers nor friends could satisfy your needs for food, clothing, shelter, knowledge, etc. Only you could act to satisfy them. This mental exercise demonstrates that no other person has ultimate responsibility for your life and well-being. You do. To judge the merits of any proposed ethical system demands an objective assessment of how well it satisfies basic individual human needs for living on Earth. Books like The Eighth Habit by Stephen Covey and The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz categorize these needs as: Spiritual: The need for meaning Emotional: The need for bonding Mental: The need for knowing Physical: The need for acting Self At the deepest spiritual level of the soul, our philosophy holds the individual’s own Self—his own life—as his own ultimate value. This profound vision reveals Selfishness as the ultimate virtue and empowers you to discover and to realize your dreams. Each of the three remaining needs has its own cardinal value. http://www.PropelObjectivism.com Three Cardinal Values To Help You Grow Self-Esteem Our radical esteem for your life as an end in itself can unleash intense emotional power. Such a power needs a supreme and ruling value to direct it. When you embrace our cardinal value of Self-Esteem, you commit to growing into a Self able to live and worthy of living. High self-esteem empowers you to form truly meaningful bonds, first with objective reality, then with your own Self, then with others. In conjunction with the remaining two ruling values, it allows you confidently and passionately to introspect, identify, and validate your own unique set of governing values—your ideal emotional states and their causes. Ongoing growth of your authentic Self lets you experience an earned sense of Pride, which Aristotle considered the highest virtue. Reason Discovering your authentic Self, categorizing that Self as various roles and planning to achieve it to the best of your ability requires the mental virtue of Rationality via its component virtues of Independence, Integrity, Honesty, and Justice. When you embrace our cardinal value of Reason, you commit to mastery of the fine art of non-contradictory identification of objective reality. Structured mental exercises among peers help to strengthen your ability to “check your premises,” to think on your feet, to control events in your life and to plan your next moves both short-term and long-term. The dynamic interactions between reality and your governing values provide the central theme for these discussions. Purpose Our philosophy views Productiveness and its handmaiden, Benevolence, as the physical virtues needed to let you flourish with exuberant living. When you embrace our cardinal value of Purpose, you learn to be constantly aware of the goal of your every act. You learn to develop a personal mission statement to give your life a sense of unity and direction. You learn to cultivate values-driven bonds with like-minded people through local club events designed to propel the soul, emotions, mind, and body.
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