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Sunday
January 30, 2005

Seven Deadly Sins by Lindsay Perigo

Seven Deadly Sins ought to be enough to be going on with. As will be readily apparent, they are overlapping and mutually reinforcing ... I hope that in getting my exasperation with them off my chest, I have written something of value to the reader in his quest for Nem-status and eudaimonia. It can be summed up as follows:

This above all, thine own self create, and to it forever be true …
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Discuss this Article (76 messages)

Saturday, March 5, 2005 - 7:11am

Byron, thank you. My sentiments exactly. Thank you for serving our country as well.

IMHO the preemptive strike against Iraq was the wrong thing to do. The focus should be kept on Bin Ladin and terrorism. They are the ones who initiated the force against us. To use 911 and bad intelligence as an excuse to go after Iraq was wrong. Call me a saddamite or whatever, I don't think the Iraqi war is justified. Its not our government's job to police the world and although some good has come from this war, free elections for example, we should not be there.

"So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. . . . When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him by force. It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share his evil or sink to his concept of morality: I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose: his own."

- Ayn Rand

(Edited by katdaddy on 3/05, 7:23am)

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 9:57am

It popped up on the homepage and I read it and sanctioned it.

I am guilty of a few of these sins, personally, but I do not view them as sins or accept guilt for them. We all know what a fathead Linz can be, so I took it with a grain of salt, so to speak. Linz's self-reflective grandeur was born of staring at himself on a TV monitor on public access television in New Zealand. He lives on an small island of pioneers in the middle of nowhere and he cannot seem to convince them that there exist certain philosophical principles that are universal. Yet, he presumes to "change the world" with the ten millionth website on Earth. Even so, for all of this, he writes well and makes an interesting point.

Somewhere in the gray murk, you (that is I) have to allow umbrage, kick a little ass myself, and do something to effect my social environment so that my daughter does not have to live in a socialist bootcamp nanny state.

Instead of posting here for my own solipsism, I should put together that two-page hand-out and challenge my police colleagues in our Ethics class to ... do... what?.... Give up the war on drugs? Stop handing out speeding tickets since speeding is all right as long as it does not result in an accident? And what would I tell them that would not result in my being written off as a crackpot, which any Objectivist must be by definition.

I mean, you can talk about Fedex and the Philadelphia Flyers, but those guys do not talk about us. It would hurt their bottom lines ... and therefore their bottom ends. About 30 years ago, in the pages of The Libertarian Connection, where I first met Tibor Machan and Adam Reed, there was a buzzword: SAVASS -- save your own ass. That is the opposite of KASS.

But it was a nice essay and I sanctioned it.

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 3:22pm

"I mean, you can talk about Fedex and the Philadelphia Flyers, but those guys do not talk about us. It would hurt their bottom lines ..."

Actually, Ed Snider, owner of the Flyers, had the movie rights to Atlas Shrugged AND made appearance at local Objectivist Clubs. Reportedly, the common question asked of him was whether or not Pat Croce, who owned the Sixers, and is one of the most KASS non-Objectivists around, ever read Rand. Snider replied that Croce would probably shoot to the moon if he ever did! (This is a man, who was told that he would never walk again after a near fatal motorcycle crash, proceeded to scale the Walt Whitman Bridge.

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 5:37pm

Joe Maurone wrote: "Actually, Ed Snider, owner of the Flyers, had the movie rights to Atlas Shrugged AND made appearance at local Objectivist Clubs. "

Thanks. I am happy to stand corrected. I do find Ed Snider when I google Objectivism, but I do not find it so readily when I google Philadelphia Flyers. But, again, the oversight is mine and I appreciate the help there, Joe.

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 5:39pm

Lindsay Perigo spun Petronius the Dane and said: "This above all, thine own self create, and to it forever be true … "

Summa.

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 5:47pm

http://www.philadelphiaflyers.com/history/halloffame/snider.asp

He's more involved right now with Comcast-Spectator, but here's a profile of his sports involvements.

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 3:46am

Thanks for the link. I did not see the word Objectivist in there.

You see, as a rational man, as a millionaire and an entrepreneur who was raised in an entrrepreneurial family, Mr. Snider -- as he is known to friend and foe alike -- keeps his personal opinions to himself. He is out to make money, not to "change the world."

According to Eric Hoffer's The True Believer, people who want to change the world are personally unhappy with their own lives. They externalize their problems, rather than taking responsibiltiy for them. They go from one mass movement to another, seeking to lose themselves in something bigger and more important, placing their hope, not in their own achievements, but in a glorious new future for their descendents.

At least, that is one view. Perhaps there are others.

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 4:57am

I am about to break my most important SOLO rule which is never respond to anything by Michael Marotta, nor participate in any thread in which he participates.

Google is not the only way to find someone's affiliations and what they've done. Just because you've done a google search doesn't mean you know something.

Ed Snider put up the money to found the Ayn Rand Institute. He was one of the three founding board members along with Leonard Peikoff and Edith Packer. He left that organization after a falling out with Peikoff.

Ed Snider is a long-time member of the Board of Directors of The Objectivist Center.

Ed Snider has been an activist in the cause of spreading Objectivism, giving his money and advice for many years.

Bill

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 6:36am

Good point Michael you made about Hoffer's The True Believer - and is one of the reasons it was so highly recommended by Branden...

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 10:45am

Bill Perry wrote: " am about to break my most important SOLO rule which is never respond to anything by Michael Marotta, nor participate in any thread in which he participates. Google is not the only way to find someone's affiliations and what they've done. ..."

Bill, you attach way too much importance to me. I would never have such a rule, but then I live by few rules, anyway. One rule I do have is not to believe anything -- or to do anything -- unless there are at least two reasons for it.

Be that as it may, my point was that we all know Ed Snider as an Objectivist because we are Objectivists. Mr. Snider -- as everyone else calls him -- does not advertise his Objectivism very much. On the other hand, Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Mel Gibson, and a gaggle of other geese and ganders, all pump for Scientology, Christianity, and whatever else they believe in -- for those who do claim to believe in anything.

You see, that is the other side of Eric Hoffer's moebius theory: most people are sheep; only a handful of seekers really care about the truth and that handful of unhappy true believers makes the world go around. We invent ideas and we try them out. If not for us, there would be no religions, no philosophies, no sciences or scientologies. We observe patterns and organize knowledge. Left to their own the sheeple would still have bilaterally symmetrical brains and no sense of self. The self was created as a new idea.

So, perhaps Ed (or "Mr. Snider" to his friends and family) is not a true believer, but only values the ideas of Objectivism as they apply to his personal life and to his own business, which he minds.

Perhaps he understands that the value of the equities of the companies that he works for might be negatively affected if people on Wall Street heard him touting laissez-faire, dissing the SEC, calling for a gold currency, and claiming that a woman president could never feel feminine. Mel Gibson is not so shy. Apparently salvation through his Savior, Jesus Christ, has given Mel ("Mel" to his friends), the courage not to care too much what other people think of him. That would be consonant with the fact that Mel Gibson sells himself, whereas Mr. Snider buys and sells other people.

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 10:50am

...And to sell oneself is to be a slave of others.

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 12:03pm

Michael,

Nonsense! Bill Perry has already discussed Ed Snider's large role in the two largest Objectivist organizations around. People don't have to go around with a big sign around their neck saying "I am an Objectivist" to be an activist. Maybe he's too busy making money. Nothing un-Objectivist about that.

Jim

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 2:41pm

"According to Eric Hoffer's The True Believer, people who want to change the world are personally unhappy with their own lives. They externalize their problems, rather than taking responsibiltiy for them. "

Hey, me and Jung go way back, and Hoffer has a point, but that doesn't mean that external threats aren't real. The key is to be able to differentiate the projections from the actual.

And why pick on Snider? I suspect he's not wearing Rand T-shirts because his line of work doesn't require it. He owns sports teams and cable companies. He runs them by Objectivist principles. He's leading by example, which is the way it should be done. Show, don't tell.

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 4:39pm

You got that right, Joe...

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 6:49pm

Joe Maurone wrote: "And why pick on Snider? I suspect he's not wearing Rand T-shirts because his line of work doesn't require it. He owns sports teams and cable companies. He runs them by Objectivist principles. He's leading by example, which is the way it should be done. Show, don't tell."

I agree 100% -- and I did mean to pick on Ed Snider, as much as to point out that Objectivism is a personal philosophy. I apologize for dropping that point. Ed Snider's success is an inspiration, as any success can be, especially in business. The fact remains that he does not wear Ayn Rand t-shirts to change the world.

Robert Malcom scored a hit with: "..And to sell oneself is to be a slave of others."

Well, yes, I have to agree with that. We Objectivists have a ways to go before we completely reason our way through the jungle of agoric service. When Roger Enright poked at Roark with "So you do need other people!" Howard replied, "I am not building mausoleums!" Perhaps, the truth is wrapped in the two halves of that shell.

Maybe the truth is that the ideal society is like Asimov's Solaria and the other Spacer worlds of the Bailey/Olivaw murder mysteries. If we had more resources, we would not need other people. Our market economy, based on service to others as it must be is flawed. Consider that ancient Rome could have had an industrial revolution, but that slave labor made Heron's steam engines uneconomical -- or so it is said. So, too, like them, do we have a surplus of people living close together which makes true automation -- and true personal liberty -- uneconomical.

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 7:48pm

Thanks for making that clear, Michael, sorry if I misread you.