Forcing an individual to help themselves

I see that everyone has been up all night trying to denounce Griffith. He would want that; it's reason that is the father of his notion of Humanity's Adult, but * it's* mother is instinct. Objectivism is capable of raising Humanity's Adult. I don't know whether he has heard of Ayn Rand or not; but I see Objectivism, now, as the intermediary stage on the journey to becoming Griffith's vision of Humanity's Adult.

He has the solution to the rancour that permeates so much of Objectivism, but then why should that surprise me. Objectivism, to me, is now Humanity's Adolescent. huge sigh.

He has concretized the HIGHEST SENSE OF LIFE. This is what happens when you sleep on it. It's time for Objectivists to take a leap.

Happy reading. Happy life.                                                        I'M FREE !   I"M FREE,   I'M FREE, AT LAST !

one day closer to crucifixion

Sh.

edit:   *its* I can't believe I did that! its mother is, its mother is, its mother is, its mother is, its mother is, its mother is, its mother is, its mother is, its mother is,
(Edited by Sharon Romagnoli Macdonald on 4/10, 5:19pm)

Post 141

Monday, April 10, 2006 - 1:46pm

Sharon,

Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL...

You are a sweetheart...

For the record, I took a look at Jeremy Griffith's site you provided called Foundation for Humanity's Adulthood. My initial impressions are three: (1) I liked what I saw in terms of the issues he raised (and, as he is a biologist, his perspective is something valuable for philosophy in talking about the nature of man); (2) I have a bit of an aversion to approaches that "finally" resolve all the issues of humanity (too much hype and I even have this criticism of Objectivism); and (3) I don't like a publicity approach of proving how good you are by showing how you trounced another - I'm specifically referring to the defamation case he won against ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) and The Sydney Morning Herald. I have no problem with him mentioning this, but he really pours on the hype and that gets my antenna buzzing.

A very interesting marketing approach is that he provides his first two books for free online: Free: The End of the Human Condition (1988) and Beyond the Human Condition (1991). Of course you have to buy his third book to read it, A Species in Denial (2003). I find the 12 year gap between the recent book and the preceding one interesting and it makes me want to read the new book. Also, it should be mentioned that he is a best-selling author.

I am impressed enough to say this. You got my attention. Over the next few weeks I will get around to reading his first book and I will do a book review of it. Then I will probably go on to the second and third. Like you, I think he might have fleshed out some crucial aspects of human nature. (As a first impression, I was reminded of Arthur Koestler's theory of the evolutionary conflicts between the different levels of the three-tiered human brain - especially between the "reptilian" part and the neocortex.)

Michael

Post 142

Monday, April 10, 2006 - 1:52pm

I think his case for the "human condition" is not justified. He makes vast and sweeping assumptions all over the place, it kind of reminds me of scientology and the like. I hope it is Ok for you, but I don't find it appealing at all.

I think that again, this child issue is a non-issue. With the abundance of wealth in a truly free society, there are always going to be more than enough kind hearts to take care of a child. Yes, for a temporary time, I think the state - as in the Police - could come pick up a wayward child, just as they would yours that ran away. They then seek to find the parents, lacking that, they would then allow charities or individuals to adopt. There could be volunteer groups that could work with police (like social workers do now). It just would be a hell of a lot better because the government would not be directly involved, just involved from a protection (keeping harm) and a legistative (deciding who had rights for care) role.

I don't think anyone would find this a problem.

Post 143

Monday, April 10, 2006 - 2:37pm

Kurt,

I wish I could sanction many times your sensible remarks about the child issue.

(As to Jeremy Griffith's ideas, I have no estimate of their merits or lack thereof; haven't looked at the site.)

Ellen

___

Post 144

Monday, April 10, 2006 - 4:35pm

Kurt,

Frankly I haven't read enough of this guy (Griffith) to understand which "vast and sweeping assumptions all over the place" you are referring to. Nothing jumped out at me. For example in a "teaser" link, you find:

Definition of the Human Condition
While the universally accepted ideals are to be cooperative, loving and selfless humans are variously competitive, aggressive and selfish.
Humans are capable of immense love and sensitivity, but we have also been capable of greed, hatred, brutality, rape, murder and war.
The subconscious sense of guilt and agony of being unable to explain this contradictory capacity has been the burden of human life, the human condition.
Conventional references to the human condition
why we are the way we are
what it is to be human
the riddle of life
our human predicament
the dark side of our nature
our troubled human state and nature
our corrupted or �fallen� state
our capacity for good and evil
our contradictory nature
our state of human frailty
our burden of guilt or sin
the root of human conflict
the meaning of humans and their place in the world
Part 4 of the Synopses of The Human Condition Documentary Proposal.
Chapter 1 of Beyond The Human Condition.

I don't see particularly vast and sweeping assumption, other than standard fare in examining issues where society is predominantly religious, and I certainly didn't see anything cult-like on his site, with recruiting and so forth. I'll have to read the stuff first, though.

About your dismissal of the "non-issue," in essence, I agree with your positions (and I believe in the general kindness of people), although I do not find your positions complete enough to warrant outright dismissal of the topic. There are some philosophical and legal principles involved and they are important to people - not just Objectivists.

You are walking away from the argument. Do you know who steps in?

Religions.

They deal with these issues. People listen because this is important to them. (And they listen to the wrong thing for lack of another option.)

Of course, you and others are free to continuing ignoring this if you like. I prefer to look.

Michael

(Edited by Michael Stuart Kelly on 4/10, 9:13pm)

Post 145

Monday, April 10, 2006 - 7:02pm

Thank you Kurt, for making the effort to at least look over that yet-to-be-ploughed field of Jeremy Griffith's.

Your lack of taste for his cup of tea, is probably the precise distaste that I experience, in having to accept an Objectivist all or nothing choice, with regard to emmergency issues around children.  Griffith's Convergence extends the cut and dried Objectivist view by hypothesizing that humanity's natural instinct is to be nurturing and cooperative in order to raise children who can become reasoned and logical adults, who would make contingency plans, ahead of time, to leave no child behind.

The thing that has astonished me the most during all of these debates on different threads at different times, concerning the abandoned child; is the fact that I can't recall a single instance of anyone claiming that Michael should stop worrying about these strawbabies; because he or she would be the one to step forward and take on the responsibility.

It has just occurred to me that the wrong issue is at question. You're correct Kurt, legislation is not necessary.

Now, Kurt, could I put your name on the volunteer list, just in case my daughter and I are mugged in the park, and my  granddaughter is wandering around with dirt on her face and a messy diaper?

Any other volunteers? Kurt might be away on business that day.                                  Thanks for volunteering. I'm feeling much reassured.

Your courteous attitude permitted me to get to the root cause for my discomfort, I was feeling as abandoned as the strawbaby.  Now, I have to work on that lack of trust issue.                                               Michael???

I appreciate your help, Kurt
Sharon

Post 146

Monday, April 10, 2006 - 7:17pm

Hi Michael

About 10 years ago someone did a study regarding the great number of eccentrics in the UK. That quote was from one of the elderly women in the study. I keep it handy, for those times when I have to defend an unconventional view.

BTW Thanks for the laugh. This thread needed it.

Watch it with that Griffith's stuff; you may find yourself fighting another addiction. haha

Sharon

Post 147

Monday, April 10, 2006 - 8:46pm

Probably couldn't help you, but if my neice and nephew needed it I would. Family still means something, as primitive as that may sound. I am sure there are folks for you :)

Post 148

Monday, April 10, 2006 - 8:53pm

Sharon asked:
Any other volunteers?

Please don't count on me either. I don't remember when was last time that I volunteered for anything. I consider that doing my own job well and taking care of my own family is in the best interest for me and for everyone else as well.

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 4/10, 9:04pm)

Post 149

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - 2:17am

Sharon asked: "Any other volunteers?"

I would likely "volunteer," assuming I could be of any help in the circumstance. (At minimum I'd try to find a police person to help.) And I disbelieve O'ist reports of predicted indifference.

I wonder, have you ever seen the movie "M"? It features Peter Lorre (sp? I'm not sure if it's one or two "r"s) as a child molester in a German town, the population of which I'd estimate as say 200-300 thousand. I believe the role was Lor(r?)e's film debut. He well portrays the hauntedness and fear. What happens is that the criminal population joins forces with the police to find "M," the molester. And it's the criminals who -- in an overpowering climax set in a cave where they congregate -- put "M" on trial. I remember that movie as the best I've ever seen at depicting the near-universal human impulse to protect a child.

I really doubt that any of the O'ists on this list, were they to find a starving child in the wilderness, would leave the child to starve. (Or, if they were to hear you and daughter screaming and see grandaughter disarrayed in a park, would pass by without trying to help. This isn't to say that I think that Objectivisim provides much of a basis for explaining the generous impulses of humans toward their fellow humans. But I do think that the original scenario which has occasioned so much heated talk isn't one in which an Objectivist would be any more likely to desert the child to starvation than would 99.9...% of non-Objectivists.)

Ellen

___

Post 150

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - 4:26am

Sharon,

If I were around and something like that happened, you can rest assured that I would do what was necessary to see that your granddaughter (even if she were a stranger) received enough care to survive and get to a safe haven (including changing her dirty diaper if need be). I would not seek compensation for this and it would make me feel good inside to do it. I hereby volunteer to be responsible in that case (and any similar one I happen to be confronted with). People can make of that what they will. I speak for me.

Just because I keep hearing a refrain that nobody would actually starve a child, I decided to google the thing (crime child starvation). I came up with 1,260,000 hits. No. I didn't make a number mistake. That's one million, two hundred and sixty thousand hits.

I started looking through them. Obviously most of the hits were parents and some were foreign countries. I am sure I can find wilderness stranger stories if I look hard enough, too. But I started getting sick in my heart reading one case after another. What a horror!

Then I came across this ABSURD story. In this one, the 19 year old mother, the legal guardian (who was not the mother), and strangers who worked in a shelter center ALL starved a five week old baby boy to death. ALL OF THEM!

And what about government protection? THAT FAILED EVEN WORSE! The result? No one was held responsible. The rest of the result? The Toronto Metro Catholic Children's Aid Society received more money!

Dayaamm! The entire civilization flunked that one!

Here's the story (my mouth is still open from my jaw dropping):

This page is dedicated to the memory of baby Jordan Desmond Heikamp, who starved to death in the care of his 19-year-old mother and in full view of shelter workers at the Anduhyaun native women's shelter, even though the responsibility for Jordan's welfare had been assigned to Angie Martin, 43, of Brampton, an employee with the Toronto Metro Catholic Children's Aid Society.

The verdict of the coroner's inquiry? It appears that all of the people entrusted with the life of Jordan Heikamp are held to be blameless.

It appears that the officials feel there is nothing wrong with the Toronto child protection system that can't be fixed by throwing more money at it.

I didn't have the stomach to read all the details.

Michael

(Edited by Michael Stuart Kelly on 4/11, 4:27am)

Post 151

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - 6:09am

MSK wrote:

Just because I keep hearing a refrain that nobody would actually starve a child, I decided to google the thing (crime child starvation). I came up with 1,260,000 hits. No. I didn't make a number mistake. That's one million, two hundred and sixty thousand hits.

I believe you did make a number mistake, since I got 1,790,000 hits. Also, it seems you could use a lesson on using Google.
For clarification I will follow your practice of enclosing the search target in parentheses.

(crime child starvation) - Every page with the words "crime", "child", and "starvation" will give a hit, even if the words are totally unrelated to one another on the page.

("child starvation") 23,800 hits. The page must have the exact phrase, and you get hits about child starvation completely unrelated to crime.

("child starvation" crime) 900 hits. Of course, the two targets may not be related.

("crime of child starvation") 0 hits

("crime of starving a child") 0 hits

("convicted of starving a child") 1 hit

Have you ever used Advanced Search? There is a link to it at http://www.google.com/

Post 152

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - 6:57am

Hong and Kurt

Thanks for noticing our family's worst nightmare. I respect the notion that you have other priorities, and couldn't get involved with strangers. I'm saddened that you didn't think to call for help.

Ellen

Can you feel the big hug I'm sending out to you? We are ever so grateful that we can have your personal cellphone number tatooed on H's hand. I have not heard of that movie; but I appreciate your taking the time to set the stage. Unfortunately, those individuals in the movie weren't Objectivists. So far you are the first.   Thank you, thank you, thank you. I went to bed last night wondering if anyone would step up to the plate.

By the way, have we met before? Perhaps the ones who know my posts, don't want to be seen with any of my family members. It's me they don't want to help support. The sins of the parents are visited on their grandchildren.

You and your loved ones are invited to my plateau in South Africa, as soon as I get housing, decent enough for North Americans. What do you put in your sundowners?

Michael

An extra big big hug for you, for noticing that diaper.   However, you'll have to tone down the rhetoric when you find little H. She has been born with an instinct to produce the gesture "talk to the hand" whenever anyone blathers on for too long. How could a 12-month-old have figured that out? I was pretty slow putting her gesture, and that phrase together. Be forwarned. She's brutal.

That issue in TORONTO, just across the lake from where we live, is bloody horrendous. GOVERNMENT AND CHURCH IN BED COMMITTING THE CRIME TOGETHER. It reminds me of that little gift I gave to Ayn Rand, on her birthday this year. GOVERNMENT IS DERIVED FROM RELIGION. Follow the robes. Unfortunately, under Objectivist law, privacy rights may have prevented the officials from ever discovering the situation at all. That's what happened to the Bernardo children. They had to suffer in silence, until they became of age, or ran away. The added motivation for committing the abuse; ie the welfare cheque, certainly wouldn't have been on the Objectivist side of the equation.

Another factor in that TORONTO case was the revelation that the grandparents were quite mentally retarded.   big sigh.

You and Kat and your loved ones are on our A list too. We may have to build some extra rondavels and expand the porch.

Thankfully
Sharon

Post 153

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - 7:22am

Merlin,

Thank you for the lesson, but I already knew all that.

I am curious about a manner of reasoning I see often online, however. In your sentence, you wrote:

I believe you did make a number mistake, since I got 1,790,000 hits.

Now with several possibilities before you as to why there could be different results, you make a snarky statement of belief about me making a mistake. I will say categorically for the second time, I did not make a mistake. I read the number right off the screen. Google gives slightly different results from different IP's, etc.

Now with this new information, I could say you made a mistake and could probably use some lessons yourself in how to use google, yada yada yada but that would sound condescending as all get out and I highly suspect it would be inaccurate. So I see no reason to use this form of rhetoric. It isn't productive and easily leads to misunderstandings. Also, I rarely feel the need to condescend.

As to the manner I used google, this merely was the first way I start a search. I gave the words I used so others could try for themselves, but why not throw in "wilderness" or "woods" or "stranger" of whatever? (I didn't have time yet to play with this. It takes time to do it right.)

I try to make a first search general as it gets you a lot of results to look at. (I like the fact that sometimes the words are not related, since by distancing themselves, other words that are related have a chance to appear. I get highly interesting results this way at times.) But then I start playing with phrases in quotation marks as you did if I need more specific information. Since I have other things to do in life outside of dodging pot shots over here over this issue, I did a quickie.

You can make room in your reasoning for a person doing a quickie search, can't you, without needing to scratch the itch to teach the world basic computer skills?

If this subject interests you for real and is not merely some kind of attempt at an Internet duel or put-down or whatever, I suggest you redo the search the first way and start reading the hits that obviously deal with crimes involving adults starving children to death. There are oodles of them. The first page alone should give you plenty to start with.

Michael

Post 154

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - 7:28am

Michael, Kurt, Ellen and Bill, if you're still there

I sent off a little note to Jeremy Griffith's website explaining how my mind hadn't been so blown away since I first read the Ayn Rand Playboy interview, when I was 22. This morning, the administrator sent me an e-mail reporting that they "have noticed the conversation I'm having with Bill and some of my other friends". How did they find me here? I never mentioned Rebirth of Reason.

Anyway, they want you all to know, "The Great Exodus" essay is a quick way to access this information, access to which can be found on the homepage of the website www.humancondition.info Also, in a week or two the website will be putting up a significantly expanded version of that essay, in place of the existing essay."

They also send everyone here, love and good wishes, as do I

Sharon

Post 155

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - 9:44am

This morning, the administrator sent me an e-mail reporting that they "have noticed the conversation I'm having with Bill and some of my other friends". How did they find me here? I never mentioned Rebirth of Reason.

They probably found it by Googling your name. Try it.

Post 156

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - 9:45am

Just because I keep hearing a refrain that nobody would actually starve a child, I decided to google the thing (crime child starvation).

This out of context statement applied beyond the scope of its use in this discussion board should stand as an excellent example of Michael's dishonesty. Posters can, from my observations, not count on MSK arguing in good faith at all.

Your dishonesty Michael is rising to new heights. Go back to your hole. You take the DISSENT section down several notches to new lows.

(Edited by Ethan Dawe on 4/11, 10:04am)

Post 157

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - 10:03am

MSK,
If you did know how to do a more refined Google search, and instead chose to report the results of a very crude one and then make a big deal out of 1,260,000 hits, then why did you do it? Was it to create another one of your many innuendos, this one trying to make the intentional starvation of children appear commonplace?

Post 158

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - 10:07am

Merlin....Ya'think?

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - 2:09pm