Unreality Based Self Defense

[Phil Elmore]

Originally posted by rmcrobertson
Nope, leaving now.

So you've told us, again and again and again. Would you do us all a favor and actually stick to at least one of your vows not to post again to this thread?

It would've been more realistic for me never to've posted, since it's only led to a silly argument I don't need, and in which I have no real interest.

That would explain your poor performance in the discussion, I guess.

Apologies all around; feel free to take that as a victory for whatever.

Don't worry; we will.

 

[Phil Elmore]

Originally posted by ZIM
Let the Ayn Rand arguments go, willya? It ain't worth pursuing.

That link suffers from the same undermining errors as does Jeff Walker's disappointing The Ayn Rand Culthttp://www.philelmore.com/objectivism/aynrandcult.htm. It consists mainly of a series of ad hominem attacks mixed with editorializing that fails to give credit where credit is due (at least in large part), destroying any credibility the author might have had and relegating the entire piece to the status of polemic. Now, I'm something of a polemicist myself, so I don't blame the author for making that choice, but the essay doesn't really accomplish much that hasn't been tried (and that failed) before.

Good article! Why bog it down with ephemera?

Thanks. I think the answer to your question is that someone got his underwear in a knot because he saw a quote from someone he dimly remembers he did not like or understand.

 

[rmcrobertson]

Nothing dim about it, Phil, as the nature of your rhetoric demonstrated. Thanks.

 

[Phil Elmore]

Don't be a sore loser, Robert; it just makes you look puerile. Didn't you vow not to respond to this topic again, like, half a dozen times between the two threads?

 

[Pat]

This thread makes me glad I don't know anything about this Rand person, and that I didn't read the article. :rofl: :drinkbeer

 

[Phil Elmore]

Ignorance is bliss.

 

[Seig]

Mod. Note.
Please, keep the conversation polite and respectful.

-Seig
-MT Moderator-

 

[MJS]

Originally posted by Pat
This thread makes me glad I don't know anything about this Rand person, and that I didn't read the article. :rofl: :drinkbeer

Ditto!!!:argue:

Mike

 

[Phil Elmore]

"Save us from all this awful learning!" :lol:

 

[Pat]

Originally posted by Sharp Phil
"Save us from all this awful learning!" :lol:

You're right about the "awful" part.
:drinkbeer

 

[Phil Elmore]

I thought about it during the last session of our class in History and Moral Philosophy. H. & M. P. was different from other courses in that everybody had to take it but nobody had to pass it -- and Mr. Dubois never seemed to care whether he got through to us or not. He would just point at you with the stump of his left arm (he never bothered with names) and snap a question. Then the argument would start.

But on the last day he seemed to be trying to find out what we had learned. One girl told him bluntly: "My mother says that violence never settles anything."

"So?" Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. "I'm sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that. Why doesn't your mother tell them so? Or why don't you?"

They had tangled before -- since you couldn't flunk the course, it wasn't necessary to keep Mr. Dubois buttered up. She said shrilly, "You're making fun of me! Everybody knows that Carthage was destroyed!"

"You seemed to be unaware of it," he said grimly. "Since you do know it, wouldn't you say that violence had settled their destinies rather thoroughly? However, I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea -- a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue -- and thoroughly immoral -- doctrine that `violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms."

He sighed. "Another year, another class -- and, for me, another failure. One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think."

- Heinlein, Starship Troopers

 

[Cryozombie]

"One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think."

My favorite quote from that book.

 

[rmcrobertson]

See? There is such a thing as violence in language--it obscures the issues, and makes discussion almost impossible.

The nicest thing that can be said about ol' Robert A.'s philosophical statements is that he was a good science fiction writer, indeed a great one. I'd re-read him; he can write (well, up until about the last ten years of his life, anyway), and his ideas remain interesting summations of "realism," applied to society and one's place in it.

For example, the notion that violence never settled anything is fun to mock. It's also pretty accurate, if you step back and take a bit of a long view--in addition to asking the Carthaginians and the supposed City Fathers of Hiroshima, Col. Dubois might've done well to check with, say, the different sides of WW I, the "War to End all Wars." Historically speaking, it sure looks like violence breeds violence at least as much as it settles anything.

It is also worth noting that Heinlein's much-discussed book focuses on a future in which the military has seized power, grounding its moral authority on superior "realism," about human beings and their world. The only funnier thing than that is the way Paul Verhoeven staged the military scenes in his giant custard pie in the face of a film...

Recommended reading: H. Bruce Franklin, "Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction," especially the chapter on the NY World's Fair of 1939. Also recommended: Heinlein's stories, "Year of the Jackpot," "They," "--All You Zombies," "Solution Unsatisfactory," and "Free Men," as well as Constance Penley's analyses of the role of male fantasy in the construction of "reality," science fiction.

Realism, my foot.

 

[ZIM]

An ultra-quick side question for Phil that has something to do with "reality":

I understand you do wing chun, which has a lot of bridging work, especially around the wrist area. What kind of watch do you wear? Does it get in the way or help in any way? Any sort of discussion that could be made of that, do you think?

 

[Brother John]

Originally posted by Sharp Phil

I don't agree. Truth is, by definition, the state of corresponding to reality. Reality is objective; it is not a creation of our perception or our feelings or our desires. If you and I hold diametrically opposed opinions on the same topic in the same context, we cannot both be correct.

EXCELLENTLY STATED PHIL. I Like this even better than the article. (Which is very good by the way)
I've often told my relativist friends:
Reality does not need your consent and doesn't read gallup polls.

Your Bro.
John

 

[Brother John]

1: I'm not familiar enough with Ms. Rand to be able to comment on her philosophical stance on matters...
2: I'm disapointed at the extreme venom loosed on Mr. Robertson.

Disagreement is one thing, and is healthy.
What I read

Petty and... I'd have thought... beneath you.

Your Brother
John

 

[Phil Elmore]

Can we assume that you've read Heinlein more recently than your early teens, Robert?

John,

Venom is neither good nor bad; only context makes it so. It has its place. It is very difficult for me, for example, to withhold the contempt I feel when presented with opinions built on ignorance. I have a great regard for knowledge and for the truth and hate to see it so callously and casually disregarded.

Rarely do I initiate, unprovoked, a tongue-lashing -- but I'm very good at delivering them when warranted.

Originally posted by ZIM
I understand you do wing chun, which has a lot of bridging work, especially around the wrist area. What kind of watch do you wear? Does it get in the way or help in any way? Any sort of discussion that could be made of that, do you think?

I usually wear a Timex IronMan or something similar with, preferably, a "sport" band rather than a buckle band. I destroy my wristwatches with alarming frequency. My watch has neither helped nor hindered me, though more than one of them have become "casualties of war."

 

[ZIM]

Just to reply, then let it go:

When I first started MAs, I was wearing a metal one with a hasp- it came off rapidly [an advantage?] but could cut me on a bridging [decidedly not!] because I typically wear it with the face inside. OTOH it could also cut the opponent given its heaviness [Eh, dunno...]. I don't worry overmuch about breaking one- its the band that can present issues. I'm still looking for a good form of band & beginning to look towards the old '70's 'biker' style- wide leather band, spikes optional, yatta yatta, like a hung gar wrist band- uncivilised!

I usually wear a Timex IronMan or something similar with, preferably, a "sport" band rather than a buckle band. I destroy my wristwatches with alarming frequency. My watch has neither helped nor hindered me, though more than one of them have become "casualties of war."

 

[rmcrobertson]

Actually, once again my point is that claiming one has a direct, unmediated relationship to reality does not make it so. In fact, these assertions of purely "objectivist," or "realist," approaches are shaped--not just inflected, which would suggest that they were at bottom fundamentally pure--but shaped by a long history of political arguments.

The relationship to "realistic," martial arts? Well, again, a point of advice: look warily at everybody claiming to be merely realistic in their approaches to self defense. It's just too easy to construct a reality "on the mats," and only a little more difficult to construct reality, "in the street," then call the product, "the way things really are." Common signs include a) confusing fighting with self defense; b) seeing the world as filled with threats; c) asserting that this training method and this training method alone makes a student invulnerable; d) (my favorite) claims that this training method was adopted by some Special Forces group, which validates the claim of simple realism.

Apologies for saying that I was gonna bow out of the discussion; I was trying to regain some lost good maanners. As for the remark about not having read Rand since my teens, well, the mediated fact of the matter is that, around then, Rand stopped being convincing.

 

[Phil Elmore]

Excuses for ignorance don't excuse ignorance.