If a man sees a grape, let him eat it, or share it amongst his fellows.

If someone sees a grape, let them eat it, or share it amongst their fellows.

If someone sees a grape, let him or her eat it, or share it amongst his or her fellows.

If a man sees a grape, let her eat it, or share it amongst his fellows.

If a human sees a grape, let it eat it, or share it amongst its friends.

Dear Mr. Ducan Bayne, how about: If one sees a grape, let her eat it, or share amongst humanity... You might like this one even better: If you see a grape, eat it. It's far too small to share amongst humanity. Or perhaps: If a man sees a grape, let him eat it, before he shares with a woman. Of course, we could also try: If a woman sees a grape, a man will pluck it from the vine and gobble it down. And my all time favorite: If you see a grape; eat and pontificate, while 18 feminists attack Mr. David Bertelsen with their hairiness... We could go on for hours, here. However, if we really cared about English semantics, we would depict humanity as a “she” rather than “he.” After all, ova (eggs) are initially female and far grander in size than men's puny sperm...

Considering the casual displays of cruel character assassinations we malevolently bestow upon one another, you should be thankful I’m even offering to define humanity in feminine terms. Of course, I realize you had no intention of hurting my feelings and I understand how emasculated you must feel, imagining yourself as a "she." I know I feel defeminized whenever I'm depicted as a man. Nevertheless, excluding women from the English language with claims "she" lacks articulative elegance, is as insulting as it is lazy.  I despise being called a "he" in every way, shape, and form. I do not hate men, I'm merely menopausal.  

Live for God or live for yourself.  You can't have it both ways.  It is one or the other. It is not "this God" or "that God."  It is "God" or "Man."

Humanity's responsible for the creation of gods, whether they are manifestations nourishing souls, metaphors providing comfort and strength, or knowledge hating despots who prejudge and plan to kill creations before they’re even created. "God" and "Man" are synonymous, Ms Iannoloir. Men have always lived for themselves and used God to do it.

It is much harder for women. Benighted by barbaric man made gods; women cannot recognize they have a profound responsibility to help humanity evolve. You cannot ask a woman to choose between God, man, or even herself. Women are still unable to discern they worship an ordinary libidinous man (not God) who was titillated by the thought of nothing to do (oblivious of knowledge) but frolic naked in gardens, (Eden) cleaving (penetrating) a woman named Eve. 

Men (not women) created, built, and promoted religious institutions, fearing women’s reproductive control. Yet women (far more often than men) remain devoted to unremarkable religions and gods that excluded and denounced them as unworthy. Indoctrination plays a big role by instilling fear and ignorance through blind faith. However, I suspect women will seek protection and emotional comfort from savage beasts as long as men continue to fail them. Deprogramming them will be very difficult.

Yet we cannot leave women spiritually thirsty or religious flocks, enthusiastically devoted to their “preordained" (and premeditated) apocalyptic doctrine, will continue to dictate, dominate, and monopolize God, terrorizing humanity. Only if we empower women and stop religions that stifle potential, will we begin to soar and evolve. Most of all we need to recognize, God is not blind faith but intelligence, compassion, and sensibility.

Are you saying that human beings have always lived, wisely or unwisely, for human purposes, and have created God(s)/desse(s) [O.K., I admit that is a little unaesthetic] in the image of those purposes?

Or are you saying that males, particularly, have lived for their own enjoyment (via God), unlike females who have not- and have been wrong to do so?

Dear Ms Jeanie Ring, I understand your confusion after Mr. Perigo embraced new-age enlightenment from the dark ages and refused to accord women an individual identity. However, I always use gender-neutral terms.

I believe creation myths were always conceived by both men and women. Stone Age homo sapiens from the Paleolithic period originally envisioned Goddesses as the Supreme Being and creator of the universe. Stone Agers’ thought females created parthenogenetically or through self-fertilization… On the other hand, perhaps they simply recognized men’s contribution as meager and insignificant…

Whatever their thoughts might have been, anthropologists have finally acknowledged our ancestors lived in matrilineal societies --- those that survived and flourished, at any rate. Men did not go around bonking women on the head and dragging her into his cave. If he had, we would be extinct along with all the other species of prehistoric humanoids.

“Men have always lived for themselves and used God to do it.”

Just between you and I Jeanie … shh, that was a generalized remark I thought sounded good at the time… Living for oneself is not what I would define as wisdom, or even enjoyment, really. I can confront one’s lack of compassion but living wisely is not something I feel I have the right to judge… Yet, I can compare women to men and throw out a statistic. Six percent of the prison population in the U.S. are women and 94% are men... Hummm…

I consider “living for oneself” to mean the chance to achieve one’s full potential. To reach within and discover one’s métier --- those wonderful abilities we all intrinsically have. Men far more than women have been able to attain and develop their talents. It sickens me to think of.all the lost potential from the women who were and still are denied the right to seek basic and essential needs that help humanity evolve.

Traditionally men have used their gods (think Saudi Arabia) to deny women educations that keep women at home and dependent on men. Of course, men were allowed to receive educations and were encouraged to seek out their dreams. Think of the negative affect upon children if their mothers’ felt bitter, angry, ignorant, or unhappy as prisoners forced to stay home. I hold religions and their doctrine accountable. I hate them with all of my heart. They are evil, evil, evil…

Personally, I cannot imagine living to survive as fulfilling or enjoyable as our Stone Age ancestors must have done. However, there are wilderness camps costing tens of thousands of dollars that will provide us the chance. Yet Stone Age women were respected and highly valued, unlike today, where a man will regard the feminine mystique as unworthy of mentioning, independent of himself. Nor would Stone Age men deride women’s hairy femininity --- even though ancient women were very hairy…

However, I suspect prehistoric women used Goddesses to protect them from the violence of libidinous males. A young girl may have been instinctively repulsed by her father’s incestuous approaches; although both were ignorant, they were related. These types of emotional horrors were probably less traumatizing to women --- and men in prehistoric environments. At least, if we judge from the size of the bear that casually entered her family’s cave and literally ripped off her (unbeknownst) father’s head before heading towards the girl...

The bear suddenly stopped in mid-track and roared, “Those who dare touch a woman without her consent shall have his head lacerated from his carcass and pulverized.” Then the bear left without another word… A new myth was born that very day and spread throughout the land, about a Bear Goddess protecting femininity. Of course, that’s not exactly how it happened. In actuality, the bear never saw the girl, as she was hiding in the shadows of the cave.

Depending upon the geographic location, the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods evolved independently, at different times throughout the world. Yet as gatherers, women discovered agriculture. Their days of long distance training and aerobic workouts were over. Menses could proceed regularly and populations soar as the Bronze Age brought metals for weaponry and men perceived of powerful warrior gods that gave them rights to kill.

The Great Mother of the Gods was deposed and exiled after a Semite tribe moved to Palestine and created a monotheistic religion and a god called Yahweh. The Goddesses Mother was eventually murdered during the Dark Ages by Christianity. Did men live for themselves during this era? Some perhaps, but most were victims of despots and ill-conceived gods who made poor role models for humanity to follow. They turned into savages and never thought about humanity’s potential. They no longer fought to protect and help their species survive. They fought to pillage, rape, and conquer for no reason at all. Unhappy with themselves, men used their gods as an excuse to blame women for their misery and lack of courage to stop the insanity.

Women, weakened by pregnancy, overloaded with children, or emotionally dead because of their realities, took the lesser role handed to them, from barbaric gods men made. The indignities women have endured, since Neolithic times; have silenced her voice and great potential, until humanity’s spirit was lost and with it, all purpose and reason to exist. In obedience, billions blindly follow and worship deities that were once despotic men. And women lived in fear of aspersions cast upon them by false gods. Until we almost forgot our true Saviors, religions would have us forget...

Imagine what was accomplished and how humanity survived, in a mighty world that existed in prehistoric times. Despite the death of other humanoid species, homo sapiens were saved from extinction, by women and men empowered with inconceivable strengths. With their blood flowing through all of our veins and their spirit vibrant and strong, these women and men we should exalt, as the Goddesses giving life.  Awomen.

 Les

PS: Did you write that beautiful poem?

Les

Dear Ms. Jennifer Iannolo, Women are biologically cyclical, commencing at puberty. Hormonal imbalances are not unique and can occur, at any age. Therefore, let’s not jump to conclusions and assume hormonal influences are a prerequisite for lacking intelligence.

Embracing irrational concepts about women’s cognitive insufficiencies or her emotional instabilities due to hormones are hardly productive.

 I do not hate men, I'm merely menopausal.

Is there a point to this essay?  Or have I simply caught alienated Objectivists doing the same thing as the True Believing Objectivists:  spouting off platitudes and bromides which masquerade as arguments that only those already converted to the true faith could endorse?  I am reminded of that great scene in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian where all the would-be followers of Brian show up in the square outside his window.  He tells them to leave, that they must think for themselves, that they must be individuals.  They all reply in unison:  “We are all individuals;”  while the lone dissenter exclaims, “I’m not.”

Worship the romantic vision of the individual.  Praise her.  Aspire to be like her.  Create a clever acronym and pronounce the virtues of NEM.  But do not think for a second that a world populated by individualist heroes brings the world any closer to Objectivism.  We should not be surprised that people thinking for themselves will necessarily lead to divergent views, not just because we sometime have different facts, or understand the import of facts differently (and by the way time is limited so this is always our condition), but also because, unless you’re a Kantian, you do not believe that reason sets its own ends, only that it provides the most effective means and methodology to think about the world.  (Rand by the way horribly misreads Kant, and there is great deal that is worthy of exploration by Objectivists).  Reason after all was Rand’s epistemology.  There is no necessary connection between it and her politics, despite the fact that many think there is.  (No doubt, a good Objectivist will respond with all the tautologies they can regurgitate, like A is A and existence exists, but those that do, do exactly what Rand criticized Khrushchev for doing when he parroted the received Marxist dogma on his visit to the U.S. and boldly asserted the coming failure of the American model.)  As Rawls points out, fundamentally incommensurable views will necessarily flourish under a system of free institutions.  It is the inevitable result of reason operating under highly favorable conditions.  And if you believe in freedom and reason, this should not be a lamentable fact.  But make no mistake, the more genuine individuals there are, the less likely it is that any one of them will adhere to the philosophy of objectivism.

The “argument” starts with unreflective praise of NEMS, but then the argument takes a shift, and we move from praise of NEMS to examples of the sad state of current affairs.  Lindsay writes: 

“Sadly, we have only partially heeded those admonitions, and have continued to use the faculty of conceptual thought in the very service of that previous norm: brute force. Thus we see an evolutionary anomaly—we brought conceptual thought and its inseparable twin, volition, into play, yet continue to treat each other as though we had neither.

Examples of this anomaly abound in the headlines each day. They range from the brute to the subtle, from the murder of schoolchildren in Beslan to the call by supposedly educated Americans for an end to "outsourcing" (a phenomenal boon to hitherto Nem-deficient regions of the earth, providing at the same time new markets for its Nem-rich countries of origin)—which "end," of course, can be achieved only by … force. Inescapably, an intelligent observer is drawn to the conclusion that though we have had the wherewithal to do so for millennia, we have singularly failed to effect a widespread transformation from paleolithic men to New Enlightenment Men.”

Kant for example, and others, might explain this fact by distinguishing between instrumental reason and practical reason.  Instrumental reason takes the end of action as given with the only relevant question of how to achieve it.  It is of course a necessary part of reason:  to will an end is to will the means to that end.  Or else the desire to obtain that end was insincere (or sour grapes).  Practical reason is about what we ought to do, where that “ought” may be either moral or prudential.  Therefore, Lindsay’s point, at least with regard to Beslan is usefully summed up as:  the terrorists were supreme masters of instrumental reason, but they set the wrong ends.  A pointless point, especially to this audience.

But how in the world did the argument move from the unreflective praise of NEM’s to the terrorist attack in Beslan and an objection to populist rhetoric about outsourcing?  The answer it seems comes from the anthropomorphized voice of Nature:  “Use this tool—your free-functioning rational mind—to protect yourself from my rages, refine and enhance my delights, and make compacts with your brothers so that you may live in harmony with them. Use it to vanquish me—and those of your brothers who retain the brute methods of social intercourse that were the norm before I gave you this gift.”

Lovely and poetic.  And pointless.  Only if we live in a naïve fantasy land, (i.e. only if we do not believe that existence exists) can it possibly be claimed that reason alone can solve the worlds problems or advance justice.  As if reason leads to some one right answer.  Reason is a tool of thought used by all, though some use it in different ways, and some are better at using it than others.  All practice some form of instrumental reason and all must set some ends, be those ends set rationally or irrationally.  But rational beings can only reason with reasonable people, namely, those willing to engage in the practice of reason giving and listening, and those willing to hold their beliefs in a sufficiently contingent way that in the face of a better argument, they will prove themselves not to be dogmatists and change their view.  But some cannot be reasoned with.  Nor is it worth trying.  I for one have no interest in reasoning with the Neo-Nazi.  It’s a waste of my time to convince her of the error of her thinking.  Moreover, let her think and believe as she likes.  It is really no concern of mine.  What matters is that she not act on those views in her personal conduct with others, and that those who disagree see that the political aims that she advocates are never realized.  And after all, that is what a free society is all about.  A totalitarian society cares why you do what you did.  A free society only cares that you conformed your behavior to the law.

Perhaps because it is fashionable, Lindsay seems to consider the NEM’s and the SOLOist movement to be fighting an uphill battle.  “Humanity is at a crossroads in its evolution, as critical as was the transition from perceptual to conceptual thought.”  (If that last clause about perceptual and conceptual thought is anything other than gibberish, please explain.  There are things known perceptually, things known conceptually, and usually, as we develop and grow into agents, our perceptual knowledge allows us to begin to formulate and construct concepts.  It’s not as if one is superior to the other, they work in tandem and aid us in different ways.  But I digress.)  A war is after all raging: 
“We are in a philosophical war. Instead of bullets and bayonets, we fight with words and ideas. Our enemies are irrationality and the initiation of force, and the people that promote the use of them. The culture is our battlefield, and the stakes are nothing short of the future of Western Civilization. It is a war for men's mind.” (See War)
 

Just