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To: thinktwice
"If a man takes his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect, if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind only to rationalize or justiy them somehow -- then he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction -- his own self and that of others." -- Ayn Rand

You use the silly words of this Objectivist to discuss emotional stability? Really, you could do better than that, I hope.
215 posted on 11/28/2003 4:29:41 PM PST by Borntowade
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To: Borntowade
You use the silly words of this Objectivist to discuss emotional stability? Really, you could do better than that, I hope.

Your hope is realized, here is more Rand -- on emotional instability ... (The following excerpts are from Ayn Rand's address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York - March 6, 1974.)

"Your subconscious is like a computer--more complex a computer than men can build--and its main function is the integration of your ideas. Who programs it? Your conscious mind. If you default, if you don't reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance--and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted. But one way or the other, your computer gives you print-outs, daily and hourly, in the form of emotions--which are lightning-like estimates of the things around you, calculated according to your values. If you programmed your computer by conscious thinking, you know the nature of your values and emotions. If you didn't, you don't ...

"A man who is run by emotions is like a man who is run by a computer whose print-outs he cannot read. He does not know whether its programming is true or false, right or wrong, whether it's set to lead him to success or destruction, whether it serves his goals or those of some evil, unknowable power. He is blind on two fronts: blind to the world around him and to his own inner world, unable to grasp reality or his own motives, and he is in chronic terror of both. Emotions are not tools of cognition."

Please notice that this speech was delivered in 1974>

The speech subsequently became Chapter One in the West Point Philosophy textbook, and the speech has found its way throughout most of the US Military to transform the US Military -- from the Vietnam mess it was -- into what we have today.

"Silly" is not a word I'd choose to describe Ayn Rand.

227 posted on 11/29/2003 9:08:27 AM PST by thinktwice (America is truly blessed ... with George W. Bush as President..)
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