Intellectual Archive

On having betrayed Ayn Rand 50 years ago

June 11, 2009 · Category: Atlasphere, Intellectual, Objectivism

I received the following today from an Atlasphere member. Our form for removing yourself from the member database asks for a reason for the removal and, inside that form, he wrote: You are associated with the Brandens, and novelist Erika Holzer, who do not represent Objectivism and have morally betrayed it's creator. Out of respect for Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism, I withdraw my membership and support from your institution. In the six years since I launched the Atlasphere, I've received only a handful of e-mails such as this one. It is usually from a young Objectivist, very sincere and ...

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Amod Lele: The Love of All Wisdom

June 10, 2009 · Category: Buddhism, Intellectual, Politics

Harvard Ph.D. graduate and occasional Mudita Journal commenter Amod Lele (see here and here, for example) has started a new blog called "Love of All Wisdom" that some of you might enjoy exploring. His political views couldn't be more different than my own, but he's proven himself interested in and open to cross-dialogue. In his latest post, "Wishing George W. Bush Well," Amod explores a theme dear to my heart -- learning not to vilify those with whom you disagree strongly. At the urging of a spiritual teacher, Amod had begun exploring his ability to wish other people well, including his ...

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Do not miss Bill Whittle’s PJTV response to Jon Stewart

May 3, 2009 · Category: Current Events, Intellectual, Politics

This response to Jon Stewart by Bill Whittle is so incredibly good that I decided to become a paid PJTV subscriber, strictly to help support their new business model. (If you've not seen the full exchange between Jon Stewart and Cliff May, it's well worth watching, just to get a handle on the depth of Stewart's intellectual skew. Aside from claiming Harry Truman is a war criminal -- for which he later apologized without much explanation of why it warranted apology -- he also asserts that the Geneva Convention should protect terrorists. His lack of historical context is staggering, especially ...

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Mudita Forum is now at Google Groups

March 18, 2009 · Category: Buddhism, Eckhart Tolle, FLOW, Individualism, Integral, Intellectual, Meditation, Mindfulness, Mudita Forum, Objectivism, Witness Consciousness

Check out the new Mudita Forum, if you think you might be interested. The purpose of Mudita Forum is to provide a stimulating, thoughtful environment for discussing Eastern consciousness-raising practices — such as meditation, mindfulness, and the cultivation of presence — while using Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism as a basic philosophical frame-of-reference. The old group got lost when I was changing servers a couple years ago, but recently I've been contacted by new people wishing to join. My hope for the new group is that it will be much like the old one: low-volume, high-quality, and stimulating on many levels. I sent invites ...

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You know that guy who proseletized me with a Bible? He was a good man.

February 17, 2009 · Category: Integral, Intellectual

Thanks to Andrew Schwartz for bringing this to my attention. Very good stuff. I like it when people can understand one another despite having very different beliefs; and Penn's commentary here is an excellent example of that.

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The new Amazon Kindle. Hmm….

February 10, 2009 · Category: Current Events, Intellectual, Personal

The new Amazon Kindle actually looks pretty fantastic. It appears to solve several of the problems I have experienced, over the years, with reading on my Treo and my iPhone: The Kindle is more like looking at paper than looking at a CRT or LCD screen No glare when you're reading outdoors or in front of a window Larger screen, which means more readable fonts as well as less time spent scrolling and waiting for the screen to load And it solves several problems associated with books, as well: Easier to hold in your hand. I'm guessing here from the videos, since I ...

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Sage insights about the “ownership society” and how it relates to the financial crisis

December 24, 2008 · Category: Individualism, Intellectual, Politics

I've been a late-comer to the Volokh Conspiracy party -- I remember hearing its name for many years and skimming many posts before realizing why it was such a big deal, and worth reading regularly -- but lately it has become one of my favorite blogs for political commentary. Today Eric Posner has an excellent post called "What is the 'ownership society'?" with many excellent observations about the mixed bag that politicians have promoted in the name of "ownership." Eric begins: This term ["ownership society"] cropped up on in a recent NYT article which blames the financial crisis on Bush administration policies, including ...

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Bill Whittle on the significance of Sarah Palin

September 6, 2008 · Category: Intellectual, Politics

If you only read one thing all week about the election, read this.

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On keeping our heads, and hearts, this election season

September 6, 2008 · Category: Buddhism, Current Events, Integral, Intellectual, Politics

I received the following from a new reader, Andrea Pflaumer. She offered that I could publish it here for Mudita Journal readers, and I'm delighted to take her up on the offer. For the next two months we can expect the airwaves and blogosphere to heat up with negative rhetoric on both sides about the candidates. That is, unfortunately, the way things are in the world of politics today. But I want to focus on something much bigger. If we all just step away from the drama for a minute I think there's an awful lot that we can ...

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Eastern traditions and the moral-practical unity

August 22, 2008 · Category: Buddhism, Intellectual

In a friends-only post (which he's given me permission to quote here), Joe Duarte wrote: ...I've always been struck by similarities between the Objectivist approach to ethics and politics, and the sage wisdom of Eastern traditions like Buddhism and possibly Confucianism. Particularly when I think about the issue of moral-practical unity -- it seems to get at some underlying feature of reality, a unity or synchrony in how to think about issues. This principle biases us against any claim that some coercive policy is necessary or useful, because we understand that reality will not accommodate it -- in the end, there ...

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