I’m on a panel this Tuesday the 26th talking about making a living on creating properties: LINK
Many don’t understand the legal underpinnings of what I do to make a living. I come up with something, I sell it to another party. But why can’t some employer just say, “That’s a good idea, I’ll take it. And you’re fired!”? Well, it’s all because we have rights to our intellectual property, and some of the strongest description of those rights in the whole world are right here in America.
I will be signing books, participating on a panel, and having fun meeting all of the suits in DC that help fight for our intellectual property rights. Come on over!
This guy forgot to mention the Salem Witch Trials and Hitler being a Catholic:
#1
Submitted on 2011/02/09 at 8:18 pm
I agree truth doesn’t evolve. But the subjects you talk about there are always exceptions to. We consume life, animals and plants to live and so do they. It’s perfectly fine to murder someone in society if they threaten your life or walk in your house uninvited. Or if a person murders another person the state then murders them.In the middle east the majority considers it acceptable to murder a wife who dishonored you in some way, or to stone a person to death if they commit adultery.
So yeah it depends on where you live and how you were raised. And it also depends on your level of education and understanding of the world around you, maybe realizing just how vast the universe is and how minuscule and insignificant their complaints against thins like sexuality and aborting fetuses are.
As more people got smarter they became more considerate it seems granted there are always more stupid people then smart people and you have to bang things into their head like “racism isn’t a good mentality to have and truth is there is no ‘race’ genetically speaking.” before they even start to process things differently and self examine themselves and seems to have a cut off point when this can happen around age 30.craftyandy
#2
Submitted on 2011/02/09 at 8:01 pm
everything has free will. Maybe you should stop seeking answers to things no one knows the answers to and find out what is true and accepting what the human race doesn’t know instead of filling in the holes with mystical beings.craftyandy
#3
Submitted on 2011/02/09 at 7:57 pm
yeah to bad most religious people don’t acknowledge it if it goes against what the bible says, they rather be willfully ignorant and arrogant in claiming they know what happens when you die and think and having faith in something is actual great when it means believing and agreeing with something as true when there is lack of evidence to even indicate it so.craftyandy
#4
Submitted on 2011/02/09 at 7:54 pm |
Why is “thou shall not rape” not one of the ten commandments? According to the bible it was required that a non virgin girl who is raped must be married to her rapist. When did the bible say slavery was wrong? Or selling your daughter as a sex slave is wrong? Just going to pretend the old testament never happened right?
If the only truth comes from God then we will never get it. The human race found all it’s knowledge on their own by asking questions, challenging the status quo and not by praying to the invisible man in the sky for the answers to just fall from the sky. The bible has been wrong on almost every scientific account and it fails as a moral guide.
People didn’t need the ten commandments to realize that murdering one another is not beneficial to society.craftyandy
No value is true today that wasn’t true one thousand years ago. It’s wrong to murder now, and nothing about the way the universe progresses can make murder right. If enslaving a man for the color of his skin is wrong today, then it was wrong 200 years ago and will be just as wrong 200 years from now.
True ideas originate from a different place than culture, so they are independent of fashion, history or evolution. Aristotle’s Law of Non Contradiction (A cannot be both A and not A at the same time and in the same way) wasn’t invented by Aristotle, it was revealed by him. We were operating under the Law of Non Contradiction and will always operate under this law, because like all true things, it wasn’t created by culture.
If anything, almost every true thing that has ever existed was campaigned against by various cultures throughout man’s history. Different cultures have believed that man can be enslaved because of the color of their skin or that Jews were the source of the world’s problems or that a child should be sacrificed to ward off evil spirits.
This is why I shrug when culture is at odds with some of my values. Given culture’s terrible track record at getting things right I should hope it opposes at least some of my values.
There is no attribute of culture that can keep it from changing while there is no attribute of the truth that can move it one way or another. You can’t improve on a true ideal.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger coined a phrase in 2005 that I’ve thought about almost every day since he gave his address in Rome, just before he became The Pope. He said that we were moving toward a “dictatorship of relativism.”
The reason why that phrase struck the gong of my mind is because something wasn’t adding up in all of the soft goo talk of relativism by our culture. You see, there’s this idea that if you stand for nothing, then you are the open minded person on the block. You’re the harmless one, because you don’t take a stand on anything (other than the stand of not taking a stand on anything.)
To claim that all morals are relative to the individual sounds innocent enough. Who can deny the curb appeal of platitudes like “It may be true for you but not for me.” I have to live by my truth, but I can’t be considered a good boy if I project my personal, local truth onto you, your situation or your culture. That would imply not only that there are objective truths, but that I can know them…and we can’t have that. Knowing the truth is bad… and we know this to be true.
But it wasn’t the “relativism” part of Ratzinger’s statement that struck me, it was the “dictatorship” part. It’s not a word we associate with the free, minimal ethic of relativism. The relativists are the good guys, they are the opposite of moral objectivists like me. Obi-Wan said, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” It’s probably a bad idea to mix logic and Lucas, but his writing would make me a Sith. The bigger problem is that if Obi-Wan was speaking with absolute certainty then he would be a Sith too.
Relativism can’t leave everyone else alone, because it is just another absolute claim. It demands that everything be relative to the individual, and is no less vulnerable to the trappings of dogmas as any other philosophy. Man is the problem, and relativists are made of the same fallen stuff that makes an absolutist dictatorial. Man’s nature has a dictatorial streak, so that relativism can be rammed down your throat by culture with the same gusto as Sharia Law but with even more self-righteous certitude.
Relativism isn’t relativistic about itself, it’s absolutist. Openness isn’t open to closed systems of thought, syncretism and other relativist buzz-words are self refuting to a point of absurdity. The self proclaimed tolerant are among the most intolerant people. Scratch a pluralist and a mean absolute statement against absolutes gushes out.
America is a pluralist culture, and that should give us the first clue about what kind of totalitarian we’re likely to create. The man who believes in nothing the loudest is the winner.
My favorite Relativist parable is about the three blind men feeling different parts of an elephant who describe what it’s like. One man feels the face says, “An elephant has a long nose.” Another feels the leg and says, “No! An elephant is like a tree trunk!” The last blind man pulls bags of money out of the elephant’s bottom and says, “This elephant ate Deepak Chopra!”
The Dictatorship of Relativism always seems to know that everyone else is blind, but that his own vision about their blindness is above reproach.
My daughter will be 9 in a couple of days and her belief in Santa is at its end. She’s trying hard to believe but common sense, and her younger brother Ed [(6) who saw right through Santa from the beginning] have undermined her unjustified belief.
She wrote this tender letter and left it for Santa tonight:
“Dear Santa,
This year is busy and we will have to visit (family) right after Christmas so, I would very much like to see you! If I don’t come to you could you please come to me? I am upstairs and very close to the stairs. You could give me something for proof or I could see you. Goodbye!
Love, Ahmi”
Disbelief is a normal thing for a child to go through, it’s a sign of growing up. I have no doubt that some day she’ll be old enough to believe in Santa again. Probably right around when she has her own children.
The whole family got together and watched the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol. The kids kept asking, “Dad, is this true?” I tell them that it’s true in all of the important ways, and a fable in the unimportant ways.
That’s Santa in my view. He’s not real like my car in the driveway is real. But my car also isn’t real in the way that Santa is or was. My car can’t make someone jolly, but Santa’s image can. As I drive down the street and see it crowded with parked cars, I don’t get all happy inside. But even the tackiest plastic Santa in the front yard makes me say “HO HO HO!” I don’t get to say “HO HO HO!” any other time of the year, so that’s some powerful magic.
Santa is an important myth for civilization to carry on. He’s like a great toy that only children get to play with. When my kids play robots and tigers I always address them as robots and tigers. What kind of mean person reminds them, “You’re not a robot. You’re not a tiger.”
Santa’s depiction has changed over the years, so in all likelihood he will evolve into a thin, non-smoking vegetarian who reminds children to recycle and that they are just evolved, meaningless molecules. Then all of the skeptics will herald him as a great figure for all children to believe in. That’s when I’ll write my goodbye letter to Santa.
