San Diego Objectivist Study Group

Should the Titan god Prometheus have stolen fire from Zeus to give it to mankind? That is the cultural issue of the day. The so-called “Earth Hour” event is coming up. Scheduled for Saturday, the 28th of March, this event, the third of its ilk, says, No thanks, to the brother of Atlas.

For one hour, 20:30 to 21:30 local time, worldwide, it is urged that every household to turn off all lights for the sake of the Earth. Environmentalists organizing the event go so far as saying that this action is an electoral vote either for Earth or for global warming.

Ed Hudgins has written an insightful commentary on this issue. Here is the money quotation:

Consider the stated purpose of Earth Hour. It is not to offer us the sensible suggestion that we turn our lights off when we are not in a room in order to lower our electric bills. That would be an appeal for individual human beings to act in their own self-interest. A “vote for Earth” assumes that the Earth has an intrinsic “Mother-Nature” value of its own, apart and distinct from its value to we human beings.

It is not that forests are of value to us because we humans can take pleasant walks in them or use them for lumber to build our houses. It is that forests have rights; icebergs have rights; swamps have rights; mosquitoes have rights; dirt has rights.

Ideas have a logic of their own that implies actions, for good or ill, sometimes contrary to the stated intentions of those who hold those ideas. […]

Believe that the Earth has intrinsic value and what do you get?

You get a new asceticism, a new Puritanism. You get individuals and a culture obsessed with the need to do without. You get guilt for all those “consumer goods” that allow us to enhance our own lives because those goods require us to cut trees, extract minerals, burn fuel, and generally use the Earth for our own pleasure.

It leads individuals to see their own lives as a burden on the Earth. […]

The implication of the myth of Prometheus is that firelight is symbolic for human life itself. Thus, to turn off the lights is a symbolic gesture for turning off your life.  And this is the moral implication of Earth Hour.

- - - -

Update, 30 March:

The U.S. branch of Earth Hour yesterday reported that more than 200 American cities participated in the event alone. This is a colossal increase from the mere handful of initial cities in Australia two years earlier.

Dr. Hudgins followed up his commentary by posting the photo below. “This satellite night photo of the South and North Korea most graphically illustrates the implications of those anti-human environmentalists.” He suggested the caption to read:

“North Korea celebrates ‘Earth Hour’ every hour every night.”

mysticism: that reason is deprecated to personal faith or to social convention in acquiring knowledge of reality.
reason: that reason–the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses–is sufficiently capable in itself to acquire knowledge.

altruism: that the action which benefits others is moral.
egoism: that the agent is the beneficiary of his own action.

collectivism: that the society is a being from which an individual is only a part and is merely a means to its end.
individualism: that man lives by his own mind and for his own end.

statism: that the social system serves the good of the collective.
capitalism: that the social system protects individual rights, including property rights.

socialism: that the government of a society may control or regulate economic activities.
free market: that the government is forbidden from interfering in economic activities.

fascism: that the government may control the use of private property.
communism: that the government “owns property” in the name of society.
civilism: that the government is the civilizing agency to set men free from other men. (This is a new term I coin in order to name a principle about a form of government that is not yet in existence.)

With resurgent bestseller Atlas Shrugged being seriously discussed at “tea parties“ as well as crassly and funnily satirized in the current culture, Americans are slowly finding Ayn Rand’s philosophical ideas becoming relevant. Lest those of us in the media forget to identify the philosophy, it is Objectivism, a philosophy for the 21^st century. 

I am hopeful.

–

Update: Yaron Brook from ARI was on Pajamas TV, “Is Atlas Shrugging?” He gave some figures on book sales and condemned Alan Greenspan for selling out Objectivist principles. Check it out.

Great arguments begin with defining the terms for the premises. Congressman Ron Paul earlier this week argues competently for why the U.S. Congress actually needs to specify more earmarks in fiscal budgets. In fact, if I understand his argument correctly, all congressional bills of appropriations should be composed 100 percent of earmarks. Now that is being principled.

Check it out. (Hat tip YAL)

I just watched a science-fictional three-mini-part movie that not only features minor characters such as Janice Rand, Ragnar, and Captain Galt, but also discusses and repudiates basic doctrines such as the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. It’s the movie Star Trek: Of Gods and Men (June 15, 2008). It is an unofficial, nonfranchised movie that was made with some original cast members as a kind of encore, a thank-you to the fans for their 40 years of syndicated viewership. The movie’s subtitle tantalizes that, “Legends come together for the last time to destroy each other.”

I like it and recommend it for the storyline and for its sense of life.

The storyline, while corny at the beginning, is Romanticist, involving human choice and real drama. Set forty years after the original five-year mission, the movie ties up an old loose end from the original series (TOS). In the process, it involves changing and extending other old storylines as well as linking and integrating the future chronology of the Star Trek universe.

The movie, directed by Tim Russ (Tuvok from ST:Voyager), stars Nichelle Nichols (Uhura, TOS) and Walter Koenig (Chekov, TOS), with supporting but as different characters from Cirroc Lofton (Jake, DS9), Garrett Wang (Harry Kim, VOY), Ethan Phillips (Neelix, VOY), and others—many of whom, presumably, were also regulars, but whose names during the funny credits did not ring familiar to me. The acting by all was competent and believable; the props and backgrounds, nostalgic of the original series; the special effects, graphically modernized; and the music, light-hearted with echoes of past themes. Only one aspect annoyed me: the sound of thunder in outer space as ships enter and exit warp space.

If you have ever watched the many Star Trek episodes from the various series (and the previous movies), and if, having watched them, you have ever wondered about the writers’ metaphysical values, you might have concluded with justification that the Star Trek universe, since Gene Roddenbery’s original creation, has become an unappealing re-creation of reality.

Consider its conceptions of man and of society. Terrans in the galaxy are viewed as irrational, aggressive beings, driven primarily by gut emotion, and harboring conflicting instincts for domination and for unthinking freedom. And that’s the good. The bad, the constantly derided, is the Vulcans, who are viewed as emotionally repressed, whose logic is more of a hindrance than a guidance to action. Socially, the Federation of Planets embodies suffocating altruism and ascending militarism. Capitalism is outlawed, for private property and free enterprise are nonexistent. (Thank God for the independent albeit demonized Ferengi Empire as a money-grubbing counterpoint!) As its “foreign policy,” the Federation adopts the so-called Prime Directive of planetary non-interference—a kind of primacy of planetary rights over any individualist sovereignty.

So you might come away thinking that, though this ST universe is futuristic, it has that malevolent feel to it. It would not be one in which you would like to live. You’d watch the episodes, of course, when channel surfing, but only for the plot action.

Of God and Men seeks to change all that. Its writers are remaking the ST universe back to what Roddenberry had envisioned, unofficial as it is, back to a benevolent universe as it should have been, at least for the fans, if not for the established future chronology. These writers openly question established doctrines; they humanize and re-elevate vulcans; and they re-assert individualism, with the view of man as a rational being possessing free will and living solely for his personal values and happiness.

On this basis, I recommend the movie. A full listing of credits is posted here; plot summary, here; select quotations, here. And you can watch the movie online here.