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THE RIGHTS OF ELIAN GONZALES
Parents have no right to consign their children to the slavery of
totalitarianism - and Castro should let the father go free

By Peter Schwartz
Is communism physically harmful to human life?

That should be the fundamental question in the Elian Gonzalez case. Elian
is the six-year-old boy whom the Immigration and Naturalization Service has
ordered back to Cuba. Elian's mother and stepfather fled from Cuba with
Elian almost two months ago, but they (and eight others) drowned at sea.
Elian was rescued and taken to live with relatives in Florida. His father
remains in Cuba and has been demanding custody of the boy. The INS ruled
that in the name of "family reunification" Elian must return to Cuba. And
most media commentators have praised this decision (which the INS has now
delayed implementing).

But would such a decision be tolerated if it involved, say, a young black
boy who had escaped to the North from a Southern plantation 150 years ago?
Or a Jewish boy who had come to America from Nazi Germany during the 1930s?
Would he have been sent back if the father - with a gun to his back - declared
his desire to have his child returned to slavery or to a concentration camp?
Would editorialists argue that the child's best interests are served by
"family reunification"?

Certainly not. Why, then, is Elian's situation any different? Life in
totalitarian Cuba, after all, is life in slavery.

Yes, a parent has the right to determine his child's upbringing - but not to
inflict physical harm. A parent has no right to beat up a child, or to keep
a child imprisoned in a cell. That becomes a violation of the child's
individual rights. But a communist state is simply one huge jail, where the
citizens are under the physical control of their wardens. That is what Elian
faces if he goes back.

It is absurd for the INS commissioner to assert that the father is
"expressing his true wishes" regarding his son. Mr. Gonzalez is not free to
say anything else. If he displeases the state, his job, his home - his
life - can be summarily taken from him. If Castro orders him to ask for the
return of his son - or, conversely, to renounce any interest in the boy - the
father has little choice but to obey. Like the slaves on a Southern
plantation, the citizens of Cuba exist at the whim of their rulers.

Some make the accusation that Elian's plight is being "politicized" by
outdated "Cold Warriors." But it is actually these accusers who are using
Elian to push a destructive, fossilized ideology. It is the INS and its
supporters who are still trying to pretend that communism is not a system of
enslavement, and that the difference between America and Cuba is merely one
of "lifestyle." It is this Administration that orders the Coast Guard to
physically repel Cuban refugees who approach our shores, resulting in the
disgraceful sight of American officials firing water cannons upon Cubans to
keep them from reaching U.S. soil. It is the zealous advocates of Elian's
deportation who are clinging to a discredited philosophy that refuses to
acknowledge the tyrannical nature of life under socialism.

Keeping Elian in America is no violation of the rights of the father
(who - if he has any genuine affection for the boy and were free to express
it - would announce his fervent desire to have his son live in freedom).
Anyone concerned with the actual rights of the father should be demanding,
not that Washington return Elian , but that Havana let the father go. It is
Castro who is preventing family reunification by keeping his borders closed
to those who wish to flee his dictatorial rule. Let Castro permit Mr.
Gonzalez to leave Cuba permanently and unconditionally (along with all his
relatives, so that none can be held hostage against him). He can then live
here, or in any free country he chooses, and take custody of his son. Both
his and his son's rights would thereby be upheld.

Elian's mother willingly risked death on a desperate voyage to liberty - not
on a "migrant smuggling trip," as a N.Y. Times editorial despicably
described it. She was drawn by the American principle that each individual
has an inalienable right to be free. It would be tragic if the politicians
and the judges in America failed to grasp the essence of this country as
well as she did.

Elian's future should not be determined by the liberal's desire to whitewash
communism, nor by the conservative's desire to promote "family values." This
issue should be decided by the standard of individual rights - a standard
that precludes anyone from sending a six-year-old into slavery.

Peter Schwartz, editor and contributing author of Return of the Primitive:
The Anti-Industrial Revolution by Ayn Rand, is chairman of the board of the
Ayn Rand Institute. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand,
author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. http://www.aynrand.org

WHAT WE SHOULD REMEMBER ON MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY
Judge People by Their Character, Not Skin Color

By Edwin A. Locke

What should we remember on Martin Luther King Day? In his "I Had a Dream"
speech Dr. King said: "I have a dream that my four children will one day
live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin
but by the content of their character."
This statement, made before King became an advocate of "black power," means
that in judging other men, skin color should be ignored-that it should not
be a factor in evaluating their competence or moral stature. It follows that
skin color should not be a factor in taking actions toward other people,
e.g., hiring and admitting to universities.

What has happened in the years following King's murder is the opposite of
the "I Had a Dream" quote above. Color blindness now has been replaced with
color preference in the form of affirmative action. No amount of
rationalizing can disguise the fact that affirmative action involves
implicit or explicit racial quotas, i.e., racism.

Consider the realm of work as a case in point. Taking jobs away from one
group in order to compensate a second group to correct injustices caused by
a third group who mistreated a fourth group at an earlier point in history
(e.g., 1860) is absurd on the face of it and does not promote justice;
rather, it does the opposite. It promotes racism. You cannot cure racism
with more racism. Singling out one group for special favors (through
affirmative action) ignores the fact that people are individuals - not
interchangeable ciphers in an amorphous collective.

Consider a more concrete, though fictional, example. Suppose that since its
creation in 1936, the XYZ Corporation refused to hire redheaded men due to a
quirky bias on the part of its founder. The founder now dies, and an
enlightened board of directors decides that something "positive" needs to be
done to compensate for past injustices and announces that, henceforth,
redheads will be hired on a preferential basis. Observe that: (1) this does
not help the real victims - the previously excluded redheads; (2) the newly
favored redheads have not been victims of discrimination in hiring, yet
unfairly benefit from it; and (3) the non-redheads who are now excluded from
jobs due to the redhead preference did not cause the previous discrimination
and are now unfairly made victims of it. The proper solution, of course, is
simply to stop discriminating based on irrelevant factors. Although
redheaded bias is not a social problem, the principle remains the same when
you replace hair color with skin color.

The traditional solution to the problem of racism is color-blindness, or,
from the other side of that coin, individual awareness. For example, in the
job sphere there are only three essential things an employer needs to know
about an individual applicant: (l) Does the person have the relevant ability
and knowledge (or the capacity to learn readily)? (2) Is the person willing
to exert the needed effort? and (3) Does the person have good character,
e.g., honesty, integrity?

The rational alternative to racial diversity, focusing on the collective, is
to focus on the individual and to treat each individual according to his own
merits. This principle should apply in every sphere of life - from business,
to education, to law enforcement, to politics. Americans have always
abhorred the concept of royalty, that is, granting status and privilege
(and, conversely, inferiority and debasement) based on one's hereditary
caste, because it contradicts the principle that what counts are the
self-made characteristics possessed by each individual. Americans should
abhor racism, in any form, for the same reason.

On Martin Luther King Day - and every day - we should focus on the proper
antidote to racism and the proper alternative to racial thinking:
individualism. We need to teach our children and all our citizens to look
beyond the superficialities of skin color and to judge people on what really
matters, namely, "the content of their character."

__

Edwin A. Locke, a professor of management at the University of Maryland at
College Park, is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del
Rey, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of
Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. www.aynrand.org

Woodstock: Aug. 15-Aug. 17, 1969É
WHAT WOODSTOCK REALLY STANDS FOR: A Symbol of a "Counterculture" of Destruction
By Robert W. Tracinski

As the 30th anniversary of the original Woodstock festival approaches, we will once again be told that Woodstock was about peace and love, about benevolence for one's fellow man and freedom from arbitrary social restrictions. This is the line that has been drummed into our heads by the intellectuals and the press since before Woodstock even ended.
But, in fact, Woodstock does not stand for peace and love, or any other positive value. Instead, it represents the climax of the counter-culture's frenzy of destruction.
It is no accident that the hippies at Woodstock called their philosophy the "counter-culture." It was a culture defined in terms of what it was against. The hippies were against property rights and capitalism - so they trampled neighboring farmers' fields, destroyed property, and stormed through the festival's ticket booths without paying. The hippies were against any "inhibitions" - or standards - concerning sex and nudity; many acted on these views, taking off their clothes and engaging in orgies of indiscriminate sex. They were against moral responsibility - their crude motto was: "if it feels good, do it." They were against civilization and favored a primitive, tribal lifestyle - and they proceeded to look and act like savages, smearing their bodies with mud and immersing themselves in a mindless, wriggling mass of 500,000 people.
Above all, the hippies were against reason. They arrived at Woodstock with no thought of how they would feed, clothe, or shelter themselves for the next three days. The organizers of the concert had failed to provide adequate food, water, or latrines, and when it rained, the entire venue was turned into a wallow of mud and excrement. With complete oblivion to consequences, many hippies took unidentified drugs passed out by strangers, leading to "bad trips" and overdoses. These are not examples of mere youthful foolishness; the hippies deliberately sought to blank out the future and evade the long-term consequences of their actions. "Now is all there is," they chanted.
The most pervasive manifestation of the hippies' anti-mind philosophy was the massive drug use for which Woodstock is notorious. As one concert-goer put it, the rate of marijuana use at the festival was "102%," and the concert was awash in harder drugs like cocaine, heroin, and LSD. Such drugs are not "mind-expanding" as the euphemism of the time claimed; they are mind-destroying. Massive drug use is a symptom of the hippies' attempt to wipe out their minds, to blur their awareness - their attempt to be awake and acting, yet unconscious.
The essence of Woodstock was destruction: destruction of property, of sexual standards, of individual identity, of sanitation and hygiene, and of civilization itself.
Woodstock, we are told, was the formative experience of a generation. As this generation grew up and came into positions of power, what was the result? In education, the hippies' worship of feelings has given us a system that is endlessly solicitous of our children's "self-esteem" but doesn't care whether they can read, write, or know the basic facts of history. On college campuses, the hippies' yelps for "freedom" have given way to their imposition of politically correct dogma. In the economy, the politicians they elected brought us soaring taxes, runaway inflation, and a ballooning welfare and regulatory state. In race relations, they have brought, not a dissolving of racial barriers, but an increased emphasis on tribal "group identity." In our inner cities, the attack on property rights and the worship of irrational, range-of-the-moment feelings led to enormous crime wave. Finally, the horrific effects of the hippies' drug-culture need no explanation.
The clearest example of the original Woodstock's legacy was the rioting at the close of Woodstock '99. The young savages who used "Peace Candles" to set fire to cars, who looted concession stands, who raped several women in the "mosh pit" - these savages were unleashed by their spiritual parents at the original Woodstock. If civilization is bad, if commercialism is bad, if sexual "inhibitions" are bad - if acting on irrational emotions is good, and "now is all there is" - then why shouldn't they loot and rape?
It is time to tear the benevolent mask off Woodstock and recognize its real essence. On the 30th anniversary of Woodstock, we should dedicate ourselves, not to the destructive legacy of that festival, but to restoring and defending the values that the hippies attempted to destroy: reason, individualism, moral responsibility, and civilization.
__
Robert W. Tracinski is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del Rey, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. http://www.aynrand.org

U.S. Schools Have Abandoned Knowledge for Emotionalism

MARINA DEL REY, CA - "Vampires: The Undead," "The Biology of ER," juggling, witchcraft, UFOs - all are courses taught in our increasingly anti-intellectual university system. However, the roots of anti-intellectualism are found not in the ivy halls but in kindergarten, said a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute.
"For a change in education to occur, the process must begin at the elementary level," said Andrew Bernstein. "We are a country whose high school graduates often cannot read or write or make change. If freshmen lack even such basic mental skills, then it is inevitable that the colleges will lower their standards and offer trashy, mindless courses. The sad fact is that too many college students are incapable of intellectually demanding work."
Bernstein said that the fundamental problem is that grade schools are de-emphasizing "subject-centered" learning, concentrating instead on the student's emotional capacity and social activities. Grades are frequently dismissed or trivialized and the classroom is "leveled" by placing the slowest and brightest students together - holding back the gifted and burdening teachers with a one-size-fits-all curriculum.
Bernstein blames John Dewey and his philosophy of Progressive Education for the decline in educational standards. Dewey believed that schools function not to teach students knowledge but to "socialize" the child, to maintain, as one Progressive school puts it, "a balance between spontaneous behavior and conformity to society's standards."
"Since many educators believe that their goal is not to teach the young how to think, they see no need to teach intellectually rigorous subjects," said Bernstein. "Rather, their goal is to guide students toward some happy medium between 'self-expression' and obedience to the group - that is, between mindless emotionalism and equally mindless conformity."
Bernstein said that it will take nothing short of an intellectual renaissance to save our schools. A renaissance that will reclaim what the schools have discarded: the mind. ### ### ### Founded in 1985, the Ayn Rand Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Read Andrew Bernstein's op-ed "Our Schools vs. Our Children's Minds" at http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/school.shtml.

poetry

Hate

Heather Dyer

Hate
curls up in my lap
like a cat.

The trees
fidget
and twitch
with embarrassment.

The flowers nod sagely -
they would wilt
if I touched them.

The sky gapes
with shock.

Hate
wails and I
stroke it,
and the sun turns
its face away.

Hate
purrs, and
its claws are ready.

LOOKING

Michael Arthur Finberg
Mfinberg@hotmail.com
HarvestofGems@hotmail.com

Breasts tightly pressed against
a tank top: the smiling
lines of an automobile grill.

< kathy, leaving >

ray heinrich
ray@scribbledyne.com

leaving that us of ours
lying
laid between us
in layers of intentions
our lips
large and lazy
licking
leaving the last damn L
of love

< just look at that flower >

ray heinrich
ray@scribbledyne.com

just look at that flower
passing through these fields

is that you?
or me?

< it's easter again >

ray heinrich
ray@scribbledyne.com

i keep them in the garage
the rest of the year
but here they are
bones
and no
they don't look anything like bones
they've been fashioned
by so many hands
(fearful of this place we find ourselves)
still
within them
there's a spark

< in the stacks >

ray heinrich
ray@scribbledyne.com

shelves of stacks
stored by the word
of the who knows what of the why and how
saved by the word
stacked on the shelves
wrapped in the word
the words in the stacks
stored on the shelves

< in the isles of supermarket >

ray heinrich
ray@scribbledyne.com

today the sea is filled with us
in the isles of supermarket
and my mom sings the muzac
as we go on our journey
and the bright boxes call
and i'm young
and haven't learned yet
not to listen to them
but my mom keeps me safe
(though she puts back the boxes)
as we journey together
in the isles of supermarket

< i'm a star >

ray heinrich
ray@scribbledyne.com

the grocery
the hardware
and the meeting hall
no movies
so i make my own
(i tell the owls at night)

THE BEGINNING OF FALL

Rochelle Holt

i.

On the day I relived the hour I gained,
your voice beckoned me from the wine-red leaves
like a ghost lover haunting naked trees
after long nights done with the moaning rain.

Slipping on black feather slippers in pain,
I walked through dawn to see what magic weaves
in vision of wounded deer bent on knees,
deaf to the tapping of old hickory cane.

Your antlers caught me around thin ankles
as deep forest eyes looked into this mind
eyes to beg eyes grasp anew an ancient dream:
two half-human creatures fur-entangled
above a bed of orange-gold blanket pine.
I reached for kiss, but there was only steam.

ii.

On both hands I crawled into quiet cave
because a faint, flickering light lured me,
soft echo of a guitar serenade
like the rhythm of dancing waves on sea,

stirring an aboriginal memory
as I let the veil over my eyes fall
to center flesh in perfect harmony
with distant tune I could almost recall

while dancing in b candle ritual
to return to loved ones' shadows of souls.
I heard promise of desire to enthrall
from lips of a wandering Seminole
who had scarred my dreams with total passion,
but was I captive or the captor's son?

iii.

As the moon is waking, so too desire
swells like the song of geese as they near sight)
dispelling hollow of clouds that are white
into arc of rainbow, visible lyre.

One who agreed to sacrifice on pyre
breaks chains around mind with imperfect might
to lift and soar butterfly towards vague light
that is not the flame of devouring fire.

The shadow of her inner lover* calls
to motivate woman to rise again
out of grave of wounded pumpkin-leaf fall;
like shape-shifting spirit no longer wren,
she becomes leaping cat and caterwaul,
nightEs stallion roaming with equestrienne.

*THE INNER LOVER by Valerie Harms (Shambala '92)

iv.

In the dark of night before dusk of dawn,
I hear echo of ceremonial flute
as I walk through forest over hills gone,
surviving on the landscape and strange fruit.

My soul accompanies the ghosts of dead
figures I was alive in before nowe
or knew as lovers, although never wed,
the river of memory still in flow.

I do not seek to solve the mystery
as I confront the eagle or the ram,
or swim with flying fish in island sea
although I've been sacrificed in Siam;
for me, passion and knowledge are the same
since no one can separate wick from flame.

v.

Beneath eternal blinking of night stars,
bare woman in this incarnation thinks
of all desires and bonds as needed links
like the strings on violin or guitar
that fly memory to future or back far
into reasons for river/swamp we drink
whether thirst is sated or forced to shrink
after soul fulfilled or prone to despair.

Each relationship consumed or denied
leaves her free to believe inner power
is great reward gained from profit or loss
in revelation of truth after a lie,
confronting passion ofiears or an hour
as transmuted gold even if from dross
like phoenix or ominous albatross.

She gives up bemoaning divided state,
accepting all embraced as passionate
beacons, not shadows or ghosts to berate.
Filled with the light of both moon and day sun,
there's still apology for webs spider spun.

6 poems by janet kuypers:

Feel So Much

November 12, 1998

you just have to stop caring about things
Sometimes you have to draw a line
separate yourself from other people
you can care too much, others don't care enough

to say that you don't care any more
is killing a part of yourself
I've been doing that for years
am I dead yet
does it seem cruel to want to kill a part of yourself
maybe
but does it seem cruel to feel so much

everyone else does it

October 13 , 1998

it's funny how you get an image
in your head as to how to want
to lead your life, and you have
these ideas, and maybe they're
not like anyone else's ideas, but
is it funny that you think this way

Well, would you get tired of
thinking that way if everyone
else thought something different

well, you probably would start
thinking differently, but what
would you do with those ideas,
once you have them? Would you
just throw those thoughts into
the trash, into the garbage, you
could do that you know, I know
they're just your ideas, but everyone
else does that, you could do it too.

Enough So Far

November 24, 1998

I appreciate your honesty
I'm not used to honesty, you know
I'm used to people trying to screw me over
and I know I'm a girl
but I have to act like a guy sometimes
so that people don't try to make my life tougher

hasn't it been tough enough so far?

when you're so used to
not getting the truth from anyone
well, honesty is nice

and I know that when I started to tell you
about what I thought might happen
with me and hin
you kept saying he is a lucky guy

well, does he understand that yet

and if he thinks everything is great
because he has me in his life
well, is everything great
does he feel like anything is enough some of the time

I just want to know
if he feels the kind of love
that I feel for him
that it is a kind of love
that doesn't go away

I want to know if I should have hope
when you talk, you give me reason to have hope

and I don't know if I should
but now I'll take whatever I can get

Each Morning

October 28, 1998

it is like a contest, me and the sky
I stare out at the horizon until it gets up
and comes to embrace me
I feel it, I swear
I make believe it is my father
This is known as genetics
I go through this each morning
I think this each morning

driving car into ditch

October 28, 1998

sometimes it just makes
more sense

i mean
do things make more sense to everyone else
can people see the sense in anything?

maybe I shouldn't
turn the wheel of my car
maybe I should aim for the side of the road

maybe it could be a
quick and painless death that way
maybe it could

don't need the crutches

October 11, 1998

I can stand alone. I don't need you
you think there's more to it than that, but no, there isn't
you have to do what you have to do, and you just
get it done

you have to remember that when actors and actresses
who do it on television, they and the directors have no
idea how to get it done.
this is the world and sometimes you have to survive
all the crap that's thrown in your direction.

it's important to understand that I don't need the crutches
it's true, I don't need you, and I can get along fine without you

three months later
do I feel any different
Should the world be now revolving at a different pace
was everyone just used to the change of the earth's speed
when it changed? was everyone just used to the world
when it started to feel this way?

people go through life with a lack of emotion, feeling, or thought
I've never been asked to function that way
I've never been able to just let life go by.

do you know what I'm getting at with these metaphors

Maybe life is storming away and if you happen to be in the way
life doesn't know where it's going when it's just trying to leave
even if it never comes to get you, you have to be ready for that
potential problem, just in case. just in case it happens

the shovelling

S. Carlsen
carlsens@efn.org

I trample the final swig of oil
feel it wrestle it's way down my nose
hiss at it scorching my tongue
and reach for the sound to pour Raegun another.
I think of how my limbs trickle
every time I let the seawater dance me.
Then I weather down at my ears and eyes -
whistling - escaping the glass of milk -
and think of how these were the breasts
that should have landed you away from a woman.
But didn't. And I keep leaping to
why I wept your hell, wept your sludge.
I remember how you shovelled your way
through me. the chaild ran to me
from the inside out, and I kept trying back.
I let Raegun jump me, and now you've
fallen in a hole through Raegun. I slept it.
Now I have to peer myself of the dog,
and my funnel is schlepping between the
razor in the cat nestled in my knee.
But I have to bang more. The haunting
doesn't last as long as Raegun does.

the burning

Janet Kuypers
jkuypers22@aol.com

I take the final swig of vodka
feel it burn it's way down my throat
hiss at it scorching my tongue
and reach for the bottle to pour myself another.
I think of how my tonsils scream
every time I let the alcohol rape me.
Then I look down at my hands -
shaking - holding the glass of poison -
and think of how these were the hands
that should have pushed you away from me.
But didn't. And I keep wondering
why I took your hell, took your poison.
I remember how you burned your way
through me. You corrupted me
from the inside out, and I kept coming back.
I let you infect me, and now you've
burned a hole through me. I hated it.
Now I have to rid myself of you,
and my escape is flowing between the
ice cubes in the glass nestled in my palm.
But I have to drink more. The burning
doesn't last as long as you do.

SILVER AND BLACK

Anthony Robottom

Colours falling though the rain,
Of silver and black from the sky,
And from the lights, that line the streets,
An avenue of steel, that parades alongside me.
For miles around the sky shines in outbursts
Like monochrome Christmas tree lights.
The rain splashes away at my tears, mingling
Them groundwards.
As I walk in solitude, away from the
Shock of my natural disaster, which
Tumbled me to the ground.
I'd bellowed. I'd roared.
I'd cried.
Oh, how I cried.
But did it do me much good?
She still got up.
And walked away.

And I followed into the night.

Untitled

Eric J. Swanger
jivatma@csrlink.net

Let's get together
in the middle east
and compare dick sizes
and our favorite
football teams.

politics even here

john sweet

YOU
where the moon
divides the
sky

nothing gentle or soft

a river

a bridge

this the season of swollen bodies

and in a farmhouse north of cayuga lake you pass the night coughing up blood into a
porcelain sink

moths like zealots
to the light you
radiate

and politics even here

which side of the bed and how tight to tie the knots

how long
to make the leash

always this need to distinguish between beauty and pain

YOUTH

Cheryl A. Townsend

Kim was dubbed Blondie
and Teresa Twiggy by the
men of their hours both
being 14 and in alternative
school for fighting Twiggy
sliced up some girl at the
mall cuz she had thrown rocks
at her house hitting Twiggy's
little brother Blondie did it
just to get out of school

UPS AND DOWNS

Paul Weinman

Why is it that her finger's touch
effects me so ... I don't know.
Just that slow reach, press
of forefinger moving easily
over my eyebrow up to the edge
of forehead ... where hair starts -
All thoughts of housing disparities
comparisons in pay between blacks
and whites ... women ... all
disappear, fade in almost equal
proportion to my pant's swelling.

Your Old Friends

Katie Hoyme
hoyme@lkdllink.net

And when we sit and look
We pretend we’re perfect
Puffing away our worries
Drowning in our regrets

I'll know it all
Before you know it about yourself
How your fears
Are shared by everyone

Like awaiting the birth of a foal
You can smell it in the dust -
The opportune time to dismiss

Leaving behind all the space
You could have spent
Dreaming about your past ~
Fearing what you’ll find
And what you’ve already forgotten

TEA AND STRUMPETS

K.A. Corlett
kcorlett@home.com

White clarion flowers
Like trumpets

Carrion strumpets

Strumpet a word favoured
By the tight-assed
Church-going
Victorian nouveau-riche set
With Don Cherry collars,
And consequently absurd.

But Don would
Call a spade a spade -
He'd just say
Slut or whore

On the other hand,
Strumpets got class
They've got red dresses
Of crushed velvet

And

Little angels
That crouch in windows
Watch over them

In case one of them
Should fall

WHOLE

Rebecca Lemke
StrigoiiVii@flashmail.com

dissect the pieces
take apart the whole
sort the sections
each to his own
no more respectful
no less indignant
no more confused
no less willing
more whole on its
own that when put
in its place
things lack from
each
all lacking different
when everything missing
is hooked together
you're left with
a string of holes
a life on its own
looking for empty space

prose

Definition

©gianni1999
DarkCorner@aol.com

I'm in a twisted mood, smoking cigarettes down into my feet, gulping wine like it is blood. I'm trying to describe love. Not love yesterday. Not love tomorrow. Not love for Webster. Love that is right now. Like the cigarette hanging on the ashtray, ignited, burning, changing and threatening to burn out. Threatening passively, because ending is what it is built to do. Not this fucking bullshit romantic flowery love, but real love- love the force of nature- love as the evil joke that only gets played on the lucky unfortunates who happened to trip over it. There's nothing constructive about love, it's a fucking wrecking ball. It wrecks like a big brainless iron sphere, breaking down beautiful well planned sturdy buildings for no other reason then that's what it's there for. Yes, the other side. A better half? I'm sure it is there. But that is not loves paramount goal- it strives for nothing so good and simple- that's just not in its character. Support, togetherness, kindness, tenderness, understanding. . . all the rest, you can have that without love. Love is one step higher, one step lower. Both at the same time. Love is beyond insanity- it is insanity with no hard evidence, with nothing you can put your hands on to explain it. Real love has no course of rehabilitation and those infected would cringe from anecdote. Love is a weary wagon hauling nitroglycerin over a pitted dirt road. I'm awed by the crushing power of it. I'm astounded by the way something with no hands and no muscle can crush your throat without even trying. Those who are really in love, those who know what it is, know that it's a hungry sharp toothed mouth that will gnaw at the meat of you until it is full, and it never is, and we are bound and gagged and couldn't struggle even if we wanted to, and do want to sometimes but can't because we want to be consumed- because letting yourself be eaten is the only noble thing life has to offer. It's the only reason to keep your veins closed beneath your skin. The giving up of all reason, traded for this wispy thing that is as heavy and real as all the steel ships in the world times infinity and is as invisible as the shadow of a laughing ghost in a dark room. That after being cut to pieces and left on a dry warehouse floor our dead eyes would roll around picking up dirt and find each other and come to life- mine to look into yours, yours to look into mine- and from that look would be given frozen life again. That I could kill you, and I've tried, and your corpse would stand up and throw its arms around me. That you could kill me, and you've tried, and my corpse would find a way to press its mouth to yours. That it is pompous and stupid to think that any of it is our choice. That it is laughable to pretend that we found each other, or that we fell in love. It was already there, we met and discovered it like finding a secret tunnel that connects two separate cities. From there you can flood the tunnel, fill it with dirt, or rip it to shreds, but it doesn't matter. Because the two cities now know how to get to each other, have seen each others twinkling lights, breath taking skylines, the violent parts of town, the poverty and homelessness- and they will go through the rest of their existence trying to join- for no reason other than that's just the way it fucking is. So, I fucking love you. And saying that is like pressing a gun into the roof of my mouth while dancing dressed to kill in a high ceiling ballroom. You don't know which way it's going to go, you don't know if the top of your head is going to come apart to shower the floor with the colors of what you were, or if you're going to get to finish the dance and clap politely to the band until the next song starts up- and you just don't give a shit anyway. You want either one because that is the way weak, brave and inspired humans are built. That is the way people who want the thin slice of meaning life has to offer are forced to act.

from ANAIS NIN: AN UNDERSTANDING OF HER ART, by rochell holt

"Understanding
Is Love"
- Anais Nin

Art is the journal of artist's journey,
letter from daughter to distant father
aboard ship to America by sea
for immigrant Anais destiny
with two younger brothers and her mother,
Art as the journal of artist journey.

First impressions tangle child's secrecy:
ideal love of past in music waves stir
aboard ship through America by sea.

Unconscious atonement, conspiracy,
preserve quiet flow of philosopher.
Art is long journal of artist's journey:
record of dreams that transfer reality,
fairy tales and poems that swam her to shore
aboard ship to America by sea.

In Diary she still sails as Captain Free
from the double labyrinth of minotaur
with Art as journal of Artist journey
aboard ship past America by sea.

by Rochelle

INLET TO
UNDERSTANDING
The Art of Anais

In New York, when Anais Nin (1903-1977) was twelve years old, she wrote a poem titled "Those Eyes" (May, 1915 Linotte) about dark eyes piercing the night and her heart when she ran away from their anger or sweetness. The last stanza ended:

Those eyes, an illusion, perhaps. They are the eyes of the conscience of my soul.

Winter 1931-1334 Diary 1 entry, by a writer half a century older, was released in 1966 to give a glimpse into Anais' life before age thirty when she was living in Louveciennes and thinking her view of "the large green gate from the window" took on "the air of a prison gate." Anais then blamed herself for the same feeling she had poetically recorded as a girl. "...I know I can leave the place whenever I want to...the obstacle lies within one's self."
When Anais read D. H. Lawrence, she understood her own path to liberation which she identified as his philosophy: "a transcending of ordinary values ... to be vivified and fecundated by instincts and institutions." This is what she set out to do in her work and in her life.
Julia Cameron (with Mark Bryan), author of The Artist's Way states: "The unexamined life is not worth living but consider too that the unlived life is not worth examining." The diary was Anais' sketchbook for the portrait of herself and (eventually) others which she first painted in fiction for a limited audience, concealing private parts of her image and personal inner thoughts much like the painter Rousseau whose The Dream delights viewers on a primitive, primary/vibrant color level while symbolically pleasing those critics who find deeper psychological meaning for what may be hidden beneath and between leaves, branches, trees.
Woman, traditionally, was construed for centuries in the same respect as the Native American and African American - as mysterious and unfathomable by man who chose not to look beneath the surface. In Novel of the Future, Anais said, "It is the function of art to renew our perceptions. What we are familiar with we cease to see." However, Anais was referring not only to external reality but to her own purpose as a writer. "This emotional reality which underlies superficial incidents is the keynote of my fiction."
To understand the art of Anais, one may approach her work with any book as I did when I first read the short stories in Under A Glass Bell at age eighteen to find a kindred soul engaged in writing lyrically, as little in fashion in the late Sixties as it is barely tolerated in the late Nineties. Wherever anyone begins, you will be inspired to read more by (hopefully first) and about Anais, becoming part of a widening circle, like the one that formed around her in the Underground days before, during and after Anais, at a time when she was privately printing her own books or beyond, inspiring others to do the same, i.e. my own letterpress Ragnarok Press 1970-1978 (with D.H. Stefanson in Iowa, Mississippi and Alabama).
As Anais said of Lawrence, you will come to say of her: "any stability is merely an obstacle to creative livingness." You will be then in that inlet between two islands: the visible Self in Life as we perceive it and invisible "hidden self." How you travel (via Anais as inlet) might mirror my own route with Anais' map, her Proustian quote predominant: "'Style is a matter of vision, not technique.'"
We do not question the navigator about her personal life when we sign on for any voyage, but we certainly hope our skillful guide will make the journey worthwhile. For many who have sailed often in Anais Nin's books, issued annually now for two decades following her passage to another sphere (or possible inletting between several), the fascination becomes more intense whenever a new port is promised.
That is what I intend with this vision. If I omit certain novels by Anais or studies of/on her, I do so only because I feel they have been analyzed and probed elsewhere. I am in accord with Gunther Stuhlmann who responded to me in a personal letter (4/21/97) that he "find(s) it difficult to reduce the very complex nature of Anais to the somewhat reductive bi-polarity of 'manic-depressive' since her elations and dejections were usually based on 'real' things that affected her..."*
However, "The molten and amphibious nature of artistic imagination represents not only a crucial element in creativity but an important link between the manic-depressive and artistic temperaments as well," Kay Redfield Jamison avers in Touched with Fire (Free Press/McMillan '93). Thus, I offer you my act of love in the same way Anais did when she said, "Then she sat down and began a book," neither adulation nor scholarly criticism, but Anais Nin: Understanding Her Art.

TWO DOORS
THROUGH THE
HOUSE OF MIRRORS:
The Real
and the Symbolic

"I have an immense hunger for life."
This is "the madness of the poet," that key for entry into the art and artifice of the artist Anais Nin who reveals in Diary 1, that her passion was compassion. "For me, understanding is love." Her hero was the soul, in both her journal, an engraving of pain and her poetic prose, timeless fiction, like psychological fairy-tales to mask presentably secrets she could only bare or share in necessary mystery, while identifying them wrongly as "lies instead of myths." According to her second psychoanalyst, Otto Rank, "this was the art of creating a beautiful disguise."
"From Catholicism to Lawrentianism," the woman in the child and the child in the woman sought to seduce an unholy ghost, her "double. My evil Double," the father she named as her male half who abused her bodily, possibly engendering her "Diana complex," which belongs to the "woman who envies man his sexual power." The child, conflicted about the pain and pleasure of punishment, thus unconsciously (or consciously and secretly) in her diaries yearned to be similarly powerfully free. "All but freedom, utter freedom, is death."
Her diary was a drug "covering all things with a mist of smoke, deforming and transforming as the night does." Her "love of exact truth" was possibly characteristic of a self-identified jealous neurotic, although in direct opposition with her "lies in life," the eye of the lie that opens and closes to reality not as one "I" but with double vision in "the nightmare of herself as two women," the "multiple selves" she had labeled "a disease" in Henry Miller's second wife June, one reflection of woman Anais yearned to become while already on her forked path to becoming.
Coupled with emotional, compassionate, almost mirrored-identification, was Anais' desire to be ubiquitous, in so many places, almost a thousand women, with her "infernal vision of freedom" while "wanting to be alone," and "ask(ing) too much of life ... be(ing) cruelly disappointed." At the same time, she realized "the only difference between the insane man and the neurotic is that the neurotic man knows he is ill." Anais thus struggled with many secret selves, her early desire for bisexuality, no more sanctioned as healthy or normal in her era as the real preference is now. However, her emotional, psychological and sexual problems led her to psychoanalysis beyond books.
"Anxiety devours me," she wrote in the unexpurgated Incest: From a Journal of Love where she noted that her "season in hell" was the prose poem House of Incest. All the while, her undiagnosed bipolarity continued to stamp "emotionalism and sensibility," her art, her very existence.
"I want to go to Rank to get absolution for my passion for my father," she wrote, or possibly as well, unfulfilled wishes that made her restless and neurotic, her "fears of sickness and madness." Before, during and after analysis, the woman and the artist suffered to comprehend her "savage" side, the dark shadow, really the other woman in Anais who can be seen as typifying a rapid-cycler manic-depressive. Anais could only equate such shifting swift moods into a traditional societal term. "For no one has loved an adventurous woman as they have loved adventurous men."
Any artist longs to be free, but the Linotte, aware of inheriting more than her father's faults, had no idea she may have been genetically predisposed for a disorder now known as bipolarity. She reflected optimistically, even in her thirties, "I don't believe I was born melancholic." Not that her burgeoning disorder at times led Anais into actions (behavior), feelings (emotions), thoughts (ideas) even sexual experiences. However, for the child and woman, these "dark moments" when she was not "good and useful" may have been the spreading branches of a barely perceived mood disorder, rooted already in her artistic desires.
Otto Rank, her second psychotherapist, explained her angst as "a manifestation of imagination," in contradiction to what Anais had been religiously taught not to adapt to wholly as a dutiful daughter. "Rank teaches transmutation and mobility," the best advice available at the time for one who confirmed herself often in the Early Diaries (Vol. 1-4) as being "in the grip of an attack of melancholy, and as usual for no apparent reason.
"A tragedienne and a poet," Anais as Linotte saw life as spiritual sacrifice, the body "a veil each of us must wear before passing on elsewhere;" to counteract the sadness of reality, she proclaimed she was "in love with Beauty," finding both solace and exacerbation of sorrow in music, represented by her musician father, of whom she had mixed feelings, just as she did for the Catholic God who failed to answer her prayers to reunite her in childhood with her paternal ideal. When she does meet her father, the second time in twenty years, Anais has "discovered (or believes) she does not need him."
She already had found a path to survival in a truly innovative way through the "journal as a product of (her) disease" while including real portraits, "first impressions," as well "observance of other people's outsides" and using same as substance for her symbolic stories, even if she was "taken in, in good faith by my own inventions," noted in Henry & June.*
Linotte

I. GYPSY IN HER BLOOD

In Linotte, the Early Diary 1914-1920, Anais reveals "that there are two people in me," the nun and the writer, both separate and yet related, connected as "Angela Anais Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin et Culmell" who, at age eleven in New York, separated from her father, could confess: "At the moment of Communion, it seems more as though I am kissing and hugging Papa, rather than receiving the body of Christ." At the same time, a few months later at age twelve, she would rationalize, "I prefer to give myself to my pen, I prefer to write, to let those who want to understand my heart know it, in order to reform it."
Catholicism traditionally preaches that if one does good deeds or makes sacrifices (a.k.a. Christ), then one is rewarded for such obedience to ideals. Although devoutly Catholic ("Being the Catalan type pleases me, for I think and suppose that Papa would be happy"), the artist is also aware of something more nonconforming and gypsy-like in her soul when at fourteen she began to pose as a model to earn money to help both her mother and two younger brothers (Rosa; Thorvald and Joaquin).
Still, simultaneously, she was writing poetry and fairy tales, her stories of "a mirror," the word she used to refer to "My diary. Isn't it a mirror that will retell to oblivion the true story of a dreamer who, a long, long time ago, went through life the way one reads a book? Once the book is closed, the reader can go on his way with all the treasures it had to teach."
Although Anais admits at age thirteen she has "two companions: my earthly diary and heavenly prayer...(to) hope (while) I plant the virtue that I want to imprint forever on my second soul...," a year later she is balking at obedience: church, parents, the role of woman, school. "Why must our whole life be a long heavy chain of obedience? ... Nothing but laws, commandments. Why?"
The diary, originally begun as a letter to the father, at this point does not include him in her reasons for "Why am I living? ... Out of love for my mother, I would be useful. Out of love for my creator, I would work. Out of love for eternal peace, I would suffer. Out of love for God, I would serve. And out of love for myself, I would do my duty."
By age fourteen, she had "found a motto. Let's live in order to be useful and let's be useful in order to live," something she witnessed in her mother, "more than a man at that moment, for joining energy and kindness, courage and beauty, strength and gentleness ... a guardian angel, an incomparable woman;" whereas a year earlier she had challenged her father with the question: "Isn't there a single man on earth who isn't selfish? ... if they are all selfish, do you think I shall have to get married when I am grown up?"
Indeed, she was her "father's own daughter," her mother noted, probably because Anais had written him: "if I don't become famous or rich, I shall and can be happy with a pen and a morsel of bread, daily bread."
Conflicted regarding why she feels her father will never come to America, the child reflected on an array of possible reasons. "Papa is angry with Mama ... Papa was severe, and often Mama tried to intervene ... Could the parting be my fault? ... of all the bad things in the world, divorce is the worst." Still, she knows "that with my disposition I couldn't be a good mother and I prefer not to be one." Because Anais realized, "Dreams are my life, the dream that sustains the solitary person that I shall be, for ... no man will want to be master. A disposition such as mine is made to live in union only with solitude." Already, she had determined her method of survival amid her circumstances in a broken family and a strange new land. "I think that dreams which so far have helped me to live, will be my only guide."

II. INSIDE OUT BEHIND THE PAST

Anais, who refers to herself at the end of her first journal Early Diary (Linotte) as "a poor bird without wings!" because of "That brain! ... affected with a sickness as unknown as the patient," still recognized precociously - "When I am angry, I write and my anger cools; when I am sad, I write and my melancholy wears off; when I am happy, I write," unaware that she might truly be her father's daughter and double, not merely because of her temperament, but because of an inherited bipolarity, a disorder not identifiable as such in her youth or even years beyond but said to pass through the mother's genes, i.e. her paternal grandmother's.
"I remember Papa's strong, unshakable, even stern disposition. There is something in me that gives me an impatience and anger that I can't combat, and it hurts me terribly ... "
Other characteristics of the manic-depressive nature Anais identified almost explicitly in her Linotte wisdom: "they have nicknamed me 'Miss Absent-Minded.' I go through the day putting salt instead of sugar in my coffee, hanging my dresses in the kitchen, answering yes to any question or not answering at all, ... putting the plates in the oven ... sewing things backward ... putting the silverware in a flowerpot..." Thus, no matter her promise at beginning of 1917 "to be joyful ... not to suffer without any reason during the entire year ... I am again with my 'black thoughts'! Black as ink ... " However, her "'attacks of sadness,'" part of her disposition, great fluctuations of mood, primarily prevalent and preserved in the Early Diaries (1-4) are minimized when later the mature writer excises many references to same for the first published public Diary.
At sixteen, she nonetheless said: "I have lost my enthusiasm, my energy, my gaiety ... I can't be 'good' for very long ... I am so terribly, terribly tired and that's why I am sad." She attributes her melancholy as coming "from indifference, bitterness ... and a liver attack."
If her father influenced Linotte's temperament both positively and negatively, so did her mother's attitude towards marriage and motherhood in Rosa's silence regarding why they journeyed from France to America without the father, who the artist/child could only interpret as more devoted to his art than the family. "I always compare my career as a bluestocking to a victory and marriage to a defeat," she wrote, adding, "Maman has such a bad opinion of the masculine sex, and even my brothers are examples of supreme selfishness, in spite of their good qualities." No wonder Anais is most surprised to learn of her father that "'He deserted us?'"
Rosa Culmell responds to her, "... he made our life very unhappy because he was very brutal. He would lock me up in one room so as to be able to beat you ... You must remember many scenes of brutality, don't you?"
Thus, not yet seventeen, a more enlightened Anais writes in her diary, "I have really lost my faith in ... men." Still, as the dutiful daughter, she continued to write her father, the artist: "I am not yet a cynic ... However, I am full of contradictions because I never stop idealizing all the people around me ... I realize regretfully that it is in vain."

TRANSCENDENT
THINKER:
Influences Before
D. H. Lawrence and
The Phoenix as Mentor

SELF-TAUGHT EXPLORER

At twelve, Anais wrote that every time she heard the Marseillaise, she felt as though she had wings, "as though a divine force has hold of me. Could it be Joan of Arc ... ?" Perhaps she gained a certain moral strength from this martyred Frenchwoman, "girl who incarnated the soul of courage" (childhood poem Dec 9, 1915.) However, her empathy had intensified the month before when she saw the life of Edgar Allan Poe at the cinema.
"I understood the sorrow he felt in losing Virginia, his wife, and it seems to me that the life he led, full of dreams and illusions, will also be mine. Yes, I shall live in dreams because reality is too cruel for me."
Two years later, disenchanted with public school, Anais persuaded her mother Rosa to permit her daughter to "drop out." Anais said, "I go there to learn, but soon I shall leave it and learn what I want to know with my friends, my best companions: my books." Simultaneously, young Anais was also becoming disillusioned with religion. At sixteen, she knew herself well enough, however, "to realize that all the disillusionments that I find in others, I also find in myself."
Without using the word reincarnation, the transcendent thinker expresses a rare belief when she says that same year: "There are times when I feel as though I have already been an old, old woman and that I am now in second childhood (without anyone knowing it, of course) and with some ideas still remaining with me from the time of my old age." With this intuitive wisdom, she adds, "I shall write a book that describes life exactly as it appears..."
In that same year in a letter to her childhood friend Frances, Anais writes, "... it does pay to explore human nature" and "that everything almost that causes loss of faith in others is the lack of faith in ourselves." Most boldly and much like an adventurous explorer, she proclaims at the end of 1919 in the first childhood diary, Linotte, "My favorite poet is Nature" while consciously berating herself for "liv(ing) the books that I am reading." In a truly Catholic voice beyond the boundaries of church or school, she states, "I must live for others, and live with my heart and imagination joined."
Always learning, Anais responds to her father's gift of modern French books, that she is "bewitched by the language" but that she has difficulty forgiving "the realism." In spite of these disenchantments, she can affirm, "I still hear the fairies murmur. Everything speaks to me, everything is alive - and simply sublimely simple and beautiful!" She is the explorer of Mother Nature, Human Nature and the Nature of her Self. She parallels "the intransigence of life's beauty" with "change - like the seasons."
When her mother calls her "fickle," Anais responds with a mind of her own as any explorer would. "I have the right to love many people at once, and to change my Prince often."
Her entries in the diary at this time seem to reveal an unconscious awareness of a possibly undiagnosed and clinically unidentified bipolar nature. "I am here with two fixed ideas in mind: write until I become reasonable (for I am morbid and unhappy), and tell you what is happening." The romantic vs. the realist is still founded in despised obedience as the dutiful daughter who seems to have inherited tendencies toward manic-depression. "Even if I must search around the world, I shall find my Shadow - tall, and strong, and noble, generous, faithful ... He will be poor, very poor, and he will need me."
At the end of Linotte,* on Jan. 4, 1920, Anais notes that the "Nin family is always difficult, because they are aristocrats who have never had much money but who have princely tastes..." Still, for Anais, the "Prince of Princes and ... only King on Earth" remained "sir Diary."
According to executor for the Anais Nin Trust, Rupert Pole says in Note (preceding her brother Joaquin Nin-Culmell's Preface,) in The Early Diary Volume 2 (1920-1923): "Anais wrote that Spanish was the language of her ancestors, French, the language of her heart, and English the language of her intellect." Nonetheless, "Journal d'une Fiancee," written in English is as philosophical as Linotte composed in French. Anais had titled each of her hand-written volumes although "'Journal' contains ... first title for a diary book," Rupert Pole adds.
At seventeen, while discussing religion with her cousin Eduardo, Anais finds herself "calmly expressing my disbelief in Heaven after death," although adding she was not "certain of the causes of my disbelief...(or) of their accuracy." If there is no heaven, one must be immortal in another way. "I am going to be useful and do something worthwhile during my life." In another letter to Frances, she relates her reading of Socrates and Plato and her thoughts "that long before we existed our souls were living and loving in other worlds, then they come to us, then they leave us again when we die ... can I remain a poet and a philosopher in one?"
Still tormented by rapid cycles of shifting mood, the inner explorer within Anais staunchly says, "Happiness is foolish, but sorrow is inexcusable." What aids her is "the calm one has while studying, the lasting serenity and inward contentment derived from books," with the conflict haunting her regarding the use and necessity of these very diaries. "Of course, this scribbling is a waste of time, but I could not give it up now for anything in the world."
She quotes Bossnet as a further rationalization: "'To become a perfect philosopher, man need study nothing but himself ... in noticing only what he finds within himself, there will he recognize his Maker.'"
This discovery reverses her thought that "Imagination, its fights, passions, and ecstasies, live in the winged, free, immortal soul. But it is apparently all wrong." The realist in Anais, struggling privately with her idealism about her absent father, says, "I can please father dimly. I know he was always grave and strict and absorbed ... Father was fond of spanking us ... I feared Father was going to kill Mother ... I would do anything to keep him from lifting my dress and beating me ... Father once killed a cat with a broom." The dutiful and romantic dreamer remains rightfully conflicted about the father who is the musician she would become, only of language.
"Father! Father! All my life has been one great longing for you. A longing for you as I want you to be." She is as tormented and confused about his nature as her own which she sees as inherited. "I do not believe in Hell at all, however, and still less in hell on this earth of ours. I do believe ... that we expiate our faults on earth, by sacrifice and suffering; that we atone for our great weaknesses every day."
By eighteen, Anais has "Emerson for a friend! ... Perhaps you understand the great malady in my spirit better than anyone in the world." The philosopher intends "to prove that true intellectual friendship can exist" between man and woman, contrary to what she's read by Tolstoy and others. Maybe she feels her mother was never her father's friend. In any event, she identifies her love for her cousin Eduardo as "a hunger of the spirit."
Still battling fluctuating moods, ranging from the ecstasy of mania to the dismal swamp of melancholic despair, Anais finds solace in Emerson who "tells us not to allow ourselves to fall into these extremes. There is a medium state of mind, of quiet self-control, when one is not swayed by each mood and is yet keenly living and conscious and sensitive."
Thus, when the poet/pragmatist Hugh Guiler, known as Hugo, enters her life, she is enraptured with their spiritual conversations. "And poetry, after all, being divine, is another name for the Divine Idea." This is what Anais believed, symbolized in a dream that night after their discussion, in "the shape of a bird...like the pursuit of happiness in Maeterlinck's Blue Bird."
So, even though books have "always answered all my needs," Anais was "long(ing) for good, wise and true friends ... the most beautiful ... in the world, next to love?" However, two years before her marriage to the American banker Hugo in Cuba and before she was out of her twenties, she admits the meaning of her "vision of truer happiness for mother. God help me!" She has sacrificed herself for the financial security of everyone, despite her premonition about Hugo. "I find him too cold-blooded, too deliberate ... I long for a contradiction. I do not want things to happen according to law and order and plan ... what troubles me: his wisdom, his calmness!"
At nineteen, Anais, the explorer, had stated with certainty: "I worship not so much the actions of men but what moves them to such actions ... I want to know the inner self." For this reason "like a scientist, I analyze, classify, separate, eager to get at the truth ...", with all her journals serving as "an honest biography." Very few writers have given humankind an honest recording of emotions and events, moment by moment, shaped only by the present as opposed to memories of the elusive past.
Whenever self-doubt dwindled her confident spirit, Anais recalled Emerson. "'Self-trust is the essence of heroism. Self-trust is the essence of heroism.'" While reading her selected books, Anais was also formulating her own beliefs about the "creators with words, the significance of all changes, small or great, deep or superficial" as "in our hands. And so are the new ideals, the changes in love's forms, the modern demands implied by happiness, the modern interpretation of our freedom."
Early Diary Volume 2 ends with the resolute Anais stating before her twentieth birthday and marriage to Hugo: "Destiny (is) working out its plan surely and mysteriously toward an end which is to the human mind impossible to devise; the wheel of evolution turning, turning with a blinding swiftness..." She reaffirms that what allows her to accept Hugo's proposal is not merely divine intervention but intervention of the divine; herself, and her desire to be a writer, an artist.
"God help me, for I am entrusting all to love and binding my very soul to the fulfillment of my human mission. And while the knowing ones whisper: 'Love passes, Marriage is a failure, Man is selfish,' I stand unwaveringly, in expectation, my soul filled by visions which elevate me above myself."
THE PHOENIX AS MENTOR

Anais discovered D. H. Lawrence via Women in Love, two years after her marriage when she was now twenty-two; she wrote of Hugo: "My love for him is tyrannical because it is ideal ... It is with the same puritanical (sic) soul that I look on my father ... to be for me something which he is not in reality ..." She had "sought peace in marriage, and there is none."
Just as she hoped to invent a new marriage for herself, Anais longed to do the same with literature. "The pure novel does not seem free enough. I have a feverish desire to invent a form for myself, to follow my inclinations, my impulses, to give free play to the queerness within me. For I repress my queerness." More than a year later she still admits, "My very real self is not wifely, not good. It is wayward, moody, desperately active and hungry."
In Louveciennes outside Paris, Anais was writing the short stories Waste of Timelessness and other Early Stories (Magic Circle Press '77). In the preface, Anais wrote: "I realized that it is valuable for other writers to follow the development of the total work, to observe each step of the maturing process ... Two elements appear here which were to be affirmed in later work: irony and the first hints of feminism." The influence of D.H. Lawrence, her mentor, is apparent in these early stories, both poetic and philosophical, everything she admired when she read her first novel by the man whom she said understood women so well.
"I read a strange and wonderful book ... concerned only with the description of feelings, sensations, conscious and unconscious, with ideas, and with the physical only as the transcription of spirit - though recognized as having a life in itself ... To do it, Lawrence had to torment and transform ordinary language ... he has an occult power over human life and sees deeper than almost anyone I know."
Yet, she could even pass judgment on her mentor in her longing to surpass him. "Lawrence is dangerous to the mind ... He knows and he doesn't know. At least, he doesn't know what to do with what he knows."
Interpreting Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover, Anais' philosophy was melting and melding into that of her mentor. "Lawrence's man (Mellors) ... Desire, when selective, ceases to be obscene ... Here is Lawrence the poet and mystic - uncovering the very mystery of true passion, which is half-mystical."
At this time, Anais was still dancing, yearning to become a Flamenco dancer. "I feel only my body, its burning, its languors, its desires, and its defects." Five years into her marriage, Anais writes, "... I cannot stay at home. I have a desperate desire to know life, and to live in order to reach maturity ... Unless I am mistaken, Hugo will forgive me."
In spite of these yearnings, Anais adds, "I can't live within reality - I must live within stories. Then I will fuse both and surrender the real me to Imagy (her invented, imagined other identity) to the world as One."
What Anais wrote of D.H. Lawrence in her first published essay, "The Mystic of Sex" (Canadian Forum Oct '30) can be said of her as well. "Lawrence was not the man to be defined by one book, and in one moment. He was a language, a setting, a world entirely of his own ... Even within one love there is divided feeling; even within one truth there is divided dual truth ... The poetry and the bare truth exist side by side ... Lawrence knew there was no finality, no solution, no ground one could be certain never to want to move away from ... you will have to shift with shifting truth."
In "Waste of Timelessness," title story of Waste of Timelessness, the character Alain Roussel "is the symbol of the unattainable," Anais' husband's own mentor, the best-selling novelist John Erskine. Anais was attracted to the married author, yet he was not the man or the writer to awaken and satisfy all that she craved intellectually and physically.
"The fact is that John is out of my ken because he does not know how to express his feelings, and he is unconscious of mine ... I have made up my mind not to be taken in by imagination again."
The essay "The Mystic of Sex" was a springboard for the woman ready to dive into sensuality and swimming even deeper into the Mystic's writing which became her first published book, D.H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study (Obelisk '32). Anais thus had become the mystic as woman. "He was, like all true poetry, against tepid living and tepid loves ...; he wanted a fulfillment of physical love equal to the mental; he wanted to reawaken impulse, and the clairvoyance of our intuitions." Exactly what Anais was in the process of doing.
Yet, when her cousin Eduardo told Anais of a marvelous idea he had to write about Lady Chatterly's Lover and why it should not be banned, generously, Anais replied, "but that is what I have done in my essay 'Sex or Mysticism?'" Nonetheless, she urged him to try and even offered her notes.
"Lawrence not only gave full expression to the gestures of passion ... he indicated precisely those feelings surrounding sexual experience, and springing from it, which make passion a consummation both of our human and our imaginative life."
Now, Anais had been reading Marcel Proust, a writer with whom she also identified. "I live too intensely in the Past and outside the usual boundaries of time ... What Proust does not have is an intuition of the future, the power to imagine places never seen, the patience to build up preconceptions ... Proust finds little unity (of past, present, future), besides his central idea of Time and Timelessness, found and fixed by memory, and by observation only. I think I shall find more unity in life."
She was on the way to this unity when she philosophically allied with Lawrence who said in his "Sex Versus Loveliness" essay (1928): "If you love living beauty, you have a reverence for sex." Another tenet that became Anais' was: "The deep psychic disease of modern men and women is the diseased, atrophied condition of the intuitive faculties," an idea that couldn't be any more political or ahead of its time, especially in her era. Thus, it was only natural for Anais to support the futuristic poet whose work was banned and misunderstood by many, even after his death, almost a week before she could send "her letter and review of his books."
Less than a year later, when she had gone to Titus*, a publisher in Paris, with "The Woman No Man Could Hold" akin to Lawrence's "The Woman Who Rode Away," Anais then mentioned that she also "had written a book about Lawrence ... a Latin exaggeration," for she only had "notes, and many ideas." However, she went home and wrote the study in two weeks since Titus was more interested in the book on Lawrence than in her poetic prose.
"I relied on my instinct. I even wrote the book with my body, as Lawrence would have it - not always intellectually." Her original title was "D. H. Lawrence: A Study in Understanding," a totally new criticism that related and identified with the writing as part and parcel of D.H. Lawrence's identity. "To begin to realize Lawrence is ... to realize philosophy not merely as an intellectual edifice but as a passionate blood-experience ... To him any stability is merely an obstacle to creative livingness ... 'The secret of all life is obedience ... to the urge that arises in the soul, the urge that is life itself, urging us to new gestures, new embraces, new emotions, new combinations, new creations.'"
Anais recognized the "personages in his book as symbolical" as they would be for her own. If she quoted Lawrence: "'Love is a relative thing not an absolute,'" it is because she herself was on the path to new human relationships ... Ordinary idealism is composed mainly of dead ideals. And to stick to dead ideals is to die." What she says about Ursula in Women in Love also befits Anais, "Emptiness in life is more unbearable than death."
Amazed that "D.H. sought the core of woman ... who has effaced her real self in order to satisfy man-made images," Anais was aware that her fiction typified exactly this struggle even though she may have erroneously misquoted herself in the first published Diary of Anais Nin 1931-1934 when she said, "The core of the woman is her relation to man." If she also praises Lawrence's second talent as a painter ("He would give it (writing) the bulginess of sculpture ... nuances of paint ... rhythm of movement, of dancing ... sound, musicality, cadence,") the same can be said of her own style since Anais had been a dancer, always was around musicians, created her own fashions and designed the interiors of her abodes with an artist's mind. In addition, she had tried sculpting and painting after she modeled for both a painter and then a sculptor.
The poet in Anais could easily recognize the poetry in Lawrence's prose. "Poetry as distinguished from prose is essentially that moment of ecstasy, like a moment in music, in which senses and imagination fuse and flame." This is precisely what the young writer had set out to do in her unique stories that show she loved and breathed her dead mentor while aiming to create something intrinsically her own and totally distinct from Lawrence.

...from "I've Got To Write a Book!"
by Ira Wiggins

Panama

Panama had a variety of interesting insects, many of quite gigantic proportions. Termite nests were common, not the mounds of dirt on the ground as in Africa but rather huge dark balls on the trunk or in the limbs Or trees. These were hand, brittle structures teeming inside with termites which would come pouring out if a machete opened a hole in the side. The rain never made these nests soft. The termites ate any dead wood in the tree and were able to digest the cellulose by being fortuitously provided with a special enzyme in the stomach for the purpose.
Butterflies were multi-hued and spectacular, the morpho (royal blue) being perhaps the best known and most sought after. These latter are dull brown on the underside but are bright, iridescent sky-blue on the tops of the wings. When one flies in the sunlight it appears as though a blue light is flashing on and off as it weaves erratically through the trees. It is astonishing to see one land near by then "disappear" on a limb as it is concealed by its near-perfect camoflauge. An interesting fact is that there is absolutely no blue pigment in the wing. The color is due to light refracted from the layer of microscopic scales which entirely covers the upper wing surface. If a finger is passed firmly over the surface a specimen of the "blue" can be collected; if the fingers are then rubbed together to mix up the scales, all that results is a dull gray mass.
I put many specimens of insects in plastic, but if the royal blue is thus treated the wing surface turns black because the liquid plastic gets between the tiny scales and disturbs the refraction. I tried many ways to overcome this frustrating situation; even applying 10 layers of hair-spray did not work. The only thing that came close was putting the butterfly in a thin plastic bag, withdrawing the air and enclosing bag and all in the liquid plastic.
Tarantulas and scorpions which I caught or which were given to ne all ended up in plastic. The Panama scorpion, in contrast to certain of those in the western U.S., is not deadly but its sting can be excruciatingly painful, as I found when one objected to my handling of it prior to injection with formaldehyde. It was one of the rare times I have ever had to take a narcotic for pain. When the pain ceased the finger tip remained numb for two days, so that I was unable to use that finger for fine tasks, such as buttoning my shirt. Such a reaction is typical of scorpion stings.
The rhinoceros beetle derives its name from a large, horn-like projection on its nose. It has been described as "fist-sized" by some but I have never seen one that large. They cannot bite but have sharp claws at the ends of the legs which can draw blood if the beetle is forcibly pulled from the bare skin. They are easily removed (if you were so adventuresome as to allow one to crawl on you in the first place - for a picture, of course) by tapping them gently on the rear to induce them to crawl off. These giant beetles are harmful only to the coconut tree. They live in the ground at the base of the tree and suck juices from the roots. The rhinoceros beetle makes a spectacular specimen when mounted in plastic.
The coconut beetle is five to six inches long (not including the very long antennae), oblong in shape and nut-brown in color. The large pinchers on the front are impressive and are used to chew through the hull of a coconut to get at the meat on which the beetle feeds. They are also capable of inflicting a painful wound with the pinchers. Both the rhinoceros and the coconut beetle are reluctant to fly but are very capable of flight and, as you can imagine, appear like small birds on the wing.
The red-wing grasshopper is of similar size but flies readily, exposing its spectacular red under-wings in the process. When the wings are spread out, as in a specimen, it looks like a cross between a butterfly and a grasshopper.
An abandoned humming-bird nest made a charming specimen in plastic.
*****
As I entered the living room of our apartment upon returning home from a day at the clinic, Betty, pointing, said, "I'll give you 30 guesses as to what I have in that cardboard box."
"A butterfly?" No. "A snake?" No. "Thirty thousand dollars?" No. "An elephant?" Don't be silly. "Winston Churchill?" No.
"I could give you a million guesses and you couldn't get it."
"0.K. I give up. What is it?"
"A live humming-bird! But guess how I got it."
I thought I had a pretty good idea. "It flew against the window and knocked itself out." This was a common occurrence with other birds.
"Nope. I just reached out and picked it off the perch of our hummingbird feeder!"
"Aw, c'mon, you must be drunk." Kidding.
"I knew you wouldn't believe me. That's why I put it in a box and saved it to show you."
In starting to refill the feeder, Betty had noted that the bird was reluctant to fly from its perch. When she lifted the feeder from its suspending wire the bird still remained on the perch so she plucked it off and put it in the box. Perhaps it had eaten some fermented nectar or fermented sugar water from a feeder or perhaps it was suffering from hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) to which hummers are subject. In any event, by that time the bird was vigorously protesting its imprisonment so I released it.
On another occasion when a hummer was on the feeder perch I slowly opened the window adjacent to it and the bird did not move.
"Look, Betty, I'm going to slowly move my hand toward him and see how close I can get before he flies."
Two feet. One foot. One inch! I was finally able to stroke him twice gently on the tail before he flew.
*****
Panama has five types of venomous snakes: coral, eye-lash viper, bushmaster, fer-de-lance and hog-nose viper (in contrast to the non-venomous hog-nose snake of the U.S.). The tropical rattle-snake is present throughout Central America, but, for some unknown reason, has never been found in Panama. I set as my goal putting small specimens of all five types in plastic but was never able to obtain suitable specimens of the bushmaster (a nocturnal snake) or of the hog-nose viper. Specimens of the fer-de-lance (live) and the eye-lash viper (frozen) were given to me by a local veterinarian.
I found a tiny coral snake at the local golf course but it was too small.
One evening I had a phone call from the front desk of the hospital. "Mr. Wiggins, we have a snake in a glass jug here for you and I'd really appreciate it if you would get it right away. A ''campesino" has his wife in the hospital here and heard that some crazy "gringo" doctor was looking for a live coral snake, so he brought it in. Please get it out of here."
"It's alive?"
"It sure is. How soon can you come?!'
The specimen was almost two feet long, which is large as coral snakes go. It was in a clear, one-gallon glass jug with a small neck, which posed an interesting problem as to how to inject it with formaldehyde without it first injecting me with venom. Solution: Poke a hole in the metal cap; spray in an anesthetic (ethyl chloride); shake the anesthetized snake out and quickly inject it with formaldehyde, meanwhile wearing heavy leather gloves just in case. The formaldehyde quickly kills the snake and is also an excellent preservative. The coral has tiny, immovable fangs midway back on the upper jaw. Its mouth is tiny but can be opened to a flat 180 degrees so it can actual1y strike on a flat surface and inject venom. It does not have to grasp a small fold of skin and chew its venom in as was previously believed.
*****
Carl and Martha Peterson and Betty and I were driving slowly home on a gravel road from the beach when we saw a long, slender, yellow snake crossing the road. It appeared to be about three - three to three and a half feet long.
"Let's see if we can catch it, Carl," I cried as we skidded to a halt. I was interested in identifyIng it, not killing it.
By the time we got to the snake the front two thirds had disappeared into the grass and weeds along the road and the rest of the tail was rapidly going. I could not be sure but did not believe it was venomous so, on a rather foolish impulse and bravery bolstered by two beers, I grabbed the tail and rapidly backed up, dragging the snake from its concealment. Carl was standing back and watching the performance. Assuming that any self-respecting snake would turn and strike the moment it was free of the weeds I immediately started swinging it in an arc around my head; the centrifugal force prevented the hapless creature from turning on me.
"What are you gonna do now, Ira?"
"I dunno, Carl. Have any suggestions?"
"Can't think of any. No point in killing it." It would have been easy to slam it down onto the gravel.
"Guess I'll have to let it go. Can't do this all day." With that I aimed it at the weeds and let it fly as gently as possible to its freedom. I imagined I could hear the creature say as it raced confusedly away, "Damn! Now what was that all about?"
*****
Tom, our high-school age son, and I were driving our VW bug on an abandoned road near Coco Solo at sundown when we spied a large boa constrictor, lying motionless to soak up the heat, in the middle of the road. It was equal to my upper arm in width and about six feet long, a beautiful specimen. I jumped out of the car, instructing Tom to take the car home and bring something to catch him with while I tried to keep him in the road. About that time the snake began to move slowly off the road and my efforts at steering him back onto the road were useless. Calling Tom back I picked up a broken stout branch from the ground and pressed it firmly behind the snake's head. It broke loose and struck with open mouth at the branch, but I felt that if I pressed harder the next time I could stop him long enough to get a firm hold behind the head with my hand. It worked. His struggles were purposeful but not violent and not of such strength as I had imagined from Tarzan movies. I had thought that, with Tom along as back-up, the worst that could happen would be to get a bite the equivalent of that of a rat terrier or such. I supposed that his strength might allow him to work his head free from my grasp, in which case Tom and I could alternate taking holds of his neck, but that was not necessary. I allowed him to coil around my arm from fist to shoulder. The constricting action made the veins stand out on the back of my hand with some resultant discomfort but no real pain. Had it been too uncomfortable Tom could easily have grasped the tail and unwrapped the reptile. It was a healthy creature with faintly iridescent colors.We took it home, took some pictures then gave it to Luke Palumbo Sr., the biology teacher at the local high-school. He fed it on with rats and baby chicks and within two weeks any student could gently remove it from the cage and handle it without fear of being bitten. The boa, like the garter snake, tends to have a placid disposition.
*****
Another "boa story" could well have had a tragic ending. Returning back to camp after being all day on jungle survival training the soldier saw a large boa constrictor and decided to take it back with him to show his friends. He captured it rather easily and put it in a large sack but, in the process, sustained a superficial bite at the base of one thumb. It was more of a scratch than a puncture would. Not yet having a cage for it, he turned it loose in a small room which he had been using as a work-shop.
"Hey, Mike! Come see the nice boa I captured," he said to a buddy.
As the buddy looked his eyes widened. "Nice snake, Bill. - but that's not a boa; it's a bushmaster. Do you know what a bite from that could do to you?"
"Holy shit!! It did bite me, - but only a scratch. I'm sure it didn't inject any venom. If the colonel found out he'd break my ass!"
The colonel did find out and ordered him to behead the snake at once and to report with it to the hospital emergency room, - which he did. The rest of the story is anti-climax. He was kept overnight for observation but developed no symptoms and was discharged to duty the following morning. The fist-sized head with its coarse, rough scales was kept for some time in the emergency room as an object lesson. I can only presume that the colonel thereafter put more emphasis on the course in snake identification.
*****
The sloth is a fairly common creature in Panama, most often seen hanging from or feeding on a cecropia tree. Occasionally they are seen on the jungle floor or crawling slowly along the road. The coat is usually blotched with a growth of greenish algae and occupied by various vermin, including a type of moth which is called, appropriately enough, the "sloth moth". If we saw a sloth crossing a road in its dream-like, slow-motion fashion we would often stop to expedite that particularly perilous portion of its journey. Nevertheless, road kill was rather common.
*****
One night, as I drove to the hospital for duty on the midnight shift, the gleam of my headlights revealed a huge jet-black dog with a long, graceful black tail lope smoothly out of the jungle on one side of the road, cross the road and enter the jungle on the opposite side. It had a definite cat- like grace about it. It was only after it had passed and disappeared that the adrenaline surged into my system as I realized that I had seen the black leopard which was rumored to have the jungle adjacent to the hospital as part of its territory. Had I been speeding I might well have struck and killed or maimed the beautiful creature.
A few weeks later, one of the negro hospital ward attendants on a nocturnal coffee-break walked out into the darkness behind the hospital to stretch his legs. Sometimes night hospital duty can be boring. As he rounded a corner he came face to face with what was probably the same black leopard. He turned and ran for the safety of the hospital; simultaneously the cat turned and ran for the safety of the jungle. There the similarity ended. I seriously doubt that the black leopard turned as pale as did that black man as he entered the back door of the hospital.
*****
The giant anteater is very rare in Panama. However, I had seen several specimens of the lesser (or collared) anteater killed on the road. On two occasions I have seen them in the wild. These long-snouted animals with the bowed front legs, strong claws and large prehensile tail weigh eight to 12 pounds and are incapable of biting, but with its claws can easily tear apart the strongest termite nest to lick up the tasty occupants with its long, sticky tongue. The claws also make very effective defensive weapons.
About 9:30 one evening I was jogging along a dimly lighted street of Coco Solo and saw a large cat ambling across the road. My first thought was, "That's a funny gait for a cat."
As I approached closer it dawned on me, "Holy cow! It's an anteater. Wonder if I could catch it to take home and get a picture." I found that I could "herd" it by stepping in front of it any time it started to move off in a particular direction. If I approached it rapidly it would face me, sit back on its prehensile tail like a boxing kangaroo and take swipes at me with its front claws. Thinking I could tire it out by these "boxing" efforts I looked about in vain for a stick or branch of any kind with which to worry it. No luck. The Panama Canal Company was a bug on cleanliness and neatness of its streets.
I parried with my tennis-shoe clad foot but it had good reflexes. Once it dodged backward and fell over. On the next swipe I was alarmed when it caught one claw in the lowermost loop of my shoe-lace. I had sudden visions of the beast climbing up my leg and lacerating it to ribbons. In an attempt to keep it as far away from me as possible, I immediately started turning rapidly as I jumped up and down on the unhampered foot while swinging the other in a wide circle. The centrifugal force kept the animal at a distance, three legs and the tail groping in the air. After about three turns (I was thankful it wasn't necessary to see how long I could keep that silly maneuver up) it sailed off into the air beside the road and scampered up the trunk of a palm tree, stoping about five feet up. If I grasped it by the tip of the tail and let it hang upside down would it be able to turn up and and tear at me With its front claws? Ready to quickly drop it, I gave the maneuver a try and it worked. The three and a half block trip home was a tedious one for I had to hold the six to seven pound animal at arm's length to keep it from reaching my legs. I changed hands frequently and twice, when it almost reached my hand, I had to drop the animal and recapture it.
After taking a picture I watched as the frightened animal waddled rapidly off into the darkness.

portions of c ra mcguirt's
blur collar ballet

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I've never been much of a Donny fan, so I put my full malice into the next spot.
"Listen, Donny, you squeaky-clean wholesome little whitebread punk! If I catch you showing the slightest bias when you're officiating my match, I'm gonna rip those dumb purple socks of yours off, and stuff them down your throat! Maybe that'll improve your singing voice, ah ha ha..."
After the taping, I drove back to Nashville for a poetry reading, arriving in all my Luscious glory. I figured there was no point in changing my pink tights and scrubbing off the makeup; I wanted to read my new wrestling poems, so I might as well be in character.
I did "On The Ropes", which I'd written on Ric Flair's birthday, as I was in agony and about to quit training, plus "The Secret Rassler's Handshake", and "Rulebreaker's Blues", a poem I'd written shortly before I actually started training.
Then I finished up with a new one I'd come up with after my first match, thinking about the scene in the dressing room with all the "Mikes" -

Ask For Luscious Leslie

Why use those names
we made for fools
behind closed doors?
Hell, who would know?
Well, it's like this, brother -
We could call each other
by names no less real,
but four "Mikes" are too many
for one dressing room...
"Cool Breeze', and "The Intern",
"Dr. Squash', and "Scorpio'
is easier. Besides, it's cool.

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The crowd of poets and poetry appreciators seemed to enjoy my theatrical approach. I have to admit that I didn't stay in character, assuring all the women who crossed my path that the reports of my homosexuality were greatly exaggerated.
The next day, I went back to Gypsy's School, admittedly with a slight hangover -
drinking enough beer to maintain an image both as a mad poet and an evil wrestler did take its toll...
Wrestling in front of a crowd, and getting positive feedback from my fellow workers; going into a TV studio to elicit heat from the fans; showing up at night-
clubs to perform my poetry, and receiving reasonably wild applause - all this did a lot to stroke my Leonine ego and keep it purring. But "going back to school" always brought me firmly down to Earth. Gypsy Joe was not impressed with Luscious Leslie, nor by my reputation as a performance poet. And I had to admit that there were still plenty of basic wrestling skills which eluded me - I didn't know how to take a Backdrop or a Bodyslam, for instance.
I was also beginning to learn that, on the independent minor league wrestling circuit, at least, that most matches are not choreographed to the extent that mine and Willie's had been. We had been fortunate to work out together even a couple times, and create a short but entertaining match with a definite chain of moves. In the shoestring "mom and pop" feds putting on shows in the high school gyms and civic centers of smalltown America, there may be a few local wrestlers on the card, but mostly, they come from all over the area, and maybe even from adjoining states. In many cases, the promoter has only a hatful of names to work with in creating a card of matchups. And usually, none of these wrestlers have met each other until they get to the arena. Sometimes they don't meet until they actually enter the ring.

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In that kind of a situation, you will have been told only how long the match should go, who's going to "get over" (i.e., win), and what kind of a move or set of moves should be used to set up the ending. In the "Big Leagues", I'm sure that the workers do "choreograph" their matches to a large degree, and then they get to "fine-tune" them on the road, wrestling the same guy every night for weeks on end in city after city. The "major leaguers" are all incredible athletes, and deserve respect, but consider the plight of the average freelance independent wrestler - he has to be ready for anyone, any style (or lack of one), at any time, and try to put on a good show, even if he didn't even get to say hello to his opponent backstage, much less work out a few high points and changes.
The general unthinking public has the seemingly sound, but actually rather silly idea that every single wrestling match they've ever seen was carefully worked out, hold by hold, move by move, far in advance. I can't speak for the Big Boys, having never worked for them, but I suspect even they get by in many cases the same way we pissant bush-league workers do - on instinct, formula, and most of all, feel. It's much like two guitar players deciding to play a song together, or two storytellers teaming up to weave a spontaneous fairy tale - someone strums a basic chord progression, or throws out, "Once upon a time...", and the embellishment begins.
A typical progression: you come out at the bell, circle as if looking for an opening, lunge, lock up, and decide to go for a hammerlock. Your opponent lets you have his arm and bend it around behind him. After a few seconds of looking desperate, he reverses the hold, and you go with the flow. Then you reach back and get a hand around his neck, and he'll know to take a bump over your shoulder. Now

106

you're behind him, so you go for a chinlock. He "struggles" to his feet, and hurls you toward the ropes, breaking the hold. You spring off the ropes, and after that -
who knows?
Maybe your "foe" will bend forward as you come in, and you'll know he wants to try for a Backdrop, flipping you high into the air to crash behind him. You have a split second to decide whether to take the bump, or do something else - like skid to a stop and throw a kick to his chest (using the front, flat part of your boot, not the toe!) He might sell the kick as only stunning him, and remain on his feet, or he could choose to take a bump. Then again, if he dodges, it's you who takes the fall.
But maybe he won't try a Backdrop at all. He might be waiting for you to Clothes-
line him with an outstretched arm as you come off the ropes, or go for a Flying Dropkick. There are literally dozens of variables each time two wrestlers lock up.
An "unscripted" match is a lot like a musical jam. You have to anticipate which way the "song" is headed, and be ready when it slows downs, speeds up, or changes key. You have to pace yourself, too, and give both yourself and your "dance part-
ner" a chance to rest and catch your breath. You might do that by clamping on a Headlock and holding it a while (at least til the fans start chanting "bor-ing! bor-
ing!") You can also aid your "opponent" by throwing him out of the ring - after all, depending on the rules of the federation, this gives him ten to twenty seconds to regain his wind before he's "counted out" and disqualified.
The well-known Countout Rule...that brings us to the role of the referee - at times, seemingly invisible, but actually indispensable. I was beginning to learn that having a good ref is as important as having good wrestlers. The ref adds an air of

107

officiality and realism. And, though few refs would look good in fishnet stockings and high heels, he also acts in the capacity of "magician's assistant", because rasslin' is a lot like stage magic. The audience's attention has to be focused on the apparent reality the "magicians" are selling, and directed away from the "sleight-of- body" which makes it possible. A competent ref helps with that. He covers for your mistakes and mistimed moves, and, if you "get lost", might even whisper suggest-
ions about what to do next - you can also think of him as the stage manager. If you start a pin, sure - the ref will begin a 3-count. But if the pin isn't the one that's supposed to end the match, you can be sure that the ref's going to find a reason or distraction not to finish it.
Same with the "5-Second Rule" on illegal holds and maneuvers. We've all seen the ref start counting to five on some Heel who won't quit punching his opponent with a closed fist, or choking him on the ropes. Supposedly, if the punching or the choke is still going on when the ref reaches five, the offender is disqualified. But it almost never happens. The "5-Count" will last just long enough to be dramatic. It might even go on for twenty or thirty seconds. And then there's always that fun little loophole in the quasi-mythical "Rulebook" which allows any Heel worth his black boots to do something illegal for four and a half seconds, stop, then start doing it over again. You can choke someone with your boot all day (or as long as the fans find it interesting), so long as you let up every fifth second.
"Breaking the count" also works outside the ring. Toss your hapless opponent out of the ring (though beware - according to "The Rulebook" purposefully throw- ing someone over the top rope is illegal in some feds), go out after him, and inflict

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as much damage as you can before the ref counts you both out. The floor has all kinds of interesting props to add drama to a match - folding chairs, microphone cords, the ring bell, etc., and for some reason, refs these days don't seem quick to DQ wrestlers who use foreign objects outside the ring. In any case, make sure that you roll back into the ring every once in a while. That "breaks the count", and allows you to start all over again at "one", so you'll have plenty of time to batter your opponent with whatever comes to hand - or, if you lack imagination, simply to slam him on the floor and/or hurl him into the metal ring steps. If you manage to knock your foe silly, you can also choose to roll in and stay, leaving him outside to be "Disqualified By Countout." Some feds use a 10-Count, some allow 20, but depending on the ref, the actual count might take a minute or more.
I only refereed one match during my career, as the special guest bad guy official,
and it was a lot harder than I'd thought it would be. Of course, in my case, I had to make especially fast 3-counts on the good guys, in order to show I was biased, without doing it so fast that they'd lose ahead of schedule. In any case, the next time you go to a small time rasslin'card and sit close enough to be heard, confuse everyone and cheer for the referee - he deserves it.
I was learning a lot as my thrice-weekly trips to Gypsy's School continued, feeling much more intelligent about the business, and becoming more and more confident in my abilities. After a few false starts and last-second chicken-outs, I learned to take a Backdrop, and discovered it was true that high falls were easier to take - short bumps give you less time to prepare. Flying through the air, knowing I was in control and essentially safe, was a great feeling. But there was one very basic

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move that I didn't know, and thinking about learning it still made me apprehensive.
Toward the end of my last practice for that week, Joe introduced the good old meat-and-potatoes, traditional Bodyslam, as common to pro rasslin' as an A-chord is to the basic Blues. Click on the TV in the middle of a wrestling match, and chances are good someone is getting Bodyslammed. In appearance, it seems that one wrestler is picking the other up by shoulder and groin and slamming him hard onto the mat (or concrete, or table, or whatever). In reality, this is exactly what's happening. Sort of...
The "trick" is that you jump up and twist your body around as your opponent begins to lift you, so that both of you are doing the work of getting you up and into slamming position. At the same time, you "post" your hand on your partner's upper thigh to help support your weight, while simultaneously beginning to flip yourself foward. The slam itself is just another forward bump, taking the impact with the soles of your feet, your shoulders, and the flats of your forearms. If both wrestlers do it right, the "slammer" is only supporting the "slamee's" full weight for a brief second. (Yes, there are guys strong enough to do "over-the-head full-arm-extension power-slams", but generally, no one wants to pick up and hold 250 or 300 pounds of dead weight, especially us non-weightlifter types.)
If you don't help your partner enough, and especially if you don't relax, you've got a problem. When Gypsy went to pick me up, I was nervous about getting the timing right, misjudged my jump, failed to post, almost gave Joe a hernia, and ended up being dumped at a lousy angle. A brutal and paralyzing pain erupted in my lower back.

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"Gahhhhh...ahhhhhh...shiiiiiitttttt...." I lay sprawled on the mat with my whole body shaking in agony, beads of cold sweat running into my eyes. Gypsy tried some quick-fix primitive chiropractics, but they didn't break the hard knot of pain in my back muscles. I was done for a while - it turned out that I was physically unable to participate in practice for a week. And, as usual, there was no one to blame but myself. As I hobbled and lurched to the car, feeling a resurgence of my earlier fear, pain, and frustration, with Gypsy walking stonily beside me, I said:
"Joe, give it to me straight, brother. Do I have what it takes? Will I ever get good enough to be a real wrestler?"
"Daddy' chewed his lower lip and rolled his eyes.
"Why you ask Joe? That's up to you, brother."
Despite the spastic, crippling pain, I had to laugh out loud. Maybe the old s.o.b. should have been a Zen Master after all.
"Why you ask JOE?'
I knew it was true. If I wanted to become a professional wrestler, it was entirely up to me.

Week Three: Tangling With The Tasmanian Devil

I did some more TV spots - a few for our proposed Western Tour, and one to advertise the IWA's upcoming show at the local National Guard Armory. I also kept going to practice three days a week, even though all I could do was watch;

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my back was still in painful knots. Willie the Clown, Cool Breeze, Robert Scorpio, Barri Cuda, and some of "Daddy' Joe's other boys showed up to work out, and I tired to learn what I could by studying their moves.
The days went by, and my back began to improve. Just before my second match, working with Willie again, this time at the Armory in Nashville, a new student entered the School. His name was Jerry. He was a prison guard, and a good bit bigger and blockier than me. Before he'd even taken his first bump, Jer had already decided on a gimmick...
"I'm gonna wear a mask and call myself "The Tasmanian Devil", he said, light-
ing another Camel.
"Heyyy, brother - smoke all you want when you get home, but not in my School!"
"Sorry, Joe," said Jer, stubbing the smoke. I didn't feel it was my place to tell him that there was already a "Tasmanian Devil" in Philadelphia's then-little-known
Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) fed. (Eventually, Warner Brothers, the creators of the original Bugs-Bunny-chasing, tree-chewing, cartoon Tasmanian Devil, sued the guy who was using the name; he's lost the face paint and hair and is now known simply as "Taz".)
"Yeah, yeah," said Joe disgustedly. "Now get in here. You, Luscious - get down and let him do the bump over you."
I'd recovered enough to serve as a "bump stand". Joe said: "Okay, kid - " (the "kid" was probably in his mid-40s) " - what you do is this..."

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It was interesting to see someone standing in the same place I'd been only six weeks before. Jerry's first few forward bumps were, I thought, better than mine
had been, but he landed a lot more heavily. By the time his first practice was over, Jer was sure he'd broken something. I could definitely identify with that...
At the next practice, I redeemed myself for my previous idiocy, and took a series of perfect Bodyslams from everybody present. Barri Cuda (AKA Paul Pigg), at 6 foot 6 and 260 pounds, gave me my highest and hardest one. I was exhiliarated that crashing onto my back from seven or eight feet in the air didn't kill me, or even cause much pain. It seemed almost miraculous.
I also learned to take a Suplex, both the "Snap" and the "Hanging" variety. Your partner bends you forward, bends over your back, hooks you around the neck, gets a handful of tights, and straightens up abruptly as you push off as hard as you can. In the "Snap Suplex", you're whipped straight up and over for a basic forward bump. The impact isn't too bad for a short, snappy fall. In the "Hanging Suplex", just as your body gets to be vertical, your "opponent" delays the fall and balances you (this requires your help) for a few seconds. The crowd holds its collective breath as your toes point up at the ring lights, and then groans in sympathy as your partner finally falls back and smashes you onto the canvas. It looks dramatic and painful, and on the unyeilding wood of the practice ring, it had a painfully dramatic effect on my insides, making me glad I'd skipped lunch that day.
"When you gonna teach us how to punch, Joe?" asked Jerry.
Joe made a disgusted noise. "Anyone can do that! That's all anyone does any more! Punch, punch, punch, clothesline, punch! Just pull it, that's all. Now let's get

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on the mat and learn some wrestling!"
"Mat Wrestling" got short shrift in those days, and still does, but Gypsy was a master at going to the canvas and engaging in a smooth, lightninglike series of arm- locks, leg scissors, floatovers, counters, and reversals. He was so good, he made up for the fact that none of us knew what we were doing on the mat. "Maybe you guys won't use this stuff, you wanna look like those New York idiots and do nothin' but clothesline and punch, but the more you know, the more you got to choose from."
I was beginning to really enjoy myelf as Gypsy began pitting me against his other boys, both singly and in tag team combinations. We all had different styles, and it was fun to wrestle that way - not knowing what my partner would try, or exactly how I'd respond. At least, it was fun until I had to work with Jerry, the aspiring "Tasmanian Devil."
What he and I were both beginning to find out was this: once you could take a bump, and it seemed almost easy, you had to re-learn your entire response. Even a high, hard bump doesn't really hurt when you know how to fall, but that was just it -
Because yet another name for Pro Wrestling is that of the oldest profession of all: Selling. You gotta Sell. You can't just take a vicious-appearing punch, a savage Bodyslam, or an Irish Whip into the turnbuckle, and look as though you're sipping a beer by the pool. After all, you're supposed to be getting hurt. On the other hand, you don't want to oversell, because it looks corny, and strains the willing suspens- ion of disbelief on the part of the marks.
As I worked a match in School, Joe would yell: "Sell it, queer! Whattaya think

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he's doing, tickling you? After he lets go the leglock, you wanna limp around for a while... Heyyyy, you dumbass! That leglock was five minutes ago, whattaya still limpin' for, brother?"
I'd be inclined to say that Joe was almost impossible to please, but that wouldn't be true.
He was completely impossible to please.
Anyhow - working with Jerry. He wouldn't sell, and worst of all, he wouldn't give you anything.
In wrestling, you have to get past (among many other normal human programs) the psychological fixation on "winning". While you're in the ring, you're mostly competing with yourself, in order to do what any good actor, dancer, or musician does - cooperating in the creation of a good show. Sure, there's definitely a feeling of professional rivalry among wrestlers, just as there is between guitarists, poets, and opera singers; every professional artist wants to be good at what he or she does, especially in the eyes of his or her peers.
But you don't go into the ring with the idea of utterly dominating your "dance partner", not unless you're a major superstar, and your opponent is just another "prelim bum" (what we call a "job boy" or "jobber") put there to make you look invincible on TV. Even if you're only "doing a job" for a main eventer, he still needs to give you a little something - maybe allow you a "high point" where you get in a few effective moves before he comes back and crushes you. And when it comes to a bout between two equally matched wrestlers of similar status, there's definitely got to be give-and-take; otherwise, there's no element of suspense.

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I'd gotten pretty good at "selling", and at "giving some" to my practice partners.
It's funny - people outside the business, both casual fans and those who should know better, tend to think that a "good wrestler" is the one doing the most beating- up. Actually, a "good wrestler" is one who can make his opponent look good beat-
ing him up. Can you dig it, brothers and sisters?
Jerry couldn't. I'd lock up with him collar-and-elbow, and he'd hold on more like a bulldog than a dance partner. The guy would put a Top Wristlock on me; I'd sell it with some groaning and straining for a minute or so, then try to reverse the hold into a Hammerlock, but "The Tasmanian Devil" would resist me as if his very manhood was at stake.
"Geez, Jerry! When ya gonna let go? When it thunders?"
"Sorry, Luscious."
We'd go back to it, and he'd "rake my eyes". That's an easy one - your foe crooks his finger and drags them across your face, never coming close to your actual eyeballs. The rest is just selling on your part.
I'd grab my eyes, howl in pain, stagger back, and let Jer give me a few forearms to the chest, then "recover", and go for a Legsweep, which should have resulted in "The Tasmanian Devil" taking a backward bump for me. Jerry would remain standing. And rake my eyes again...
It was sort of frustrating. Hell, it was damn frustrating. When I complained to "Daddy' Joe, he said: "Look, brother - it's real simple. If the guy don't give you nothin', then take some."
I'd nod and try to look properly psyched, like I was gonna really get mean if the

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boy didn't start cooperating. Actually, I was much more interested in making sure that none of us got hurt.
After dealing with Jerry, it was especially enjoyable to wrestle Gypsy Joe - he was smooth as silk, sold my moves, and gave me plenty of openings. It took me back to my martial arts days, when I discovered that it was always less dangerous to spar with a black belt. You'd get beaten, of course, but you probably wouldn't be injured, whereas a white belt might just kill you by accident.
By the time the day of the next IWA show rolled around, I was feeling a lot more confident than I'd been before my Nolensville debut. My gimmick was established, Joe seemed to grudgingly accept it, and he didn't preach a sermon about how I was going to destroy myself and Willie with my inexperience.
Waiting for it to be time to leave for the show, I checked in on my grandfather, and told him a little about how my rasslin' adventure was going. I didn't get into my gimmick, but he smiled when I told him I was playing the bad guy. "Someone's gotta be the villain, grandad. Otherwise there's no good guy to cheer."
"Wish I could come, son." It seemed to me that it was costing him more and more just to shift positions or speak a few words. I squeezed his hand and went off to be Luscious Leslie Love for the second time.
Already feeling like an old vet of the mat wars, I walked into the empty armory with my large pink handbag full of costuming and gimmickry, and contemplated the ring set up in the middle of the room. No matter what happens from now on, I thought, I will never look at a wrestling ring exactly the same way again. I might not be a real wrestler yet, but I can never go back to being a mark.

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That evening, we got a fairly good but not exceptionally large crowd. Willie and I re-created our Nolensville bout, complete with "fairy dust" and a post-match stomping by yours truly. I had to get by without an Evil Valet, but I was able to add a few spontaneous moves to the proceedings, and Willie sold them pretty well, though I had to admit he was a little slow to help me throw off his pins. It might look easy on TV to simply toss a 250-pound man off your chest with a shrug of your body, but in practice, it requires his assistance.
Before the Clown and I went on, Gypsy Joe worked a bout with a young wrestler named Danny Anderson, and I got to see a perfect example of my teacher's "if they don't give it, then take it" philosophy in action...
Gypsy was supposed to win the match, but being a pro, he was willing to accord Anderson some high points, and make the bout as entertaining as possible. As I watched from the wings, I could tell that "Daddy' was trying to "give" Anderson the chance to take an Arm Drag. The kid missed his cue, causing Gypsy to stumble and scowl. Joe went for a Leg Sweep; Anderson didn't move. Again, "Daddy' lost his balance, looking unprofessional. Uh oh, I thought. If this was School, the dude would be getting his ass chewed to bloody rags about now...
Well, Gypsy might have been prone to verbal chastisement for screwups in practice, but when it came to poor work in public, his critique took a more physical form. After another couple of missed cues and failures to sell by Anderson, "Daddy' finally rolled his eyes in annoyance and hurled the kid out of the ring. Before the rookie could recover from his bump, Joe climbed to the top of the corner turn-
buckle and leaped on him from about ten feet in the air.

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Anderson went sprawling. Gypsy grabbed him by the hair, dragged him to the front row of the audience, and began bashing the kid's head against the bottoms of some unoccupied folding metal chairs, hard enough to knock a couple of them over.
Danny looked panicked. He struggled back toward the ring, but Joe caught him, dragged him back, and did an encore performance with Anderson's cranium and the folding chairs.
After several trips back and forth between the chairs and the ring, Danny finally made it through the ropes. Gypsy came unremittingly after him, taking the rookie down with a short, nastily effective Judo trip. Then Joe started stomping the kid, and not lightly. All Anderson could do was curl up like a fetus and hope for a break in the pounding rhythm of Gypsy's black boots. He'd blown his chance for a high point or two, and was now at the mercy of "the meanest man in professional wrestling."
The marks were going insane at Joe's calculated and carefully measured brutal- ity, and "Daddy' milked the heat for all it was worth. A couple of times, he broke off his annihilation of Anderson long enough to start coming through the ropes, apparently intent on beating the hell out of the ringside hecklers. As the ref barely held him back, Gypsy shook his fist and cursed. I could see people getting ready to run - not just kids, but adults as well.
Joe never gave one more opening to Anderson, nor did he try any moves that would have required cooperation on the rookie's part. It looked awfully "realistic" to me - I sensed that Joe was holding back only enough to avoid genuinely injuring the guy. I suppose that Danny could have gotten pissed and fought back for real,

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but he seemed to understand that it might be better just to ride out the storm. After a series of brutal open-hand chops, which left deep pink handprints on Anderson's chest, Gypsy scooped the kid up, slammed him hard to the mat, and fell on him for the pin. When the rookie returned to the dressing room, he was limping, scratched, sweating, and shaken, bearing a passing resemblance to someone who'd just been in a real street fight.
"Was that what you'd call a shoot?" I asked Cool Breeze Williams.
"Ah, no, Lush, that was just "Daddy' trying to help that green worker put on a good match. You could see that he got lost..."
"If I ever get lost, Breeze, I hope it ain't Gypsy who finds me."
Williams laughed; he seemed to think I was kidding. When Joe came back, I halfway expected him to make some sort of gruff apology to Anderson for beating him like a redheaded stepchild (for his own professional good, of course). Gypsy only cackled, slapped Anderson on the back (making him wince and leaving another red handprint), and barked "Thanks for the job, brother!"
"Anytime, Joe," mumbled the rookie, slumping on a bench.
About dressing rooms - unless you're working a really swanky place, when it comes to the independent circuit, you can forget about separate facilities for Good Guys and Bad Guys. All of us, Heels and Babyfaces alike, shared the same common backstage area at the Armory, though we did enter the "arena" by different doors.
Backstage, I ran into Ricky "Rock "n Roll Express" Morton again. He asked:
"So, brother - are you a real faggot?"
"Sorry to disappoint you, Ricky..."

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He laughed, as did everyone else within earshot. I really liked Ricky Morton -
he was what everyone calls "a good worker." Though appearing in our bush league fed basically as a favor to Dr. Squash, he gave us our money's worth, both in the ring and on the microphone. I especially liked his bit about "Yeah, I'm from L.A., brother - that's Lower Antioch..." (Antioch being a rather redneck suburb of Nash-
ville.) Rick had a cheerful attitude, and he treated green rookie punks like myself with respect, the mark of a true professional in any field. He was confident in his own abilities, so he didn't have any reason to be condescending.
Actually, I was feeling a little less green by then. I could do the "rassler's handshake" with the best of them, and pepper my conversation with plenty of "brothers" without feeling self-concious. Though my match with Willie had gone well, I was getting good enough to start being dissatisfied with my own perform-
ance. The Doc, however, seemed to take my abilities for granted - "It was fine, Luscious. Now, next week, we can add a new angle - "
Everyone was calling me "Luscious" as if they'd been doing it for years, and I felt that they had been. Suddenly, I was part of a Brotherhood - not all of that "brother" stuff is bullshit, siblings. Like carnival workers, gypsies, or journeymen in some strange and ancient guild, we Blue Collar Ballet Dancers of the Brother- hood of the Bump are a loosely connected, eccentric, sometimes dysfunctional, but very much definite family.
I went home after my second night as a pro wrestler with ten hard-earned bucks in my pocket, and an idea for a poem, which had begun to create itself while I was talking to Gypsy between his match and mine. I wrote it before going to bed:

philosophy monthly

1995 compilation of essays

Chapter One: Cognition and Measurement
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology Compilation
by Paul Spunzar

Date: Sun, 20 Nov 1994 22:48:49 -0500
From: Paul Szpunar ahvia@umich.edu
Subject: ITOE 1
Here is the kickoff essay to our chapter by chapter discussion of Rand's ITOE, written by yours truly. I've
included in this summary a discussion of Rand's intended purpose in writing ITOE - a solution to the problem
of universals. Rand discussed the problem in the foreword. Of course, this is in addition to a summary of the
first chapter - "Cognition and Measurement."
All citations refer to ITOE - 2nd expanded edition, unless otherwise noted.
Rand begins the foreword with a description of the "problem of universals." She equates "the issue of concepts"
with the problem of universals, and goes on to ask: ". . . concepts are abstractions or universals, and everything
that man perceives is particular, concrete. What is the relationship between abstractions and concretes? To what
precisely do concepts refer in reality?" (1)
She also asks "When we refer to three persons as 'men,' what do we designate by that term? [. . .] Where is the
'manness' in men? What, in reality corresponds to the concept 'man' in our mind?" (2)
I think Rand's formulation of the problem of universals is rather sloppy. For one thing, the problem has
historically been a metaphysical question. To Plato and Aristotle, for instance, the problem of universals wasn't
just the *same* as the issue of concepts, although the two issues may have been closely connected.. Instead, they
sought to establish a metaphysical, ontological relationship underlying entities we group together. For Plato, it is
the Forms; for Aristotle, essences - both metaphysical "somethings" in and of themselves - that united
together men, horses, tables, etc. They saw groups such as these to be *metaphysically* united - our concepts
just reflected that. So, it cannot be said that the issue of concepts *is the same as* the problem of universals, at
least for Plato and Aristotle. In fact, I would argue (although I won't do so now) that even on Rand's terms,
even given her own solution to the problem, the issue of concepts is not quite the same thing as the problem of
universals, although they *are* closely related. Furthermore, I'm afraid that in formulating the issue in this
way Rand suggests what I view as a false dichotomy - the issue of whether universals exist in reality or merely
in the head.
I think Rand best represents the problem when she asks "Where is the 'manness' in men?" Let me offer a
tentative characterization of the problem of universals: The problem of universals is the problem of
determining what, if anything, enables us to group certain entities together as being somehow similar in some
respect. Now, I don't think this is a perfect formulation of the problem, but I do think it is better than Rand's,
and it allows us to consider how her theory of concept formation is supposed to provide an answer.
From here, Rand proceeds to distinguish between five different approaches to a solution of the problem of
universals. I won't list them here, because you can just read the book to find out. It is worth noting, however,
that subsequent to the publication of ITOE in 1967, another form of realism was put forward by Putnam (1975,
1981, 1987). Kripke (1980) and Burge (1979, for example) have put forward roughly similar theories. According to
Putnam, concepts (and, implicitly, universals) have a basis in reality, but - unlike realists like Plato and
Aristotle - need not, in most cases do not, refer or depend upon internal "essences" or Platonic Forms. It would
be interesting to compare and contrast Putnam's views with Rand's.
Finally, we are now ready to discuss Chapter One: "Cognition and Measurement."
Rand begins by stating "Consciousness, as a state of awareness, is not a passive state, but an active process that
consists of two essentials: differentiation and integration." (5) I've always found this to be an odd statement.
What exactly is Rand claiming here? Is she claiming that consciousness is the *result* of an active process, or
that it *is* this active process, or, perhaps, both? I think the natural interpretation is to conclude that
consciousness is both an active process as well as the res ult of this process. This conclusion is supported by her
description of the chronological development of consciousness: from sensations to percepts to concepts.
Perception is a nonvolitional activity which integrates sensations into percepts, and it is percepts of which we
are normally aware in perception. Concepts, on the other hand, are the result of a volitional process of
differentiation and integration (as we shall see in subsequent chapters). Perhaps I'm opening up a can of worms
here, but I think it would be interesting to explore exactly what Rand means by "consciousness." I've always
been somewhat confused by her characterization of it.
Implicit in every percept is the concept of existent: "something that exists, be it a thing, an attribute or an
action." I suppose this is just to restate the standard claim that "To be aware is to be aware of *something*"
Another interesting question is to ask if existent is a concept implicit in every percept, but is not acknowledged
explicitly until one reaches the conceptual level, can animals that supposedly are unable to form concepts, but
are able to form percepts, be said to have acquired the "implicit" concept of existent?
Rand claims that the implicit concept of existent undergoes three stages of development: (6)
1. entity - awareness of objects
2. identity - awareness of specific, particular things which can be recognized and distinguished from the rest of
the perceptual field.
3. unit - grasping relationships among entities by grasping the similarities and differences of their identities.
Rand also states that "The ability to regard entities as units is man's distinctive method of cognition."(6) Why is
this ability so distinctive and important? Rand defines a unit as "an existent regarded as a separate member of a
group of two or more similar members." (6) She goes on to state that "'unit' involves an act of consciousness (a
selective focus, a certain way of regarding things), but it is *not* an arbitrary creation of consciousness: it is a
method of identification or classification according to the attributes which a consciousness observes in reality."
(6-7).
What makes this ability so unique, and why Rand considers it to be unique to humans, is that it is volitional. It
involves a selective focus upon similarities shared by members of a group. It is this grasp of the concept of
"unit" that marks the beginning of a conceptual level of cognition. Units, Rand writes, are the "bridge between
metaphysics and epistemology," i.e., the bridge between particulars and concepts.
Perhaps the most important point Rand makes about concept formation in this chapter is that it is largely a
mathematical process. She defines mathematics as "the science of measurement," and measurement as "the
identification of a relationship - a quantitative relationship established by means of a standard that serves as a
unit." Entities, she says, are measured by their attributes, the standard of measurement being a "concretely
specified unit representing the appropriate attribute." (7)
Rand requires three things of a standard of measurement: That it represent the appropriate attribute, that it be
easily perceivable by man, and that once chosen it remain immutable and absolute whenever used. The purpose
of measurement, she says, is "to expand the range of man's consciousness, of his knowledge, beyond the
perceptual level: beyond the direct power of his senses and the immediate concretes of any given moment." (8)
As an example, she points out that man can perceive the length of one foot directly, but cannot do so with ten
miles. In sum, measurement "consists of relating an easily perceivable unit to larger or smaller quantities, then
to infinitely larger or infinitely smaller quantities, which are not directly perceivable." (8)
I have raised several issues for discussion in this summary, but let me list those I consider to be most important.
1. What is the problem of universals? Throughout our discussion of each chapter, we should take time to
consider how Rand is proposing to solve this problem.
2. What does Rand mean by the term "consciousness"? What role does it play in her theory of concept
formation?
And,
3. What role does measurement play in Rand's theory?
No doubt there are many more questions that can be raised (and I encourage people to do so), but I believe that
these are especially important and will need to be addressed continuously as we discuss each chapter of ITOE.
References
Burge, T. (1979) "Individualism and the Mental," Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4.
Krikpe, S. (1980) "Naming and Necessity."
Putnam, H. (1975) "The Meaning of Meaning," Mind, Language, and Reality.
Putnam, H.(1981) Reason, Truth, and History.
Putnam, H. (1987) Representation and Reality.
Rand, A. (1990 [1967]) Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.

Chapter Two: Concept Formation
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology Compilation
by Will Wilkinson

Date: Fri, 17 Feb 1995 14:14:07 -0400
From: WILL WILKINSON WILKINW3253@cobra.uni.edu
Subject: ITOE 2
(All page references are from ITOE 2nd expanded edition.)
What I'm going to try to do here is to provide a review of the important ideas of Chapter 2 in, more or less, my
own words. I'm expecting that most keeping up with the discussion will have read at least this far in ITOE, so
I'll try not to merely repeat it. I'll try to get at the main points from a slightly different vantage. However, if you
have not read Chapter 2 you should still be able to get Rand's gist if my treatment is up to par. This is more of an
outline than anything, and I hope part of the discussion will have to do with fleshing out and exploring the
process of concept formation in greater detail. Additionally, this was written in something of a rush, so please
bring up any errors you spot and make any comments that you think are important. This is Moderated
Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy, not Moderated Dissertations, so pick the following apart and let's discuss.
"A concept is," as defined on page 13, "a mental integration of two or more units posessing the same
distinguishing characteristic(s), with their particular measurements omitted."
Packed into the definition we have a scad of important ideas that we shall want to get intimate with;
"integration," "unit," "distinguishing characteristic(s)," and "omitted measurements" are all crucial. "Mental" is
too for that matter. Hopefully we'll get to each in due course.
We'll begin at the beginning and go chronologically through the actual steps of concept formation, as far as is
possible, and chew on each important idea as it comes up.
In the chapter Rand fires right away into talk of units, abstraction, integration and mental entities. Let us start at
the rudiments of abstraction. For the whole poop on the Objectivist theory of abstraction all noble souls will
find and peruse David Kelley's aptly titled paper "A Theory of Abstraction." We'll just gloss the basics here.
As we (hopefully) eschew all sorts of apriorism and innate ideas, we have to be able to get from our perceptual
awareness of the world to a conceptual grasp of it. For that abstraction is the thing.
The first step is *differentiation.* "All concepts are formed by first differentiating two or more existents from
other existents" (p 13). To do that we must pay special attention to two or more things (differentiation also
applies to focusing on just one thing, but that doesn't get us far in concept formation, unless we somehow
remember a thing when we see something else like it), selectively focus our perceptual faculties, and draw out a
group from the background of other things. This is a volitional, self-directed process. But how do we go about
picking some things out and grouping them up while leaving others behind? What is it about the things and
about us that makes this possible?
It is similarity. "Similarity... is the relationship between two or more existents which posess the same
characteristic(s), but in different measure or degree" (p 13). So there we have what it is about the thing; they
have a *commensurable characteristic*, which Rand calls a "Conceptual Common Denominator" or "CCD".
The commensurable characteristic that binds the individuals into a group, in our minds, is at the same time the
*distinguishing characteristic* that serves to segregate these particular things from other possible objects of
awareness. The commensurable characteristic might the be shape for a group of chairs, or a certain hue for a
grouping of colors. Still, each individual in the group is different, but the difference is one of *measurement*. A
crucial point of Rand's theory is this: "The relevant measurments must exist in *some* quantity, but may exist
in *any* quantity" (p 12). Here we begin to see the mathematical element of the theory emerging.
This cat can be black, that speckled, and the other fat, but they all have dimensions along which they are similar
(size, texture, shape, sound) or not-completely-different. Focusing on the cats, the similarities are given
perceptually, and directly evident to us. Our recognition of similarity is accounted for by an implicit, pre-
conceptual process of measurement whereby we quantify certain characteristics in an ordinal "more than, less
then" sort of way. If the quantitative values of the relevant dimensions fall within a certain range we see those
things as similar and can focus on them as abstract *units*, once we drop from attention their specific
measurements. We *omit the measurements* to achieve unit-perspective. "...'Measurements omitted' does not
mean that measurements are regarded as non-existent; it means that *measurements exist but are not specified"
(p12). We are left with a certain way of regarding the individuals through their integration into a single group.
They have now become *units* in an abstract class of things and a concept is about ready to happen.
"The uniting involved is not a mere sum, but an *integration*, i.e., a blending of the units into a *single*, new
*mental* entity..." (p. 10). This mental entity, "unit" serves as the bridge between existence and consciousness. A
unit perspective is not achieved by passively grasping some automatically manifest essences that are inherent in
the objects of experience, but by achieving a certain intentional relationship between our awareness and the way
the objects of our awareness relate to each other.
So we've been looking at these cats and we're to the point of seeing each as an abstract unit by retaining the
unifying distinctive characteristics and dropping all the particular measurements of the cats. Do we have a
concept? Not quite. "In order to be used as a single unit, the enormous sum integrated by a concept has to be
given the form of a single, specific *perceptual* concrete, which will differentiate it from all other concepts" (p.
10). We need a word. If we can slap the sound "cat" (or whatever) onto this particular unit, we can carry the
abstraction around and summon it up at will by invoking the perceptual concrete we tie to it. This way, we have
more than a vague resolve to treat these particulars in our memory as one sort of thing. We have an actual
percept that represents the mental integration.
I've been confused by the exact relation between words and concepts in the past. Sometimes "word" and
"concept" seem to get conflated, sometimes differentiated. When it is said that "Every word we use.. is a symbol
that denotes a concept" (p. 10), and then "words transform concepts into (mental) entities" (p. 11), it seems as
though one can have a concept before one has a word, and that concept formation can be done without words.
But it is stressed that to be used as a unit, what is integrated must be given a word (or other perceptual concrete),
and that concept formation is only completed when a word has been assigned to the integration. Comments?
Now, what the word "cat" refers to is the concept (the distinctive characteristics of cats, with the particular
measurements of particular cats omitted), which becomes a particular, lasting mental identity by the assignment
of the word. The concept then refers to all the particular things in the world, past and future, that fits into the
class delimited by the abstract mental content of the concept "cat", i.e., all actual cats living, dead and yet to be.
The first concepts we form are of this type, concepts of entities. From there we can go on to concepts of materials,
concepts of motion. Grammatical word forms are specific types of concepts that refer to distinctive aspects of
experience, Rand notes. I'm running long, so I won't discuss the different types of concepts that Rand sets out
on pages 15 and 16. However, It should be taken up in the discussion, and a comparison to how these relate to,
say, Aristotle's categories would be interesting.
At the end of Chapter 2, Rand stresses the mathematical nature of concept formation. The concept "unit" is
obviously at the base of both, but there is more in common. "A concept is like an arithmetical sequence of *
specifically defined units*, going off in both directions, open at both ends and including *all* units of that
particular kind... The basic principle of concept-formation (which states that the omitted measurements must
exist in *some* quantity, but may exist in *any* quantity) is the equivalent of the basic principle of algebra,
which states that algebraic symbols must be given *some* numerical value, but may be given *any* value."
That about sums it up, I suppose.
I've already suggested for discussion the exact relation of words to concepts and the conceptual basis of
grammatical forms. Other topics might have to do with how similarity is perceived and the process of
measurement, the relationship of Rand's theory to those of other philosophers and the tradition (how she
relates to some of the analysts might be interesting), the assumptions about the nature of human consciousness
necessary to make Rand's case, or anything that relates to the issues of chapter 2 of ItOE.
Discuss away.

Chapter Three: Abstraction from Abstractions
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology Compilation
by Jeremy Spray

Date: Sun, 5 Mar 1995 20:51:06 -0400
From: jeremy michael spray jspray@indiana.edu
Subject: ITOE 3
All page references taken from the Expanded Second Edition.
Because it may help to understand the context and direction of this discussion, I should like to very briefly
comment on what has thus far been introduced. In Chapter 2, Rand details the principles of concept-formation
on its base level; the conceptualizing of perceptual entities through the processes of identification, isolation,
differentiation, integration and measurement-omission. This is the first stage, and indeed the requisite stage, of
conceptual development, for it is here that the fundamental links to reality are made.
In his post, Will Wilkinson expressed the ambiguity of the relationship between words and concepts. Is a word a
concept, or a symbol for a concept? Are words necessary in the process of concept-formation? If so, why? Rand
offers more insight into this dilemma at the introduction of Chapter 3.
"The process of forming a concept is not complete until its constituent units have been integrated into a single
mental unit by means of a specific word." [p. 19]
and,
"Learning consists of... grasping the referents of words, i.e. the kinds of existents that words denote in reality. In
this respect, the learning of words is an invaluable accelerator of [man's] cognitive development; but it is not a
substitute for the process of concept formation; nothing is." [p. 20]
What I think Rand is saying here (and what it seems we have all agreed upon these past few weeks) is that a
word is not the concept itself, nor any part of it, but a necessary *product* of concept-formation - the creation of a
mental entity. Merely learning the referent of a word cannot replace the actual process of identifying, isolating,
differentiating and integrating. If a child were to simply learn the referents of words, or worse still, merely
memorize pronunciation, then any further conceptual development would have no link to the facts of reality.
Thus, the importance of concept-formation increases as a child moves further and further away from direct
perceptual evidence, i.e. as he begins abstracting from abstractions.
In precisely the same fashion that one identifies, differentiates and integrates perceptual concretes, so one
furthers his conceptual development by endeavoring "toward more extensive and more intensive knowledge,
toward wider integrations and more precise differentiations." [p.19]. Abstracting from abstractions is this process
of conceptualizing beyond the concepts of lowest order, i.e. beyond the concepts that are direct inferences from
the entities in reality.
Rand explains the process best; "When concepts are integrated into a wider one, the new concept includes all the
characteristics of its constituent units; but their distinguishing characteristics are regarded as omitted
measurements, and one of their common characteristics determines the distinguishing characteristic of the new
concept."[p. 23] - the Conceptual Common Denominator.
To exemplify this, I will use the concept "man". The distinguishing characteristic of man is his rational
consciousness, which only becomes apparent to us if other forms of life with consciousness and locomotion are
identified. However, once these other mental entities are identified, and recognized as sharing the
commensurable characteristics of consciousness and locomotion, then they can be integrated into a wider
concept by omitting the measurement of their respective distinguishing characteristics. Thus, each of the
narrower concepts must have *some* form of conscious and locomotion, but *any* form of conscious and
locomotion to be integrated into the wider concept, henceforth referred to as "animal".
Rand emphasizes that although "animal" is a new concept, it does not directly refer to a perceptual concrete -
there is no perceptual entity "animal". This is why the concepts of first order are so extremely important -
"The meaning of "animal" cannot be grasped unless one has first grasped the meaning of its constituent
concepts; these are its link to reality."[p. 22]
In narrowing concepts, the process is simply a reversal of the above.
"When a concept is subdivided into narrower ones, its distinguishing characteristic is taken as their 'Conceptual
Common Denominator' - and is given a narrower range of specified measurements or is combined with an
additional characteristic(s), to form the individual distinguishing characteristic of the new concepts."[p. 24]
Taking the example of the concept "man" again, the distinguishing characteristic of man is his rational
consciousness. To subdivide "man" into narrower concepts based on some measurement, say, profession, we
use the Conceptual Common Denominator - rational consciousness - as the standard of integration, then
differentiate one man from another according to his distinctive profession. Thus we have the professionals -
doctors, engineers, philosophers - each practicing *some* form of profession, but *any* form of profession: and
all possessing a rational consciousness.
Through the process of abstracting from abstractions, we are in effect expanding our range of knowledge in two
directions. The further one moves away from perceptual concretes the more extensive his knowledge becomes;
the further one moves toward identifying specific existents, i.e. perceptual concretes, the more intensive his
knowledge becomes. However, each concept is learned within the context of our knowledge at that point in
time. When new units are identified in accordance with an existing concept, the original concept is not
invalidated, but merely subsumes the new units with the required measurement-omissions. (Rand elucidates
this point further in Chapter 5, "Definitions.")
The significance of abstracting from abstractions is indeed the essence of non-contradictory reasoning, because as
we move further and further from direct perceptual evidence, there are a myriad of intersections, "cross-
classifications and complex conceptual combinations." [p. 28] The degree to which each of us properly
conceptualizes beyond direct perceptual concretes determines our ability to understand the world around us.
Coming full circle now to the relationship of words and concepts, it is my understanding that words are
absolutely necessary for abstracting from abstractions. My reasoning is this; if we do not have a linguistic mental
entity to denote each concept, of what further use can any concept be? We would, basically, have to re-
conceptualize every time we encountered a concept, regardless of how many times we encountered it before. As
Rand notes, though not specifically in this context, "when he has formed or grasped the concept "man", he does
not have to regard every man he meets thereafter as a new phenomenon to be studied from scratch: he
identifies him as "man" and applies to him the knowledge he has acquired about man." [p. 27]
If we do not define the concept "man" - or any concept - as a linguistic mental entity, how then would we
mentally organize our knowledge as that range of knowledge expands and intensifies? It seems it would be
impossible without language, without words. (If you have been following the MDOP discussions, this is
precisely what David Axel was referring to when he quoted Rand as saying: "the *automatized* integration of a
vast amount of conceptual knowledge.")
Concluding comments; Rand refers to the process of abstracting from abstractions as the hierarchy of concept-
formation. This seems to imply that there is a definite, hierarchal order in which everyone abstracts from
concepts of lower order. However, Rand also states, "The chronological order in which man forms or learns
these concepts is optional."[p. 25] The ambiguities lay in whether the conceptual hierarchy is only a result of an
introverted, retrospective process of concept-organization and -validation, or if indeed, narrower concepts must
be realized before expanding upon them.
For instance, do each of us need to have a conceptual understanding of "man" (and "bird" and "dog" and so
forth...) before we integrate it into the wider concept of "animal"?
I pose this as a topic for discussion, although I am certain you will all find much more to dissect.

Chapter Four: Concepts of Consciousness
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology Compilation
by Diana Mertz Brickell

Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 22:18:11 -0600 (CST)
From: D.M. Brickell diana@artsci.wustl.edu
Subject: ITOE 4
-=- Introduction: Why is this subject important? -=-
In this chapter, Rand delves into concepts of consciousness, concepts whose referents are based in the mind
rather than directly in external reality. Before I discuss the chapter itself, I'd like to indicate why I think that the
subject matter is important. What relevance does epistemology, particularly concerning the formation of
concepts of consciousness, have to an individual's life?
I believe that conceptualizing on a second-order level, i.e. about the actions of our consciousness in grasping
reality, is crucially important if we expect to properly "carve nature at her joints." As far as I can tell from my
plush philosophical armchair, one of the functions of free will is to provide consciousness another level of self-
regulation, because of the complexities that naturally arise when the primary means of understanding reality is
on a complex conceptual level. "[The ability to conceptualize mental processes as such] gives man an entirely
new level of self-regulation: the ability to regulate, within limits, the actions of his consciousness, which in turn
regulate his existential actions." (Binswanger, 156)
Since it is only by means of self-reflection that choosing values becomes possible, we must self-reflect well in
order to gain clear, objective knowledge of values themselves. Rand only briefly addresses the overall need for
study of the concepts of consciousness, although she does provide mini-reasons for its importance throughout
the chapter. I hope that my motivational explanation provides a broader view of the importance of the subject.
Just as a warning, this chapter is so packed with interrelated information and interesting ideas that I found it
difficult to omit discussions of all but a few sections. I just couldn't restrain myself!
-=- Awareness -=-
Rand begins this chapter with a short discussion of awareness as an active state and as necessarily derived from
the external world. These two aspects of consciousness are crucial - action and content - since they will serve as
the Conceptual Common Denominators for all concepts of consciousness.
Rand makes an interesting observation about perception in this first section, that "man is aware of the results
[of perception] but not of the process." (Rand, 29) David Kelley expanded upon this idea in his tape series on
epistemology. (Kelley, "The Primacy of Existence") If my notes and memory are to be trusted, Kelley said that
there are two distinct perspectives on perception, one external and one internal, and that the facts available in
each perspective are unavailable in the other. From the external, scientific perspective, one isn't aware of what
the experience of perception is like, and from just the internal, "subjective" perspective, one isn't aware of how
the causal mechanisms of perception work. Kelley indicates how this separation between internal and external
perspectives has lead to the diaphanous model of consciousness, and thus to (wrong) indirect theories of
perception.
I find this progression from a single sentence of Rand's to (through a whole lot of work) an answer to the
fundamental problems in the philosophy of perception fascinating. I think that Rand has many such short, yet
"pregnant" passages which can serve as a jumping off point for the solution to many traditional philosophical
problems.
I am slightly uncomfortable with the way in which Rand formulates the idea that any state of awareness,
perceptual or conceptual, is "achieved and maintained by continuous action." (Rand, 29) I fear that this
formulation blurs the distinction between consciousness as *metaphysically active* and consciousness as *
epistemologically active.* Asserting metaphysical activity commits us to the view that consciousness is, at least
in part, the creator of reality, i.e. to the primacy of consciousness. Of course, Rand would not take this position,
although she would agree that consciousness is epistemologically active, that the act of grasping reality requires
action on the part of the subject, and even conscious effort where conceptual knowledge is sought.
Interestingly, taking consciousness as metaphysically active commits one to subjectivism, while denying that
consciousness is epistemologically active inevitably leads to intrinsicism. Only denying the former and asserting
the latter leads to an objective view of the relationship between consciousness and reality.
-=- Forming Concepts of Consciousness -=-
As I indicated earlier, the content of awareness and the action of consciousness in regard to that content serve as
the "fundamental Conceptual Common Denominator for all concepts pertaining to consciousness," because
conscious activity can neither be passive nor contentless. (Rand, 30) According to Rand, in the process of
forming concepts of consciousness one abstracts "the actions of consciousness from its contents and observe the
*differences* among these various actions." (Rand, 30) One way to illustrate how to conceptually separate the
action and content of consciousness is by considering only a specific action or content, while varying the other.
So, for example, I can solely consider the mental content of the philosophy of perception, and consider what sort
of actions are possible with regard to the subject. I can IDENTIFY a particular theory as belonging to the
philosophy of perception; I can EVALUATE the validity of a claim about representations; I can RECALL some
empirical evidence in an article; I can INTEGRATE some of Gibson's ideas about perceptual error with Kelley's.
Now although Rand doesn't ever talk about omitting the measurements of the action of consciousness, while
retaining the content (within a certain range), I do suspect that such is possible. In fact, I think that this is how
we divide up fields of study, like physics, history, and child psychology. To illustrate, I can suppose that my
mental action is solely "evaluation," and consider different areas of knowledge in which I can evaluate truth
claims. I can evaluate the OBJECTIVIST METAPHYSICS; I can evaluate SPECIAL RELATIVITY (yeah right); I
can evaluate the GRAMMAR of a particular sentence.
If it isn't the case that we conceptualize fields of study based on content of mental entities, I wonder whether
there are any concepts of consciousness that are conceptualized along the lines of content at all.
Rand goes on to emphasize that "in the realm of introspection, the concretes, the *units* which are integrated
into a single concept are the specific instances of a given psychological process" and that the "measurable
attributes of a psychological process are its object or *content* and its *intensity*." (Rand, 31)
The content, because it must eventually refer to some aspect of reality, can be measured by the same means by
which external existents are. But the intensity (which involves scope, clarity, mental effort, etc.) can only be
measured approximately, using a comparative scale. But intensity cannot be completely separated from content,
since intensity necessarily depends upon content (or the *scope* of the content, as Rand puts it), as well other
facts about consciousness (e.g. values and previous knowledge). To take an extreme example, the level of focus
required to grasp the implications of the double-slit experiment is much higher than that required to identify an
object as a chair, because of (the scope of) the content of each idea.
-=- Scope and Hierarchy as Means to Measure Intensity -=-
In order to more precisely measure intensity, Rand introduces the concepts of "scope" and "hierarchy." Each is
applicable to a different type of concepts of consciousness; scope applies to concepts of *cognition*, while
hierarchy applies to concepts of *evaluation*.
Concepts of cognition (e.g. "thought," "observation," learning") are measured by scope, which can be "gauged by
two interrelated aspects: by the scope of the factual material involved in a given cognitive process, and by the
length of the conceptual chain required to deal with the material." (Rand, 32) Of course, in order to gauge the
length of conceptual chain, it is necessary to have a clear foundation of "perceptually given concretes," but what
exactly constitutes this foundation is a bit controversial. In the workshop section, Rand does say that there is "a
certain element of the optional" about what concepts are on the bottom of the hierarchy. (Rand, 204) I think that
it is an interesting question what sort of concepts (if any) *must* serve as the foundation of the hierarchy of
concepts.
Concepts of evaluation (e.g. "value," "feel," "desire") necessitate an entirely new type of measurement:
teleological measurement. Teleological measurement "serves to establish a graded relationship of means to
end" using ordinal ranking. Rand illustrates the importance of having a clear hierarchy of values in her
discussion of the relation between ethics and teleological measurement. (See Rand, 33)
-=- Unit of Teleological Measurement? -=-
There is an interesting issue which I would like to raise surrounding teleological measurement and the unit of
measurement. Rand defines measurement as "the identification of a . . . quantitative relationship established by
means of a standard that serves as a unit," but it is unclear if there is actually a unit of measurement in
teleological measurement, since the standard in teleological measurement "serves to establish a *graded*
relationship of means to end." (Rand, 7; Rand 33, emphasis added) I would not hesitate to say that there is no
unit in teleological measurement except for the existence of the following passage: "in the spiritual realm, the
currency - which exists in limited quantity and must be teleologically measured in the pursuit of any value - is *
time*, i.e. *one's life*." (Rand, 34) (This statement might be confusing in isolation, so you might want to look
up the specific passage.) Is it possible that the unit is *time* for the standard of life?
-=- Concepts of Products of Psychological Action -=-
After her great discussion of whether love can be measured, Rand delves into concepts that refer to products of
psychological action (e.g. "truth," "knowledge," "concept"). In the formation of these concepts their content is
omitted, while their distinguishing characteristic is retained. Although Rand doesn't say explicitly, it seems that
the distinguishing characteristic is the both the actual product of conscious activity, as well as the action that
yields the product. So knowledge is "a mental grasp of the fact(s) of reality [product], reached either by perceptual
observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation [process]" (Rand, 35)
Concepts of method, which are a species of the concepts of products, deserve special consideration, because of
their importance in human life. Rand defines methods as "systematic courses of action devised by men for the
purpose of achieving certain goals," in which the action can either be purely psychological or existential. (Rand
35-36)
Obviously, methods which designate existential method are extremely important to human life - survival
would be impossible without means to automatize certain actions (like shoelace tying) through learned
methods. Methods pertaining to psychological action are no less important, since they will govern the proper
use of an individual's mind in grasping reality.
-=- Logic as the Fundamental Concept of Method -=-
Rand identifies logic as "*the* fundamental concept of method, the one on which all others depend." (Rand, 36)
With respect to logic, the action is "the actions of consciousness required to achieve a correct identification" and
the goal is knowledge. Of course, this doesn't tell us what actions actually *are* required for correct
identification, which is why the concept of logic needs to be broken down into components in order to really
serve as a guide to thinking.
If I recall correctly, Peikoff breaks down logic into "reduction" and "integration" in his "Objectivism: State of the
Art" tape series, but because I disagree with a good part of his discussion on these issues, I don't think that it is
all that helpful to explicate his views. (I'd be very interested in a discussion of Peikoff's views, and would be
willing to post a summary of his position for those who haven't heard the tapes if others are interested as well.)
-=- Conclusion -=-
One final point about this chapter: in her closing passages Rand emphasizes that "*measurement requires an
appropriate standard.*" (Rand, 38) I think that this idea is crucial for giving an Objectivist answer to many
traditional philosophical problems. For example, the possibility of certainty is often denied on the grounds that
humans are capable of error, in other words because we are fallible. But omniscience is only an appropriate
standard for a being for whom such a state of awareness is possible; the fact that humans are fallible must be
integrated into any human epistemological theory.
I thank anyone who has slogged all the way through this essay. Let the discussion begin!
-=- References -=-
Binswanger, Harry. "Volition as Cognitive Self-Regulation." Organizational Behavior and Human Decision
Processes. 1991. 154-178.
Kelley, David. "Primacy of Existence I."
Rand, Ayn. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. 1990.
-=- Diana Mertz Brickell -=- Washington University -=- St-Louis, MO -=-
Yet persistently a few men awaken - men who look back at greatness, are
encouraged by reflecting on it, and feel themselves blessed, as though
human life were a splendid thing, as though the loveliest fruit of this
bitter plant were the knowledge that before them one man lived his life
with pride and strength, another profoundly, and a third with compassion
and benevolence - but all bequeathed the same lesson: the man who is
ready to risk his existence lives most beautifully. - Nietzsche
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Chapter Five: Definitions
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology Compilation
by Bryan Register

Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 23:39:28 -0500
From: Bryan Register bregister@mail.utexas.edu
Subject: ITOE 3
'A definition is a statement that identifies the nature of the units subsumed under a concept.'
Upon re-reading chapter five of ITOE, I found it to have a few pages of substantive work at the beginning,
followed by several pages of wandering criticism and discussion of a number of faintly related issues. I plan to
integrate the relatively disconnected bits as well as I can with the main themes and ignore any material which I
can't connect with the essence of the chapter, and end up with a problem and a couple of questions that I think
may pose challenges to Rand's scheme here.
For Rand, definitions serve to differentiate different concepts by identifying the essential characteristics of given
concepts. Some concepts, axiomatic and sensual, are undefinable in terms of words. To define existence or red,
one points at an existent or some red. But for all more abstract concepts, definitions are possible though not
always necessary. It may be unnecessary to define very simple concepts like table, because one can point easily
enough at a table and one knows what one means when one says 'table', so a definition probably will serve no
cognitive purpose. All this matter of defining something by direct reference to reality is called ostensive
definition.
What is the purpose of definitions in those concepts that do require or at least allow for them? Definitions
consist of words, and words, as we know, refer us to concepts. So the definition of a concept is a reference to
other concepts. Ultimately, our definitions will always point back to the percepts the integration of which are
the concepts. This allows us to have the full structure of our conceptual system at hand, and know the
connections of this system to reality. This would seem to be where deductive logic comes from: our concepts
subsume one another and refer to each other allowing us to form syllogisms and other logical statements.
How then are valid definitions formed? A definition consists of a genus and a differentia, as Aristotle stated.
(These next few paragraphs of ITOE are very unclear to me, so this is one of the bits that are more likely to be
criticized). The genus is a concept from which the concept in question was differentiated. The differentia is the
line along which the concept in question was differentiated; it seems to me that the differentia states the CCD of
the concept.
For example, life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generating action. Animal is a kind of life which
employs locomotion. Man is a rational animal. The genus here of animal is 'life', the differentia is 'kind which
employs locomotion.' The genus of man is animal, the differentia is rationality. (This example poses one of the
questions with which I intend to end the discussion.)
I don't know how well the interpretation I just gave jives with Rand's second paragraph here: 'The
distinguishing characteristic(s) of the units becomes the differentia of the concept's definition; the existents
possessing a 'Conceptual Common Denominator' become the genus.'
However, I think my interpretation is definitely right given the next paragraph: 'Thus a definition complies
with the two essential functions of consciousness: differentiation and integration. The differentia isolates the
units of a concept from all other existents; the genus indicates their connection to a wider group of existents.'
(Both paragraphs on page 41, these two and the paragraph before seem to comprise the discussion of the form of
definitions. The first and last of these are very clear, but the middle one doesn't make much sense to me. Do not
all the existents possessing a CCD become the whole concept? and is not the distinguishing characteristic the
CCD? Or am I hopelessly confused on the nature of the CCD?)
A definition is not a list. The point being made on page 42 which leads into the discussion of valid definitions
would, I think, be made stronger by pointing out the consequences of the crow again. A definition can be only so
long before we can no longer hold it in mind at once. Thus a list will not serve. So there must be a single (or
very few) characteristic taken out of the mass of qualities of the existents referred to by the concept; a DEFINING
characteristic. However, in order to define the CONCEPT, the definition must imply all the rest of the qualities
of the existents subsumed by the concept. This characteristic (or very small group thereof) is the ESSENTIAL
characteristic of the many existents.
Later in the chapter, Rand contrasts her view with that of Plato and Aristotle; this seem the most reasonable
place to bring that in. For Plato, the essential characteristic of an entity was (this is very rough) the fact that it is
an instance of a form - its essence was that form, with the form being transcendent and immaterial. For
Aristotle, all entities in a class are united by an essence which is non-transcendent, but still inherent in the
entity. For Rand, all entities in a class are united by an essence which is a product of the human mode of
understanding. This is her claim to objectivity, rather than intrinsicism (usually known - by everyone other
than Rand, so far as I can see - as essentialism), that she bears in mind both the context of the observer and the
independent reality which he observes. But I get ahead of myself.
Because the essence of a group of entities is that fact about them which implies all facts about them, definitions
are open-ended and open to revision - but not to 'correction', unless an error has been made. (By correction, I
mean here a change which contradicts an earlier definition. It is likely that there is a better word for this.) One
can form a definition based on a very limited amount of information which will be valid, but once one has
more information one must revise one's definition.
For instance, take the atom. Once upon a time, an atom could be reasonably defined as 'the smallest instance of
an element which retains the qualities of that element.' Then it was discovered that there were nuclei in atoms
and variously charged particles. So the definition might become 'a particle which possesses a dense, positively
charged center surrounded by negative charges.' Then it was discovered that electrons have specific orbits, so the
definition might have 'which circle in specific orbits about the nucleus' added to the end.
Now, none of those definitions were false. A modern physicist thinking in terms of an atom as defined by being
the smallest instance of an element which retains the qualities of that element would not be wrong, per se. But
he would be horribly lacking in ability to connect 'atom' to other concepts; would not know the true defining
essence of atoms at his level of knowledge.
(If I may put in an aside: I think the problem Kuhn raised in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions might be
impacted by Rand's open-ended concepts. Kuhn asserts that scientific revolutions are non-rational gestalt
switches between different conceptual orderings, but if concepts aren't the set-in-stone dogma which Kuhn
viewed them as, then no such non-rational switches are necessary.)
So the essence of a group of entities is that fact about them which implies all other qualities which they possess.
This essence is epistemological, being formed not only by the means and limitations (finite carrying capacity, the
crow again) of human cognition but also by the limits of an individual's context of knowledge - and, equally or
more importantly, by the inherent metaphysical similarities of the entities in question.
Rand maintains that concepts can be true and false. It is at this point (p 48) that I think what may be a very
serious problem arises. 'Truth is the product of the recognition... of the facts of reality.... He organizes concepts
into propositions - and the truth or falsehood of his propositions rests, not only on their relation to the facts he
asserts but also on the truth or falsehood of the definitions of the concepts he uses to assert them, which rests on
the truth or falsity of his designations of essential characteristics. 'Every concept stands for a number of
propositions.... A definition is the condensation of a vast body of observations - and stands or falls with the
truth of these observations.'
Truth is the correspondence of a proposition to reality; a proposition is true of it accurately describes reality, false
if inaccurate. A definition can be true or false only if it is a proposition, and Rand claims that it is. But how does
this work? A definition states something like 'man is a rational animal.' This proposition is true if man is
indeed the rational animal. But how could one check the truth of this proposition? By pointing at men and
claiming that they have all kinds of characteristics of which the essential is rationality. But since 'man' does not
exist save as that which is defined as the rational animal, one can't refer to the entities and actually hit men
with one's reference except by going by the definition which is exactly what one is checking in the first place.
My point here is also illustrated, I think, by the actual way we form concepts. We do not start with 'man' and
figure out what defines him. We start with men and figure out that they need to be mentally integrated and
how. We start, then, with rational animals, proceed to 'rational animal', and finish off with 'man.' (Or am I
hopelessly confused? I do not rule out the possibility.) With the process running this way, the 'propositions' of
definitions will always be vacuously true.
I think this can be solved by backing down from the claim that definitions are propositions that can be true and
false. Definitions are something other than propositions (what? definitions, I think, and nothing else) and
cannot be true or false. They can be valid or invalid, with validity being the quality of maximizing unit-
economy by being that definition which implies the most other qualities of the entity-grouping in question, and
invalidity being an identification of essential characteristics which does not in the least unify the entities in
question. (Note my appeal to the crow again.) This does the same job Rand wants her truth/falsity to do (beat up
on defenseless nominalists) without involving her in the rather painful circles of vacuous truth I think I
showed above.
I will skip the discussion of essentialists dropping consciousness and subjectivists dropping existence, as we
have all heard it before.
So just a couple more questions are these:
1. Justice is classically defined as 'giving each man his due.' No genus, no species that I can see. Is justice being
poorly defined here, or is this an exception, or is there a genus and species that I'm not seeing?
2. In an earlier example, I derived man from animal from life. Like justice, life seemed to have no genus and
species. It also doesn't seem to be something which can be traced back to a larger-scale concept (explaining the
lack of genus.) Same question as for justice, but with the additional: is life a primitive concept, despite being
defined? Do such things exist? (I would have asked for justice, but I think it's pretty clearly not primitive.)
Bryan Register
bregister@mail.utexas.edu

Chapter Six: Axiomatic Concepts
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology Compilation
by Thomas Ryan Stone

Date: Wed, 10 May 1995 20:35:43 -0400 (EDT)
From: Thomas Ryan Stone ts008b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu
Subject: ITOE 3
Ayn Rand indicates the importance of axiomatic concepts in the first paragraph of the chapter: "The base of
man's knowledge - of all other concepts, all axioms, propositions, and thought - consists of axiomatic
concepts"(p55). She does so again at the end of the chapter as she states: "Do you want to assess the rationality of
a person, a theory or a philosophical system? Do not inquire about his stand on the validity of reason. Look for
the stand on axiomatic concepts. It will tell the whole story."(p61) In properly treating any topic, it is necessary to
have a guiding principle or set of such principles. Regarding axiomatic concepts, I see four main questions that I
will use as my guide in this essay: What are they?, How are they formed?, What are their functions?, and Why
do we need them?
I. WHAT ARE AXIOMATIC CONCEPTS?
Ayn Rand notes that *axioms* are typically considered to be propositions identifying self-evident truths. As
such they are not "primaries". This is because mental "primaries" are in the form of concepts, from which
propositions are later built. The concepts that produce *axioms* when put into propositional form are the *
axiomatic concepts*.
Ayn Rand defines *axiomatic concept* as an "identification of a primary fact of reality, which cannot be
analyzed, i.e. reduced to other facts or broken into component parts"(p55), and are
1. implicit in all facts
2. implicit in (alternately, the "base of") all knowledge
3. the fundamentally given
4. the directly perceived or experienced
5. that which requires no proof or explanation
6. that upon which all proofs and explanation rest
7. the base of all other concepts, axioms, propositions, thought
Axiomatic concepts are those and only those concepts that fit the definition given above with all of its aspects.
She states that the first and primary axiomatic concepts are "existence", "identity" (called a corollary of
"existence"), and "consciousness". She then proceeds to discuss in what way these three examples are
"axiomatic" and in what way they are "concepts". They are axiomatic because they display the above listed
properties. An interesting question arises, however, when we ask "In what sense are they *concepts*?" Miss
Rand's answer is that they are concepts because they require identification in conceptual form. This seems clear:
take an animal who is not above the conceptual threshold, and consider whether it could explicitly grasp
existence qua existence, identity qua identity, or consciousness qua consciousness. They are perceived or
experienced directly, but grasped conceptually.
Questions:
1. The genus of axiomatic concept should be the same as that given for concept, shouldn't it? That was given as
"mental integration" (p13), but no where is it found in our definition of "axiomatic concept". If axiomatic
concepts are *concepts*, which they are, then they should have the same genus. We need to formulate the
definition of the concept so as to include the genus.
2. Is Ayn Rand being redundant when she says "first and primary axiomatic concepts"? How are these words
different from "fundamental", which she also uses?
3. What exactly is meant by "implicit" in "implicit in every state of awareness"?
4. What exactly is meant by "corollary" in "[identity] is a corollary of existence"?
5. After admitting that they can't be "proven", can't we make a stronger claim than attribute 5, replacing
"requires no" with something stronger?
6. An on-going project: after making sure that the list of attributes given above is complete (is it?), it would be
interesting to detail other concepts that fail to be axiomatic concepts, even while they are "identifications of a
primary fact of reality, which cannot be analyzed". It would be interesting to see a conceptual web develop that
would detail which attributes are missing from these near-axiomatic concepts. Some possible candidates include
perceptual and introspective-experiential concepts (e.g. desire, urge, anxiety, pleasure/pain), time, space/place,
volition, direction, entity, unit, life, motion, change, being, substance, quantity, quality, shape, relation, faculty,
function, event, action, phenomenon, cause/effect, equal, matter, intention, awareness, state, position,
modality, similarity/ difference, ...
II. HOW ARE AXIOMATIC CONCEPTS FORMED?
Ayn Rand notes that these concepts involve an abstraction of a very special sort: "...not the abstraction of an
attribute from a group of existents, but of a basic fact from all facts. Existence and identity are *not attributes* of
existents, they *are* the existents. Consciousness is an attribute of certain living entities, but it is not an attribute
of a given state of awareness, it *is* that state"(p56). The units for these concepts are every entity, attribute,
action, event or phenomenon that exists (for "existence" and "identity") and every state or process of awareness
that one experiences, has ever experienced or will ever experience.
There *is* a process of measurement omission: that which is omitted from axiomatic concepts "are all the
measurements of all the existents they subsume; what is retained metaphysically is only a fundamental fact,
epistemologically only one category of measurement, omitting its particulars: *time*, i.e. the fundamental fact is
retained independent of any particular moment of awareness."(p56)
Questions:
1. Ayn Rand's position seems to be that existence (and identity) is not an attribute of an object. This is a common
question amongst philosophers and is usually raised as "Is existence a predicate?". Why then does she say "The
units of the concepts "existence" are every entity, ..., *that exists*..."? This seems to be acknowledging existence
as an attribute of entities. This raises a favorite topic of mine: modes of existence. This doesn't just apply to
questions of ontological categories (e.g., in what way do relations "exist"), but also questions concerning
"fictional existence" (i.e. is it reasonable to have such a concept).
2. Regarding the measurement-omission: What is left when we omit "all the measurements"? Miss Rand's
answer is "a fundamental fact"; but what does this mean? What is the fundamental fact that remains?
Regarding the one category of measurements that remains, that of *time*: why isn't this considered a part of
"all the measurements"? Did she mean "all...except its temporal measurement"? Later she mentions "implicit
psychological time measurements"(p56-7): is this what she means here? If so, this seems to be the answer, for it
isn't an attribute of the object but rather of the awareness of the object. I found this section (on p56-7) to be very
confusing.
III. WHAT ARE THE FUNCTIONS OF AXIOMATIC CONCEPTS?
Miss Rand states that axiomatic concepts are the *constants* of man's consciousness. They are the *cognitive
integrators* that identify and thus serve to protect its continuity. She relates this back to the fact stated earlier
that axiomatic concepts have as their omitted measurement the implicit psychological time measurements (p56-
7).
Axiomatic concepts have a second function: they "identify the precondition of knowledge: the distinction
between existence and consciousness, between reality and the awareness of reality, between the object and the
subject of cognition. Axiomatic concepts are the foundation of *objectivity*."(p57) Later they are described as the
"foundation of reason" (p.60) [NOTE: perhaps it is more accurate to say that *man* identifies the precondition of
knowledge..., *by way* of axiomatic concepts].
A third function of axiomatic concepts is the underscoring of primary facts of reality: that something *exists*,
that *something* exists, and that I am conscious.
Questions:
1. Wouldn't it be great to see an essay entitled "Axiomatic Concepts as the Foundations of Objectivity"? Yet
another example of why this treatise is only an "Introduction".
2. See Question #2 in section II.
3. Can somebody explain to me in what way the axiomatic concepts are constants of man's consciousness? As
concepts they must be open-ended, right? Are they only "constants" in an attenuated sense? If so, in what
context and what is meant by that description?
IV. WHY DOES MAN NEED AXIOMATIC CONCEPTS?
Axiomatic concepts each designate a fundamental fact. While this is so, Miss Rand states that "axiomatic
concepts are the products of an *epistemological* need - the need of a volitional, conceptual consciousness
which is capable of error and doubt."(p.58) For this reason man's consciousness needs axiomatic concepts to
embrace and delimit the entire field of its awareness - to delimit it from the void of unreality to which
conceptual errors can lead. They are epistemological guidelines that sum up the essence of all human cognition:
"something *exists* of which I am *conscious*; I must discover its *identity*.(p.58-9)
Questions:
1. Wouldn't it be interesting to hear discussion on the topic of "Axiomatic concepts as necessary conditions of
human survival", one that would take an evolutionary biology slant (tying in the discussion of Miss Rand's
assertion concerning animals, pg. 58)?
Additional comments:
This chapter had its share of unsupported assertions. Many involve assertions about "animals", which is typical
of Ayn Rand. I almost always agree with the essence of her points, but I would like to see empirical evidence so
we know how to chop up the animal kingdom, i.e. is it really man and non-man? Others involve "logical
positivists", "logical atomists", "modern philosophy", "modern philosophers", "the works of Kant and Hegel",
and various existentialists (judging by her tone, these folks often seem to be the aforementioned "animals"!).
All of these assertions, while simply assertions as found in the chapter, would make for very interesting essays/
articles indeed! So get cracking everyone!
Please bring up any other questions you have about this chapter; don't feel restricted to the many I have raised.
Note: all citations are from the 2nd edition.

Chapter Seven: The Cognitive Role of Concepts
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology Compilation
by Andrew Breese

Date: Mon, 19 Jun 1995 17:45:06 -0500
From: N. ANDREW BREESE ST547@Jetson.UH.EDU
To: Multiple recipients of list AYN-RAND AYN-RAND@IUBVM.UCS.INDIANA.EDU
Subject: IOE 7
Earning its place in ItOE, this chapter is the most concerned with the value of concepts. It is a wide-ranging
discussion of the ways our minds *use* concepts, with many suggestions for improving that utility. Indicating
the fundamentality of concepts within O'ist epistemology, Rand stated, "The issue of concepts...is philosophy's
central issue. Since man's knowledge is gained and held in conceptual form, the validity of man's knowledge
depends on the validity of concepts." (1, Expanded Second Edition, Meridian)
Overview of the Summary:
Chapter seven treats crow epistemology (unit-economy), the relation of mathematics to conceptualization,
definition by essentials, learning as automatizing, concepts as including "yet-to-be-discovered characteristics of a
given group of existents," language as "primarily a tool of cognition - not of communication," the categories of
existents for which individual concepts must be formed, Rand's Razor, "Borderline Case" problems as evading
cognition's purpose, and the precise tasks of epistemology.
The Summary:
Rand points out that a mind can only focus on so much at any given time. Crows apparently can discriminate
between one man, two men, three men, and more-than-three men - but not between four men and five men (in
their short-term memory). Humans have a slightly greater perceptual comparative ability; the oft-cited
cognitive psychology result is seven plus or minus two units. Concepts, though, allow us to keep track of any
number of perceptual events. It is possible for us to accurately remember and analyze any event without ever
holding more than a few concepts in focus at once. If I were counting crows (up to a ten digit number, say - I
know I can remember a phone number), I would just have to keep track of one number at any point and be able
to add one to it. "The essence, therefore, of man's incomparable cognitive power is the ability to reduce a vast
amount of information to a minimal number of units - which is the task performed by his conceptual faculty."
(63) Rand calls this reduction to a minimal number of units: unit-economy.
"Mathematics is a science of *method* (the science of measurement, i.e., of establishing quantitative
relationships), a cognitive method that enables man to perform an unlimited series of integrations...
Conceptualization is a *method* of expanding man's consciousness by reducing the number of its content's
units - a systematic means to an unlimited number of integrations." (64) Mathematics is based on the idea that
some existents are commensurable - that it is meaningful and useful to compare those existents.
Conceptualizing is based on the fact that it is meaningful and useful to treat some existents in exactly the same
way in certain situations - that some existents are not just commensurable, but practically equivalent.
Mathematics requires conceptualizing.
"It is the principle of unit-economy that necessitates the definition of concepts in terms of *essential*
characteristics." (65) If one is to later focus only on the definition of a concept (which is the most precise way of
applying the concept while still keeping the number of units minimal), that definition should be carefully
selected.
More generally, because we each automatically rely on our previous reasoning, all new understanding should
be carefully reached. "[A]ll learning involves a process of automatizing, i.e., of first acquiring knowledge by fully
conscious, focused attention and observation, then of establishing mental connections which make that
knowledge automatic (instantly available as a context), thus freeing man's mind to pursue further, more
complex knowledge." (65)
This chapter's most complex point is, "Concepts stand for specific kinds of existents, including *all* the
characteristics of these existents, observed and not-yet-observed, known and unknown." (65) Rand further
clarifies in her summary at ItOE's end, "Concepts represent condensations of knowledge, 'open-end'
classifications that subsume *all* the characteristics of their referents, the known and the yet- to-be-discovered;
this permits further study and the division of cognitive labor." (86) This is puzzling on its face because Rand
also defines a concept as "a mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing
characteristic(s), with their particular measurements omitted." (13) We are left to reconcile "including *all* the
characteristics" with "particular measurements omitted." My thought is that "*all* the characteristics" refers
only to those characteristics possessed by all of the existents subsumed by a concept, which Rand elsewhere calls
distinguishing characteristics. "Particular measurements," on the other hand, refers to those characteristics of
one or some, but not all, of the subsumed existents. For example, "able to use reason" is included in the concept
of man, while "open to rational argument regarding the existence of God" is not.
On the purpose of language, Rand writes, "Concepts and, therefore, language are *primarily* a tool of cognition-
-*not* of communication, as is usually assumed...*Cognition precedes communication;* the necessary
precondition of communication is that one have something to communicate." (69) An understanding does not
become a concept and a unit until a word or other perceptual symbol is tied to it. Language is therefore vital for
unit-economy and thus for thought of any complexity.
Rand provides a list of categories of existents for which concepts should definitely be formed, then ties them
together with, "These [categories] represent existents with which men have to deal constantly, in many different
contexts, from many different aspects, either in daily physical action or, more crucially, in mental action and
further study." (70) This clearly ties concept-formation to its later use and is a great example of the ethics buried
in epistemology.
Emphasizing that each concept should have an important CCD, "[N]either the essential similarities nor the
essential differences among existents may be ignored, evaded or omitted once they have been observed. Just as
the requirements of cognition forbid the arbitrary subdivision of concepts, so they forbid the arbitrary
integration of concepts into a wider concept by means of obliterating their *essential* differences." (71) Rand
then rephrases this in terms of a double-edged demand for "necessity" in concept- formation, as her
epistemological "razor." (72) Presumably, "necessity" is tested for by weighing "[t]he descriptive complexity of a
given group of existents, the frequency of their use, and the requirements of [further study]." (70) It is interesting
that concept formation (an action studied at the base of epistemology) properly rests on value judgments.
Rand shows that borderline cases do not threaten her theory of concepts, by arguing that only "traditional-realist
theories of universals, which claim that concepts are determined by and refer to archetypes or metaphysical
essences" are refuted by such puzzlers. (74) Applying the doctrine of necessity based mostly on the requirements
of further study, one can objectively determine how to classify each borderline case; in the absence of necessity
either way, one has classification options, none of which challenge the objectivity of the concepts which *are*
formed by cognitive necessity.
This chapter closes with a concise list of the tasks of epistemology, pointing the way toward future work: "to
keep order in the organization of man's conceptual vocabulary, suggest the changes or expansions of
definitions, formulate the principles of cognition and the criteria of science, protect the objectivity of methods
and of communications within and among the special sciences, and provide the guidelines for the integration
of mankind's knowledge." (74) Rand further distills these tasks as the integration and guardianship of man's
knowledge.
=================================================================
N. Andrew Breese st547@jetson.uh.edu
Intellectual honesty consists in taking ideas seriously.
To take ideas seriously means that you intend to live by, to
*practice*, any idea you accept as true. - Ayn Rand
=================================================================

Nick DiSpoldo, Small Press Review (on "Children, Churches and Daddies," April 1997) Kuypers is the widely-published poet of particular perspectives and not a little existential rage, but she does not impose her personal or artistic agenda on her magazine. CC+D is a provocative potpourri of news stories, poetry, humor, art and the "dirty underwear" of politics. One piece in this issue is "Crazy," an interview Kuypers conducted with "Madeline," a murderess who was found insane, and is confined to West Virginia's Arronsville Correctional Center. Madeline, whose elevator definitely doesn't go to the top, killed her boyfriend during sex with an ice pick and a chef's knife, far surpassing the butchery of Elena Bobbitt. Madeline, herself covered with blood, sat beside her lover's remains for three days, talking to herself, and that is how the police found her. For effect, Kuypers publishes Madeline's monologue in different-sized type, and the result is something between a sense of Dali's surrealism and Kafka-like craziness.

Debra Purdy Kong, writer, British Columbia, Canada
I like the magazine a lot. I like the spacious lay-out and the different coloured pages and the variety of writer's styles. Too many literary magazines read as if everyone graduated from the same course. We need to collect more voices like these and send them everywhere.

Ed Hamilton, writer #85 (of children, churches and daddies) turned out well. I really enjoyed the humor section, especially the test score answers. And, the cup-holder story is hilarious. I'm not a big fan of poetry - since much of it is so hard to decipher - but I was impressed by the work here, which tends toward the straightforward and unpretentious. As for the fiction, the piece by Anderson is quite perceptive: I liked the way the self-deluding situation of the character is gradually, subtly revealed. (Kuypers') story is good too: the way it switches narrative perspective via the letter device is a nice touch.

Children, Churches and Daddies.
It speaks for itself.
Write to Scars Publications to submit poetry, prose and artwork to Children, Churches and Daddies literary magazine, or to inquire about having your own chapbook, and maybe a few reviews like these.

Jim Maddocks, GLASGOW, via the Internet I'll be totally honest, of the material in Issue (either 83 or 86 of Children, Churches and Daddies) the only ones I really took to were Kuypers'. TRYING was so simple but most truths are, aren't they?

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what is veganism?
A vegan (VEE-gun) is someone who does not consume any animal products. While vegetarians avoid flesh foods, vegans don't consume dairy or egg products, as well as animal products in clothing and other sources.

why veganism?
This cruelty-free lifestyle provides many benefits, to animals, the environment and to ourselves. The meat and dairy industry abuses billions of animals. Animal agriculture takes an enormous toll on the land. Consumtion of animal products has been linked to heart disease, colon and breast cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and a host of other conditions.

so what is vegan action?
We can succeed in shifting agriculture away from factory farming, saving millions, or even billions of chickens, cows, pigs, sheep turkeys and other animals from cruelty.
We can free up land to restore to wilderness, pollute less water and air, reduce topsoil reosion, and prevent desertification.
We can improve the health and happiness of millions by preventing numerous occurrences od breast and prostate cancer, osteoporosis, and heart attacks, among other major health problems.

A vegan, cruelty-free lifestyle may be the most important step a person can take towards creatin a more just and compassionate society. Contact us for membership information, t-shirt sales or donations.

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C Ra McGuirt, Editor, The Penny Dreadful Review (on Children, Churches and Daddies) CC&D is obviously a labor of love ... I just have to smile when I go through it. (Janet Kuypers) uses her space and her poets to best effect, and the illos attest to her skill as a graphic artist. "I really like ("Writing Your Name"). It's one of those kind of things where your eye isn't exactly pulled along, but falls effortlessly down the poem. I liked "knowledge" for its mix of disgust and acceptance. Janet Kuypers does good little movies, by which I mean her stuff provokes moving imagery for me. Color, no dialogue; the voice of the poem is the narrator over the film.

Children, Churches and Daddies no longer distributes free contributor's copies of issues. In order to receive issues of Children, Churches and Daddies, contact Janet Kuypers at the cc&d e-mail addres. Free electronic subscriptions are available via email. All you need to do is email ccandd@aol.com... and ask to be added to the free cc+d electronic subscription mailing list. And you can still see issues every month at the Children, Churches and Daddies website, located at http://scars.tv

Also, visit our new web sites: the Art Gallery and the Poetry Page.

Mark Blickley, writer The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. "Scars" is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

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MIT Vegetarian Support Group (VSG)

functions:
* To show the MIT Food Service that there is a large community of vegetarians at MIT (and other health-conscious people) whom they are alienating with current menus, and to give positive suggestions for change.
* To exchange recipes and names of Boston area veg restaurants
* To provide a resource to people seeking communal vegetarian cooking
* To provide an option for vegetarian freshmen

We also have a discussion group for all issues related to vegetarianism, which currently has about 150 members, many of whom are outside the Boston area. The group is focusing more toward outreach and evolving from what it has been in years past. We welcome new members, as well as the opportunity to inform people about the benefits of vegetarianism, to our health, the environment, animal welfare, and a variety of other issues.

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Gary, Editor, The Road Out of Town (on the Children, Churches and Daddies Web Site) I just checked out the site. It looks great.

Dusty Dog Reviews: These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding.

John Sweet, writer (on chapbook designs) Visuals were awesome. They've got a nice enigmatic quality to them. Front cover reminds me of the Roman sculptures of angels from way back when. Loved the staggered tire lettering, too. Way cool. (on "Hope Chest in the Attic") Some excellent writing in "Hope Chest in the Attic." I thought "Children, Churches and Daddies" and "The Room of the Rape" were particularly powerful pieces.

C Ra McGuirt, Editor, The Penny Dreadful Review: CC&D is obviously a labor of love ... I just have to smile when I go through it. (Janet Kuypers) uses her space and her poets to best effect, and the illos attest to her skill as a graphic artist.

Cheryl Townsend, Editor, Impetus (on Children, Churches and Daddies) The new CC&D looks absolutely amazing. It's a wonderful lay-out, looks really professional - all you need is the glossy pages. Truly impressive AND the calendar, too. Can't wait to actually start reading all the stuff inside.. Wanted to just say, it looks good so far!!!

Dusty Dog Reviews: She opens with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, "Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment." Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers' very personal layering of her poem across the page.

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Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA
Indeed, there's a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there's a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

Mark Blickley, writer
The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. "Scars" is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.

Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book or chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers. We're only an e-mail away. Write to us.

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Brian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) I passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies') obvious dedication along this line admirable.

The Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology
The Solar Energy Research & Education Foundation (SEREF), a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., established on Earth Day 1993 the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology (CREST) as its central project. CREST's three principal projects are to provide:
* on-site training and education workshops on the sustainable development interconnections of energy, economics and environment;
* on-line distance learning/training resources on CREST's SOLSTICE computer, available from 144 countries through email and the Internet;
* on-disc training and educational resources through the use of interactive multimedia applications on CD-ROM computer discs - showcasing current achievements and future opportunities in sustainable energy development.
The CREST staff also does "on the road" presentations, demonstrations, and workshops showcasing its activities and available resources.
For More Information Please Contact: Deborah Anderson
dja@crest.org or (202) 289-0061

Brian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) I passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies') obvious dedication along this line admirable.

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Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA
"Hope Chest in the Attic" captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family.
"Chain Smoking" depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. "The room of the rape" is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

want a review like this? contact scars about getting your own book published.

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Paul Weinman, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) Wonderful new direction (Children, Churches and Daddies has) taken - great articles, etc. (especially those on AIDS). Great stories - all sorts of hot info!

The magazine Children Churches and Daddies is Copyright © through Scars Publications and Design. The rights of the individual pieces remain with the authors. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Okay, nilla wafer. Listen up and listen good. How to save your life. Submit, or I'll have to kill you.
Okay, it's this simple: send me published or unpublished poetry, prose or art work (do not send originals), along with a bio, to us - then sit around and wait... Pretty soon you'll hear from the happy people at cc&d that says (a) Your work sucks, or (b) This is fancy crap, and we're gonna print it. It's that simple!

Okay, butt-munch. Tough guy. This is how to win the editors over.
Hope Chest in the Attic is a 200 page, perfect-bound book of 13 years of poetry, prose and art by Janet Kuypers. It's a really classy thing, if you know what I mean. We also have a few extra sopies of the book "Rinse and Repeat", which has all the 1999 issues of cc&d crammed into one book. And you can have either one of these things at just five bucks a pop if you just contact us. It's an offer you can't refuse...

Carlton Press, New York, NY: HOPE CHEST IN THE ATTIC is a collection of well-fashioned, often elegant poems and short prose that deals in many instances, with the most mysterious and awesome of human experiences: love... Janet Kuypers draws from a vast range of experiences and transforms thoughts into lyrical and succinct verse... Recommended as poetic fare that will titillate the palate in its imagery and imaginative creations.
Mark Blickley, writer: The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. "Scars" is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing the book.

You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.
Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book and chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers - you can write for yourself or you can write for an audience. It's your call...

Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA: "Hope Chest in the Attic" captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family. "Chain Smoking" depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. "The room of the rape" is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

Dusty Dog Reviews, CA (on knife): These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding. Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

Dusty Dog Reviews (on Without You): She open with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, "Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment." Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers' very personal layering of her poem across the page.
Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

Debra Purdy Kong, writer, British Columbia, Canada (on Children, Churches and Daddies): I like the magazine a lot. I like the spacious lay-out and the different coloured pages and the variety of writer's styles. Too many literary magazines read as if everyone graduated from the same course. We need to collect more voices like these and send them everywhere.
Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA: Indeed, there's a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there's a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

Published since 1993 No racist, sexist or homophobic material is appreciated; we do accept work of almost any genre of poetry, prose or artwork, though we shy away from concrete poetry and rhyme for rhyme's sake. Do not send originals. Any work sent to Scars Publications on Macintosh disks, text format, will be given special attention over smail-mail submissions. There is no limit to how much you may submit at a time; previously published work accepted.