Greetings and Felicitations,

While lookiing for a quote from a different thread I came across a lecture by Robert Heinlein. I always find his thoughts extremely fascinating and this is no exception.

Quotations from Heinlein's address at the U.S. Naval Academy (5 April 1973)
Sincerely Yours,
C. David Neely

__________________

Thats very good And i agree. But I wonder, what is the reverse idea... That my country must do something for ME... what does that fall under?

__________________

www.myspace.com/crusade7

If we are nothing but biological machines, here for one life and then gone with no essence left behind, then Heilein is correct and we should all embrace the Might is Right philosophy and work to ensure only our line of descendants thrives like the Pak Protectors did. But I don't buy it, I think social Darwinism is nonsense and that there is far more cooperation in the world than predation.

While we were all raised learning about the "fight or flight" response, new research has turned up a very different response in studies about women. It seems that women's brains are wired for something being called the "tend and befriend" response in which women with children often band together in emergencies to help each other and care for the children as a group even though this exposes them to imminent death. Heinlein's philosophy doesn't make any room for transcendence, it anchors us in an animal reality with the lowest common denominator. If I truly believed Heinlein's philosophy I would take my own life immediately because as a transsexual woman I have no children and no hope of having children, I don't desire money or power, I have no vices to which I am wed, and I think that the culture in which I live is quite insane. Heinlein believes in a world that is not designed for those who are cursed with self-awareness.

__________________
The apocalypse is coming... we're gonna need more ammo.

I adore Heinlein - of course he was still alive when I was reading his books. I grew up on his juveniles - they are quite an odd read now. Did you know he was physically ill most of his life - fascinating character. Created Jubal Harshaw as an alter ego. He is a classic 50's patriot - a Goldwater republican. Poor man was quiet distraught that hippies grokked on his lawn, in droves.

He is what was once called right wing - and now would be an uberlibretarian/never trust the govt green. Have you ever read his list of what every civilized human should have to be able to do - something like build a cabin, birth a baby, slaughter an animal, sew clothing...it was great!

__________________
And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it." --George W. Bush, Jan. 29, 2007

Yes, I think that list was in his book TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE. Did you know he was an accomplished pilot? In fact he and some pilot friends bought a specially equipped multi-engine plane that had every kind of electronic device available at the time and they had a disconcerting experience in the Bermuda Triangle. Between them they had tens of thousands of hours of flight time, but none of them had ever seen a fog like they flew into while crossing the Triangle. None of their hi-tech equipment worked, even the simple compass was spinning in slow circles, with no radio contact and zero visibility they were completely lost. Eventually they flew out of the fog and everything worked again. He wrote an article about their experience that was published in FATE magazine.

__________________
The apocalypse is coming... we're gonna need more ammo.

he also made a case for world patriotism... like self sacrifice for mankind in general... in my view patriotism is simply an ideal, willingness to self sacrifice for the good of your people, or your planet. It does not really mean anything else.. it has nothing to do with blindly following orders or sense of superiority... its loyalty to a certain cause you believe is for the greater good of your nation, and of humanity.

__________________

www.myspace.com/crusade7

In answer to the objection regarding Heinlein's morality as requiring anybody to either have children or die, my wife and I don't have children and in fact neither did Heinlein and his two wives. Heinlein believed having children was
inherently morally superior to not having children because there is nothing that more objectively ensures human survival than having children. That
doesn't mean people who don't have children can't also do things beneficial
for human survival like invent moon rockets or just helping families pay their
bills by patronizing their family businesses or being a professional soldier like
I was for 20 years defending other people's families from being murdered by
heavily armed psychopaths trying to rob them or enslave them to systems
not beneficial to human survival like Orwellian Dictatorships or Dark Age
Theocracies. Furthermore, if the human race survives long enough and
continues our so far constant technological and scientific progress we'll
logically create a utopian society where all things human beings want to do
may be possible someday including raising us all back to life to share in their
worldly paradice so helping human survival may ultimately be more beneficial
to any of us than simply being selfish hedonists until we die or having WW3. Being mortal human beings otherwise destined to die, what's to lose?

The real beauty of Heinlein's Pragmatics of Patriotism is that it provides us
all with a basic common ground for making values judgments that doesn't
require any of us to agree on anything but our mutual desire to survive. We
don't need to have any Orwellian thought police forcing everybody in the
world to agree with us in all things which has about zero probabability of ever happening given that its never happened in human history, would require centralizing almost Godlike power in some global dictator who might go mad
with power and kill us all off like meglomaniacal dictators usually try to do,
and would certainly be violently opposed by anybody aware of that threat
to their own survival. There is no more transcendant universally held value
than our individual and collective survival instinct. If anybody truly wants to
die more than survive than they'll be inherently more likely to die than the
rest of us and when the opinions of the dead conflict with the opinions of
the living, the dead will always be outvoted in any election referendum.
There are many possible ways to survive and diversity increases our odds of collective survival. The only view always clearly wrong is a Mass Suicide Cult.

This "selfishness is moral" nonsense seems to pop up whenever some right-winger is up on his hind legs channeling Ayn Rand.

Selfishness is indifference to others. If you care about some larger group then you can't be selfish. That would contradict your indifference to others.

If selfishness is the bedrock of moral behavior then by definition it can never be immoral.

He obviously fell into the trap of thinking that selfishness = strength, then had to do some fancy footwork to justify still caring about family and country.

__________________
"Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity, myself especially, are in a state of shock and disbelief." - Alan Greenspan