Slowly Going Bald

"Look, we're gonna spend half the night driving around the Hills looking for this one party, and you're gonna say it sucks, and we're all gonna leave and we're gonna go look for this other party. But all the parties and all the bars, they all suck. I spend half the night talking to some girl who's looking around the room to see if there's someone who's more important she should be talking to, and it's like I'm supposed to be all happy 'cause she's wearing a backpack."

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Living With An Objectivist: Lessons In Patience And Depression

One of my roommates is an Objectivist. The philosophy, set forth by Ayn Rand, states that man's highest goal is rational self-interest; sacrificing yourself for someone else or letting them sacrifice their selves for you is horribly wrong. Possessions go to those who have worked for them, who deserve them. By this reasoning Robin Hood was doubly evil because he (1) stole from the rich who had earned their wealth and (2) redistributed it to the poor who had not.

Why, yes, my roommate is a registered Republican. Why do you ask?

But here's the rub: my roommate is also a Christian. Granted, a kind of snooty one with a penchant for wine and sushi, but a self-professed Christian nonetheless. He claims to be a member of a denomination based on service to the poor, charity for the needy and a desire to unite all classes.

However, from the way he usually speaks and acts, I'd guess my roommate has a fundamental problem with the last being made first and the first being made last. How can he subscribe to a philosophy that encourages accumulation of material wealth and a religion that encourages you to give it all away? How can he sing these hymns on Sunday and on Monday express disdain for giving out money to a homeless beggar?

If anybody knows how I can get this little pissant to stop living such a gleefully hypocritical life, I'm open to suggestions. And don't say, "Set his bedroom on fire," because that didn't work.

4 Comments:

How about just asking him if he thinks he is being hypocritical and explain your thinking(in a really innocent, non-thretening way). Then you can walk away and watch as he slowly self destructs because logic has eaten away at his world view and religious guilt tears him apart from the inside.

Or he will realize that he isn't really a Christian, and that he just likes the idea of a benevolent God because he feels better when he occassionally aknowledges those little voices in his head.

Man, I hate those days.

PS what denomination is based on service to the poor?

By Master Baron Von Tuckenstein the First Esquire, at 7:22 AM, November 12, 2004

Send him out to visit me–I'm living in a house with 4 other women and devoting a year of my life to serving the poor (something that either doesn't sound like much fun or sounds snooty when I type it out like that). I perform footcare for homeless men twice a week, which is not the way I expected my life to turn out as I pursued that IMC degree at ACU. But there is great joy and great wisdom in homeless men, I have learned, and they can be pretty funny even when they're drunk. And if he wants to get my monthly newsletter, I'd be glad to send it to him.

By A. Lo, at 11:55 AM, November 22, 2004

Who are you, A. Lo?

By Dan Carlson, at 11:06 AM, November 24, 2004

Lol, sorry. Abby Lowe. Guess I got the address to your blog from Mel's profile a long time ago, and it's pretty well written, so I keep coming back. I'm in Oakland now doing inner-city mission work with a program called Mission Year. My blog's located at youtypedbutt.blogspot.com if you wanna check it out.

By A. Lo, at 8:45 PM, November 27, 2004

: Name: Dan Carlson; Location: Houston, Texas, United States

View my complete profile

...a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces....

O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.

--Look Homeward, Angel

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

--John Stuart Mill

We have all read in scientific books, and indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

--G.K. Chesterton

We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy.

--August Van Zorn

There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way.

Film lovers are sick people.

--Francois Truffaut