O mon bon dieu, but he is loud and intense down the bond the last couple hours!! He was last night from like 8p til almost 1a while I was watching Olympics coverage. (Obsessive Olympics watching is what's distracted me recently.  Sports I watch religiously: Packers games, all figure skating events all season, every World Cup soccer match, Olympics coverage. Luckily, both soccer World Cup and Olympics are like leap years rather than an annual fixation the way Packers and figure skating are. There are other sports events I'll watch and enjoy if they're on but those are the only ones I try to make sure I don't miss and will (re)schedule things around.). But then after like 1a or so, he got quieter down the bond except occasional reaching down it for love/comfort, I assumed he went to bed. (I did not sleep yet - I missed my window for getting to bed before sunrise would make me at an awkward amount of sleep, so then I just stayed up reading Ambrose Bierce Civil War Stories and the most recent Lang Leave poetry book The Gift of Everything. And then I had to take the dog out and then I was wide awake so I made brunch instead of sleeping. And. Well. Here we are and I've not slept in over 24hrs....)

Anyway. I don't actually know WHY he's been having peaks of love/need intensifying down the bond. I just know is. I'm not even going to theorize on why he might be doing that because theorizing might lead me to assuming and that's what I am fighting to make sure I don't do in regards to him. I want to know his truth, not blind myself with assumptions I make about it. 

So I won't hypothesize what he's up to or why he's full of love and need intensely flooding down the bond. But I will acknowledge is. And is, very loudly is.  

Anyway. I've been responding to the random influx by accepting it and hugging his energy and flooding back toward him how much I love him and wish all the best success at whatever his heart is set on. 

I'm currently finishing my coffee and reading some more. Ronald W. Merrill The Ideas of Ayn Rand - I'm curious to read the view of someone who claims to be a scientist and an objectivist through the various iterations of the "cult of Rand" in different generational milieus. This book was first published in 1991, most recent copyright renewal in 2003. I do actually own and have read all of Ayn Rand's published works, though I haven't reread any of them in close to a decade now. I own and have read them because 1) I enjoy reading philosophy 2) intellectual curiosity given how influential she has been in shaping socio-political-philosophical zeitgeist of the latter 20th century 3) I like to read philosophers/theologians/spiritualists in their own words because all interpretations/synopses are distorted by implicit bias 4) every good tactician recognizes the need to know thy enemy; many Libertarian narcissists turned racist-fascists claim to be influenced by her and I want to know what she said and how it is used to rationalize evil intents/actions. I draw the line of reading authors I find morally reprehensible at specific works and other authors that border into propaganda and give me the icks. Rand herself does not give me the icks, though many who blindly worship her or use her to justify their own agendas do give me the icks.  Anyway. This book encapsulation/analysis of her ideas from someone who claims to follow them throughout his life was in a little library and I picked it up out of curiosity as to what it says. 

There are aspects of objectivism that I like and consequences of it I abhor - this is true of many philosophers. I personally think where objectivism fails (like Nietzsche and nihilism and libertarianism generally) is at the intersection of competing values/selfishness. It is important to value free will and individualism and knowing one's own desires/morals and to have so much faith in a dream you won't stop until you make it manifest -- these are all things Rand gets right after decades of denying these truths. But not all dreams can be realized without causing harm of varying magnitudes to others. Some dreams are just sick and morally bankrupt. (Such as eugenics and fascism and genocidal murder in any of their forms.) So the problems arise at imposing those desires/morals/dreams and the consequences of them on others, especially when it gets coupled with an evangelical Christian style "holier than thou" mentality of elitism. When two or more people's needs/desires/dreams are at odds, how do you determine which should be prioritized? For all it's called objectivism and strives toward an Aristotelian style pseudo scientific objectivity, what it boils down to on its logical consequences is that the desires that should be prioritized are whoever is willing to most ruthlessly sacrifice everything else to achieve their values and desires. Any megalomaniac narcissist can single mindedly devote all their resources to a given desire/whim and cause great harm to others by it. Especially if you take such a rigid view of your own blindered "right side" that you lose sight of empathy and the harmful consequences of your actions/choices.  That way of dealing with competing desires makes it just another justification of power or money or social caste determining whose desires get priority and is why so many petty dictators seeking to impose their will on others are drawn to objectivism. So the good in her philosophy is overshadowed by the way her conclusions end up reinforcing being stuck within the master-slave dialectic and encouraging each individual to behave as the master trying to dominate all others into a slave by force of will. I believe this is a residue from her idealizing her early life in Russia before everything fell apart into suffering due to WWI and the revolution and living behind the iron curtain. Her golden memories of her childhood where aristocracy were put on pedestals so it was an unexamined premise that some people are simply born superior to others. From reading her words, I don't think she ever realized how thoroughly indoctrinated her subconscious was in the master-slave dialectic. Thus how all the good in her individualism could be turned to support anyone who claimed their greatest value is making themselves the master over others trying to make others conform to their narrow view. Because no matter the original intentions, anything can create evil if you don't consider the logical consequences of it. Especially when there's something as pernicious as master-slave dialectic in the implicit bias unexamined premises. 

Myself, I'm not interested in dominating others or being dominated by them and I'm not interested in reversing the dichotomy so each side can know both sides and you give the power to those who have been powerless - I'm interested in shattering the master-slave dialectic completely and instead having every living being approach every other living being as approaching an equal. Not communism since that puts the collective above the individual and thus all who serve the collective are now become the masters. The dichotomy itself of dominance versus subservience must be shattered to achieve the most beautiful dreams  of social justice -- so long as anyone strives to function within the roles of master-slave dialectic you will have oppression of those they see as beneath them and those they seek to manipulate/control. It's a radical respect for all individuals rather than a worshipping of one's own individuality and a "might makes right" approach to morality. I don't have a political "how to organize a social structure without any hierarchies" framework that doesn't dissolve into anarchism, I'm working at it from a spiritual philosophical frame of reference. Because you have to abolish the internalized master-slave dialectic first to stop people asserting their dominance over others because they're terrified of ending up beneath others. It's not any given political hierarchy system that is problematic per se, at least as far as I can tell, it's the corrosive influence of having power while acting under the mindset of an internalized master-slave dialectic. 

Anyway. That was the most random digression of what's inside my head.... I wandered incredibly far from my point. And all because of mentioning the book I'm reading today. And that's after drinking half the pot of coffee to help me focus rein in my associative ADHD shotgun patterns of thought. I spend more time contemplating random things like how to shatter the master-slave dialectic than most people ever realize. (Hello Mercury direct and the sun still in Aquarius. How you doing?) Be careful asking me what I'm thinking about unless you're int the mood for either really deep or really random - it's never anything in between. 

I'm going to go reheat my tepid coffee then read some more until whenever I head into work to get hours in for the week ahead. (My grandma has appointments on Tuesday and Thursday (originally wrote Friday, but it's actually Thursday) so I want to get hours in today to get a jump on the week to let the rest flow more easily around the immovable things.)  I just wanted to acknowledge I hear him and his love is loud again - and I love when he does that, whatever his reasons for it.