Greetings!

[Zarkary]

Hello TTI!

My name is Zarkary, you can call me Zark for short. I recently applied to TTI this week and am very excited to hear the Boards decision. I figured I'd post an official introduction so everyone could get a sense of me.

I've been playing EVE off and on for a little over a year now and have just settled down with a character I know fits my personal interests. Overall my goal is make billions of ISK and mow down those that get in my way. My plan is to fly haulers, exhumers and covert ops. And of course to have hauler loads of fun doing it! I can't imagine playing in anything but O.O space because of the immense challenges it presents. The words "Red in Local" bring chills of excitement.

In real life I have been a student of Objectivism for nearly 3 years. The philosophy of Ayn Rand changed my life. I went to a strict Christian college where I read Atlas Shrugged my senior year. After that I began reading VoS and following Leonard Peikoff and the OO.net forums. Christians always speak about "filling the void in your life." But they have no idea what it is like to actually fill that void.

Anyhow, I could go on for a while. I sincerely hope to carry the TTI logo next to my avatar. To find a corp of individuals who are legitimately devoted to reason and reality has brought a whole new, better purpose for playing EVE to me.

Feel free to ask me anything, I don't take things personally (I'm in business management, I have to be able to do that).

~Zark

[musashi]

Welcome to the forums Zarkary, and welcome to TTI.

The transition from a religious college experience to Objectivist thinking is quite an extreme transition. How did your family and friends react to the changes in your thinking? Have you maintained a connection to religion?

[Zarkary]

Not surprisingly to me and in likeness to other Oist experiences I have read, my family just looked off afar and said things like "you'll understand someday." No one could ever defend themselves, they always referred to vague ideas. They still think this way of course, saying I'm "just searching." They do what I equivocate as "blanking out." My idea wields the power to shatter their thought structure so they simply imagine a new, blurrier idea. Eventually I gave up talking to many people on the subject. I have maintained a couple close family members that seem to hold nothing against me, or at most don't even care.

The only connection I've kept with religion is the twice a year church visit with some family (Easter and Christmas). The church they attend happens to have lessons more akin to a poor philosophy class than your standard religious drivel. So I typically have fun pulling the ideas apart in my head to pass the time. It's definitely something I'm still working out of my life. I know what is right of course, but acting on it is a whole different ballgame. I've come really far, so far I don't consider attending a couple services a year to spend time with otherwise valued people to be a terrible thing.

However, this past Easter may have been the final straw. Something about all those people singing worship songs struck a deep chord. It's so mindless it's scary.

Z

[musashi]

I think Christianity really struck a chord when they named the “fruit of forbidden knowledge” right from the beginning in the Garden of Eden. The framers of the religion must have known that a clear thinking person would reject the tenant of blind faith and so they outlawed certain thoughts.

Yeah I have to occasionally attend services, and while the family generally knows that I do not keep the faith. They really have no idea just how silly I think the whole thing is. I hold back my opinions just because I know that they are not strong enough to cope with our differences of opinion.

[Kushan]

Well, at least you are living more honestly than me. My family still doesn't realize I'm an atheist :p. And holy crap, you're a tougher man than me - actually attending church?!? I became adept at creating excuses to get out of that while I was still a believer

[musashi]

If the family can lie to themselves every day, I figure it is not too much of a burden to attend them once in a while (a few times a year) and abide in silence. Mind you I don’t put money in the plate.

The truth I’ve come to understand is that each of us sets boundaries in the truths that we allow to confront us. In the case of my zealous family, they gain an illusion of serenity by embracing a fiction. I decided long ago that confronting their views would just alienate us and shatter a fragile structure that they depend on. Ever see or read Tennessee William’s play The Glass Menagerie?

I do believe that good things come from religions, even though I am not a believer of religions.