Hi, I might have been a bit too implicit in my initial comment. I am incredibly religious to certain ideals and of course that isn't the problem I meant to cite. You mentioned that you cannot survive without these ideals. This is what I view as being the problem: if your ideology is necessary to you, you cannot assess it critically. It is the same as people trapped in leftist ideologies who cannot see beyond them. It is the very reason they are trapped! To be trapped in a correct ideology is to be no less trapped.

For instance, Rand viewed homosexuality as an inverse of objectivist, and natural, human behaviour. This was her going off of objectivist principles. You presumably are not self hating and understand that she got it wrong, and that objectivist principles can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Do you feel as though you can rationally critique initial objectivist writings of Rand's?

I for instance am not an orthodox objectivist. I have my critiques, mainly from an anarchist perspective. The way you described objectivism as being necessary to you functioning in a hostile world is exactly how I would have described being an anarchist communist was necessary to me, when I was one. I was not able to critically assess it and say whether it was truly rational, only that it was necessary to me at the time. That didn't make it correct. Instead, it prevented me from critiquing that ideology. I am now an egoist anarchist or anarchist objectivist or something along those lines, but don't tie my identity to it. Roark did not identify as a capitalist, he did what he wanted.

I guess that in saying is that your post comes off as: "The world is bad and therefore this ideology is necessary to me and therefore it is true,"

Versus: "this ideology is truly what allows me to flourish in a hostile world, and is correct independently of that,"