Tradition. The "neo-conservatives" are now trying to tell us that America was the product of "faith in revealed truths" and of uncritical respect for the traditions of the past (!).
It is certainly irrational to use the "new" as a standard of value, to believe that an idea or a policy is good merely because it is new. But it is much more preposterously irrational to use the "old" as a standard of value, to claim that an idea or a policy is good merely because it is ancient. The "liberals" are constantly a.s.serting that they represent the future, that they are "new," "progressive," "forward-looking," etc.-and they denounce the "conservatives" as old-fashioned representatives of a dead past. The "conservatives" concede it, and thus help the "liberals" to propagate one of today"s most grotesque inversions: collectivism, the ancient, frozen, status society, is offered to us in the name of progress-while capitalism, the only free, dynamic, creative society ever devised, is defended in the name of stagnation .
The plea to preserve "Tradition" as such, can appeal only to those who have given up or to those who never intended to achieve anything in life. It is a plea that appeals to the worst elements in men and rejects the best: it appeals to fear, sloth, cowardice, conformity, self-doubt-and rejects creativeness, originality, courage, independence, self-reliance. It is an outrageous plea to address to human beings anywhere, but particularly outrageous here, in America, the country based on the principle that man must stand on his own feet, live by his own judgment, and move constantly forward as a productive, creative innovator.
The argument that we must respect "tradition" as such, respect it merely because it is a "tradition," means that we must accept the values other men have chosen, merely because other men have chosen them-with the necessary implication of: who are we to change them? The affront to a man"s self-esteem, in such an argument, and the profound contempt for man"s nature are obvious.
["Conservatism: An Obituary," CUI, 198.]
America was created by men who broke with all political traditions and who originated a system unprecedented in history, relying on nothing but the "unaided" power of their own intellect.
[ibid.]
See also AMERICA; ANTI-CONCEPTUAL MENTALITY; "CONSERVATIVES "; CULTURE; "ETHNICITY"; FAITH; HISTORY; INDIVIDUALISM; TRIBALISM.
Tribal Premise (in Economics). The basic premise of crude, primitive tribal collectivism [is] the notion that wealth belongs to the tribe or to society as a whole, and that every individual has the "right" to "partic.i.p.ate" in it.
[Review of Shirley Scheibla"s Poverty Is Where the Money Is, TO, Aug. 1969, 11.]
The tribal premise underlies today"s political economy. That premise is shared by the enemies and the champions of capitalism alike; it provides the former with a certain inner consistency, and disarms the latter by a subtle, yet devastating aura of moral hypocrisy-as witness, their attempts to justify capitalism on the ground of "the common good" or "service to the consumer" or "the best allocation of resources." (Whose resources?) If capitalism is to be understood, it is this tribal premise that has to be checked-and challenged.
Mankind is not an ent.i.ty, an organism, or a coral bush. The ent.i.ty involved in production and trade is man. It is with the study of man-not of the loose aggregate known as a "community"-that any science of the humanities has to begin.
["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 14.]
Political economists-including the advocates of capitalism-defined their science as the study of the management or direction or organization or manipulation of a "community"s" or a nation"s "resources." The nature of these "resources" was not defined; their communal ownership was taken for granted-and the goal of political economy was a.s.sumed to be the study of how to utilize these "resources" for "the common good."
The fact that the princ.i.p.al "resource" involved was man himself, that he was an ent.i.ty of a specific nature with specific capacities and requirements, was given the most superficial attention, if any. Man was regarded simply as one of the factors of production, along with land, forests, or mines-as one of the less significant factors, since more study was devoted to the influence and quality of these others than to his role or quality.
Political economy was, in effect, a science starting in midstream: it observed that men were producing and trading, it took for granted that they had always done so and always would-it accepted this fact as the given, requiring no further consideration-and it addressed itself to the problem of how to devise the best way for the "community" to dispose of human effort.
[ibid., 12.]
A great deal may be learned about society by studying man; but this process cannot be reversed: nothing can be learned about man by studying society-by studying the inter-relationships of ent.i.ties one has never identified or defined. Yet that is the methodology adopted by most political economists. Their att.i.tude, in effect, amounts to the unstated, implicit postulate: "Man is that which fits economic equations." Since he obviously does not, this leads to the curious fact that in spite of the practical nature of their science, political economists are oddly unable to relate their abstractions to the concretes of actual existence.
[Ibid., 15.]
See also CAPITALISM; COLLECTIVISM; "COMMON GOOD"; INDIVIDUALISM ; MAN; PRODUCTION; "REDISTRIBUTION" of WEALTH; SERVICE; TRIBALISM.
Tribalism. Tribalism (which is the best name to give to all the group manifestations of the anti-conceptual mentality) is a dominant element in Europe, as a reciprocally reinforcing cause and result of Europe"s long history of caste systems, of national and local (provincial) chauvinism, of rule by brute force and endless, b.l.o.o.d.y wars. As an example, observe the Balkan nations, which are perennially bent upon exterminating one another over minuscule differences of tradition or language. Tribalism had no place in the United States-until recent decades. It could not take root here, its imported seedlings were withering away and turning to slag in the melting pot whose fire was fed by two inexhaustible sources of energy: individual rights and objective law; these two were the only protection man needed.
["The Missing Link," PWNI, 51; pb 42.]
What are the nature and the causes of modern tribalism? Philosophically, tribalism is the product of irrationalism and collectivism. It is a logical consequence of modern philosophy. If men accept the notion that reason is not valid, what is to guide them and how are they to live? Obviously, they will seek to join some group-any group-which claims the ability to lead them and to provide some sort of knowledge acquired by some sort of unspecified means. If men accept the notion that the individual is helpless, intellectually and morally, that he has no mind and no rights, that he is nothing, but the group is all, and his only moral significance lies in selfless service to the group-they will be pulled obediently to join a group. But which group? Well, if you believe that you have no mind and no moral value, you cannot have the confidence to make choices-so the only thing for you to do is to join an unchosen group, the group into which you were born, the group to which you were predestined to belong by the sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient power of your body chemistry.
This, of course, is racism. But if your group is small enough, it will not be called "racism": it will be called "ethnicity."
["Global Balkanization," pamphlet, 5.]
A symptom of the tribal mentality"s self-arrested, perceptual level of development may be observed in the tribalists" position on language.
Language is a conceptual tool-a code of visual-auditory symbols that denote concepts. To a person who understands the function of language, it makes no difference what sounds are chosen to name things, provided these sounds refer to clearly defined aspects of reality. But to a tribalist, language is a mystic heritage, a string of sounds handed down from his ancestors and memorized, not understood. To him, the importance lies in the perceptual concrete, the souud of a word, not its meaning. He would kill and die for the privilege of printing on every postage stamp the word "postage" for the English-speaking and the word "postes" for the French-speaking citizens of his bilingual Canada. Since most of the ethnic languages are not full languages, but merely dialects or local corruptions of a country"s language, the distinctions which the tribalists fight for are not even as big as that.
But, of course, it is not for their language that the tribalists are fighting : they are fighting to protect their level of awareness, their mental pa.s.sivity, their obedience to the tribe, and their desire to ignore the existence of outsiders.
[Ibid., 8.]
It is obvious why the morality of altruism is a tribal phenomenon. Prehistorical men were physically unable to survive without clinging to a tribe for leadership and protection against other tribes. The cause of altruism"s perpetuation into civilized eras is not physical, but psycho-epistemological : the men of self-arrested, perceptual mentality are unable to survive without tribal leadership and "protection" against reality. The doctrine of self-sacrifice does not offend them: they have no sense of self or of personal value-they do not know what it is that they are asked to sacrifice-they have no firsthand inkling of such things as intellectual integrity, love of truth, personally chosen values, or a pa.s.sionate dedication to an idea. When they hear injunctions against "selfishness," they believe that what they must renounce is the brute, mindless whim-worship of a tribal lone wolf. But their leaders-the theoreticians of altruism-know better. Immanuel Kant knew it; John Dewey knew it; B. F. Skinner knows it; John Rawls knows it. Observe that it is not the mindless brute, but reason, intelligence, ability, merit, self-confidence, self-esteem that they are out to destroy.
Today, we are seeing a ghastly spectacle: a magnificent scientific civilization dominated by the morality of prehistorical savagery.
["Selfishness Without a Self," PWNI, 61; pb 50.]
See also ALTRUISM; AMERICA; AMORALISM; ANTI-CONCEPTUAL MENTALITY; COLLECTIVISM; "ETHNICITY"; INDIVIDUALISM; IRRATIONALISM; KANT, IMMANUEL; LANGUAGE; PSYCHO-EPISTEMOLOGY; RACISM; REASON; SELF; SELF-ESTEEM; SELFISHNESS; STATISM.
Truth. Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man"s only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.
[GS, FNI, 154; pb 126.]
Truth is the product of the recognition (i.e., identification) of the facts of reality. Man identifies and integrates the facts of reality by means of concepts. He retains concepts in his mind by means of definitions. He organizes concepts into propositions-and the truth or falsehood of his propositions rests, not only on their relation to the facts he a.s.serts, but also on the truth or falsehood of the definitions of the concepts he uses to a.s.sert them, which rests on the truth or falsehood of his designations of essential characteristics.
[ITOE, 63.].
The truth or falsehood of all of man"s conclusions, inferences, thought and knowledge rests on the truth or falsehood of his definitions.
[Ibid., 65.]
Every truth about a given existent(s) reduces, in basic pattern, to: "X is: one or more of the things which it is." The predicate in such a case states some characteristic(s) of the subject; but since it is a characteristic of the subject, the concept(s) designating the subject in fact includes the predicate from the outset. If one wishes to use the term "tautology" in this context, then all truths are "tautological." (And, by the same reasoning, all falsehoods are self-contradictions.) When making a statement about an existent, one has, ultimately, only two alternatives: "X (which means X, the existent, including all its characteristics) is what it is"-or: "X is not what it is." The choice between truth and falsehood is the choice between "tautology" (in the sense explained) and self-contradiction.
In the realm of propositions, there is only one basic epistemological distinction: truth vs. falsehood, and only one fundamental issue: By what method is truth discovered and validated? To plant a dichotomy at the base of human knowledge-to claim that there are opposite methods of validation and opposite types of truth [as do the advocates of the "a.n.a.lytic-synthetic" dichotomy] is a procedure without grounds or justification.
[Leonard Peikoff, "The a.n.a.lytic-Synthetic Dichotomy," ITOE, 136.]
The existence of human volition cannot be used to justify the theory that there is a dichotomy of propositions or of truths. Propositions about metaphysical facts, and propositions about man-made facts, do not have different characteristics qua propositions. They differ merely in their subject matter, but then so do the propositions of astronomy and of immunology. Truths about metaphysical and about man-made facts are learned and validated by the same process: by observation; and, qua truths, both are equally necessary. Some facts are not necessary, but all truths are.
Truth is the identification of a fact of reality. Whether the fact in question is metaphysical or man-made, the fact determines the truth: if the fact exists, there is no alternative in regard to what is true. For instance, the fact that the U.S. has 50 states was not metaphysically necessary-but as long as this is men"s choice, the proposition that "The U.S. has 50 states" is necessarily true. A true proposition must describe the facts as they are. In this sense, a "necessary truth" is a redundancy, and a "contingent truth" a self-contradiction.
[Ibid., 150.]
[Consider the catch phrase:] "It may be true for you, but it"s not true for me." What is the meaning of the concept "truth"? Truth is the recognition of reality. (This is known as the correspondence theory of truth.) The same thing cannot be true and untrue at the same time and in the same respect. That catch phrase, therefore, means: a. that the Law of Ident.i.ty is invalid; b. that there is no objectively perceivable reality, only some indeterminate flux which is nothing in particular, i.e., that there is no reality (in which case, there can be no such thing as truth); or c. that the two debaters perceive two different universes (in which case, no debate is possible). (The purpose of the catch phrase is the destruction of objectivity.) ["Philosophical Detection," PWNI, 16; pb 14.]
See also a.n.a.lYTIC-SYNTHETIC DICHOTOMY; CONCEPTS; CONTRADICTIONS; DEFINITIONS; EXISTENCE; FALSEHOOD; HONESTY; IDENt.i.tY; LOGIC; METAPHYSICAL vs. MAN-MADE; NECESSITY; OBJECTIVITY; PRIMACY of EXISTENCE vs. PRIMACY of CONSCIOUSNESS; PROPOSITIONS; REASON.
Tyranny. Tyranny is any political system (whether absolute monarchy or fascism or communism) that does not recognize individual rights (which necessarily include property rights). The overthrow of a political system by force is justified only when it is directed against tyranny: it is an act of self-defense against those who rule by force. For example, the American Revolution.
["From a Symposium," NL, 96.]
See also DICTATORSHIP; GOVERNMENT; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; PHYSICAL FORCE; POLITICS; PROPERTY RIGHTS; STATISM.
U.
Ultimate Value. An ultimate value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means-and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated. An organism"s life is its standard of value: that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is the evil.
Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means: a series of means going off into an infinite progression toward a nonexistent end is a metaphysical and epistemological impossibility. It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of "value" is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of "life." To speak of "value" as apart from "life" is worse than a contradiction in terms. "It is only the concept of "Life" that makes the concept of "Value" possible."
["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 7; pb 17.]
The maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are not two separate issues. To hold one"s own life as one"s ultimate value, and one"s own happiness as one"s highest purpose are two aspects of the same achievement. Existentially, the activity of pursuing rational goals is the activity of maintaining one"s life; psychologically, its result, reward and concomitant is an emotional state of happiness. It is by experiencing happiness that one lives one"s life, in any hour, year or the whole of it. And when one experiences the kind of pure happiness that is an end in itself-the kind that makes one think: "This is worth living for"-what one is greeting and affirming in emotional terms is the metaphysical fact that life is an end in itself.
[Ibid., 25; pb 29.]
See also EMOTIONS; GOAL-DIRECTED ACTION; HAPPINESS; HIERARCHY of KNOWLEDGE; LIFE; METAPHYSICAL; STANDARD of VALUE; "STOLEN CONCEPT," FALLACY of; VALUES.
Understanding. To understand means to focus on the content of a given subject (as against the sensory-visual or auditory-form in which it is communicated), to isolate its essentials, to establish its relationship to the previously known, and to integrate it with the appropriate categories of other subjects. Integration is the essential part of understanding.
The predominance of memorizing is proper only in the first few years of a child"s education, while he is observing and gathering perceptual material. From the time he reaches the conceptual level (i.e., from the time he learns to speak), his education requires a progressively larger scale of understanding and progressively smaller amounts of memorizing.
["The Comprachicos," NI 208.]
See also CONCEPTS; EDUCATION; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); KNOWLEDGE; LEARNING; PERCEPTION; REASON.
Unemployment. See Unions.
Unions. The artificially high wages forced on the economy by compulsory unionism imposed economic hardships on other groups-particularly on non-union workers and on unskilled labor, which was being squeezed gradually out of the market. Today"s widespread unemployment is the result of organized labor"s privileges and of allied measures, such as minimum wage laws. For years, the unions supported these measures and sundry welfare legislation, apparently in the belief that the costs would be paid by taxes imposed on the rich. The growth of inflation has shown that the major victim of government spending and of taxation is the middle cla.s.s. Organized labor is part of the middle cla.s.s-and the actual value of labor"s forced "social gains" is now being wiped out.
["A Preview," ARL, 1, 23, 2.]
Organized labor has been much more sensitive to the danger of government power and much more aware of ideological issues. Its spokesmen have fought the government in proper, morally confident terms whenever they saw a threat to their rights. (To name a few examples of such occasions: the attempt at labor conscription in World War II, the issue of U.S. contributions to the Soviet-dominated International Labor Organization, President Kennedy"s attempt to impose guidelines in the steel crisis of 1962.) Labor"s concern was aroused only in defense of its rights; still, whoever defends his own rights defends the rights of all. But labor was pursuing a contradictory policy, which could not be maintained for long. In many issues-notably in its support of welfare-state legislation - labor violated the rights of others and fertilized the growth of the government"s power. And, today, labor is in line to become the next major victim of advancing statism.
It was business, not labor, that initiated the policy of government intervention in the economy (as long ago as the nineteenth century)- and business was the first victim. Labor adopted the same policy and will meet the same fate. He who lives by a legalized sword, will perish by a legalized sword.
["The Moratorium on Brains, ARL, I, 3, 2.]
See also CAPITALISM; FREE MARKET; INFLATION; MIDDLE CLa.s.s; MONEY: POVERTY.
Unit. The ability to regard ent.i.ties as units is man"s distinctive method of cognition, which other living species are unable to follow.
A unit is an existent regarded as a separate member of a group of two or more similar members. (Two stones are two units; so are two square feet of ground, if regarded as distinct parts of a continuous stretch of ground.) Note that the concept "unit" involves an act of consciousness (a selective focus, a certain way of regarding things), but that it is not an arbitrary creation of consciousness: it is a method of identification or cla.s.sification according to the attributes which a consciousness observes in reality. This method permits any number of cla.s.sifications and cross-cla.s.sifications : one may cla.s.sify things according to their shape or color or weight or size or atomic structure; but the criterion of cla.s.sification is not invented, it is perceived in reality. Thus the concept "unit" is a bridge between metaphysics and epistemology: units do not exist qua units, what exists are things, but units are things viewed by a consciousness in certain existing relationships.
[ITOE, 7.].
With the grasp of the (implicit) concept "unit," man reaches the conceptual level of cognition which consists of two interrelated fields: the conceptual and the mathematical. The process of concept-formation is, in large part, a mathematical process.
[Ibid., 8.]
A "number" is a mental symbol that integrates units into a single larger unit (or subdivides a unit into fractions) with reference to the basic number of "one," which is the basic mental symbol of "unit." Thus "5" stands for. (Metaphysically, the referents of "5" are any five existents of a specified kind; epistemologically, they are represented by a single symbol.) [Ibid., 84.]
See also CONCEPT-FORMATION; CONCEPTS; EPISTEMOLOGY; IMPLICIT KNOWLEDGE; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); MEASUREMENT; METAPHYSICS; NUMBER; UNIT-ECONOMY; WORDS.
Unit-Economy. Since consciousness is a specific faculty, it has a specific nature or ident.i.ty and, therefore, its range is limited: it cannot perceive everything at once; since awareness, on all its levels, requires an active process, it cannot do everything at once. Whether the units with which one deals are percepts or concepts, the range of what man can hold in the focus of his conscious awareness at any given moment, is limited. The essence, therefore, of man"s incomparable cognitive power is the ability to reduce a vast amount of information to a minimal number of units-which is the task performed by his conceptual faculty. And the principle of unit-economy is one of that faculty"s essential guiding principles.
[ITOE, 83.].
In any given moment, concepts enable man to hold in the focus of his conscious awareness much more than his purely perceptual capacity would permit. The range of man"s perceptual awareness-the number of percepts he can deal with at any one time-is limited. He may be able to visualize four or five units-as, for instance, five trees. He cannot visualize a hundred trees or a distance of ten light-years. It is only his conceptual faculty that makes it possible for him to deal with knowledge of that kind.
["The Psycho-Epistemology of Art," RM, 19; pb 17. ]
Conceptualization is a method of expanding man"s consciousness by reducing the number of its content"s units-a systematic means to an unlimited integration of cognitive data.
A concept subst.i.tutes one symbol (one word) for the enormity of the perceptual aggregate of the concretes it subsumes. In order to perform its unit-reducing function, the symbol has to become automatized in a man"s consciousness, i.e., the enormous sum of its referents must be instantly (implicitly) available to his conscious mind whenever he uses that concept, without the need of perceptual visualization or mental summarizing-in the same manner as the concept "5" does not require that he visualize five sticks every time he uses it.
For example, if a man has fully grasped the concept "justice," he does not need to recite to himself a long treatise on its meaning, while he listens to the evidence in a court case. The mere sentence "I must be just" holds that meaning in his mind automatically, and leaves his conscious attention free to grasp the evidence and to evaluate it according to a complex set of principles. (And, in case of doubt, the conscious recall of the precise meaning of "justice" provides him with the guidelines he needs.) It is the principle of unit-economy that necessitates the definition of concepts in terms of essential characteristics. If, when in doubt, a man recalls a concept"s definition, the essential characteristic(s) will give him an instantaneous grasp of the concept"s meaning, i.e., of the nature of its referents.
[ITOE., 85.].
See also AUTOMATIZATION; CONSCIOUSNESS; DEFINITIONS; IDENt.i.tY; MEANING (of CONCEPTS); PSYCHO-EPISTEMOLOGY; "RAND"S RAZOR"; WORDS.
United Nations. Psychologically, the U.N. has contributed a great deal to the gray swamp of demoralization-of cynicism, bitterness, hopelessness, fear and nameless guilt-which is swallowing the Western world. But the communist world has gained a moral sanction, a stamp of civilized respectability from the Western world-it has gained the West"s a.s.sistance in deceiving its victims-it has gained the status and prestige of an equal partner, thus establishing the notion that the difference between human rights and ma.s.s slaughter is merely a difference of political opinion.
The declared goal of the communist countries is the conquest of the world. What they stand to gain from a collaboration with the (relatively) free countries is the latter"s material, financial, scientific, and intellectual resources; the free countries have nothing to gain from the communist countries. Therefore, the only form of common policy or compromise possible between two such parties is the policy of property owners who make piecemeal concessions to an armed thug in exchange for his promise not to rob them.
The U.N. has delivered a larger part of the globe"s surface and population into the power of Soviet Russia than Russia could ever hope to conquer by armed force. The treatment accorded to Katanga versus the treatment accorded to Hungary, is a sufficient example of U.N. policies. An inst.i.tution allegedly formed for the purpose of using the united might of the world to stop an aggressor, has become means of using the united might of the world to force the surrender of one helpless country after another into the aggressor"s power.
Who, but a concrete-bound epistemological savage, could have expected any other results from such an "experiment in collaboration"? What would you expect from a crime-fighting committee whose board of directors included the leading gangsters of the community?
["The Anatomy of Compromise," CUI, 148.]
When an inst.i.tution reaches the degree of corruption, brazen cynicism and dishonor demonstrated by the U.N. in its shameful history, to discuss it at length is to imply that its members and supporters may possibly be making an innocent error about its nature-which is no longer possible. There is no margin for error about a monstrosity that was created for the alleged purpose of preventing wars by uniting the world against any aggressor, but proceeded to unite it against any victim of aggression. The expulsion of a charter member, the Republic of China -an action forbidden by the U.N."s own Charter-was a "moment of truth," a naked display of the United Nations" soul.
What was Red China"s qualification for membership in the U.N.? "The fact that her government seized power by force, and has maintained it for twenty-two years by terror. What disqualified Nationalist China? The fact that she was a friend of the United States.
["The Shanghai Gesture," ARL, I, 14, 1.]
See also COMMUNISM; COMPROMISE; FOREIGN POLICY; SANCTION; SOVIET RUSSIA; WAR.
Universe. The universe is the total of that which exists-not merely the earth or the stars or the galaxies, but everything. Obviously then there can be no such thing as the "cause" of the universe....
Is the universe then unlimited in size? No. Everything which exists is finite, including the universe. What then, you ask, is outside the universe, if it is finite? This question is invalid. The phrase "outside the universe" has no referent. The universe is everything. "Outside the universe" stands for "that which is where everything isn"t." There is no such place. There isn"t even nothing "out there": there is no "out there."
[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), Lecture 2.]
To grasp the axiom that existence exists, means to grasp the fact that nature, i.e., the universe as a whole, cannot be created or annihilated, that it cannot come into or go out of existence. Whether its basic const.i.tuent elements are atoms, or subatomic particles, or some yet undiscovered forms of energy, it is not ruled by a consciousness or by will or by chance, but by the Law of Ident.i.ty. All the countless forms, motions, combinations and dissolutions of elements within the universe-from a floating speck of dust to the formation of a galaxy to the emergence of life-are caused and determined by the ident.i.ties of the elements involved. Nature is the metaphysically given-i.e., the nature of nature is outside the power of any volition.
["The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made," PWNI, 30; pb 25.]
See also CAUSALITY; EXISTENCE; IDENt.i.tY; INFINITY; METAPHYSICAL vs. MAN-MADE; METAPHYSICS; NATURE; s.p.a.cE; TIME.
U.S.S.R. See Soviet Russia.