A deathly hush?


anthony

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I noticed a press release came out about the "lost" Ayn Rand novel Ideal (it was lost in the ARI archives) and sucked up the air in the mainstream news for Rand-related items.

What made my antenna wiggle was the fact that the book will come out next year, in July 2015, yet the press release was sent out right after NB passed away.

Here's a typical article from USA Today based on the press release: 'Lost' Ayn Rand novel to be published.

I could be making too much of a stretch about this, though.

If strong hatred and spite by others are involved, I acquire a causal theory bias when processing coincidences.

Michael

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*boggle*

... What am I missing, here? I don't get it. O.o

JJ,

Boggle?

We certainly can't have that, now can we?

Let's unboggle you.

Nathaniel Branden was extremely important to the life and work of Ayn Rand. Since he recently died, one would imagine the institution carrying the name of Ayn Rand would mention his passing in some form. It's not a matter of sanction or approval, but relevance.

As to the press, when Barbara passed away, there were notices all over the mainstream. (Google this if you don't believe me. Google is your friend.) Other than an article in The Huffington Post by Jim Peron, Nathaniel's passing has received no notices so far that I'm aware of.

Many people on OL participated in months and years of bickering with some real boneheaded people like James Valliant and his defenders. These boneheads could get quite petty. I don't feel like going into all that irrationality anymore, so you're on your own with this one. But Google it if you are interested. There's plenty to read. Google is your friend.

The comments on this thread reflect judgments made over time of extended interaction with representatives of ARI insiders and sometimes the insiders themselves.

I hope that helps unboggle some of the confusion.

Michael

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I did also, Tony.

Adam, you were disappointed, too? For me, naive as it seems, it would have been the right moment for a simple gesture of respect - and who knows, reconciliation. Michael called it correctly: Nathaniel's "relevance". If nothing else.

To say nothing of objective justice, a virtue taken seriously in these parts - employed more for praise than censure, hopefully.

Ah well, I have confidence that one day the Split and all that surrounded it will be a footnote to Objectivist history.

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I did also, Tony.

Adam, you were disappointed, too? For me, naive as it seems, it would have been the right moment for a simple gesture of respect - and who knows, reconciliation. Michael called it correctly: Nathaniel's "relevance". If nothing else.

To say nothing of objective justice, a virtue taken seriously in these parts - employed more for praise than censure, hopefully.

Ah well, I have confidence that one day the Split and all that surrounded it will be a footnote to Objectivist history.

Peikoff was a pathetic, think of a dildo that has the same letter "p," when I would run into him cerrttain cirlces and apparently he still is.

It was a perfect time to smooth over the dirt and plant a new tree, however, like I said a pathetic...

A...

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*boggle*

... What am I missing, here? I don't get it. O.o

JJ,

Boggle?

We certainly can't have that, now can we?

Let's unboggle you.

Nathaniel Branden was extremely important to the life and work of Ayn Rand. Since he recently died, one would imagine the institution carrying the name of Ayn Rand would mention his passing in some form. It's not a matter of sanction or approval, but relevance.

As to the press, when Barbara passed away, there were notices all over the mainstream. (Google this if you don't believe me. Google is your friend.) Other than an article in The Huffington Post by Jim Peron, Nathaniel's passing has received no notices so far that I'm aware of.

Many people on OL participated in months and years of bickering with some real boneheaded people like James Valliant and his defenders. These boneheads could get quite petty. I don't feel like going into all that irrationality anymore, so you're on your own with this one. But Google it if you are interested. There's plenty to read. Google is your friend.

The comments on this thread reflect judgments made over time of extended interaction with representatives of ARI insiders and sometimes the insiders themselves.

I hope that helps unboggle some of the confusion.

Michael

Thank, Michael!

I trust you on the boneheads bashing Branden here on OL—I've seen enough of it other places. It's honestly childish.

If they so believe their view of this philosophy is the correct one, and reason is on their side, they should welcome other viewpoints, as a chance to clarify what's what. That they don't perhaps foreshadows (there's a better word that goes there... can't think of it right now... grr) their insecurity.

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ARI has no moral and little intellectual gravitas. It represents the end of top-down Randian Objectivism. Kind of like a desert river dissipated in the sands.

Nathaniel was blown out of that situation in 1968; said it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Don't pine for ARI. Let it go. It's ersatz NBI nostalgia--second-hand if you ever had any NBI experience and third-hand if not. No going back to those days.

--Brant

(edited)

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ARI has no moral and little intellectual gravitas. It represents the end of top-down Randian Objectivism. Kind of like a desert river dissipating in the sands.

Nathaniel was blown out of that situation in 1968; said it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Don't pine for ARI. Let it go.

--Brant

Ok...can I still cry for Argentina?

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ARI has no moral and little intellectual gravitas. It represents the end of top-down Randian Objectivism. Kind of like a desert river dissipating in the sands.

Nathaniel was blown out of that situation in 1968; said it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Don't pine for ARI. Let it go.

--Brant

Ok...can I still cry for Argentina?

Nope.

--Brant

if you have to cry, cry--don't talk!

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It stinks either because the stink was built in or added on. Smells the same, I would imagine.

--Brant

esoteric trivia because ARI is trivial condemned to pettiness because Peikoff decided to sit on a throne others had built and vacated for different reasons, two were named Branden, one Rand--this thronism ruined official Objectivism leaving rationality in its wake as what was worth observing, considering, refining, expanding, describing, etc. as in JARS, and by the likes of Kelley, Sciabarra, Boydstun, et al.

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This strikes me as silly. Branden was a niche figure, popular with the (non-orthodox) Objectivist audience and with the pop-psych audience. He was not newsworthy in his own right even when he was turning out new books and publicizing them personally. A test of the present claim would be to see how the media handled his public doings and sayings on days when ARI did not issue press releases. Short answer: they didn't handle them.



It cuts both ways in any case. Alan Gotthelf belongs in Objectivist history for his part in bringing Rand into the academic big time. He co-founded and for many years chaired the ARS/APA and edited its anthologies. TAS cites him on several occasions but didn't note his death.



My guess is that ARI issued the press release to coincide with the publishers' settling on a cover design.

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This strikes me as silly. Branden was a niche figure, popular with the (non-orthodox) Objectivist audience and with the pop-psych audience. He was not newsworthy in his own right even when he was turning out new books and publicizing them personally. A test of the present claim would be to see how the media handled his public doings and sayings on days when ARI did not issue press releases. Short answer: they didn't handle them.

It cuts both ways in any case. Alan Gotthelf belongs in Objectivist history for his part in bringing Rand into the academic big time. He co-founded and for many years chaired the ARS/APA and edited its anthologies. TAS cites him on several occasions but didn't note his death.

My guess is that ARI issued the press release to coincide with the publishers' settling on a cover design.

Your last sentence may be correct.

--Brant

there is no "academic big time" except for the crypto-Marxists and grant hunters and big spenders

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I just took a look on SLOP (see here) and finally Perigo sounded off against Nathaniel. (Blather not worth repeating, but there's the link for those curious.)

The thread's opening post contains a quote from the beautiful article by Jim Peron praising Nathaniel and a link to the rest of it in the Huffington Post. And the doofus didn't even notice. I know he didn't notice because this yo-yo is unable to keep his trap shut about those he hates when he is near something by them.

Clueless in NZ.

Sounds like the title of a bad movie.

Michael

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I have enough first-hand knowledge about Nathaniel Branden et al. going back to NBI, to make creditable and nuanced statements about him, some not so nice, Lindsay Perigo does not. Nathaniel earned the right to be judged as a man and psychologist for what he was and did in and out of Los Angeles after 1968, especially considering the insane context he left behind in NYC even though he had a lot to do with that situation. For that too he deserves judgment. To mix up pre-1968 and post-1968--distorting and traducing too boot--and passing judgment on the whole completely misses the point that there is no whole for him because there is no whole world that encompasses living inside the world of Atlas Shrugged and then outside. The cult of Ayn Rand, such as it was, all came out of the deference of a younger generation first called "The Collective" literally watching the creation of a great save-the-world novel by a great novelist. The creation of NBI was a natural extension of that group into a larger conglomeration of students already primed by reading the finished product. They were invited to step onto, into, a powerful, giant airplane in mid-flight to fight a corrupt culture first by getting an Objectivist education, a somewhat toned down broader explication of "Galt's Speech," then help defend the intellectually impregnanble fortress of her philosophy as long as they only said that Objectivism was; go get the real scoop from the higher ups. This was correct in that Objectivism is 90% a cultural artifact, 10% a real and simple and understandable intellectual construct. You can foolishly study that 90% for a lifetime and still not quite get it. Even Leonard Peikoff fell short with his Objectivism book which wasn't about Rand's philosophy but of what he thought was almost perfectly his too. To write about her philosophy as such almost every paragraph if not sentence requires a footnote; all you would be doing is conglomerating its pieces--scholarship in other words: something he is so far from he might as well be on Mars.

--Brant

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Brant, I think Peikoff's OPAR is closer to canonical Randian Objectivism than that. The Moon, maybe? ;-)

Do you think that Peikoff's original lectures (1976) on which the book is based were *closer* to her philosophy? I mean, she was virtually standing over him in the creation of this series.

And what about NB's Basic Principles lectures or the book (Vision of Ayn Rand)? Are *these* closer to her philosophy than OPAR? She approved these lectures - at least, in their original form - as being an authoritative systematic presentation of her ideas.

Sure, what would count and be acceptable to her as "the best yet" version of her philosophy's system evolved over time. But are you mainly commenting about what has been put out *since* she died and could no longer give a thumb's up?

Just curious.

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Brant, I think Peikoff's OPAR is closer to canonical Randian Objectivism than that. The Moon, maybe? ;-)

Do you think that Peikoff's original lectures (1976) on which the book is based were *closer* to her philosophy? I mean, she was virtually standing over him in the creation of this series.

And what about NB's Basic Principles lectures or the book (Vision of Ayn Rand)? Are *these* closer to her philosophy than OPAR? She approved these lectures - at least, in their original form - as being an authoritative systematic presentation of her ideas.

Sure, what would count and be acceptable to her as "the best yet" version of her philosophy's system evolved over time. But are you mainly commenting about what has been put out *since* she died and could no longer give a thumb's up?

Just curious.

OPAR is pretty close to canonical Objectivism and so is Branden's core course as reflected in your transcriptions for his last book. You did a great philosophical and historical service with that. Classical Objectivism was a great one-two punch against a rotten left-wing dominated intellectual culture. The first punch was the novel, the second NBI. Then it was time for something else besides more of the same in the 1970s, but Rand was still here with her thumb on it. Peikoff never got out from underneath. The key is that the philosophy of Ayn Rand is simply that. A real objectivist philosophy is in there somewhere, but objectivism is not Objectivism. Small case objectivism need not waste time continually referring to itself for it's focus is out there on the big, wide, real world. Scientists understand this. They've been carrying around and using "Objectivist" metaphysics and epistemology for centuries. What is not scientific needs a lot of catchup and scientists sometimes need to understand what is going on in their basement and their need for courage and integrity for all the bad science they publicly tolerate for peer pressure and government grant money they have to hustle in lieu of science. They don't all have Dr. Stadler's Dr. Ferris to do that for them while they fiddle with their abstractions.

http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/policy-based-evidence-making.aspx

--Brant

edit: I think I should make clear the tremendous educational value of these lectures, a value apart from the philosophy itself, and while reading The Vision of Ayn Rand has all that value if you can listen to the lectures first, do so, to get a proper grip on Nathaniel's charismatic brilliance when he and Ayn were at the top of their games

Edited by Brant Gaede
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