Benevolent Egoism, Anyone?

[william.scherk]

My blog retirement is going badly. I feel like a Snowbird in Sun City, except that I am the only camper there. No knocks on the door. No fun outings. Trapped.

I have taken to having imaginary conversations with folks I hope might drop in. Like Diana Hsieh. I have been having a conversation with her on the subject of ethics. Or rather, she rants at me from her podcasts and I imagine what kind of conversational neck-lock I could apply. Since she has banned me at Noodlefood comments (unless I choose a sockpuppet, which I find unethical), I no longer have any opportunity for her to read or consider my writing. Thus the neck-lock I imagine. Her ranting at me from a stand-up studio in her compound near Sedalia, me ranting at her from a patio in leafy White Rock.

A conversation. A chat. A full and frank exchange.

Sadly, the only conversations happen in the dire OO.net chatbox, and in face-to-face confabs at objectivish meetups large and small. There is a real non-communication policy between the various factions, so nobody talks face to face with anybody whom they believe is opposed to them, or Objectivism, or morality or whatever.

I listen to Diana Hsieh giving practical ethical tips and fatwas, talking to her dreary pogue co-host, reading the live chatclaque lines off her monitor, and I think how isolated from discourse, challenge and heated exchanges is she.

So, what do I think about the smear of issues under the rubric civility?

It depends. A writer can be civil, measured, careful -- even kind and empathetic in his stance. A writer can use a variety of voices, from bland to caustic, from screaming to whispers, can be scolding, coaxing, sweet. The voice, the stance and the register are tools.

A writer can write towering jeremiads, relentless satires and critiques, vast summary judgements, intricate inquisitions. Tart, pointed insults. Mockery. Invective. Whatever the fuck he wants. He can insult happily and without apology or explanation. He uses whatever tools, whatever potion he has mixed up for his purpose.

Insulting language is a sometimes useful, shocking ingredient -- especially when infused with ridicule -- itself a most powerful tool of the rhetorical kit. At its best, insult is unforgiving, unforgivable, and unforgettably true.

When I mock the Mad Princess of Objectivism, when I pillory The Vicar of Diddly, when I excoriate flab and laze and whinge, do I give a shit for civility and all the tut-tuts and frets and simpers and sniffs?

Anyhow, back to the Mad Princess. Like all the dogmatistas, she refuses to converse. She refuses communication. She has instructed her moral enemies to never approach her or speak to her at conferences. She is mad with the same infection that has blistered and sickened Objectivism for forty years. Exclusion. Shunning. Cultish self-isolation. This is perhaps the most monstrous incivility of all.

So generally, I view squabbles about manners and comportment quite as I do chickens pecking aimlessly in their pen.

Seriously, it is okay to be uncivil. It is sometimes more than necessary. It stirs up the dank ponds full of bleary-eyed Objectivish toads and flusters the dimwitted clucks. Phil, please use incivility to advance your interests, use it wisely, use it with purpose.

As for Princess, I am going to do another nasty edit of a podcast, dolled up with scathing visuals and portentous music.

At my OL wind-blasted holiday blogtrailer "Frenzenfoes," where I am semi-retired. Where we can have a conversation about Hsieh, Civility & Humour.

Here again is my musical comedy version of Diana Does TheBrandens, which is now number five on the Google results for "Diana Hsieh." And then follows an excerpt from my fiesta of incivilitas, "Universe of Evil" (which Hsieh characterized as raving screed), from March 26 2011.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AQxfyhUwZE

Linz, I salute you. You rose from the unfunny and untrue accusation of being a drunken raging maniac to preside over the funniest, most entertaining corner of the objectivist universe. And lately, of course, your triumph in attracting Empress Diana to converse with actual mortals (the glorious Holly excepted). Please make her Empress to your Emperor, so she can delete people's accounts arbitrarily until there is no one left but you, her, Casey and a bottle of fine Australian.

She is possibly the funniest, go out on the porch and throw up a good dinner funniest of any person who styles themselves an O'ist. If only she could take over from Peikoff as Pope. She is also living proof that people with Asperger spectrum disorder can make fine rulers of all that moves.

From boo! hiss! RoR, post 30, in the dreary but evil thread 'Why doesn't Diana like me?':

Philip Coates comments on La Mertz over on her popular blog, with some cogent observations. Of course, Diana is also now active on Linz's site.

I read Noodlefood with a grim fascination. As a person who is not just yet quite ready to call himself an objectivist, I find I can't look away. La Mertz's factionalism exemplifies one of the 'ick factors' that keeps me from donning the robes . . .

My fascination turns to appreciation when I turn my dial to 'entertainment.' Then I imagine La Mertz as Empress of the Objectivist Universe, atop the castle ramparts pouring boiling oil on the evil TOC army below, and later, after reviewing the records of that days beheadings, slinking into bed with his Majesty Linz, and whispering "KASS me, you radical.'

At the moment she has got herself in a stew of quite amusing contradictions over at SOLOPassionofbitchingaboutBarbaraBranden, where her toadies gush and Valliant and his demented wife continue to examine the sheets of Ayn Rands 1968 bed for stains of evil.

La Mertz finds herself an able match in the quick-witted Shayne Wissler, but cannot acknowledge this because she has only the one eye in the middle of her forehead -- the one and only eye in the kingdom that Sees all, Knows All.

I'll tell ya, if she ran for meter-maid in my town, I would move to Costa Rica in fear she would take power and start killing people.

As it is, she has her universe, her castle, her king, her fellow maniacs and enough rectitude to fill the Bay of Fundy.

Edited March 9, 2011 by william.scherk

[caroljane]

The notion of a "public figure" is a legal standard used in defamation law. It has absolutely nothing to do with civility per se.

Ghs

The term "public figure" is in common usage to mean a person known to the general public, those outside their own profession. It may indeed be defined in legal terms for purposes of determining how defamation would damage reputation and reduce income; that hardly makes it a "notion" which has nothing to do with civility. The level of privacy and civility which celebrities can and should expect is regularly debated whenever an actor slugs a paparrazzo.

[George H. Smith]

The notion of a "public figure" is a legal standard used in defamation law. It has absolutely nothing to do with civility per se.

Ghs

The term "public figure" is in common usage to mean a person known to the general public, those outside their own profession. It may indeed be defined in legal terms for purposes of determining how defamation would damage reputation and reduce income; that hardly makes it a "notion" which has nothing to do with civility. The level of privacy and civility which celebrities can and should expect is regularly debated whenever an actor slugs a paparrazzo.

You can define "public figure" however you like. Why I don't understand is why you and Phil seem to think that insulting a "public figure" somehow differs from insulting a public poster on an internet forum.

I am attempting to get a reasonably clear picture -- mainly from Phil but also from you -- of what "civility" is and why incivility (in the form of insults or whatever) is supposedly a bad thing. But you and Phil keep dauncing around the issue with irrelevancies. Or, to be more precise, you formulate the irrelevant points, and then Phil says that he agrees with you.

Ghs

[caroljane]

Nancy Pelosi and most other politicians are not "famous outside their own spheres." They are not famous for anything other than being politicians, but they are regarded as "public figures" nonetheless.

Indeed, most local politicians are not famous at all, but they are still regarded as public figures.

I have published three books on atheism. Does this make me a public figure? If so, how does publishing a book differ in principle from publishing thousands of posts on the Internet?

Ghs

Of course Nancy Pelosi is famous outside her own sphere, which is other politicans.I'm not a politician or even an American, and I've heard of her. The source of her fame (being a politician) is beside the point. Elected and want-to-be elected politicians are, or certainly should be, known to the general public outside their own party. If they are elected they are representing and being paid by the public, they certainly become public figures in both senses.

In the arts, success requires the practitioner to court publicity, which as we know can result in monetary success even when the practitioner has no talent in his particular art. Bad writers can become famous, for example. Publishing books does not make anyone a public figure; it is the degree to which the writer becomes a "household name" outside the sphere of other writers, and enthusiasts of the writer's subject matter, which determines how public a figure he is.

But you know all this already. So do we all.

[George H. Smith]

Of course Nancy Pelosi is famous outside her own sphere, which is other politicans.I'm not a politician or even an American, and I've heard of her. The source of her fame (being a politician) is beside the point. Elected and want-to-be elected politicians are, or certainly should be, known to the general public outside their own party. If they are elected they are representing and being paid by the public, they certainly become public figures in both senses.

In the arts, success requires the practitioner to court publicity, which as we know can result in monetary success even when the practitioner has no talent in his particular art. Bad writers can become famous, for example. Publishing books does not make anyone a public figure; it is the degree to which the writer becomes a "household name" outside the sphere of other writers, and enthusiasts of the writer's subject matter, which determines how public a figure he is.

But you know all this already. So do we all.

What I don't know is why any of this is relevant to the issue of civility.

Ghs

[caroljane]

The notion of a "public figure" is a legal standard used in defamation law. It has absolutely nothing to do with civility per se.

Ghs

The term "public figure" is in common usage to mean a person known to the general public, those outside their own profession. It may indeed be defined in legal terms for purposes of determining how defamation would damage reputation and reduce income; that hardly makes it a "notion" which has nothing to do with civility. The level of privacy and civility which celebrities can and should expect is regularly debated whenever an actor slugs a paparrazzo.

You can define "public figure" however you like. Why I don't understand is why you and Phil seem to think that insulting a "public figure" somehow differs from insulting a public poster on an internet forum.

I am attempting to get a reasonably clear picture -- mainly from Phil but also from you -- of what "civility" is and why incivility (in the form of insults or whatever) is supposedly a bad thing.

Ghs

OK, I think incivility is a bad thing for an individual to practise regularly, in discussion/debate or in daily life.

In debate, it's ad hominem.

In life, it's bad hombre-ism.

Over to you, Phil.

[George H. Smith]

OK, I think incivility is a bad thing for an individual to practise regularly, in discussion/debate or in daily life.

In debate, it's ad hominem.

In life, it's bad hombre-ism.

Over to you, Phil.

So do you ever have a problem with Phil's incivility?

Btw, in debate incivility is not necessarily ad hominem. It sometimes is, however, as when Phil speculates on the motives of his adversaries -- something he does frequently. That is classic ad hominem.

Ghs

[caroljane]

My blog retirement is going badly. I feel like a Snowbird in Sun City, except that I am the only camper there. No knocks on the door. No fun outings. Trapped.

I have taken to having imaginary conversations with folks I hope might drop in. Like Diana Hsieh. I have been having a conversation with her on the subject of ethics. Or rather, she rants at me from her podcasts and I imagine what kind of conversational neck-lock I could apply. Since she has banned me at Noodlefood comments (unless I choose a sockpuppet, which I find unethical), I no longer have any opportunity for her to read or consider my writing. Thus the neck-lock I imagine. Her ranting at me from a stand-up studio in her compound near Sedalia, me ranting at her from a patio in leafy White Rock.

A conversation. A chat. A full and frank exchange.

Sadly, the only conversations happen in the dire OO.net chatbox, and in face-to-face confabs at objectivish meetups large and small. There is a real non-communication policy between the various factions, so nobody talks face to face with anybody whom they believe is opposed to them, or Objectivism, or morality or whatever.

I listen to Diana Hsieh giving practical ethical tips and fatwas, talking to her dreary pogue co-host, reading the live chatclaque lines off her monitor, and I think how isolated from discourse, challenge and heated exchanges is she.

So, what do I think about the smear of issues under the rubric civility?

It depends. A writer can be civil, measured, careful -- even kind and empathetic in his stance. A writer can use a variety of voices, from bland to caustic, from screaming to whispers, can be scolding, coaxing, sweet. The voice, the stance and the register are tools.

A writer can write towering jeremiads, relentless satires and critiques, vast summary judgements, intricate inquisitions. Tart, pointed insults. Mockery. Invective. Whatever the fuck he wants. He can insult happily and without apology or explanation. He uses whatever tools, whatever potion he has mixed up for his purpose.

Insulting language is a sometimes useful, shocking ingredient -- especially when infused with ridicule -- itself a most powerful tool of the rhetorical kit. At its best, insult is unforgiving, unforgivable, and unforgettably true.

When I mock the Mad Princess of Objectivism, when I pillory The Vicar of Diddly, when I excoriate flab and laze and whinge, do I give a shit for civility and all the tut-tuts and frets and simpers and sniffs?

Anyhow, back to the Mad Princess. Like all the dogmatistas, she refuses to converse. She refuses communication. She has instructed her moral enemies to never approach her or speak to her at conferences. She is mad with the same infection that has blistered and sickened Objectivism for forty years. Exclusion. Shunning. Cultish self-isolation. This is perhaps the most monstrous incivility of all.

So generally, I view squabbles about manners and comportment quite as I do chickens pecking aimlessly in their pen.

Seriously, it is okay to be uncivil. It is sometimes more than necessary. It stirs up the dank ponds full of bleary-eyed Objectivish toads and flusters the dimwitted clucks. Phil, please use incivility to advance your interests, use it wisely, use it with purpose.

As for Princess, I am going to do another nasty edit of a podcast, dolled up with scathing visuals and portentous music.

At my OL wind-blasted holiday blogtrailer "Frenzenfoes," where I am semi-retired. Where we can have a conversation about Hsieh, Civility & Humour.

Here again is my musical comedy version of Diana Does TheBrandens, which is now number five on the Google results for "Diana Hsieh." And then follows an excerpt from my fiesta of incivilitas, "Universe of Evil" (which Hsieh characterized as raving screed), from March 26 2011.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AQxfyhUwZE

Linz, I salute you. You rose from the unfunny and untrue accusation of being a drunken raging maniac to preside over the funniest, most entertaining corner of the objectivist universe. And lately, of course, your triumph in attracting Empress Diana to converse with actual mortals (the glorious Holly excepted). Please make her Empress to your Emperor, so she can delete people's accounts arbitrarily until there is no one left but you, her, Casey and a bottle of fine Australian.

She is possibly the funniest, go out on the porch and throw up a good dinner funniest of any person who styles themselves an O'ist. If only she could take over from Peikoff as Pope. She is also living proof that people with Asperger spectrum disorder can make fine rulers of all that moves.

From boo! hiss! RoR, post 30, in the dreary but evil thread 'Why doesn't Diana like me?':

Philip Coates comments on La Mertz over on her popular blog, with some cogent observations. Of course, Diana is also now active on Linz's site.

I read Noodlefood with a grim fascination. As a person who is not just yet quite ready to call himself an objectivist, I find I can't look away. La Mertz's factionalism exemplifies one of the 'ick factors' that keeps me from donning the robes . . .

My fascination turns to appreciation when I turn my dial to 'entertainment.' Then I imagine La Mertz as Empress of the Objectivist Universe, atop the castle ramparts pouring boiling oil on the evil TOC army below, and later, after reviewing the records of that days beheadings, slinking into bed with his Majesty Linz, and whispering "KASS me, you radical.'

At the moment she has got herself in a stew of quite amusing contradictions over at SOLOPassionofbitchingaboutBarbaraBranden, where her toadies gush and Valliant and his demented wife continue to examine the sheets of Ayn Rands 1968 bed for stains of evil.

La Mertz finds herself an able match in the quick-witted Shayne Wissler, but cannot acknowledge this because she has only the one eye in the middle of her forehead -- the one and only eye in the kingdom that Sees all, Knows All.

I'll tell ya, if she ran for meter-maid in my town, I would move to Costa Rica in fear she would take power and start killing people.

As it is, she has her universe, her castle, her king, her fellow maniacs and enough rectitude to fill the Bay of Fundy.

William, I think you're - you're - well, you're not quite respectable.

There. I said it! And I'm not sorry!

[Selene]

Now Phil, don't you think this is a beautiful horse?

[Philip Coates]

Subject: Civility, Name-Calling, and Ayn Rand

> You would have advised Ayn Rand to be more civil in her writing. Is this, in essence, what you are saying? [GHS]

Exactly, in the following sense:

1. In non-fiction writing and speaking and philosophizing, I would have advised her not to call specific people names or accuse them of being monsters or 'the most evil man in history'. She doesn't know them and it's largely irrelevant to the central point that they are wrong, destructive, etc.

Instead Ayn Rand should have stuck to the facts. Her philosophy and her arguments were powerful enough. And the other things merely distract from that focus and make people wonder why she had to slime the historical figures or those she strongly disagrees with.

(All her enemies have to do is quote her as saying Kant was the most evil man in history, and at one stroke a million serious people will roll on the floor laughing and never read her.)

2. It's perfectly okay to portray monsters and vicious men in fiction. If on the other hand instead of sticking to making a fictional Peter Keating or Toohey or Stadler or James Taggart, you say Kant or David Hume or Plato or J.K. Galbreath (or who's that guy she said she patterned Toohey after?)...or Hayek or Ronald Reagan were that way as specific real life individuals, you are sliming specific people you don't know: That's psychologizing. That's ad hominem.

3. In very rare occasions about specific historic and public figures, the evidence is almost perceptual: it's truthful and accurate AND MORALLY NECESSARY to say that the great historical dictators and murderers were vicious and evil. And that full-scale evil exists as does evasion, power lust, etc. and is behind many of the mistakes in history.

[No big deal, but I'm surprised you have to ask me this. I think I've made each of these points (probably repeatedly) on posts going back years.]

Edited March 10, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Selene]

Phil:

So the definition of the "serious people" that we should want to convince, is/are:

Those people who will roll on the floor laughing and never read an author based on one out of context statement.

Got it.

Noted.

Adam

holding back from rolling uncivilly on the floor

[Jonathan]

A few examples of Phil's "civility":

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9077&st=0&p=104786entry104786

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9077&st=0&p=104791entry104791

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9077&st=20&p=104825entry104825

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9077&st=20&p=104887entry104887

J

[George H. Smith]

[No big deal, but I'm surprised you have to ask me this. I think I've made each of these points (probably repeatedly) on posts going back years.]

I didn't become active again on OL until February of last year. Of course, the first thing I did was to run a search of your name so I could read everything you have ever written about civility on OL. Unfortunately, I misspelled your last name as "Coats," so nothing turned up.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Subject: Civility, Name-Calling, and Ayn Rand

> You would have advised Ayn Rand to be more civil in her writing. Is this, in essence, what you are saying? [GHS]

Exactly, in the following sense:

1. In non-fiction writing and speaking and philosophizing, I would have advised her not to call specific people names or accuse them of being monsters or 'the most evil man in history'. She doesn't know them and it's largely irrelevant to the central point that they are wrong, destructive, etc.

Instead Ayn Rand should have stuck to the facts. Her philosophy and her arguments were powerful enough. And the other things merely distract from that focus and make people wonder why she had to slime the historical figures or those she strongly disagrees with.

(All her enemies have to do is quote her as saying Kant was the most evil man in history, and at one stroke a million serious people will roll on the floor laughing and never read her.)

The problem with Rand's statement about Kant is not that is is uncivil but that it is untrue. If Kant's ideas and influence really were as Rand portrayed them, then she would have been justified in calling Kant the most evil man in history.

In any case, it is indeed a shame that Ayn Rand didn't write more like Phil Coates. Then she might have influenced some people instead of being an obscure writer that few people read, owing to her incivility.

Ghs

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Is WSS being uncivil to Hsieh?

Hmmmm...

Michael

[Philip Coates]

> I didn't become active again on OL until February of last year. Of course, the first thing I did was to run a search of your name so I could read everything you have ever written about civility on OL. Unfortunately, I misspelled your last name as "Coats," so nothing turned up. [GHS]

And now that you have the correct spelling...??????

(In the spirit of benevolence which is in the title of this thread, I will allow you two weeks to bone up before I hand out the four hour test. Bear in mind also that I have written about civility on other boards so it will include all postings going back for at least ten years.)

Edited March 10, 2011 by Philip Coates