Nathaniel is no longer with us


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Brant,

I didn't know that one.

Helluva talk.

It got me thinking, self-responsibility as a psychological default is taught in the culture, at least the culture greatly influences the general attitude about it, and self-responsibility is a precondition for libertarianism to work as social organization.

This means more blockbuster stories about self-responsible heroes, more sermons on self-responsibility for religious people, more pop songs that glorify how good it feels to be self-responsible, and so on are in order.

People who want to spread freedom will get audiences to think about it and feel it before they can ever present libertarian political propositions and expect them to be accepted.

Michael

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Here's a very nice piece by Sheldon Richman:

http://reason.com/archives/2014/12/14/nathaniel-branden-rip-and-the-pursuit-of

He quotes George at length before getting into his appreciation of NB.

This is the kind of tribute Nathaniel Branden deserved.

One of them, at least.

Robert Campbell

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Here's a very nice piece by Sheldon Richman:

http://reason.com/archives/2014/12/14/nathaniel-branden-rip-and-the-pursuit-of

He quotes George at length before getting into his appreciation of NB.

This is the kind of tribute Nathaniel Branden deserved.

One of them, at least.

Robert Campbell

That was excellent.

I liked his last line and I am thankful that I had the opportunity to thank him after I interviewed him for my thesis.

A...

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Just came across this in my unread e-mails ...

And you know what I admire about him most? As far as I know, he never fired back at his enemies after being purged from their inner circle. And he continued to speak about Rand with genuine affection and respect.

The course of Branden’s life and work reveals lessons for everyone. He learned over time that true ideas do not need gatekeepers to cast out nonconformists, much less crusaders dedicated to crushing deviants.

Rather, the truth needs sincere hearts that believe with genuine conviction, public intellectuals who share their ideas generously while remaining open to new ideas, and adherents who shine the light of truth for all who seek it.

I think back to Rothbard’s play. It is a send-up of imperialist, fanatical ideology as driven by the cult of personality. The character who represents Rothbard is taken aback because, to him, the whole purpose of human liberty is to unleash the wonders and magnificence of the human personality — to provide the maximum amount of room for its creative expression in the world.

The author concludes:

How interesting that Branden himself seemed to come around to that view: if we are to love liberty, we need to love it not just as a policy, but as a life principle. Nathaniel Branden spent the best and most productive part of his career explaining and modeling that idea.

The author explains well that:

After his disastrous falling-out with Rand, it took him some years to see the episode clearly. Eventually, he realized that a genuinely great idea does not need people who crack skulls, purge, condemn, and exclude. It needs people who explain, edify, listen, and learn. A great body of thought shines on its own, without shouting, extremist dogmatism, or the pose of omniscience. He never repudiated his objectivism or his deep love for Rand’s ideas, but he came to wear them lightly, as part of a life well lived.

Rather than an enforcer, he had come to see himself as a servant. He served objectivism well by being the more humane face of the inner circle to which he once belonged. He also sought to serve his readers and was busy putting out a nice shelfful of books. He came to see Rand’s philosophy not as a gnostic teaching intended only for purists, to be imposed with severity and shouting, but as a gift to the world, a perspective that illuminates the potential of the human person and the dangers of all barriers to self-achievement.

Jeffrey Tucker clearly shows that Nathaniel:

"...learned that being principled does not require being a jerk, and that having convictions does not mean insulting your opponents. In many ways, he was a survivor, and the life lessons he learned were hard won. For the rest of his life after the break with Rand, he endured slings and arrows from Rand’s closest followers."

Sounds a lot like how Roark talks about the man who brought the concept of fire down to man...

"...and they probably burned him at the stake with the fire he showed them how to light."

http://fee.org/freeman/detail/nathaniel-branden-rest-in-peace

The title is "True ideas do not need gatekeepers to cast out nonconformists."

A...

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It's of mild interest that Barbara was almost exactly a year older than Nathaniel and died almost exactly a year before he did. I think she removed her photo here as away of saying goodbye. She left her c.v. Her last signed on visit here was on my birthday 3/28/12. She tended to withdraw in face of health issues and because I figured she had some I didn't try to visit her when I was in LA two years ago. Leigh Branden told me Kerry O'Quinn was having someone looking after her, but that's all she knew. She was concerned and surprised by my suspicions. I do think Barbara didn't go completely inactive, just less social.

--Brant

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The best dedication to Branden I've read. It's most insightful, Adam.

Thank you Tony.

Much appreciated coming from you.

I found it very much in tune with how I felt about him post split.

Pre-split, I did not like him even after interviewing him.

However, putting when that interview occurred, he must have been under extreme stress with what was fulminating in the background.

Therefore, I did not feel looking back at it that he could even be himself at that time.

A...

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The best dedication to Branden I've read. It's most insightful, Adam.

Thank you Tony.

Much appreciated coming from you.

I found it very much in tune with how I felt about him post split.

Pre-split, I did not like him even after interviewing him.

However, putting when that interview occurred, he must have been under extreme stress with what was fulminating in the background.

Therefore, I did not feel looking back at it that he could even be himself at that time.

A...

I wrote someplace that he validated Rand words -through his independent work - in that, indeed, "Man is a being of self-made soul".

I was thinking mostly of self-esteem then, his pioneering thinking there, but as you and others who met him have showed, very clearly Nathaniel turned himself - his 'soul' - around, also. At what must have been a very hard time of his life, when another man might have given up to bitterness or self-blame.

(From the first pages NB's writings felt personal to me, without the touchy-feeliness of other authors in the field, but empathetic without compromising the truth).

Many might speculate he "learned humility" after his Fall from Grace - I suggest he regained his grounding in reality.

As Tucker (who is a fine and lucid writer btw) indicated, he'll be remembered, apart from all else he was to many all over, as an unceasing, lifelong objectivist and rational egoist.

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For me as a young man, Nathaniel’s The Disowned Self, along with Breaking Free, were absolutely liberating and probably life saving.

Stumbling home in 1970 as a shattered wreck out of the military, I was really, really fucked up. And it wasn’t just recent war trauma that had me by the throat. I had long been fucked up philosophically as well. I have frequently been too much of an idealist (perhaps an artifact of my evangelical Christian childhood). I had taken Objectivism, which I had studied enthusiastically while in high school and then when in the military, as a vision of absolute perfection – but it was an impossible vision that I strived for unrealistically, and thus I could never live up to it. (Who the hell did I expect to be? John Galt?)

Branden’s works pointed me back to my authentic self, the person I had disowned through my unrealistic fantasies of perfection and my shouldering of hyper-moralistic expectations. With this release from my over-idealistic delusions, I went back to my true roots as a lone hill and forest rambler who was happiest sojourning in wild natural places. I got into mountaineering and technical climbing, and I became good at it. This exhilarating avocation and the acquisition of the skills it required brought me back to my true psychological “home.” I had rediscovered my true self, my eudaimonia. And I honed my Objectivist virtues: i.e., if one tries to climb without rationality, etc., then one’s climbing career will be short.

A later book of Nathaniel’s that was highly valuable to me for self-exploration was If You Could Hear What I Cannot Say. He also produced a relaxation cassette tape that I internalized and incorporated into my meditation practices when under maximum stress and adversity. His work was fundamentally liberating and calming.

Nathaniel Branden was a healer of the highest rank, and I thank him.

-Ross Barlow.

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  • 1 year later...
39 minutes ago, 9thdoctor said:

Hope it's not in bad taste to share this here:

http://www.peikoff.com/2016/08/29/episode-415/

Go to 15:15.  He shares his immediate reaction to learning of the deaths of the Brandens. 

Class act, eh?  At least he waited a while.

He never said the Brandens

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5 minutes ago, KorbenDallas said:

He never said the Brandens

You think he might be talking about some other people who recently died, a year apart, and who "hurt" Ayn Rand? 

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1 hour ago, 9thdoctor said:

You think he might be talking about some other people who recently died, a year apart, and who "hurt" Ayn Rand? 

[...]

It sounds like he's talking about the Brandens but he didn't mention them by name.  It sure is problematic.  :(

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He's talking about the Brandens. At the beginning of the podcast he talks about how he switched his "allegiance" from his father to Ayn Rand. If that's your relationship to significant others, then the Brandens end up--must end up--as "evil." That Rand may have hurt the Brandens before they hurt her has no room in such a cosmology. Evil must rise to the top so it can be skimmed off. One thing might make Peikoff wake up screaming: understanding he's a second-hander. Don't ever bet on that happening because one can believe one is a first-hander and not see the second-hand world that lays all about in which one is King.

--Brant

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17 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

He's talking about the Brandens. At the beginning of the podcast he talks about how he switched his "allegiance" from his father to Ayn Rand. If that's your relationship to significant others, then the Brandens end up--must end up--as "evil." That Rand may have hurt the Brandens before they hurt her has no room in such a cosmology. Evil must rise to the top so it can be skimmed off. One thing might make Peikoff wake up screaming: understanding he's a second-hander. Don't ever bet on that happening because one can believe one is a first-hander and not see the second-hand world that lays all about in which one is King.

--Brant

Yes, Peikoff was definitely referring to Barbara and Nathan. But his general point about cheering, in effect, upon learning of the deaths of evil people is quite sound.  

One of these days I plan to write an essay or two on NB's writings for Libertarianism.org.

Ghs

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3 hours ago, George H. Smith said:

Yes, Peikoff was definitely referring to Barbara and Nathan. But his general point about cheering, in effect, upon learning of the deaths of evil people is quite sound.  

One of these days I plan to write an essay or two on NB's writings for Libertarianism.org.

Ghs

To what degree of "evil" does one have to be to warrant cheering for their death?  I thought Objectivism placed a higher value on human life than this.  I thought it was reserved for only the truly evil, or "evul".

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7 hours ago, KorbenDallas said:

To what degree of "evil" does one have to be to warrant cheering for their death?  I thought Objectivism placed a higher value on human life than this.  I thought it was reserved for only the truly evil, or "evul".

It's simple, really. Leonard Peikoff went off his rocker with Ayn Rand--and stayed there. He's his idea of her man, not a man apart and autonomous.

--Brant

"evil" is a reductio ad absurdum on where he ended up

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