The lonely and alienated, lecturing the fulfilled and grounded; men that posses no discipline and order within their own personal lives, fanatically obsessing on what should be the proper social and economic order of the world; men that are failures at even the most mundane aspects of life, lecturing to those of genuine personal achievement; the unkempt and ugly, giving instruction on the arts and beauty; emotionally repressed geeks, giving lectures concerning joy and exaltation; and last but not least, people unable to create and maintain lasting relationships or friendships, pontificating on the nature of love and loyalty.

Goerge Cordero

As an admirer of Rand for many years I have been horrified at the malevolent human beings who come in her name on the internet.

Cordero's quote just says it all -- and that is so sad. We have Perigo and Cresswell in NZ 'promoting' Objectivism - two of the angriest men in the country.

Just venting...something is wrong here.

The nature, ultimately, of online everything, milady.

Ruth,

Unfortunately George stopped posting on Objectivist forums. That is our loss. I miss him.

I am not an Objectivist guru nor even a guru wannabe. If you go through the threads here, you will constantly see me encourage people to think with their own minds and challenge Objectivist premises if they are in doubt or defend them if they are not. The important thing to me is for people to use their own minds and give it their best shot—and respect others who do the same even if conclusions are different at any point in time. Conclusions can change. A flawed thinking method is much harder to change. Lack of goodwill is also hard to change.

I started doing this, in fact the very existence of this forum came about, as a reaction to the kind of persons George characterized and you criticize (as do I). They gather in tribes and fly the banner of Rand and Objectivism. I found myself in the middle of them, thinking they were something completely different and I had to get out once I became totally convinced of their nature. That wasn't too hard, either, because I was an embarrassment to them for not singing their party lines, but was popular among their followers.

I have since developed a deep contempt for that kind of person seasoned with pity. If there is one thing I want to do, it is make my admiration of Rand and agreement with the Objectivist framework (especially the epistemological framework) clear while rejecting the form of being these sad creatures present. Many people come across Rand's ideas, become enchanted with them, then come across these boneheads and just give it all up after a bout or two of nastiness. I don't blame them, either.

These alienated boneheads go way beyond Objectivism, though. Their personality problems are much deeper than philosophy. I think they are nasty little souls regardless of how they became that way. I would not like them even if they were Christians, punk rockers, Muslims, next-door neighbors, Jews, Boy Scouts, football players, computer hackers, celebrities or Nazis. They are deeply neurotic people irrespective of the philosophy or activity. They merely use Objectivism to justify and practice their neurosis.

I think the main problem is that they are attention-starved and don't know what to do about it. Objectivism gives them a framework so they can put some order to the worthlessness they feel about themselves and hide it from themselves. They attack others so they don't have to attack themselves.

I know I am psychologizing and painting with a very broad brush, but I have seen enough writing from these people and have interacted enough with them to come to that conclusion.

Try an experiment sometime as one indication of this. Give some heartfelt praise to one of these lost souls and watch him melt. It doesn't last long, but it is intense and almost comical, with self-pity usually coming to the surface. Often such a person will fall out with you not too long thereafter. You showed him his hunger and fed him, but he is hellbent on denying it. That generates great resentment.

(This does not mean that I am playing games when I compliment people. I rarely do that kind of manipulation. It does mean, though, that I am observing a person's reactions when I interact.)

btw - You and I got off to a shaky start some time ago. I think that was a mistake. The more I read of you, the more I see that you think with your own mind and do not follow tribal dictates (and are no more neurotic than the rest of us ). I greatly value this, even if the person disagrees with me or does not like me. If I ever offended you, please accept my apology.

btw again - Do you remember where Goerge's quote came from? I would like to link to it. The only other place I found on Google was another post by you here.

Michael

Yes, Ruth, there is something which some of the malevolent find attractive in Rand. There are online forums (and blogs) which are absolutely embarrassing for someone who values reason or honest enquiry.
On the whole, OL is a good place. Not perfect, but actually quite good.

I strongly reading Barbara Branden's essay on Rage and Objectivism (linked at the top level page for Objectivist Living) on the subject.

Alfonso

I very much applaud your goals. I just want to add though that I think there is at least some value in lack of goodwill. I think there can be more truth exposed when one does not care about hurting another's feelings.

Also, the folks that George writes about deserve to be verbally hammered back when they lash out.

Bob

Highly productive people in the midst of their careers--and earlier, education--don't have much time for Internet forums. Because of what I do I'm on the Internet a lot and jump in and out of OL all day long, but most of my posts, like this one, are short and reactive. The way my life is going I anticipate that in one or two years I'll be cutting way back on even this. Generally speaking, though, like money the bad drives out the good. On OL the opposite seems to be true because of list policies.

--Brant

Bob,

Maybe in bootcamp or military structures on in contact sports people learn by being bullied and cussed. I have yet to meet someone in an online forum who changed his mind about anything that way. I have seen, far too often, people get intimidated into silence or even dig in and defend positions they would otherwise consider when they are bullied and/or cussed. And I have seen people usually abandon the ideas and start throwing insults back and forth. There is even jargon for this: flame wars, feeding trolls, etc.

Contrary to exposing more truth, I find, by sheer observation alone, that bullying and cussing someone either buries the truth or takes it off the discussion table. I have yet to see truth uncovered through this method on a philosophy forum.

Not even once.

And I have been doing this daily for about 3 years.

I am not totally against bullying and cussing, though, as any number of bullies and cussers have found out with me when they were astonished to get their crap back in their face. If you want to reject someone and get him away from you, bullying and cussing often works well. I also agree with Donald Trump. The best thing to do with a bully is to wallop him squarely between the eyes just as hard as you can right at the beginning. There is even an adrenalin rush you get from baring your chest and cutting loose with a Tarzan yell.

I don't care for the atmosphere this creates in a philosophy environment, though. The ideas usually get shot to hell. And philosophy without ideas is not philosophy.

I have no idea what bullies and cussers want with philosophy, anyway. They usually have very little respect for the independent human mind in the first place. I don't see what value they get, but there it is. Objectivism attracts them like honey and shit attract flies.

Michael

Michael,

You may be describing a few public faces of Objectivism, but there are millions that have been positively influenced by Objectivism and Ayn Rand's novels and I strongly suspect they are not bullies and cussers. (Maybe Michael Newberry thinks I'm a bully.)

--Brant

Brant,

I fully agree. When I first started writing about Objectivism, I called them the Silent Contingency. I broke it down into 1% pro-Rand fanatics, 1% anti-Rand fanatics and 98% people who have been influenced by Rand. The bullies will be found in those 2%. The other 98% actually live what they learned and are producing the wonderful goods and services we enjoy in this wonderful world. They prefer to listen to music or watch TV or something in their free time rather than bicker with obnoxious people.

Have you noticed that intellectual bullies like to inhabit places that are free?



Michael

I quite think lack of goodwill and not caring about hurting feelings are the same thing. When one is debating/discussing, why would each debator's personal feelings even be a concern? It's the ideas one should be discrediting (or promoting) anyhow. When debating, someone's feelings really shouldn't be an issue. And how absurd it is that anyone would get their feelings hurt by an Objective attack (for lack of a better word) on their ideas.

Anywho, there definitely are people out there who've been positively influenced by Objectivism. They just tend to steer clear of nastiness. Nice to meet you, Ruth.

I think Michael is right. For every one person I've met who is an ardent pro-Rand fanatic I've met dozens who are positively affected but not lobotomized. I have also met an equal number of antirandians.

An excellent and wise post, Michael. (And I,too, miss George. Apart from being an interesting man, he is a fine writer.)

Barbara

Just for the record - while a number of us have sounded off in response on various dimensions of the problems with the Objectivist ONline community, I would like to reiterate that Objectivist Living is, in the main, a very pleasant exception.

Bill P

Michael; Thank you for keeping OL a pleasure to come to everyday. Bill P is exactly right.

Barbara Branden can explain this much better. She has done so before. The origin of the problem is with Ayn Rand herself, or, more correctly, with her imitators. Barbara explained that Rand had the intelligence and insight to "connect the dots" as it were (my phrase, not hers). When someone said that they liked Mozart, Rand could show that they accepted the epistemology of Immanuel Kant. Followers who mimicked the method would then turn on people (or each other) with similar denunciations, inferring deep problems from minor differences. And here we all are today.

Of course, there is nothing new in this. On the amusing side, there is this saw;


A bit heavier is Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon. The old bolshevik, imprisoned and tortured asks his warden how he can be accused of attempting to assasinate Stalin when he is patently innocent of at least that, if nothing else? His prosecutor tells him what he must already understand. Communism -- scientific socialism -- is an integrated philosophy and the USSR is at war against capitalism. (Certainly, the capitalists are at war against us.) To err on this point or that is tantamount to attempting to kill the leader: there is no distinction; there can be no distinction.

Of course, this goes back to the medieval Church. Venal sin has mortal roots. Stalin had trained to be a priest. The others were not ignorant and were, in fact, highly educated to their cultural contexts. Moreover, the term "totalitarianism" was invented by the fascist Giovanni Gentile. While it refers to the external unity of society (labor, capital, science, art,...) under the government, of course, the philosophy itself is total. Truly striking, for instance, is the 1930 film of All Quiet on the Western Front: the glazed and adoring wonder on the face of Paul Baumer as his high school teacher lectures on Hegel's theory of the State as Idea. America's own "Mercury" Dime features a fasces. Look at the Washington Quarter of 1932 and the German coins of the same era. (Cick on that and scroll down a bit.) Do your own research on America's so-called "National Anthem," and its "Pledge of Allegiance." Total philosophies -- ideologies -- dominated the intellectual discourses of Ayn Rand's own maturing years. Moreover, if you understand "ideology" it is not just any set of beliefs. "Ideology" was invented by Karl Marx as a stamp to label the philosophy of domination invented by the ruling class. Ironic, isn't it?

Also ironic was Ayn Rand's endorsement of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer.

Probably the most recent example of such wry humor was MSK's own denunciation of those who are not as tolerant as we are. Lacking our own high self-esteem, their flawed psyches only degrade the true spirit of Objectivism.

When your head is spinning on your shoulders, it is actually the same as if your head were stationary and your body were spinning. The Earth does not really "go around" the Sun and the Moon does not really "go around" the Earth. It all depends on your frame of reference. (Where is Bob Kolker when you need him?)

Historical question: did Rand endorse The True Believer? It got a favoriable and quite pointed review (by Barbara Branden, I think) in the Academic Associates newsletter (affiliated with Nathaniel Branden) shortly after the excommunication, but I never heard of Rand mentioning it.

EVERYTHING which appeared in The Objectivist Newsletter or in The Objectivist was approved by Ayn Rand.

Bill P (Alfonso)

And AYn Rand said in "To Whom It May Concern,"

"I must state, for the record, that Mr. and Mrs. Branden's writings and lectures up to this time were valid and consonant with Objectivism. I cannot sanction or endorse their future work, ideas or ideological trends."

Bill P

Michael,

You crack me up at times and I always find your approach, trying to blindside at a totally unexpected angle, refreshing, for lack of a better word. It's fun. (I'm serious.)

Let me explain my intolerance and frame or reference, since this could become unclear to readers. It is definitely not an issue of humor, despite your delightful post.

One of the ironic parts of how Objectivism has been assimilated is that some people (the boneheads) constantly make false dichotomies using it, when Rand's intent was to reject false dichotomies. The people I criticize are professional producers of false dichotomies. They have a moral on/off switch for their countless issues where they want to condemn others and act the fool. Flip it one way and they have the good. Flip it another and they have the evil. It's always more fun for them to flip it to evil. Besides, they need to use the evil switch a lot to keep thier tribes in line.

Unfortunately for their flawed epistemology, the on/off moral switch and the tribal setting are the only elements in their context. But reality is not exclusively what is in their heads. Reality is a bit more varied.

Now look at someone like David Kelley. He emphasized degree in the middle of the Objectivist on/off moral switch and this was too hard to think about for the boneheaded on/off moral switch mongers. They couldn't understand it and, anyway, it looked like a dangerous way to keep a tribe in line. People might start measuring issues on their own and God only knows what standards they would use if that became a habit. One thing is for sure. If a person measures degrees, he starts thinking for himself. Much better for top-down control to keep tribe members measuring moral issues only in terms of on/off and dictate to them when to activate the switch (and in which direction to switch it).

The on/off moral switch monger does not understand toleration. He only has on and off. If he is on, toleration to him means switching off and vice-versa. That's all he understands. So when he looks at someone like Kelley and hears him say that he is only "partially on" or "partially off" on an issue because of other factors and contexts, they scream that he is a sell-out, corrupt, yada yada yada. And they scream loudly and viciously because he has shaken the very roots of their moral switchedness.

Now Kelley is a really nice guy. I have no doubt that he condemns just as much as we all do. He just keeps it to himself because, as in a famous essay he wrote, he has better things to do. He is a producer. So the boneheads start believing that black and white are not on his color spectrum at all and that toleration means never condemning. They couldn't be more wrong.

I am not as nice a guy as my namesake. I have an ornery streak and I happen to like blowing bullshit out of the water. I fight against this inner drive since it is not all that productive, but it sometimes is bigger than my conscious desires.

And it feels good.

Now if we are going to talk about humor, I usually find it amusing that the on/off moral switch mongers always get so surprised when I shove their crap right back in their faces (often in double or more) and they start screaming, "Foul! Hypocrite! You claim you are tolerant, but look at what you just did!"

It does not occur to them that degree and kind are two different conceptual premises. Good and evil are kinds. Toleration is degree. Context means other elements, often background elements, but often fundamental ones, impacting the issue being categorized. Here is an illustration. Imagine judging a person cussing people, since that is what many on/off moral switch mongers like to do. To narrow it down, let's restrict it to cussing people they think are bad people. The on/off moral switch monger has only two choices:

• Switch on (the good): Cuss people he thinks are bad people.
• Switch off (the evil): Do not cuss people he thinks are bad people.

A person with strong moral convictions, but who also holds tolerance as a virtue, has a middle part and qualifications for the end points. Think of it as a fader device on the switch.

• Switch off (the evil): Do not cuss people he thinks are bad people when this is the only (or main) value.
• Fader: Degrees of cussing, going from mild disagreement on up to strong language right before wholesale cussing, taking into account other factors and contexts.
• Switch on (the good): Cuss people he thinks are bad people when this is the only (or main) value.

Now ponder one essential point, one that the on/off moral switch mongers constantly miss. The person who values toleration also turns the moral switch on and off at times. There is no inconsistency in this. He merely reached his limit of measuring the importance of other factors and contexts as opposed to the bullshit. So he fully switches on or off, as the case may be (depending on the values involved).

That kind of thinking neither spins the head on the shoulders, nor the shoulders under the head. It keeps the person firmly planted on the planet and lets the earth do the spinning.



Michael

The Acadamic Associate newsletter was after the split. I once heard a derogtory comment on Hoffer by an associate of Miss Rand's. I think this was after the split. Were any books by Hoffer in Rand's library?

Harsh straight talk is not the same as bullying and cussing though.

You are right. It appeared in 1969 in the Academic Associate newsletter, after the break. My memory error.

Bill P

Bill; I'm happy I still have a memory although I'm always saying that was how long ago.

Ruth,

Great quote from George. Reminds me why he is my kind of guy. Well...and that he collects my work. But, then you do to, so I am not surprised you posted it.

Michael

*an innaccurate - and somewhat malevolent quote*

I disagree with everyone who has posted here supporting or praising this quote so far.

"The lonely and alienated, lecturing the fulfilled and grounded; men that posses no discipline and order within their own personal lives, fanatically obsessing on what should be the proper social and economic order of the world; men that are failures at even the most mundane aspects of life, lecturing to those of genuine personal achievement; the unkempt and ugly, giving instruction on the arts and beauty; emotionally repressed geeks, giving lectures concerning joy and exaltation; and last but not least, people unable to create and maintain lasting relationships or friendships, pontificating on the nature of love and loyalty." [George Cordero]

This reminds me very much of an Ayn Rand quote "every loneliness is a pinnacle" that I really liked, until I thought about its exact meaning.

I don't know the context of the Cordero quote and it's not crystal clear who specifically - or how many people in the Objectivist movement he's criticizing - the breadth of the condemnation, but I've now read it two times. The first time, I reacted purely emotionally and said 'right on' and 'beautiful' without any such knowledge or specifs.

There are elements of truth - there are people who lack the achievements they criticize, who attack those bigger than them. But then I reread it line by line and saw the exaggerations and quasi-omniscient misstatements which cheapen and undercut its fire. . . its alleged "nobility" of soul:

Mr. Cordero has no way of knowing that the Objectivists who criticize others are universally, or even largely, "lonely and alienated". It's good poetry but not good science. Maybe he could detect alienation in, any one prominent target...but not knowing their personal lives, it is an unjust inference. Similarly, "men that posses no discipline and order within their own personal lives", " failures at even the most mundane aspects of life", "people unable to create and maintain lasting relationships or friendships" . . . and so on . . . is psychologizing about people he doesn't know.

It’s sort of a sweeping demonization in a stylish, H. L. Mencken kind of way (e.g., the middle class as the “booboisie” – clever, but malevolent and unfair.)

And, more, the stark contrast with the objects of criticism that he is placing on a pedestal: "the fulfilled and grounded", "those of genuine personal achievement [even in mundane areas of life]": Does he know these people, his revered group, well enough to credit them with all of this? Or is it simply that he wants to in a ‘literary’ or fictional way, paint one side as pure white so the other will seem pure black?

Leaving aside by what means he knows the lives of his targeted and denounced group well-enough to sweepingly characterize them this way, "emotionally repressed geeks giving lectures concerning joy and exaltation" sounds as though it were something to be denounced, but in fact sometimes those who have strived for a goal or only partly achieved it can be among the best teachers. Think of the basketball coach who isn't Michael Jordan of a great passer or rebounder but can describe what it takes to be one.

Evaluating the quote objectively, I agree that the starkness and vividness of the contrast makes it powerful and poetic. He's a very good writer. But it is unjust and overstated, and because it is unfair and contradicts reality ... it's a -bad quote-.

It's an example of an Objectivist over-hyping something, grandstanding in a an over-stated or over-simplified "me against the universe" way.

(There is a similar problem with "every loneliness is a pinnacle"...but that a matter for another post.)

Michael Marotto: "When someone said that they liked Mozart, Rand could show that they accepted the epistemology of Immanuel Kant. Followers who mimicked the method would then turn on people (or each other) with similar denunciations, inferring deep problems from minor differences. And here we all are today."

Michael, I would like to edit your first sentence to read: "When someone said that they loved Mozart, Rand would present an argument for the thesis that they had a deeply flawed psycho-epistemological sense of life." But you see, I believe she was mistaken. And her own theory of music contradicts her mistaken view. She wrote: "Until a conceptual vocabulary is discovered and defined, no objectively valid criterion of esthetic judgment is possible in the field of music. No one, therefore, can claim the objective superiority of his choices over the choices of others. Where no objective proof is available, it is every man for himself -- and only for himself."

Peter: "Historical question: did Rand endorse The True Believer?

No. I never discussed Hoffer with her, and I don't think she had read him.

Chris: "Were any books by Hoffer in Rand's library?"

No.

Barbara

Thanks for the clarification.



Thanks again. I apologize for promulgating that falsehood. I always remembered having read a review of The True Believer in The Objectivist Newsletter. However, checking the archives, I see that I was wrong about that. In point of fact, I must have read it in the Academic Associate's publication which I received when it came out. However, I have none of those with me now, having lent all of them to my sister-in-law some decades back when she read Atlas Shrugged. Now that my memory has been remediated, I will stop making that claim.

Michael; I commend you for willingness to admit you are wrong. It shows you an adult in the best sense of over-used word.