THE OBJECTIVIST PSYCHOLOGISTS AND ME

5/28/08 8:20 PM – personal reflections:

While I was jogging just now I thought of posting this. And realized that what this new thread and post reveals about my pratfalls, insensitivities, and lack of awareness is really going to make me look stupid. But that's ok - it hasn't ever stopped me before and it is what it is. (I’m just going to let it flow and not edit.)

On another thread several of the New York psychologists and psychotherapists were mentioned, such as Allan Blumenthal and Lonnie Leonard. Omitted was Edith Packer. I knew them all and saw them all (either individually, or in the case of Blumenthal, in "group") and spent enormous numbers of hours with each of the three of them. As a paid student or client.

Probably why I haven't written about my experiences with them before is because I simply have not retained and 'filed' my experiences in any organized fashion. I haven’t had as much to say as I have on topics more distant from my personal life and inner psychological workings.

I came down from the north to New York after exiting grad school to take Peikoff’s courses and meet other Objectivists and be around people, all kinds of people. I had missed NBI, it had been closed for years. I quickly got involved in all the “psychology” that was going on and which was the main form of activity in the Objectivist universe centered in Manhattan. In retrospect, that was an enormously healthy thing. Psychology is a good real world complement to all the philosophy course. Very grounded.

Unfortunately, I was not very grounded. In the decade of my twenties was a little Platonist in many ways. With an enormously high IQ, and great academic and theoretic and logic-chopping abilities, the highest SAT scores in years? decades? at my small public high school, I could grasp a blackboard full of equations in an instant. Unfortunately, again, I was dumb as a mudflap when it came to people. All the brilliance in academic issues, but extremely almost retarded in understanding what a glance meant. I often couldn’t have told if a woman was interested or what a remark meant unless I sat down and reflected on it laboriously for hours. Or if someone was hostile or wanted to be my friend.

An idiot savant, the most obvious common sense things would totally escape me.

Phil: “I saw her at the Peikoff lectures. We had been so close and had had such a great date, but now she was grimacing and seeming preoccupied during the break. She didn’t really want to talk and kept on throwing a little rubber ball up the escalator and watching it come down. I’ve thought of different possible explanations for her odd actions, but haven’t been able to come to a conclusion. Maybe someone was sick in her family...”

Lonnie Leonard: [Interrupting] “Why didn’t you ask her?”

Phil: “Oh!! . . . I never thought of that!!

Lonnie Leonard: “Phil, the answer to questions is out there. It’s not in your head. If you want to know what is going on, your source of information is often right in front of you . . . . . .”

I have the sense that there were dozens of similar occasions in which Dr. Leonard or Dr. Blumenthal or Edith (I felt closer to her, not a distant authority figure, so I use her first name ... I also knew her much longer, and she seemed more like a friend, which is nothing against the two men) patiently explained the obvious to me, tried to make me into an empiricist, someone ‘in the moment’, not in my own head, not a Platonic theorizer or deducer.

As far as the actual therapy is concerned, as far as curing my neuroses or improving social skills and helpint me to introspect, go back into my childhood and who I was and what I thought and my self-image then before reading Rand, their success was limited.

I think the fault was largely mine. I don’t normally feel much guilt, but in the area of getting in touch with my own psychology, that’s the area where I feel I should have done more than I’ve done. I still have gray areas which I’m not even fully aware of. I don’t remember huge areas of my childhood. “Phil, what was your first series of conscious memories in your life?” “I just remember places and what the house looked like.” “Is there one big memory or series of events from before Kindergarten?” “I remember riding my bicycle down a central median full of trees.” “How did you feel toward your father, then?” “I dunno. I don’t remember feeling things then.” “Wasn’t he stationed overseas for years at a time?“. “Yes.”

Dr. B tended to be more theoretical and abstract. “This week we are going to list and discuss Defense Mechanisms and Defense Values as mechanisms in human beings.” I got all this stuff, but it wasn’t what I needed. Dr. L and Edith were much more Aristotelian and down to earth. What happened yesterday? How did you react and feel? Why did you do that? Let me explain why it’s inappropriate or why you totally blanked on what was going on around you....”

It was as though it took years and session after session to make this immature, post-adolescent, egghead kid into an Aristotelian not a rationalist and a Platonist. And that had to be done before I was even in the right universe to begin to help me peek under the shadows, shine a light on all the stuff I’d repressed, forgotten, or simply innocently had go over my head.

Another example of my emotionally – socially – psychologically retarded state. I didn’t have my first serious girl friend till I moved to New York. I’d spent my time running track or with my head buried in math books even through college although I’d started to be interested in philosophy and bull sessions about it after reading Rand during that period: “After we’d had sex, instead of my walking home to my apartment, she wanted me to –sleep- with her.” “Hadn’t you just done that.” “No, sleep. As in spend the night lying next to each other. In the same bed. I told her it seemed odd and I wanted to go home.”

I didn’t even have the concept of closeness, of intimacy! I wondered what would be fun about doing that. (Now I understand what an idiot I was and that there’s something very wrong with a romantic relationship which doesn’t want or seek or need that kind of closeness, the physical touching, the intimacy involved in falling asleep with your arms around someone . . . and how that’s one of the great pleasures of life.) My girlfriend was not an Objectivist, by the way, had just about *zero* interest in philosophy, just about as far from an egghead as you can get – the opposite of me – but she, while not a soulmate ultimately, was a perfect match for me in this regard. And I shocked myself by being completely and utterly comfortable with someone spontaneous, ‘arty’, and emotional who bluntly told me she would have viewed discussing epistemology as arcane water torture. [As the Tom Cruise movie says, she –completed- me. And I gave herf a certain reliability and steadiness and thoughtfulness she hadn’t had in her giddy and much more social life.]

[[ My girlfriend, who patiently had to explain the most obvious things about relationships to me (with some help from Edith in our sessions), told me three years later, when we broke up, “boy, Philip, I sure improved you for the next woman!!” :-) ]]

Conclusion, at least so far:

I guess a point, a lesson I’d like to draw here is that these years of focusing on introspection and self-awareness and social and relationship issues have given me a certain humility about myself and about how we all screw up and have blind spots which a pure exposure to Objectivism only thru the philosophy would not have done. And when I read from posters on these lists and talk to people at conferences, I see them making the same grotesque, blind, solipsistic mistakes that I made (or in some cases didn’t make –- like constant moral condemnations, cliquism—I never tried much to fit in, or psychologizing -- I wasn’t a *total* basket case and I think a saving grace is I always had benevolent and positive instincts).

I moved from being on the Platonic to the Aristotelian sector in our movement. And to knowing much more about the blind-spot areas I mentioned (though I still have ‘miles to go before I sleep and promises to –myself- to keep’.) And my posts and lectures and intellectual interests, if they have a theme, is to constantly swat down Platonism, psychologizing, tunnel-vision and the like. Diplomatically sometimes, undiplomatically and bluntly other times. I’ve appreciated being treated frankly and bluntly by Drs. B, L, E ...and by Peikoff... over the years. And tried to learn without chagrin or ego problems from someone who knows more than I.

[Ok, that's quite enough – it’s taken me close to an hour to write this “diary entry” - 5/28/08 9:11 PM]

Thanks, Phil. That's quite a story. Now I can make more room for you and your points of view.

--Brant

Phil, I think you learned the most important lesson of all for any intellectual young man -- or girl -- to learn: to change from a Platonist to an Aristotelean, from a rationalist to an empiricist. It's a lesson I, too, had to learn. I began life as more of an empiricist; it was only in my early Objectivist years that I switched, perhaps in part because I was trying to absorb too much theory too fast, until I finally realized I had to re-learn looking at the world rather than living in an ivory tower of ideas disconnected from reality.

I have met literally dozens of young men who were as you describe yourself. The Objectivist movement is bursting with Platonists, young and old, ill-equipped to understand or deal with practical reality -- as is every other intellectual movement I can think of.

I'm very glad you posted your message. It took courage. And I got to know you quite a bit better. I was learning about you from our earlier correspondence, but this took me a level deeper. I like what I see.

Barbara

Phil,

I don't have time to write in depth tonight, but I want you to know that I saw what you wrote and I know what it took to write that. (Boy, do I know!)

I am more than pleased.

This will also help me respond to you better in the future—to try to speak your language, so to speak. You have no idea how relieved I am to get rid of some conclusions that I was forming about you from your online presence. You ain't that at all. (Don't even ask... ) Now I know where you are coming from.

I don't know how to say that I really liked this without sounding sappy, but what the hell. You're a good dude and it's a pleasure to know you.

Michael

Phil; Thanks for your entry. I am just curious if you had any encounter with Dr. Richard Nickerson. I saw Dr. Edwin Locke who had a practice in the DC area.

I'll have more to say later.

Phil -

Thanks for posting this. I am certain that it wasn't easy to do so.

Bill P (Alfonso)

Phil,
Thanks for opening up.

From what you've said about yourself above, I'm largely your opposite. I'm dumb as a mudflap when it comes to a blackboard full of equations (though I do quite well at non-math subjects), but I usually have a very good eye for what a "glance" means. I generally have very reliable "instincts" about who and what people are.

So, when I warn others that they seem to be falling for the "charms" of a manipulative asshole, and that they're probably going to be taken advantage of or stabbed in the back, would you say that I'm necessarily indulging in "cliquism," "psychologizing" and "food fights"? When my sensitive nose tells me that something is rotten, are you suggesting that I should stop paying attention to it and follow your nose instead, because you've spent many years deeply studying how you might compensate for your anosmia?

You seem to be trying to help people avoid making mistakes that you think you've made. That's wonderful. But do you think it's possible that others are also trying to be helpful, but with different tools than those that you have?

For those of us who were never "dumb as a mudflap when it comes to people," might it make sense for us to try to prevent damage before it occurs rather than limiting ourselves to painstakingly analyzing the damage after it occurs (as you did here, for example)?

Isn't saying "Hey, Person X, you're going to get totally fucked over by Person Y" potentially better than saying "Hey, let me logically explain what was wrong with Person Y's totally fucking over of Person X"?



Would you mind answering some questions about your views on "constant moral condemnations"? I'd like to get a better idea of which types of judgments you think qualify.

Is it an act of improper "moral condemnation" for me to mention that I think that certain Objectivists (whom I personally like, incidentally) sound like religious zealots when they characterize people who question Rand's ideas or behavior as trying to "pull down" or "diminish" their hero?

Is it unfair of me and others to judge Lonnie Leonard as a rapist and an evil fucking bastard for what he did to Ellen Plasil and many of his other patients, or would you characterize such judgments as "acrimonious" and as unfair "character attacks and name-calling"?

When people express outrage at Leonard's behavior, and morally condemn him, would you advise them to weigh his abuse of his patients against what you think were his positive contributions?

When you heard that Leonard had abused his patients, did you feel emotionally outraged, or was your reaction more along the lines of logically analyzing the ethics of the situation, and judging Leonard's behavior to be inconsistent with Objectivism? Did you feel anything for the patients who had been abused, or was your mental process more like that of an adding machine which calculated a logical sum that had little or nothing to do with feeling anything about what had happened?

Should people's feelings and judgments not be expressed or discussed? When discussing such things as Leonard's abusive behavior, or the abusive behavior of today's Objectivists, is it your view that people should limit themselves to logically discussing the philosophical and psychological issues invloved, and avoid airing their emotional reactions?

Do you think that people should have given Leonard another chance? Should they have "gotten over" their moral condemnations of him and their emotional reactions to his behavior, and then focused on the good that he had done, and that he still might have done in the future?

Do you think you'd be here on OL writing about the value that Dr. Leonard brought to your life if, in addition to helping you clear your head on certain issues, he had intimidated you into removing your clothing during therapy sessions and had stuck his penis inside one of your orifices without your permission?

If people were to come forward and suggest that Leonard's abuse of his patients was actually a good thing -- that it was a groundbreaking new approach to therapy -- or that it wasn't as bad as people think it was, would you scold those who vehemently opposed such claims, telling them to stop being upset, and reminding them that Leonard has been sufficiently condemned many times in the past and that they don't need to go through it all over again just because someone new has come along and stirred up the hornet's nest again?

J

Phil,

If you're willing to provide details, I'd be interested to hear about the dates and locales:

When did you move to New York City?

Did Allan Blumenthal refer you to Lonnie Leonard?

How long were you Lonnie's client?

When did you become Edith's client -- and where, in NYC, on the West Coast, overlapping (that is, starting in NYC, then continuing on the West Coast)? (Edith moved to California in '77.)

Ellen

___

Thanks, Barbara, Michael and others for the supportive comments!

PURPOSE OF THREAD

My original post indicates that I started a thread is to discuss personal growth, relationships, psychology in a manner not being done much on the other threads. Not individual 'movement personalities'. Or who did what to whom. Or who broke with whom forty years ago [There are plenty of other threads for that --- currently the PARC thread is where everyone is flocking to discuss this. That seems to be the general area of interest.]

I had hoped that this thread would cause others to reflect, look well inside themselves and talk about the same kinds of issues I raised:

Mistakes made in -your- life.
Lessons learned.
Introspection about your feelings.
Personal development.
How you are a different person now.
Who has helped you.
What has stood in your way.
Breakthroughs or personal triumphs over yourself.

GOOD CONVERSATIONS, TRADER PRINCIPLE IN REGARD TO

Jonathan, Ellen, I got a whole lot of questions which I have thought extensively about and -do- have answers for. Post-NBI, I knew everybody in New York and have lots of observations and insights which have not been mentioned yet.

But I want a trade of value for value in regard to what obviously interests me. If people want me to engage further on the issues that interest them, they have to first participate by sharing -themselves- or at least engaging on some of the former. Posting in at least a little detail and thereby starting a real conversation on the issues that interested me enough to make a lengthy post on them. By responding with more than a bullet list of questions (for example shifting my new topic of introspection instantly within only hours back to your 'personalities' topics which are already on the other thread, as if those were the only issues one could legitimately discuss.)

Your initial post links your experiences in contemplating your own psychological explorations to your criticisms of the mistakes that you think that "posters on these lists" make. If you don't want to discuss "movement personalities" as they relate to your "lessons learned" observations, then why did you bring it up?



The topic isn't unappealling to me, but I'm not interested in joining anything resembling a group therapy session. Many of the things you've listed above are often discussed beween the rest of us on various threads during the give and take of normal discussions. In fact, they seem to be the kind of things that you'd be likely to gripe about as being off-topic. See, we all talk about things as they occur to us. We socialize and share stuff as life is happening. We don't set aside all of those things to be discussed only on planned, categorized, limited, compartmentalized threads when Phil is ready to discuss them.



Great. I'd love to hear your observations.



As I said above, if you didn't want to discuss your opinion that others are making "grotesque, blind, solipsistic mistakes" and "moral condemnations," and that they are "psychologizing," then you shouldn't have included the topic in your initial post.

Anyway, you say that your having focused on introspection, self-awareness, and social and relationship issues has given you a certain humility. I don't know you, but from what I've seen of you online, I don't see a lot of humility. I see a lot of presumptuous scolding. As do others. A lot of people in these Objectivist forums seem to think of you as a "schoolmarm," which doesn't exactly imply humility. How self-aware and socially sensitive could you be if you're still behaving like a schoolmarm after being called a schoolmarm so often? You know, pretty much the only time that I enjoy reading someone like Pigero or Chris Catheter is when they're ripping on you for being a prissy schoolmarm. You should really think about what a major pain in the ass a person has to be in order to make me enjoy Pigero and Catheter.

Your participation online is often very dismissive of people and the things they're interested in or concerned about. You're not interested in something, so, damn it, they shouldn't be interested either. When you're done arguing over a "personality issue" about "who said what to whom," you seem to think that everyone else should be done too. Phil has had his fill, now it's time for Phil to bitch endlessly about the fact that others are still bitching about what Phil just spent hour upon hour of his life bitching about.

People learn about others and about themselves by discussing their own and others' behavior. Wasn't the point of your initial post that philosophy alone doesn't cut it, that people need to live and interact and gauge how and why people respond to other people? Isn't discussing "personality issues" valuable in learning how to behave and how not to behave? Isn't letting off steam and sharing minor frustrations with like-minded online pals, or finding a way to laugh at annoying jerks, a vital part of experiencing and understanding "social and relationship issues"?

Worded more bluntly, who do you think you are to presume to tell everyone which topics of discussion are or are not worthy of their time? What the hell do you know about their stages of personal development, their personal contexts, and what they currently need intellectually, psychologically and emotionally, and what they don't?

To end on a more pleasant note, I don't think that your schoolmarm behavior defines you. It's an aspect of your personality that irritates me, but I don't want to leave you with the impression that that's all that I think you are.

J

Phil,

The questions I asked were brief, very specific, and didn't require having "thought extensively about" to answer. If you didn't want to answer them, fine, that's up to you. Just pointing out to you something in your reply which I've noticed as a frequent feature of your method of reply, which is lumping together instead of responding individually.

As to people's "sharing - themselves-," you know what? There's been a whole lot of exactly that, talking about personal experiences, on exactly the subjects you become so irritated that people talk about. It's so often exactly when people DO bring in the personal that you start complaining. Can't win with you, in other words.

As to your having known "everybody" in New York post-NBI: I arrived in NYC early September 1968 and got to know quite a number of the "everybody" in New York post-NBI. I don't think that you and I even met, or that I ever heard of you. I'm thus doubtful as to how well you knew "everybody." If you "have lots of observations and insights which have not been mentioned yet," I would certainly be interested in hearing those. But it's up to you if you want to write about them. Any request that I "share first" is pretty ridiculous, considering that what I'm most often criticized for, by you and my other critics, is my habit of telling personal reminiscences -- a habit I intend to continue within the next few days with tales of TheRapist Lonnie Leonard.

Ellen

___

Phil,

Here is a post I made in a discussion with Ellen last year. It touches on all the major issues in this thread and I don't think you have read it. I think you might find it interesting. Most all of the psychological problems I seen with good people in Objectivism boil down to duty. (The bad people would be bad anyway irrespective of moral system—bad Christians, bad Muslims, bad Buddists, bad Humanists, bad period.)

Outside of the post below, I did not have the privilege of having a therapist when I started melting down in Brazil. I had to come out of it the hard way. As the road went straight through addiction, I simply had to give up Objectivism for a while and take what help I could find.

Incidentally, I think I should mention something. If you really have the stamina and toughness to do this right in the manner you started, you can't teach. How this works is not as a competition or hierarchy of knowledge between unequals. It is sharing goodwill. It works like a mirror. Read my words and look inside your own soul to see what resonates. Then stop there. The rest doesn't matter.

But then you'll see that you're not alone and you'll know it on a deeper level than just thinking it.

Michael, thanks for posting on the topic of the thread (and Barbara for her comments on Platonists, etc., as well.)

Jonathan and Ellen on the other hand?? -- wow, what a lot of venom and seething hostility. And 'dealing in personalities instead of ideas' --> poorly thought out criticisms of me. As opposed to anything on topic. They claim to have posted elsewhere on this topic, but these two bile-filled 'attack posts' and wanting to switch the topic to Lonnie Leonard and his (very real!!) failings raise doubts.

Does indeed remind me a lot of Perigo and Cathcart, especially the 'schoolmarm' taunt and the 'people don't like you' group metaphysics which is a non-objective slur for someone who criticizes you.

And for not admitting that you are unwilling to accept criticism and that it raises enormous resentment in you.

No. No venom. Just honest criticism of the way that you treat people. Why are you so unwilling to accept criticism? Why does it raise such enormous resentment in you?



Speaking of not staying on topic, you like the The West Wing, don't you? I'm pretty sure that I'm remembering correctly that you do. Anyway, my wife and I love the show, and we had been talking lately about how much we miss it. Then, the other day, out of the blue, we were in a store that had all of the seasons on sale for about $18 each!

The other night I started watching the second season, and the opening of episode 3 cracked me up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3DoDMfDa_Q

That C.J is a hoot! Here she is doing The Jackal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7H_L5cYkg8

Classic.

While we're on the subject of youtube videos, I just came across this one by Creed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yY1Nrznh4I

I'm not a huge Creed fan, but I really like this video. Visually, it's got kind of a John William Waterhouse meets Salvador Dali feeling to it.

What are some of your favorite videos, Phil?



"Failings"? The man took advantage of patients while they were in very weakened psychological states, molested them, raped them, beat at least one of them and challenged him with a gun, and you categorize it as "failings"? Jesus, I would have thought that someone who would call my mere words "venom," "seething hostility" and "bile-filled attacks" would use a little stronger language than "failings" when talking about a sexual predator's violations of his victims.

Btw, I've heard that Hitler was often nice to children despite also having some (very real!!) shortcomings, blemishes or imperfections (or however you'd put it).



It wasn't meant as a "taunt," but more of an apt identification of your behavior.

J

Phil,

People have been calling you "schoolmarm" since before the time when I first encountered you in listland -- which was also when I started participating in listland -- back in 1998 during the final months of the Cornell-L list. (Kirez was then in process of setting up the WTL -- WeTheLiving -- family of lists which replaced his Cornell-L list.) Finding your posts often tedious, I inquired about you of a friend who had enticed me into posting; the friend reported that you were widely looked upon as being a "schoolmarm" and often a bore. The "schoolmarm" description didn't originate with Perigo and Cathcart.

Someday you might want to ask yourself if there's a characteristic way of approach in your posting style which elicits this description.

As to "'people don't like you' group metaphysics," I don't see that in either Jonathan's or my remarks, or "a lot of venom and seething hostility." Sometimes Jonathan's sarcasm is mistaken as being venomous; I never read him that way myself, but it might be an issue of different sensitivities to tone. He wasn't being hostile, however. I am to an extent hostile toward you. I've been irritated time and again by your appearing partway into the progression of a thread where the discussion has become heated and delivering a lecture to everyone indiscriminately, showing no signs that you even understand what the argument's about and who's said what. You did the same sort of thing on a small scale in your first reply with lumping together Jonathan and me (also in your second reply).

I repeat my comment that if you "'have lots of observations and insights which have not been mentioned yet," I would certainly be interested in hearing those.' But it's up to you if you want to write about them."

I am certainly not going to oblige you by "sharing" on your sudden demand, and I repeat that in my case I find the request "pretty ridiculous" anyway, since I've frequently posted with personal reminiscences (and you've sometimes been one of those who've criticized my doing this). In regard to Lonnie Leonard, I didn't mean that I was going to talk about him on this thread. I was referring to a comment I made on the "Uselessness of PARC" thread.

Ellen

___

[Disclaimer: I don’t wish to continue a pissing contest with the “attack mode people”, J and E attempting to highjack my thread. I don’t have time to try to pick out occasional valid points out of venom and hostility. So, I’ll simply ignore their posts in their entirety.]

> the most important lesson of all for any intellectual young man -- or girl -- to learn: to change from a Platonist to an Aristotelian....I was trying to absorb too much theory too fast, until I finally realized I had to re-learn looking at the world rather than living in an ivory tower of ideas disconnected from reality. [Barbara]

Barbara, I think the mistake i) of trying to hungrily read and integrate the entire Objectivist corpus as fast as possible -- and then add to this ii): feeling one is on top of the world, master of the universe that one is intellectual Superman having read it all is probably the most common pair of mistakes of all among those who become Oists. It leads to rationalism, to arrogance, to deductively trying to answer every issue without really understanding the issues.

Enormously abstract material is like rich food.

You need time to digest each morsel and let it enter the bloodstream. Without dizziness, inebriation, or a sugar rush. But very few people do what you mention grasping you had to do: realize they had tried to absorb too much theory too fast. And even fewer try to restart. I don’t remember a lot of people (back in the day or even now) having the humility to say “Well, you know, I’ve got to relearn Objectivism. I don’t think I really got it the first time around.”

The great virtue of the psychological tendencies of the post-NBI period (bolstered by the rather introspective UO course) for me was that they sort of rubbed my nose in the fact that I had a lot of blind spots. I wasn’t God’s gift to the world of ideas the instant I turned over the last pages of Atlas and the primary non-fiction anthologies or because of my Ivy League education.

> Most all of the psychological problems I seen with good people in Objectivism boil down to duty. [Michael]

Michael, I think I might have to disagree with you there. In my experience it’s been hubris. The sort of thing I mentioned above in my response to Barbara. Thinking they are superior to everyone because they’ve read a little Ayn Rand and being blind to their own flaws and the years it will take them to integrate this enormously difficult philosophy...and even be aware of where they need to improve...and being proudly, arrogantly hostile to those who dare to suggest they are not perfect because they have a high IQ, verbal facility, and have read all of Ayn Rand or taken some lecture courses.

It’s actually the very first mistake I saw with the shock or disappointment when I met my first students who liked AR in college.

> I did not have the privilege of having a therapist when I started melting down in Brazil. I had to come out of it the hard way. As the road went straight through addiction, I simply had to give up Objectivism for a while and take what help I could find.

I can sympathize with how difficult it is when you don’t have anyone around you who can be a true guide or source of help. You have to do what you can do at the time...and the true test of a man is if he comes out of it at the other end, when he’s finally able to see clearly, build himself up, etc.

> I must have read ITOE at least 10 times and I still didn't understand it

It’s good that you stuck to it and didn’t let your ego get in the way of admitting you weren’t getting it.

> if you propose a morality that is geared toward prompting guilt and impossible to practice correctly on earth, i.e., designed to be breached (like many Christian teaching are)....

While it is my conclusion that this was never intentional on the part of Miss Rand or of her main Objectivist colleagues and heirs, in their zeal and idealism to change the world and eagerness to HELP PEOPLE, they sometimes are exhibiting psychological blindness and –acting- in way they would be shocked to realize: in a psuedo-cultlike manner. As a teacher I can understand this: forgetting or never fully integrating the distance between your level of knowledge and that of your students. Forgetting what it took –you- to learn things years ago in the past, the mistakes you had to make or see past....

And so they engender guilt or at least a sense of intellectual inadequacy in the people who accept the blandishments to make no mistake, be flawless in practice, understand all ideas now, etc.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. And neither was Atlantis.

Phil,

I agree with the arrogance, but I have seen a lot of guilt beneath the surface of a lot of arrogance. I don't think the arrogance is mutually exclusive of the sense of duty (which is a great source of guilt). They go hand-in-hand quite well. Also, almost comically, the arrogant person has no difficulty telling you what your duties are, even as he says that duty qua duty is evil. Objectivists don't like the word "duty" because of Rand's blasts, but the concept they preach and practice is nothing but duty regardless of what word you call it.

What I noticed with me was that the sense of duty increased and strangled me over time as the arrogance became at first more strident, then started abating. I have seen this pattern online several times. I am probably sensitive to it for having lived it.

We are, of course, talking about people who actually strive to be good by choice. Not about people who are manipulating others for power or position. These also tend to be strident, but they have an unsavory agenda.

I also think the problem with hubris is not simply lack of integrating the philosophy. In every skill I have learned, I never had this kind of problem in life, or any difficulty performing (on a minor scale), because of my limited lack of knowledge. I also note that people trying to learn far more complicated philosophies (like Kant's or Wittengenstein's) do not have problems in life like excessive hubris because they have not fully integrated the philosophy.

I see no reason to make not understanding Objectivism a source of this behavior if it does not happen in other bodies of ideas.

I do agree that many of the more strident Objectivists actually do not understand much of the philosophy, but I think this has more to do with the emotional appeal of basking in Rand's arrogance (and she was very arrogant when she wanted to be) than it is in any philosophical consideration, other than using it as subterfuge.

I really like the thought that Atlantis was not built in a day, especially if we consider Atlantis to be an individual state and not a collective one.

Michael

You'd think that he'd have asked himself that already. He's heard the complaints often enough, whether they're worded politely, as yours are, Ellen, or more sarcastically, as mine, Pigero's and Catheter's tend to be.



That's right, I'm not being "hostile." And I'm definitely not "seething."

I don't know where Phil got the idea that I'm coming from a "'people don't like you' group metaphysics" mindset. I generally like Phil, despite his schoolmarm behavior, and I wasn't suggesting that he should act according to how any group of people would tell him to act. The point was more along the lines that, for someone who claims to have an interest in his own psychology and social and relationship skills, there seem to be a lot of very loud, obvious signals that he's missing, or defensively writing off as taunts, venom, hostility and pissing contests.



It sounds as if you're describing something that could be called "self-unaware Objectivist hubris or arrogance." I wonder how a person could say the preceding sentence without it being dismissed as "venom" by the person of whom it is critical.

I've asked Phil polite but direct questions in the past, about such things as, say, his qualifications to offer unsolicited advice on how to run an organization, and how those qualifications pertain to his expectation that his advice should be taken seriously, if not implemented immediately, by the targets of his wisdom, and he has tended to not see any relevance in such questions, but has responded by saying things like, "Vicious troll ignored." With that type of hyper-sensitivity and hair-triggered judgmentalism, I can't begin to imagine how one might tell him that he can be very condescending and insulting in the way that he treats people. Any attempt at getting through seems to be deflected as "venom" and "hostility."



I think that the odds are now very much against us ever hearing those observations and insights. We've expressed demand for something that Phil can supply, and we did so while refusing to follow the lesson plan that he wanted us to conform to. As Phil said, it's a "trade." We didn't give him the value of allowing him to control how we conversed on this thread, so there's no reason for him to give us the value that he offered in exchange.



The whole schoolmarm, lesson plan, stay on topic, nose to the grindstone attitude seems so lifeless and stifling. It's not exactly something that makes you want to open up and get personal. I mean, if that's the way that Phil's mind works best, then good for him. But to me, it absolutely destroys the conditions that allow for the spontaneity of creative discovery. There's no chance for a genuine "eureka moment" by diligently making sure to not stray off course, and limiting our thinking to the confines of what we've decided ahead of time to think or talk about. It's so damn dry, stale and devoid of anything even resembling a spark of imagination.

I think that's the primary problem that I have with Phil -- he seems so damned anti-imagination. I find myself suspecting that there's probably a very serious lack of creative originality in his life. I know a lot of highly creative people -- very successful inventors, artists, entrepreneurs, etc -- and they all spend a lot of time veering way the hell off course, following hunches and wild hairs, and then coming back to the original problem or topic from a completely new perspective. For someone to be so adamantly and downright intrusively opposed, as Phil is, to others enjoying such free-style thinking and conversing is just bewildering. I really can't imagine Phil's persnickety mindset leading to anything brilliant and new and exciting.

J

Okay, so I'm up to the middle of the third season of The West Wing, and I had a good laugh over an episode in which Josh Lyman starts posting to an online discussion forum called LemonLyman.com where members argue about everything from his work as White House Deputy Chief of Staff to his personal life.

Here's a clip in which he gets a taste of C.J.'s wrath for having posted on the site:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRHygbB1dp4

There's an even better segment (which, unfortunately, I couldn't find online) earlier in the episode in which Josh describes to Donna the members of the site, including their endless gripes and dictatorial attitudes about such things as spelling, grammar, staying on topic, etc.

Heh.

J

I hear that Tim Russert died. He was only 58. Pretty sad.

J

Phil, I don't think you're being fair to Jonathan and Ellen. Ellen asked mostly factual questions, which you could have answered very briefly; and Jonathan asked -- and never mind if you didn't like his tone -- some intelligent and interesting questions very relevant to your original post. They both deserve to be answered, not dismissed.

A friend of mine, a psychologist, is doing very interesting work in communication theory. As he said, after we are weaned, our means of making contact with other human beings is, essentially, through verbal communication -- so we had better get it right. And he points out that each of us has his own natural method of functioning –- of understanding, of reacting, of pursuing knowledge, of learning –- of grasping and dealing with the world and with people. If we are to deal successfully with other people we need to become aware of their characteristic way of functioning –- we are not going to change it –- and attempt to utilize that awareness in our dealings with them (unless of course we find them hopelessly irrational). He gave me the following example:

The CEO of a company informs his top executives that he has a new idea for the company that he wants them to implement; he explains the idea, and says he wants them to advise him on its validity and, if they decide it is valid, to advise him on how and when it should be implemented. Executive A responds that he’ll need a couple of weeks to research the idea in order to see how it fits into the overall operations of the company, what its long range consequences for the company would be, what changes in personnel might be required, and so on. Executive B says “I like the idea. Let’s try it out. We have nothing to lose, and we’ll learn as we go, we’ll discover what the problems are and solve them as we come to them. That’s how we can quickly discover if it makes sense to implement it in full or not.” What do you think would happen if the CEO told Executive A to immediately test the plan in action and report back on how it worked and he told Executive B to investigate the plan it from the aspects of the company’s overall plans and purposes? Each man would likely do a rotten job of his assignment because he would be required to fly in the face of his normal, comfortable, and predominantly successful way of functioning. A good CEO makes it a point to know his executives sufficiently to understand how they function and therefore to know what assignments to give each of them; he knows how to profit from the best of each man’s abilities.

I had an example of this principle soon after talking with my psychologist friend, in a conversation with another friend. This friend was considering writing a book that, for a variety of reasons, I had been urging him to write. One evening, I asked if he had yet decided whether or not to do it. He answered that he still was doing a good deal of thinking about it, that there were certain problems he had to solve before he could definitely decide, and he proceeded to name some of the problems. As he spoke, I found myself getting slightly irritated, and thinking: “Good God! At this rate he’ll never decide! Why doesn’t he just start writing; he’s a brilliant man -- he'll find the answers to the problems as he gets to them in the writing.” Then I remembered my conversation with the psychologist, and I realized that I was mentally not allowing my friend to be himself, to be who he was. Leaping into action is my natural way of functioning; my friend’s way is first to research an issue from every aspect he finds relevant –- and if I were to somehow require that he function my way, he would not be successful at it. With that, my irritation vanished.

The point is, Phil, that you are dealing with people on this forum who have different ways of functioning. I’ve briefly illustrated only two very different methods, each of them legitimate, each of them with a track record of success. You need to consider that fact before jumping to malevolent conclusions from the perspective of your own natural method. You need to understand essentially good people and, assuming the way they function is not self-defeating, to grant them legitimacy in your own mind and in your words and actions involving them. Jonathan, for instance, as he has indicated, tries out a new idea on his emotions first (but on his intellect as well), as is typical of any artist you will meet. You can’t jump down his throat because he is not your twin. Allow him to function as he does and do your best to find a common ground with him.

Let me give you some examples of how differently people process information from my observations of OL people. I’ll be very approximate for the sake of brevity, but I think you’ll see my point. Michael Kelly, for instance, is a a union of the dedicated researcher, who would be miserably uncomfortable if he had to come to conclusions ahead of gathering a good deal of empirical evidence –- and also a man who, like Jonathan, tries out ideas on his emotions to see if they are or are not congruent. Ellen judges first and foremost analytically, she examines an idea from many angles and perspectives and she is needs to be certain that every detail of an overall theory is exactly right before she can accept it. You are a big picture addict—-that is, you think in wide abstractions and are relatively unconcerned and impatient with details and witih how your readers are likely to react –- which is why you often clash with Ellen ad Jonathan. You don’t clash because one of you is always right and the others wrong, but because you don’t understand and accept your very different ways of functioning. Give them a break, Phil, and you'll be giving yourself a break, too.


Barbara

Barbara,

There are a lot of issues in your post which require thought. Let me mull them over and sort them out before I reply.

Phil

> The CEO of a company...wants [his top executives] to advise him on [a new business idea]. Executive A responds that he’ll need a couple of weeks to research the idea in order to see how it fits into the overall operations of the company, what its long range consequences for the company would be, what changes in personnel might be required, and so on. Executive B says “I like the idea. Let’s try it out. We have nothing to lose, and we’ll learn as we go, we’ll discover what the problems are and solve them as we come to them. That’s how we can quickly discover if it makes sense to implement it in full or not.” [Barbara]

I think whether both approaches are valid (and whether the two executives are then capable of switching their preferred approach) depends entirely on what the idea is. If it is disruptive, costs tons of money, could sidetrack or derail other projects, then A's can be the objectively better approach. If a "study" is less direct, less informative, and slower than the experimental approach, then B's may be the only proper approach.

Your next example of the writer - the one who plunges in and figures it out along the way, vs. the meticulous pre-planner sounds more like a great example of a case where -either- approach can be valid, depending on how one's mind works most fruitfully.

> The point is, Phil, that you are dealing with people on this forum who have different ways of functioning...You need to understand essentially good people and, assuming the way they function is not self-defeating, to grant them legitimacy

Barbara, my basic problem is not with different cognitive styles. It is with personal attacks and hostility. And not only not posting on the topic of the thread but being contemptuous of my request for that.

I don't know how closely you read my post #9 which launched this tangent, followed by the responses to me in posts #10 and #11 ["presumptuous scolding...prissy schoomarm...you start complaining. Can't win with you...pretty ridiculous...I am certainly not going to oblige you by "sharing" on your sudden demand..."] They were unprovoked by what I said. And not in the spirit of my original post or of my polite request for more of the same. They were personally hostile and sort of trying to 'even old scores' from previous threads.

Lack of basic conversational respect and civility or willingness to engage on the thread topic: I think you would see this quite directly if it were directed at you. In this case, it's not basically an issue of cognitive styles but of something which is clearly inappropriate (and quite important for the Objectivist movement and for people in general).

I pretty much agree with what AR was reputed to say on this:

"I reject the modern concept of manners; I don't have to engage in conversation with, or offer a service to anyone who doesn't know how to disagree with me politely."