> Why is there so much infighting among Objectivists? [Roger]

Why is there so much infighting among academics, intellectuals in many disciplines, among those with strong ideological views? They spent a lot more time mastering intellectual matters (and developing respect for those matters) than they did getting along with (or developing respect for) other human beings. "Pointy-headed" intellectuals [as opposed to the mature, balanced, well-developed ones] are far more likely than the average to lack tolerance, respect, people skills, tact, diplomacy. They also are more likely to have spent less time developing verbal self-control. "Hey, I'm a genius ... I don't have to attend to that distracting, conventional stuff." "I'm just more honest thatn other people and say what I feel." "I can just wing it and just fling my feelings around at anyone who gets in my way."

> Seriously, hostile commentary and personal attacks are a lot easier than rolling up one's sleeves and trying to fight productively for reason and freedom.

The average intellectual has concentrated so heavily on developing his mind or his "topic mastery" that he has neglected self-mastery, self-discipline, character and effort-building in other areas. That's why you see so many Oists in dead-end jobs, struggling for money, etc. To be successful in those areas -- just like going out into the arena and fighting for reason and freedom -- requires a significant portion of your life have been spent getting off the couch and learning how to do things in the real world. Successfully.

> But when I see how many posts are sent up each day by some people, I wonder if they have considered whether this is the most rational and productive use of their time?

This doesn't only apply to Oists, of course but "internet discussion mavens" in general. It's perhaps the line of least resistance for them. Anti-effort combined perhaps with a sneaking inadequacy at dealing with the 'real world'.

We know that condemnation of evils is fundamental to our fundamentalism. Ayn Rand played the A for our orchestra. There is no surprise in that.

Larger than us, ideologies tend to be this way. It was all well and good for Patrick Henry to give a speech and Alexander Hamilton to be Washington's aide de camp. After the revolution, other issues divided them. It is appropriate, if not ironic, that Hegel's theories generated the antithetical Young Hegelians who stood him on his head.

As I suggested in the "Gold Standard" topic, it may be genetic, rewarded by evolution that we perceive by contrast heed warnings. Did your mother give you a list of things you could do, or merely the things you could not. It's the Ten Commandments, not the 10,000 Approvals, though Jeremiah was more inclusive than Moses: "all is vanity..."

Maybe if we were other creatures - perhaps if we not tied to the Apron Strings of Mount Sinai - in discussions, we would only agree with each other and let disagreements die by lack of reinforcement. There would be no disagreements, only consensus.

It may be that the path to truth must be a dialectic, a "proportional, integral, and differential tuning" as is the case in servo-feedback mechanisms. In other words, if all we measure is agreements, what happens when they are lacking. Above, I said that disagreements would cease to exist from lack of reinforcement.

Discussing the post-modernists, David Kelley drew a powerful analogy to driving. Do they actually dirve as if reality were a socially-mediated construct? Of course not. Here, too, then: if you never acknowledged a disagreement (your speed versus the posted limit; your general direction version the curve in the road), you would not be very successful.

Perhaps the problem is not disagreeing, but taking all such conflicts to heart. Again,though, how else could you react your lover abandons you for a younger woman? Scorned women seldom have been known to denounce their betrayers as existentialists, though it happens, apparently.