Bad Boys, "swagger deficit," 'n stuff

[Jonathan]

> Honestly, Phil? Do you really crave attention that much?

PDS, do me a favor: don't buy the claim that I post to "get attention". Read the posts I make carefully and notice that I'm making logical points or arguments.

Don't psychologize about people you don't know and their motives.

As I see it, there are only a few possible options as to what motivates Phil. He either craves attention, or he's moron, or he's an asshole. Or some combination of all three. So I think that PDS wasn't psychologizing so much as being too generous in concluding that Phil only craves attention. It's clear to the rest of us who have known him a long time that he not only craves attention but is also a bit of a moron and quite an asshole.

J

[Jonathan]

The usual 'snark' and cartoons, but no one who disagrees with me was capable of answering my points intellectually:

The admiration or esteeming of "swagger" or being a "bad boy", whether among Oists or among the opposite sex, is foolish and will lead one into many errors in "judging people by their cover". In each case, it's a superficial attribute. It does not connote self-confidence or risk-taking but merely the ability to put on its facade. Two analogies will make the point clear ==>

1. "Swagger" : Self-confidence and Self-esteem :: Being a "motor-mouth" : Intelligence

2. Being a "Bad-Boy : Willingness to Act and Take Proper Risks :: The Cast of 'Jackass" : People who are Creative or Genuine Explorers

...So can I assume my points were accepted, and that I'm being thanked for pointing them out?

Wow, what a total idiot.

J

[Robert Campbell]

In addition to being able to be "rational", you also have to be able to generate interesting/fruitful hypotheses. The Objectivist system is pretty sterile when it comes to this. When it comes to economics, biology, or chemistry there is enough for a creative person to do that is fertile and doesn't come with the preset axiomatic limits Objectivism has in place. When a certain type of person encounters a Kary Mullis or Richard Feynman or John Von Neumann, they get what they need and Rand doesn't penetrate for them.

Jim,

The Objectivist system isn't just pretty sterile in this regard. There's no real acknowledgment of hypotheses or hypothesis testing at all.

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

We can both make contrary claims about that and neither of us top the other with justifiable certitude. I find it hard to believe, though, when Rand had Roark blowing up Cortlandt she was thinking of a cowardly, scumbag murderer hacking up a little girl.

--Brant

I'm not saying she was thinking of that, nor am I talking about the blowing up of Cortlandt. That's what she finally used as the plot means to result in the climactic trial scene. It's the trial scene I'm talking about in seeing direct lineage. I'm saying that I think she'd formed an image which stuck with her of a protagonist in the dock calmly facing the courtroom. She wrote about that image in her sketch for "The Little Street." If you re-read the sketch, I think you could see that the abstraction is the core of the scene she ultimately used years later -- and remember, she said even at the time she wrote "The Little Street" sketch that it was what Hickman suggested to her, not Hickman himself, she was thinking of as the basis for her character. My belief is that she quickly gave up on that project with a stern admonition (see the final Journal comment of the sequence) not to be self-indulgent because she found out more about Hickman and became disgusted. But the image she'd meanwhile sketched is just the abstraction of the scene with Roark on trial, calmly facing the courtroom and delivering a speech (as she planned to have the character Danny in "The Little Street" do).

Ellen,

The climatic scene is the dynamiting. You threw me off there. Perhaps we have an interesting tie in with Penthouse Legend too, with the hero only being in court in spirit. That would smooth out unwanted possible nastiness in his life and actions--even his personality.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

The climatic scene is the dynamiting. [...]

I don't think so. The climactic scene is the trial and Roark's speech, to the setting up of which the Cortlandt dynamiting is the means.

Ellen

[Philip Coates]

Subject: Bristling with resentment rather than being able to offer a rational response

I offered a strong challenge to the idea that there is something objectively to be admired in 'swagger' and 'bad boys'.

But Jonathan (expectedly) and Ellen (who should know better) were unable or unwilling to offer a reasoned response.

Sadly, this is common among people who fancy themselves Objectivists or influenced by Rand on this list. It seems to attract people who bristle with resentment at strong intellectual disagreement. When their emotions are involved because they dislike the interlocutor or are passionatly committed to their viewpoint, they can't deal with disagreement with rational.

Here is a viewpoint that disagrees with them: i) 'swaggering' and 'bad boys' personalities are superficial attributes ii) they do not connote self-confidence or risk-taking, iii) instead they connote the ability to put on their facade. iv) unselectively admiring these two traits that will lead to errors in judging people.

There are four separate points here. None of them is impolite or insulting. You can agree or disagree. You can try to rebut if you think one or more of them is invalid or oversimplified.

But they do represent a rational argument.

,,,,,,,,

Instead here is the response J and E offered in the best George H. Smith / Lindsay Perigo dismissive insult style:

> schoolmarming [E, 61]

> a Goodiegoodie..craves attention..a moron..an asshole..a total idiot. [J, 75-77]

Edited April 19, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Philip Coates]

Subject: Being an Objectivist is about standing up for the truth and for justice. Even when you have to "go against the crowd."

Sadly, no one, absolutely no one, on the OL list has had the courage - or simple decency - to step out from the "snark pack" and point out that J and E have simply used insult rather than rational engagement. And have been unfair to my attempt to strongly argue against them.

Of course, maybe they didn't notice.

Or just can't be bothered.

Too busy for fairness perhaps.

Maybe thinking up the next satirical cartoon.

Edited April 19, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Jonathan]

Sadly, this is common among people who fancy themselves Objectivists or influenced by Rand on this list. It seems to attract people who bristle with resentment at strong intellectual disagreement. When their emotions are involved because they dislike the interlocutor or are passionatly committed to their viewpoint, they can't deal with disagreement with rational.

I think the above is a great example of unintentional self-analysis. As you often do, Schoolmarm, you've publicly projected your own problems onto others without recognizing it.

Here is a viewpoint that disagrees with them: i) 'swaggering' and 'bad boys' personalities are superficial attributes

You do realize that we've been talking (and quoting Rand) about fictional characters and aesthetic response, don't you? No? Ah. I should have known. You haven't read or understood any of the initial posts on this thread, have you? Idiot.

ii) they do not connote self-confidence or risk-taking,

To whom?

iii) instead they connote the ability to put on their facade.

So, then you're saying that the character of Howard Roark, with his "bad boy" behavior, did not connote self-confidence and risk-taking to you, but the ability to put on a facade?

iv) unselectively admiring these two traits that will lead to errors in judging people.

No one, including Rand, has been talking about "unselectively admiring" any traits. So, obviously you didn't grasp the parts of this conversation in which we've discussed the selective aesthetic isolation of a character's virtuous "sense of life" characteristics from his ethical lapses.

There are four separate points here. None of them is impolite or insulting.

The fact that you don't pay attention to what others have said is impolite and insulting -- insulting mostly to yourself: it's making you look like an attention-craving idiot.

You can agree or disagree. You can try to rebut if you think one or more of them is invalid or oversimplified.

But they do represent a rational argument.

They represent the responses of someone who isn't paying attention but craving it.

J

[Jonathan]

Subject: Being an Objectivist is about standing up for the truth and for justice. Even when you have to "go against the crowd."

Sadly, no one, absolutely no one, on the OL list has had the courage - or simple decency - to step out from the "snark pack" and point out that J and E have simply used insult rather than rational engagement. And have been unfair to my attempt to strongly argue against them.

Of course, maybe they didn't notice.

Or just can't be bothered.

Too busy for fairness perhaps.

Maybe thinking up the next satirical cartoon.

Or maybe they agree that you're behaving like an idiot, a moron, an asshole and a schoolmarm, and that it is therefore just, fair and reasonable for you to be called those things.

J

[PDS]

Subject: Bristling with resentment rather than being able to offer a rational response

I offered a strong challenge to the idea that there is something objectively to be admired in 'swagger' and 'bad boys'.

But Jonathan (expectedly) and Ellen (who should know better) were unable or unwilling to offer a reasoned response.

Sadly, this is common among people who fancy themselves Objectivists or influenced by Rand on this list. It seems to attract people who bristle with resentment at strong intellectual disagreement. When their emotions are involved because they dislike the interlocutor or are passionatly committed to their viewpoint, they can't deal with disagreement with rational.

Here is a viewpoint that disagrees with them: i) 'swaggering' and 'bad boys' personalities are superficial attributes ii) they do not connote self-confidence or risk-taking, iii) instead they connote the ability to put on their facade. iv) unselectively admiring these two traits that will lead to errors in judging people.

There are four separate points here. None of them is impolite or insulting. You can agree or disagree. You can try to rebut if you think one or more of them is invalid or oversimplified.

But they do represent a rational argument.

,,,,,,,,

Instead here is the response J and E offered in the best George H. Smith / Lindsay Perigo dismissive insult style:

> schoolmarming [E, 61]

> a Goodiegoodie..craves attention..a moron..an asshole..a total idiot. [J, 75-77]

Phil:

Since the term "swagger deficit" is my term, I feel I should address your substantive point, and I will even offer you a concession, having recently looked up the definition of swagger in the dictionary in a few places. When I used the term "swagger deficit", I meant the term as shorthand for a lack of authentic self-confidence. The others on this thread did not seem to have much trouble understanding the term this way. By way of example, more than a dozen years ago, while working a large stifling law firm full of Peter Keatings in almost every office, I was told by a fellow partner that the younger lawyers that worked for me admired my "swagger." Having not heard this term much before, I asked the person who told me this what was meant by this, and was told something along the lines of "the way you carry yourself, your Marine bearing." This is what I meant by the term swagger--swagger is self-confidence, but genuine self-confidence.

Having looked at the definition in a few places, I see where you could get the impression that this term swagger means something more superficial than I am suggesting, but we do we have this definition from dictionary.com: "A very confident and typically arrogant or aggressive gait or manner."

So, using one definition of this term, and emphasizing the notion of superficiality to the exclusion of context, your four points above are partially correct, and my understanding of the term is slightly off the mark. If the above definition used the disjunctive rather than the conjunctive in the third word, we would both be right. But, you might ask yourself this question, sometime when you are bored or in a self-reflective mood: why is it that you seem to be only person on this thread who didn't make the above distinction, or accept the implicit shorthand for the term "swagger deficit"?

[i have an answer for this, having read your posts for the better part of a year on a variety of topics, but I will refrain from giving you that answer unless that is something you would genuinely like to hear.]

Now to your approach: none of brain damage over the definition of this term would this would be necessary if you had read the context of the discussion Ellen and I had started with, and were hoping to continue, prior to your entry onto to this thread. Nobody here would claim that a sauntering and swaggering Peter Keating makes him Howard Roark. Nobody here would claim that an Objectivist or Rand-admirer should carry himself in a "typically arrogant...manner", and, as a matter of fact, I rarely, if ever, seen an Objectivist or Rand-admirer carry himself that way. Finally, nobody on this thread has suggested that such behavior would be a good thing. So, your substantive concerns, while technically not incorrect, are beside the point of the thread: i.e., why is there a "swagger deficit" among Objectivists, or, to flip this question on its head--why are there so many conformist-weenies who end up calling themselves Objectivists?

These latter questions are substantively quite interesting and important, because they tell us something about the present state of the Objectivist movement, and they also (in my opinion) tell us something very important about the the concept of "sense of life".

How about we get back to those questions, and take you out of the picture?

Edited April 19, 2011 by PDS

[Philip Coates]

PDS, your basic point is that people on this thread did not mean "swagger" in the sense I criticized. If so, they didn't need to respond with hostility. They could certainly have pointed that out -politely and respectfully- in response to my post number 44: "Phil...I think you misunderstood, certainly in my case I did not intend the term literally...", etc. A purpose of a place for debate about ideas is to correct just those kinds of misunderstandings.

(Also, in your response you left out the phrase "bad boys" I was criticizing and how it was used.) I -did- read the thread very carefully and my assessment is that many of the posts were using one of both terms in one or more of the following ways. My very point was that these two terms were used in a rather shifting or sprawling or imprecise or ambiguous way. Fortunately, I clipped them before I wrote post 44. (Is it possible you many have missed or forgotten some of them?) ==>

when I have the exact post number, I've put it in brackets after the person's name...but in any case, I went systematically through them in order and clipped things I either i) disagreed with, or ii) which tended to be lumping a bunch of different complaints in as a sort of shifting package:

*jnthn [1] --> Rand's love of rebellious bad boys...the sense of life behind Howard Roark....all of these little submissive weaklings online looking for guidance from Objectivist authority wannabes?...

*pds--> I have referred to this as the swagger deficit in Objectivism on more than one occasion. I will never understand this herding phenomena among self-styled Objectivists.

*jnthn [2]--> A lot of Objectivists come across to me as very naive and easily charmed by anyone who appears to be promoting Objectivism, and they're very willing to trust such people

*ellen [5]---> I'd expected "colorful characters," a lot of individualistic and creative folk, but a high percentage seemed to me as goodiegoodie as if they were attending a church school...[fictional bad boys]a taste of an awfully high percentage of women. Wuthering Heights's Heathcliff, Jane Eyre's Rochester, Byron -- "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"

Edited April 19, 2011 by Philip Coates

[anthony]

PDS,

Until you related your history with the word, I agreed with Phil in that I found "swagger" to be connotative of unmerited confidence, counterfeit self-esteem, and such. In your case, apparently not.

My experience of O'ists has not been shortage of, but surfeit of, the same.

Over-identification with their heroes' sense of life?

As with me for a long while, a 'front' to conceal a lack of assertiveness?

With the youngsters, there is every possibility that they will eventually grow into their mantle, so I'm fondly amused by their swagger.

I don't think it needs to be encouraged, since everyone, O'ist or not, knows the value of confidence. What could become distasteful is the Objectivist world out-swaggering each other, and arrogantly putting down everybody else.

Tony

Edited April 19, 2011 by whYNOT

[Philip Coates]

I'm not done yet with the examples. I usually snip things and think about them before I make a post, and there's quite a few more [i'm going out and may have to complete them later]. If I get non-insulting responses I may outline exactly where I have a problem with many of these quotes:

*why not [7]--> Yes, "goodiegoodie" applies...I get an impression of reactionary self-constraint prevalent among some O'ists. They may be forgetting the initial sense of life they found in Rand - that of the revolutionary-radical. (Aux barricades!)

*brant [8]--> If you swagger supposedly you have something to swagger about. Herding here means accepting Rand's intellectual radicalism but conforming to her ad hominem cultural dictates.

msk[12]--> I think my initial attraction to Perigo when I came back to the USA and started posting online was that he appeared to be a bad boy in the Randian sense. But all he turned out to be was a narcissistic neurotic...

Edited April 19, 2011 by Philip Coates

[PDS]

PDS, your basic point is that people on this thread did not mean "swagger" in the sense I criticized. If so, they didn't need to respond with hostility. They could certainly have pointed that out -politely and respectfully- in response to my post number 44: "Phil...I think you misunderstood, certainly in my case I did not intend the term literally...", etc. A purpose of a place for debate about ideas is to correct just those kinds of misunderstandings.

(Also, in your response you left out the phrase "bad boys" I was criticizing and how it was used.) I -did- read the thread very carefully and my assessment is that many of the posts were using one of both terms in one or more of the following ways. My very point was that these two terms were used in a rather shifting or sprawling or imprecise or ambiguous way. Fortunately, I clipped them before I wrote post 44. (Is it possible you many have missed or forgotten some of them?) ==>

when I have the exact post number, I've put it in brackets after the person's name...but in any case, I went systematically through them in order and clipped things I either i) disagreed with, or ii) which tended to be lumping a bunch of different complaints in as a sort of shifting package:

*jnthn [1] --> Rand's love of rebellious bad boys...the sense of life behind Howard Roark....all of these little submissive weaklings online looking for guidance from Objectivist authority wannabes?...

*pds--> I have referred to this as the swagger deficit in Objectivism on more than one occasion. I will never understand this herding phenomena among self-styled Objectivists.

*jnthn [2]--> A lot of Objectivists come across to me as very naive and easily charmed by anyone who appears to be promoting Objectivism, and they're very willing to trust such people

*ellen [5]---> I'd expected "colorful characters," a lot of individualistic and creative folk, but a high percentage seemed to me as goodiegoodie as if they were attending a church school...[fictional bad boys]a taste of an awfully high percentage of women. Wuthering Heights's Heathcliff, Jane Eyre's Rochester, Byron -- "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"

Sorry, but I don't think a herding mentality is a sign of authentic self confidence.

The "bad boy" issue is completely different from the swagger issue. Honestly, I don't understand that particular issue well enough to comment on it.

Edited April 19, 2011 by PDS

[Philip Coates]

> I don't think a herding mentality is a sign of authentic self confidence.

I don't either. I'm certainly not a big fan of 'herding' or groupthink or sheeplike obedience to authority. That was never my point.

There are three issues: Is 'herding' a widespread phenomenon among Objectivists as the posters claim? Is it related to lack of swagger or being a bad boy? Do you have any fuzziness or package dealing by lumping these issues together or by using those umbrella terms?

(PDS, I have to go out, if what I just wrote is unclear I will try to clarify later..)

Edited April 19, 2011 by Philip Coates

[anthony]

*why not [7]--> Yes, "goodiegoodie" applies...I get an impression of reactionary self-constraint prevalent among some O'ists. They may be forgetting the initial sense of life they found in Rand - that of the revolutionary-radical. (Aux barricades!)

Phil,

I need to point out that I was thinking only of "the bad boy" - and not "swaggering", which I find ambiguous.

Apart from all the rest, Objectivism will always have an attraction for the maverick and non-conformist, who is not too well accepted by polite society - I believe.

What a pity.

B)

Go! all you bad boys and bad girls.

Tony

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I'm certainly not a big fan of 'herding' or groupthink or sheepish obedience.

Phil,

Then why do you try to instill it in others so often?

Sheep-herder complex?

You're always acting like a sheep-herder trying to get the strays back into the herd.

That sounds like a quip, but I'm serious.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I'm certainly not a big fan of 'herding' or groupthink or sheepish obedience.

Phil,

Then why do you try to instill it in others so often?

Sheep-herder complex?

You're always acting like a sheep-herder trying to get the strays back into the herd.

That sounds like a quip, but I'm serious.

Michael

It's the primary source of antagonism against him. It's the main thing he does.

--Brant

[Philip Coates]

I'm actually a really nice person when people treat me with courtesy and respect.

[Jonathan]

PDS, your basic point is that people on this thread did not mean "swagger" in the sense I criticized. If so, they didn't need to respond with hostility. They could certainly have pointed that out -politely and respectfully- in response to my post number 44: "Phil...I think you misunderstood, certainly in my case I did not intend the term literally...", etc. A purpose of a place for debate about ideas is to correct just those kinds of misunderstandings.

Hey, fuckhead, if you want your questions answered politely and respectfully, then learn to ask them politely and respectfully. Quit rudely intruding on discussions with your asshole schoolmarm routine while not paying attention to what has been said -- don't show up claiming that others are using concepts "imprecisely" and being "sloppy, shifting, or ambiguous" and "foolish" when the actual problem is that you're too busy playing schoolmarm and scolding people to grasp what is being discussed. Stop leaving your shit-stain on every thread on OL and then whining when people rub your nose in it.

J

Edited April 19, 2011 by Jonathan

[Brant Gaede]

I'm actually a really nice person when people treat me with courtesy and respect.

Your default position is you're not?

--Brant

[Philip Coates]

> [schoomarmism, shepherding] It's the primary source of antagonism against him. [brant]

It's actually not the main source. It stems much more from a [not fully spelled out] deep disagreement I have with both "Orthodox/Fundamentalist" and "Reform/Open" Objectivists over how to practice the philosophy. Both sides resent not just -how- I say things (or its tone or preachiness or smugness), but -what- I have to say.

When you are "preachy" or "acting like your the teacher" or "trying to be a reformer/crusader" about something that people are deeply in agreement with, they tend to admire your persistence or zeal or commitment or willingness to take on all enemies. That's how people here felt when I was defending Chris Sciabarra against a simultaneous attack over on SoloP. Since I wasn't criticizing them or their very deep approaches, they weren't deeply offended or 'condescended to'.

.

.

.

(I haven't done an overview post or thread explaining all this yet. Right now I'm too disgusted with the constant attacks and character assassination I'm getting every single time I open my mouth on anything. And I seriously doubt anyone here has enough respect for what I have to say on "the two movements" and in what way I think both are mistaken and people should -stand apart from both- to politely respond to it or perhaps even thoughtfully read it in the first place. Especially since it might have to be as long and personal as my "Willy and Me" series. Most of the most frequent posters on OL have basically "had enough of Phil" and are either: i) ignoring anything I write or ii) carrying over previous hostility and looking to find feet of clay, something to attack or make fun of.)

Edited April 19, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Philip Coates]

> Hey, fuckhead..learn to ask them politely and respectfully...stop whining...

polite and respectful troll ignored

Edited April 19, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Brant Gaede]

The climatic scene is the dynamiting. [...]

I don't think so. The climactic scene is the trial and Roark's speech, to the setting up of which the Cortlandt dynamiting is the means.

Ellen

Can we treat them as a whole respecting the climax? I read once that it was when Rand was at Stony Creek one summer in the late 1930s that she came up with the housing project-dynamiting-court thing as solving the climax problem in the plot structure. She sure did go to court a lot in her fiction.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

> [schoomarmism, shepherding] It's the primary source of antagonism against him. [brant]

It's actually not the main source. It stems much more from a [not fully spelled out] deep disagreement I have with both "Orthodox/Fundamentalist" and "Reform/Open" Objectivists over how to practice the philosophy. Both sides resent not just -how- I say things (or its tone or preachiness or smugness), but -what- I have to say.

Who wants to be told "how to practice the philosophy"? You've just affirmed what you've just denied. The only reason I don't have you on "IGNOR" is you're quoted so much it wouldn't do any good, which is the best argument I can come up with for not using the quote function. If George didn't engage you even Jonathan would stop and you'd evaporate for lack of any feedback at all unless you actually started contributing and stopped lecturing and arguing and gratuitously intruding about form rather than real substance. I'm sure you don't realize it but George is your best friend here, but sooner or later he'll get tried of the constant need for CPR. For George name-calling is last-chance banter since there is no possibility of witty give and take.

--Brant