Hypothetical Question

[Judith]

HYPOTHETICAL QUESTION

The Situation:

During the '60s, one of Ayn Rand's inner circle is called in for one of her infamous "mock trials", with Nathaniel Branden acting as the interrogator/prosecutor. Things don't proceed too far before said person has been accused of some "sin", and the person says, "Ooh, the horror!" (or some appropriate '60s sarcastic equivalent expression).

Everyone is struck dumb with horror. Eventually Nathaniel continues, but is interrupted by the accused, who says, "People, this is crazy. What is this? First of all, who are all of you to call me on the carpet for these things? And secondly, what if I did do these things? So what? I'm still myself, with all that that entails. And I'm still your friend. Can you see Howard Roark or John Galt or Dagny Taggart standing for being put on trial by this kind of kangaroo court proceeding? And more importantly, can you see any of them SITTING IN JUDGMENT on any such court, or standing by while one of their friends is put on trial by a kangaroo court for a bogus sin?"

At this point, Ayn Rand is overcome with rage and shouts down the person and attempts to throw the person out of her apartment. The person refuses to leave. "Look at yourselves," the person says. "Wake up. WAKE UP!!!!" I'm your friend. You all know me. Are you willing to stand by while I'm treated like this?

Again, Ayn and Nathaniel demand that the person leave. The person goes up to each individual and looks each person in the eye. One at a time, the accused says to each person, "Are you willing to stand by and let this happen, or will you stand with me?"

Part A: Suppose that, into the deafening silence, one of the collective had said, "Hey wait a minute, this person has a point. Let's rethink this." What would have happened? It need not have been a member of the collective who was being addressed by the accused at the moment -- it could have been a bystander.

Part B: Suppose that no one responded to the accused's individual demands, and that the accused, having gone around to each person in the room, finished with, "This is very sad. If any of you should wake up, you know where to find me," and left the apartment.

Part B(1): What would have been said immediately afterwards?

Part B(2): Would anyone have been changed by the event? Would anyone have "woken up" as a result, either immediately or eventually?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Judith,

I don't have the answers (except that many people eventually did change, especially when their turn came), but I thoroughly enjoyed reading that.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL...

I have had authority problems ever since I was little, so this was greatly appreciated.

You should think about writing some fiction. You have a solid knack for it.

Michael

[Judith]

Judith,

I don't have the answers (except that many people eventually did change, especially when their turn came), but I thoroughly enjoyed reading that.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL...

I have had authority problems ever since I was little, so this was greatly appreciated.

You should think about writing some fiction. You have a solid knack for it.

Michael

I'm genuinely interested in hearing what people have to say, especially from people who were around back then. I'd particularly like to hear Barbara's response, but I'd also like to know what people like Chris and Ellen and anyone else who was around then think, and of course anyone else who wants to opine is welcome as well.

As far as writing fiction -- I'd love to. I've thought about it for over 25 years. There's only one problem: I can never come up with plot ideas. From what I hear from writer friends, if you can't think of plots, you might as well give up at the start, because real writers are usually bursting with plot ideas. I read very carefully your thread on the twenty basic plots, and I have a bunch of books on writing. I suppose I could ghost write for someone who has ideas but can't write....

Judith

[Chris Grieb]

Judith,

I don't have the answers (except that many people eventually did change, especially when their turn came), but I thoroughly enjoyed reading that.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL...

I have had authority problems ever since I was little, so this was greatly appreciated.

You should think about writing some fiction. You have a solid knack for it.

Michael

I'm genuinely interested in hearing what people have to say, especially from people who were around back then. I'd particularly like to hear Barbara's response, but I'd also like to know what people like Chris and Ellen and anyone else who was around then think, and of course anyone else who wants to opine is welcome as well. I never went through one those events. The DC Ayn Rand Society desolved before anyone could be accused of being a supporter or neutral in regard to the split.

As far as writing fiction -- I'd love to. I've thought about it for over 25 years. There's only one problem: I can never come up with plot ideas. From what I hear from writer friends, if you can't think of plots, you might as well give up at the start, because real writers are usually bursting with plot ideas. I read very carefully your thread on the twenty basic plots, and I have a bunch of books on writing. I suppose I could ghost write for someone who has ideas but can't write....

Judith

[Rich Engle]

Oh, heavens, if only it ever happened remotely in that fashion.

I have serious, serious authority issues. It's always been my calling card.

I will respect authority if it's got some back in it. But that only happens here and there.

People that have real authority are so good that they rarely have to exert it.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

As far as writing fiction -- I'd love to. I've thought about it for over 25 years. There's only one problem: I can never come up with plot ideas. From what I hear from writer friends, if you can't think of plots, you might as well give up at the start, because real writers are usually bursting with plot ideas. I read very carefully your thread on the twenty basic plots, and I have a bunch of books on writing. I suppose I could ghost write for someone who has ideas but can't write....

Judith,

You just gave me an idea, because your situation is very similar to mine. As a matter of fact, I have written very good passages for film scripts and I outline shows (with small skits, etc.) with no problem whatsoever. However, when it gets to planning out a larger work, I get stuck--never by characters or even by what I want to say. I get stuck in deciding what they are supposed to do.

The 20 plots was a very good thing for learning the 3 acts--and let's say some general patterns of things that should happen during the story. But it isn't much of a help in determining a sequence of events at a medium level.

I suspect that this medium level is where you have a problem. I know it is where I have mine. For example, I can draw up some very good characters, get them talking in my head, etc., and know where they start out and where they are supposed to end up. Also, if someone gives me a medium level directive, I have no problem working out the details. My very first experience doing this was a situation a film director gave me for a horror film. Here is a quote from a post I made on SoloHQ about it (March 2005) on a writing thread Barbara started back then. I forgot to mention that the director gave me a small outline--something like, "have guy go in a room, strange things happen and he dies." Here is how I remembered it.

My first experience with writing (unfortunately most of my stuff is in Portuguese) was in motion pictures in Brazil. I was HUNGRY to break into the field, so I was willing to do almost anything. I became part of a horrible slash-trash Grade Z horror flick as a sort of assistant (to bide time while waiting to be able to write the soundtrack). Right in the middle of the production, the lab accidentally destroyed half of the negative shot and the screenwriter was traveling. The director asked me if I could write a horror scene, so I sat in a corner and got started. After about an hour or so later, I turned in a scene to him. Here is an outline of my first serious writing:

A man goes into his living room and goes about his normal affairs of getting settled in. Little by little the door locks, the windows shut and the typewriter starts typing all by itself. (I can't even remember the phrase that was being typed anymore - it had something to do with something in the film.) The man slowly goes over to read the message and gradually becomes aware of his confinement, trying to open the door to get out and whatnot. He starts going into a panic while the typewriter starts going faster and faster. Tense music swells. The typewriter innards like the type-head spoke-arms start flying off the typewriter and zipping all over the room, eventually decapitating him. As his head drops on the ground and rolls to a stop, a frog (a symbol in the film) hops by.

The guy loved it. We didn't use it for some reason or the other, but I made up other passages on request. It always used to bug me about why I was able to write this kind of stuff so easily, yet clam up when I had to come up with the initial scene.

So here is my idea. I think I am going to study a list of some basic situations and why we use them. But before I worry about why, I think I just want to concentrate on the what. For example, here are some of the things a character or characters can be doing in a story:

Conversations:

Eating a meal

Business meeting or appointment

Walking with someone

Driving with someone

(I won't go on right now)

General scenes with standard sequences:

Courtroom

Chase

Making love

Fistfight

Putting something together for use

Going into a room/house and looking for something

(I won't go on right now)

I think you can see where I am going with this. You could make an medium-scale events outline like this. For example, here is the first chapter of The Fountainhead:

1. Roark swims and thinks

2. Conversation between Roark and Mrs. Keating

3. Roark looks at his drawings

4. Conversation between Roark and Mrs. Keating

5. Meeting between Roark and Dean

That's it.

Of course, he goes from one place to the other and does some small things, but the rest plot-wise is filling in the details (descriptions, thoughts, actions, dialogue).

One of the reasons I started with autobiographical material on "coming out" as a writer is because these kinds of sequences are already defined by how they happened. The rest for me is easy. (Well, not easy, but at least I get going.)

I think it is important--for me at least--to have a general vague outline like this. If a part really doesn't fit after a few tries, I can always get rid of it.

Did this help any? It sure helped me to think about it.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

Judith,

For one thing, I wasn't there in the days of "the Collective," at least not of the original version. I arrived in New York City in September 1968, the month in which "To Whom It May Concern" was published. As time went on, I got to know several of the original Collective members, especially Allan Blumenthal. But I wasn't aware of the previous "show trials" at that time; thus I never tried to find out from any of those who had been present what those scenes were like.

Barbara recounts in Passion one incident in the fiction writing seminars when she'd responded in a way which upset Ayn about an early story of Ayn's (not at first identified as such). Ayn became upset with Barbara, and castigating continued into the wee hours. Eventually, Barbara said, "Ayn stop it," and Ayn stopped. For then. But did she come back to it later? I heard from Allan Blumenthal after he had split with Ayn that she'd never really let it drop about his and Joan's differences with her on music and painting, that she'd keep trying to change their views to be in line with hers. Allan said that she'd give him some arguments as to why there was something wrong with his tastes, and then a day or two later would call and ask had he thought about it and if he'd say, no, he hadn't, then there would be further charges re his character (or if he said he had, further attempts at persuasion).

But these sorts of incidents aren't quite the "show trial" scenes you're speaking of. My own belief is that the hypothetical you raise just wouldn't have happened. I think that anyone who was that close to her circle in those years wouldn't have made the sort of "stand" you describe. All of them too deeply believed in AR's moral authority. Anyone who wasn't "under the spell," as it were, wouldn't have been in that circle to begin with. There are subtle ways in which the right "attitude" can be detected. I think that anyone who didn't have that attitude just wouldn't have gotten close enough in the first place; the door wouldn't have been opened to initial admittance. (Someone might come back with the supposed counterexample of Rothbard; but according to Nathaniel and Barbara, Rothbard and friends never were genuinely part of "the Collective". Instead, Rothbard exaggerated his degree of propinquity in later telling.)

I, too, will be very curious to hear what Barbara has to say if she sees and responds to your question.

Ellen

___

[Judith]

I suspect that this medium level is where you have a problem.

...

Did this help any? It sure helped me to think about it.

Thanks. Unfortunately, my problem is more at the macro level. I'm pretty confident about writing a scene, and about getting from point A to point B. It's the entire overarching idea that has me stumped. What motivates the characters? What are they doing, and why?

I have a very stern inner critic. I tend to be a perfectionist. For example, I could never write "Atlas Shrugged". Right at the beginning, I'd say to myself, "No, that won't work. There's no way that all the smart people in the world will go on strike. No way that even the smartest, most important ones would agree to it. What could one person say to them that would make them agree to it? All it would take would be for one of them not to agree to it, and then tell the whole world about John Galt and his plot, to blow the whole thing out of the water. And even if they did, where would they hide? The remaining collectivists still have the technology, and they're not stupid. There's no place in all the world that's not controlled by some government. Nope -- it simply won't work -- too many problems with it."

Judith

[Ellen Stuttle]

[....] For example, I could never write "Atlas Shrugged". Right at the beginning, I'd say to myself, "No, that won't work. There's no way that all the smart people in the world will go on strike. No way that even the smartest, most important ones would agree to it. What could one person say to them that would make them agree to it? All it would take would be for one of them not to agree to it, and then tell the whole world about John Galt and his plot, to blow the whole thing out of the water. And even if they did, where would they hide? The remaining collectivists still have the technology, and they're not stupid. There's no place in all the world that's not controlled by some government. Nope -- it simply won't work -- too many problems with it."

Uproariously laughed out loud. That's just the sort of reason why, from the first time I read Atlas, I thought that its author was an exceedingly good writer, a brilliant structuralist (brilliant at putting together the structure of the book), extremely smart -- and very naive. I don't suppose she took "the strike" idea literally; I think she meant that as metaphor. But there's other stuff which I thought she did believe was actual ways humans might act. "And I mean it," she says in the Postscript, and I thought that she did mean it. But I didn't find it "real." However, she must have found it "real," seemed to me, or she couldn't have sustained the conviction for writing the book.

Ellen

___

Edited November 13, 2006 by Ellen Stuttle

[Barbara Branden]

Judith: “During the '60s, one of Ayn Rand's inner circle is called in for one of her infamous "mock trials", with Nathaniel Branden acting as the interrogator/prosecutor. Things don't proceed too far before said person has been accused of some "sin", and the person says, ‘Ooh, the horror!’”

It’s important to understand that the supposed “sin” would be one of some significance, or at least would be made to appear so. Say that you were a philosophy student at a university, and it was learned that you had gone out of your way to be especially cordial to a professor who had written an article in which he unjustly attacked Rand; your reason was that he taught at a university where you hoped to get a job teaching once you had your PhD. The prosecutor would point out to you: a.) the disloyalty involved – that you had acted as if the professor’s attack on the woman to whom, by your own often-repeated statements, you owed so much, were of no importance to you – meaning, that she, Ayn, was of no importance to you; b.) that by so doing you had hurt Rand badly at a time when unjust attacks on her were the order of the day, making her feel that she could not count even on her friends to stand up for her; c.) that your disloyalty had not even the virtue of practicality, since it was highly unlikely that the professor, once he knew of your association with Objectivism, would be willing to consider you for a teaching post. So, without even the excuse of having something practical to gain by it, you were guilty of disloyalty to a system of thought you believed to be the hope of the future and indifference to the woman you professed to love and admire above all others -- inevitably raising the question of what serious psychological flaws your behavior had manifested.

When you were courting the professor, you had perhaps felt a vague uneasiness, which you had not identified. Now, you are horrified at hearing what you feel you must grant is the actual meaning of your action – and frightened at the thought of its psychological causes.

You do not say “Who are you to call me on the carpet for these things?” You know who Nathaniel and Ayn are to do so. Nathaniel is your therapist, the brilliant man who has been helping you to understand yourself and to correct flaws in your psychology that were making you unhappy and stopping you from achieving your goals; and Ayn is the woman from whom you learned your code of morality and who always has seemed infallible in judging good and evil. You do not question the presence of the Collective at this hearing; you realize that if a good friend of yours were accused, say, of stealing, you would want to be present when he was given an opportunity to confront his accusers. You do not say “What if I did do this? I’m still myself and I’m still your friend” – because if what you did was evil, as you are beginning to think it was, the Collective will see that they never really knew you and were mistaken in thinking that you truly were their friend; a friend does not betray his most cherished values. You do not say that Roark or Galt or Dagny would not accept a trial such as you are being put through, because it’s obvious to you that they are thoroughly rational people who would never deserve the kind of charges being leveled at you. You do not say that they would never stand by while a friend of theirs was being tried, because you believe they would – that if, say, one of their fellow strikers had betrayed the strike, they would insist of knowing it and would be the first to denounce him.

Thus, however severe the condemnations and the penalties that followed the prosecution, you would not protest, you would not attempt to defend yourself, on the theory that there are no degrees of evil, that you surely must have known better than to do what you did but had evaded that knowledge, that your moral authority recognizes the presence of immorality even when you do not – and that you must, above all, work your hardest in order to understand and correct whatever immoral attitudes and premises, despite all your efforts at self-improvement, still are present in your psychology.

(I think I ought to stop this before I convince myself!)

In The Passion of Ayn Rand, I described an evening very early in my acquaintance with Rand that is relevant to your questions:

“I casually mentioned that I liked to look at mountains and the ocean, that the sight of them gave me a special feeling of peace, ‘Why?’ she demanded, a slight edge in her voice. ‘Because they’re beautiful. And, I suppose, because they never change, they’re always just what they are.’ ‘And human beings?’ I shrugged. ‘Human beings change constantly, they shift, they seem to dissolve from one identity to another.’ The edge in her voice was sharper as she said, ‘That’s always why people prefer nature to man.’ And she began to speak of skyscrapers, of city pavements, of giant industries, of all the mighty creations of the human mind – almost as if I had been denouncing man’s achievement. ‘It’s a “malevolent universe” emotion – it’s the subconscious belief that man’s life is inevitably tragic – that makes you prefer nature to the man-made,’ she told me, and I saw, bewildered, that she was deeply angry.

“I listened uncomfortably as she continued speaking, wondering why a philosophical disagreement – if that was indeed what was involved – had become the occasion for an analysis of my psychology. But I had learned the quality of Ayn’s intelligence: that behind every statement stood an enormous breadth and complexity of thought and integration; if I took it seriously when that intelligence was directed at philosophical issues, then I had to take it no less seriously when it was directed at what she saw as errors in my thinking and reactions. And I knew that some part of what she said was true. Her sensitivity to the slightest implication of a statement was honing in like a laser beam to something that was real. Some part of me was not convinced of what my mind had accepted: that reason and achievement were man’s natural state.”

You asked if anyone would have been changed, been “woken up” by the mock trials. My impression is that several of the people there, although not all of them, felt uneasy at the harshness of the way you were treated, felt that you were not quite the monster you were being portrayed as – but would have concluded, as you did, that if your psychologist and their own moral authority felt it was deserved, then probably it was deserved.

But I can give you an example of a reaction I finally had to one of these trials that was a turning point for me, and led me at last to face how very much I loathed them and how intensely I sympathized with the person on trial. (I had often made a point of talking to the hapless victim after one of these events and trying to make him feel better, saying that I didn’t believe the situation was quite as bad as it had been painted and that it would blow over in time – but I hadn’t fully recognized the revulsion against such cruelty that had led me to do so.) One particular evening, when a woman I admired and cared for was being vilified – and during that trial she was not even allowed to be present – I became aware of something that I either had not noticed before or that had not been apparent before: that one or two of the people present who were loudest in their attacks against the woman who had been their friend until then, seemed almost to be gloating over her downfall. As I watched, I felt progressively sickened by it, and I kept thinking: “This is wrong! What’s happening here is worse than anything that their victim is said to have done! I loathe this – I loathe everything about it!” And it was that evening that I first began thinking that one day I would have to leave this world, leave Ayn, leave Nathaniel, leave the Collective, leave everything that for years I had built my life around.

Perhaps all of this will give you some sense of what those evenings were, and how it was possible for intelligent people not to recognize the madness of what went on.

Barbara

[Judith]

It’s important to understand that the supposed “sin” would be one of some significance, or at least would be made to appear so.

I see. Yes, that does make a substantial difference.

Perhaps all of this will give you some sense of what those evenings were, and how it was possible for intelligent people not to recognize the madness of what went on.

Very much so. Thank you for such a thorough and moving response. Wow. How very terrifying.

You do not say “Who are you to call me on the carpet for these things?” You know who Nathaniel and Ayn are to do so. Nathaniel is your therapist, the brilliant man who has been helping you to understand yourself and to correct flaws in your psychology that were making you unhappy and stopping you from achieving your goals; and Ayn is the woman from whom you learned your code of morality and who always has seemed infallible in judging good and evil. You do not question the presence of the Collective at this hearing; you realize that if a good friend of yours were accused, say, of stealing, you would want to be present when he was given an opportunity to confront his accusers. You do not say “What if I did do this? I’m still myself and I’m still your friend” – because if what you did was evil, as you are beginning to think it was, the Collective will see that they never really knew you and were mistaken in thinking that you truly were their friend; a friend does not betray his most cherished values. You do not say that Roark or Galt or Dagny would not accept a trial such as you are being put through, because it’s obvious to you that they are thoroughly rational people who would never deserve the kind of charges being leveled at you. You do not say that they would never stand by while a friend of theirs was being tried, because you believe they would – that if, say, one of their fellow strikers had betrayed the strike, they would insist of knowing it and would be the first to denounce him.

Thus, however severe the condemnations and the penalties that followed the prosecution, you would not protest, you would not attempt to defend yourself, on the theory that there are no degrees of evil, that you surely must have known better than to do what you did but had evaded that knowledge, that your moral authority recognizes the presence of immorality even when you do not – and that you must, above all, work your hardest in order to understand and correct whatever immoral attitudes and premises, despite all your efforts at self-improvement, still are present in your psychology.

In all of this, I can't help wondering if just a SLIVER of psychological health EVER slipped in -- or if not, what would have happened if it did. Did anyone ever confront such an episode with wide-open, calm, fearless mien, saying to him/herself, in effect, "If I did something wrong, I want to know about it and fix it; and if I did, it's just a mistake -- it doesn't mean I'm irredeemably evil." To take the example of the professor, perhaps the person might have said, "You know, you're absolutely right. I didn't look at it it that way, and I SHOULD have looked at it that way. Man. I really screwed up." And let it go at that. No more breast-beating, no grovelling, no excuses, no explanations. How would people have reacted? What would have happened? What would have been the penalty? Would the person have been lectured ad infinitum? Grilled on his/her psychology? What would the "penance" have been -- a paper, like Leonard Peikoff was sometimes sentenced to write? Etc.

I know I'm asking a lot of questions here; feel free to answer as much or as little as you wish. Thanks!

Judith

[Philip Coates]

> “I casually mentioned that I liked to look at mountains and the ocean, that the sight of them gave me a special feeling of peace, ‘Why?’ she demanded, a slight edge in her voice. ‘Because they’re beautiful. And, I suppose, because they never change, they’re always just what they are.’ ‘And human beings?’ I shrugged. ‘Human beings change constantly, they shift, they seem to dissolve from one identity to another.’ The edge in her voice was sharper as she said, ‘That’s always why people prefer nature to man.’... [barbara]

Barbara, the thing that strikes me about this is that Rand was overgeneralizing or unwarrantedly extrapolating, taking one preference as a general preference for things over people or (worse) a general dislike of people and desire for a world without people. Either that, or she is taking as confirmatory your answer to her question: one mistaken or colloquial or imprecise thing you said - the Heraclitian-ness of people - they change constantly (certainly many of them do but not all in fundamental ways) - and giving too much weight to you remark.

It's very legitimate to like symbols or signs of permanence, solidity, unshakeableness as symbols of a solid universe or of integrity. I certainly get a feeling of peace or serenity in the mountains or at the ocean, as you do.

A good example of that was the mighty oak tree in Atlas, Eddie's greatest symbol of strength. It doesn't mean he despises every human being as fickle, as I'm sure it did not in your case.

To overgeneralize in this way and drop context as Ayn Rand did in this anecdote, is, unless she qualified it in a way you forgot, a mistake.