The Atlas Society Policy and the Summer Seminar


Ed Hudgins

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Perigo responded:

Response to Ed

To be absolutely blunt, Perigo doesn't "get it" and I don't think he ever will. He has no idea what Objectivism is about (productivity, self-esteem, rationality, goodwill, egoism as opposed to vanity, etc.).

Here is a visual of my position. If, by some miraculous happening, I were put into a situation where I was given a gun and told that I had to do one of two things and had no other alternative:

1. Commit suicide; or

2. Accept a vision of the world akin to Perigo's vision of Objectivism, hold it up as the good, and know that this will be as good as it gets within my lifetime;

I would blow my brains out without hesitation. I would do so in the full knowledge that I had made the best choice possible for my life, that I had valued it. If that is all life had to offer me, I would not want it anymore.

I mean it.

Michael

Michael,

Relax. You will never have to face that choice. And Mr. Perigo will never have to face the opposite choice of accepting your vision (and mine, incidentally) of Objectivism, or of jumping into a New Zealand volcano. Ain't gonna happen in either case. (Although I think Mr. Perigo - and maybe the rest of us - could benefit from a nice long relaxing bath in one of New Zealand's hot springs....).

Nope. What we are going to have to face is Hillary's (or Obama's, or Romney's, or McCain's) vision of the future. In addition to fighting off Al Qaida's hellish plans for Western Civilization.

A world in which Objectivism has become a political contender? "Not in the cards, baby"! Not in the foreseeable future, anyway. Look, nobody in this squabble is going to drop their arms and "cry uncle." An offer is made for civility and the individual requesting it gets (symbolically) kicked in the teeth.

So, I say, take them at their word. Let them play in their own sandbox. This is very difficult to do when we are being attacked. But then, if we don't visit their website(s), we won't be exposed to their vitriol. Soon, they will just be talking to themselves (and it is hard to imagine a more deserving fate).

Jerry, I agree completely with you. As much as I admire Captain Bob for his moxie in attempting to educate the Perigonians with his impassioned verbal commando raids, I have thought for months that he was wasting his time and energy and acting counter to any sensible person's hope that SOLO would just wither up and blow away. As are all of us who give them more than our peripheral attention.

REB

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For some reason I don't think I was clear. My point was that this issue is much greater than a personality dispute. Yet you guys seem to be taking it as nothing but a personal dislike of Perigo.

The waters run much deeper in my soul than what you are apparently seeing on the surface and I am trying hard not to be offended with the equivalent of a pat on the head and admonition to not take it all so seriously. I do take it all so seriously.

I reject the entire world-view of follow-the-leader. I reject tribalism at the core. Perigo's brand is one form of it, not all of it. My hatred is for tribalism. He is merely a passing example that is contaminating the Objectivist movement for the time being. But he will pass. I am aware of that.

I am discussing principles here, not spats.

I meant it when I said I mean it. The world is a good place and these people (bloated frogs in tiny ponds) make it a lousey place. I reject everything that supports them.

Michael

EDIT: Btw - I fully agree that the best solution in the best of all worlds is to ignore irrational people like Perigo. I think this is ultimately what will happen and that is my final goal in all this mess. But there are a few contingencies that have made it impossible to ignore the man up to now, starting with his constant public smear campaigns against prominent people in the Objectivist world—good people. It is like he is scrambling for power by trying to take down well-placed individuals, but the funny part is that there is no real power structure in place in the Objectivist world other than a person's history. There are a couple of organizations, but they are small and nothing like the power structure of, say, Scientology or a religious denomination.

And for the record, I do not wish ill upon him as a human being. My ire is against the intellectual package he presents to the world: getting the Objectivist rhetoric more or less right while peppering it with vulgarity and acts of pure tribalism as his practice. What he says is one thing and what he does is another. I loathe what he does and I loathe even more the hypocrisy of there not being an alignment between his words and deeds. That is part of the world view I reject. Especially a fundamental component: lying to oneself. I think Perigo believes some of his own BS and just doesn't see the contradictions with his acts. He lies to himself.

But I also believe he knows he is presenting BS on a certain level. This is shown by his backstage manipulations. He is a particularly vicious manipulator. I personally have about 500 emails to and from him as one small item of proof. But there is plenty of evidence of his backstage manipulations out there online for all to see. All one has to do is look. He does that crap on purpose.

I am enormously frustrated by the fact that good people are fooled by his words (some of his words, not all of them), granting them much more weight than his acts, which are well-documented, and insist on staying fooled just because he says the next time will be different.

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My point was that this issue is much greater than a personality dispute.

Yes, it is. It's a continuation of the issue which resulted in the split between Leonard Peikoff and David Kelley. New guise, same battle. As I see the battle, it's that of which matters more to the Objectivist world, reality or Ayn Rand's image? Or another way of saying it, is Objectivism a philosophy or a religion with a deified human as its "supernatural" figure?

In a post of his on the SOLO list, James Heaps-Nelson let the cat out of the bag, I think, as to why those who are keen on having Linz talk at TAS are keen.

SEE

He wrote:

I think there's a hidden subtext to all of this that is missed. There are those of us who want to see Ayn Rand's banner flown high without apology or qualification. Given all that she accomplished, she deserves that much.

I respect Jim; I even sympathize with where I believe he's coming from -- for one thing, he's tired of all the dwelling on history instead of "getting about it" addressing the relationships between Objectivism and science (much more troublesome relationships, imo, than in what I understand to be Jim's opinion).

BUT. Asking for Ayn Rand's banner to be "flown high without apology or qualification" I can only view as asking for the acceptance of a myth which never should have been started in the first place and which Ayn Rand herself bought -- even partly started -- about herself. E.g., the biographical essay in Who Is Ayn Rand? -- which to an extent is a hagiography -- wouldn't have been published without her accepting the image presented.

Jim has said previously something to the effect, I don't recall on which site in which thread, that a reason he wants Linz invited is because Linz presents Rand in the way he wants.

That way I consider mythical. Thus I see the choice as one between truth or myth -- and this episode as yet another in the ongoing clash between the respective versions of Ayn Rand various persons want to have prevail.

Ellen

___

Edited by Ellen Stuttle
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Ellen,

I agree with your last post. It is one more facet of how people like Perigo get free passes from good people for the repeated evil deeds they commit.

On one level, the difference between a Rand-worshipper who tries to trash the reputation of a person he thinks is blaspheming Rand and a Muslim's execution of an infidel because he blasphemed against Allah is a matter of degree, not kind. They are the same animal. One is simply more viscious than the other, but both are viscious.

This is the world-view of faith in something human-like that is greater than oneself. I think the nastiness of these people when their idols are discussed in objective terms and taken off the worship-pedestal stems from not wanting to see the lie in their own soul exposed. Underneath it all, they are lying to themselves and they know it. They want to give up the responsibility of thinking for themselves and deciding their own values. They want someone else to tell them what is right and wrong. They want to submit their minds to something, anything, other than their own independent judgment.

I know it almost sounds Rand-like (not at her finest, either) to say it that way, but I believe it is so.

As an aside, I have done some introspecting and I think one part of the believer mentality is trying to deny time. All human beings live within a context of time passing and things changing. This means that our minds must be open to noticing what is going on all the time. There is no way to turn off the responsibility of that without running serious risk. I see the faith-oriented wanting to suspend the effects of time by freezing a mental thing in place that they can use as some kind of anchor when the effects of time become too undeniable and this makes them feel insecure. I think I am going to expand on this after I mull it over some more. I am seeing the glimmer of an insight.

Michael

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Ellen,

I agree with your last post. It is one more facet of how people like Perigo get free passes from good people for the repeated evil deeds they commit.

On one level, the difference between a Rand-worshipper who tries to trash the reputation of a person he thinks is blaspheming Rand and a Muslim's execution of an infidel because he blasphemed against Allah is a matter of degree, not kind. They are the same animal. One is simply more viscious than the other, but both are viscious.

This is the world-view of faith in something human-like that is greater than oneself. I think the nastiness of these people when their idols are discussed in objective terms and taken off the worship-pedestal stems from not wanting to see the lie in their own soul exposed. Underneath it all, they are lying to themselves and they know it. They want to give up the responsibility of thinking for themselves and deciding their own values. They want someone else to tell them what is right and wrong. They want to submit their minds to something, anything, other than their own independent judgment.

I know it almost sounds Rand-like (not at her finest, either) to say it that way, but I believe it is so.

As an aside, I have done some introspecting and I think one part of the believer mentality is trying to deny time. All human beings live within a context of time passing and things changing. This means that our minds must be open to noticing what is going on all the time. There is no way to turn off the responsibility of that without running serious risk. I see the faith-oriented wanting to suspend the effects of time by freezing a mental thing in place that they can use as some kind of anchor when the effects of time become too undeniable and this makes them feel insecure. I think I am going to expand on this after I mull it over some more. I am seeing the glimmer of an insight.

Michael

Michael; This post is very good. I hope you will work on the ideas in your last paragraph. Thanks again. Again thanks!

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SEE

He wrote:

I think there's a hidden subtext to all of this that is missed. There are those of us who want to see Ayn Rand's banner flown high without apology or qualification. Given all that she accomplished, she deserves that much.

Wow. Talk about getting to the heart of the matter. I didn't notice anyone notice that Jim absolutely nailed it over there. Which would make sense. It boggles the mind that he'd admit it out loud. On the other hand, this sort of stuff is said in Objectivist circles. If I'm not mistaken, in Peikoff's "My years with Ayn Rand", he glorifies the idea of evading any faults she might have had.

This is tantamount to making her into a God and worshiping her. It means lying to yourself about what she did. It means wishing that she was right about everything so badly that you evade any contrary facts and arguments, and condemn the bringer of those facts and arguments. It means orienting your life around a fragile fiction. It means making Objectivism into a religious cult and not the tool of individualist living it should be.

Perhaps it's odd but I've never see this as literally before I saw Jim's comment just now. I've always thought that some Objectivists sometimes act as if Objectivism is a religion. But that's not nearly strong enough. For them, Objectivism is literally a religious cult, and Ayn Rand is its leader.

Michael is right--it'd be better to blow your brains out than to hand them over if that was the only option. But in reality, you can of course always earn your mind back. Which is what these people need to do.

Shayne

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As an aside, I have done some introspecting and I think one part of the believer mentality is trying to deny time. All human beings live within a context of time passing and things changing. This means that our minds must be open to noticing what is going on all the time. There is no way to turn off the responsibility of that without running serious risk. I see the faith-oriented wanting to suspend the effects of time by freezing a mental thing in place that they can use as some kind of anchor when the effects of time become too undeniable and this makes them feel insecure. I think I am going to expand on this after I mull it over some more. I am seeing the glimmer of an insight.

NOTE: The Austrian economists consider time (or more correctly, changing patterns) to be the root of all uncertainty within economics. Possible idea plug-in.

Also I cover what motivates religious fundamentalism (which is a pure form of true believer mentality) in "The Appeal of Fundamentalism To The Young." It may provide some thinking material to you for that insight.

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As an aside, I have done some introspecting and I think one part of the believer mentality is trying to deny time. All human beings live within a context of time passing and things changing. This means that our minds must be open to noticing what is going on all the time. There is no way to turn off the responsibility of that without running serious risk. I see the faith-oriented wanting to suspend the effects of time by freezing a mental thing in place that they can use as some kind of anchor when the effects of time become too undeniable and this makes them feel insecure. I think I am going to expand on this after I mull it over some more. I am seeing the glimmer of an insight.

NOTE: The Austrian economists consider time (or more correctly, changing patterns) to be the root of all uncertainty within economics. Possible idea plug-in.

Also I cover what motivates religious fundamentalism (which is a pure form of true believer mentality) in "The Appeal of Fundamentalism To The Young." It may provide some thinking material to you for that insight.

Where can we find "The Appeal of Fundamentalism To The Young?"

Alfonso

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As an aside, I have done some introspecting and I think one part of the believer mentality is trying to deny time. All human beings live within a context of time passing and things changing. This means that our minds must be open to noticing what is going on all the time. There is no way to turn off the responsibility of that without running serious risk. I see the faith-oriented wanting to suspend the effects of time by freezing a mental thing in place that they can use as some kind of anchor when the effects of time become too undeniable and this makes them feel insecure. I think I am going to expand on this after I mull it over some more. I am seeing the glimmer of an insight.

NOTE: The Austrian economists consider time (or more correctly, changing patterns) to be the root of all uncertainty within economics. Possible idea plug-in.

Also I cover what motivates religious fundamentalism (which is a pure form of true believer mentality) in "The Appeal of Fundamentalism To The Young." It may provide some thinking material to you for that insight.

Where can we find "The Appeal of Fundamentalism To The Young?"

Alfonso

Ignore my question, please. I found it.

Alfonso

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As an aside, I have done some introspecting and I think one part of the believer mentality is trying to deny time. All human beings live within a context of time passing and things changing. This means that our minds must be open to noticing what is going on all the time. There is no way to turn off the responsibility of that without running serious risk. I see the faith-oriented wanting to suspend the effects of time by freezing a mental thing in place that they can use as some kind of anchor when the effects of time become too undeniable and this makes them feel insecure. I think I am going to expand on this after I mull it over some more. I am seeing the glimmer of an insight.

NOTE: The Austrian economists consider time (or more correctly, changing patterns) to be the root of all uncertainty within economics. Possible idea plug-in.

Also I cover what motivates religious fundamentalism (which is a pure form of true believer mentality) in "The Appeal of Fundamentalism To The Young." It may provide some thinking material to you for that insight.

Where can we find "The Appeal of Fundamentalism To The Young?"

Alfonso

Ignore my question, please. I found it.

Alfonso

"The root of uncertainty within economics" is a combination of ignorance and free will, with ignorance being primary--that is, we are ignorant of the free will of millions of human beings in what they might choose and why.

--Brant

Edited by Brant Gaede
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I think there's a hidden subtext to all of this that is missed. There are those of us who want to see Ayn Rand's banner flown high without apology or qualification. Given all that she accomplished, she deserves that much.

This quote is a real litmus test. This is not making Rand into a God and worshipping her. This quote expresses the feelings of a valuer, not a cultist. I'm with Jim.

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I think there's a hidden subtext to all of this that is missed. There are those of us who want to see Ayn Rand's banner flown high without apology or qualification. Given all that she accomplished, she deserves that much.

This quote is a real litmus test. This is not making Rand into a God and worshipping her. This quote expresses the feelings of a valuer, not a cultist. I'm with Jim.

Valuer and cultist are not mutually exclusive concepts. Everybody is a valuer, afterall. "Ayn Rand's banner," moreover, does beg the question of just what Jim is talking about. What that is is in our heads and his, not on top of a hill.

--Brant

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I value Ayn Rand more than I have ever valued any other thinker. (I speak in terms of how I was formed intellectually from my youth. Nowadays I value many thinkers so highly, I don't know who I value more. I only know there is a line called "value highly" and once a thinker is over that line, it does not make any difference anymore.)

The main value I derived from Rand's thinking over time was the sanctity of accepting reality and not faking it, all the way down to mankind's big questions like whether God exists or not.

That is why it is really painful to me to contemplate faking Rand's reality and pretending this is some kind of value.

Michael

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Laure,

It is certainly appropriate for Objectivists to raise Rand's banner high. But to suggest that nothing that she did or said requried any "qualification" leads to cultism of the Valliant/Peikoff variety. Even when I showed that Rand's dogmatic statement about the streaker's motivation in the 74 Academy Awards was misguided, Valliant defended Rand and even Peikoff.

Or, does praising Rand's evaluation of philosophers in FTNI "without qualification" advance Objectivism when students study these people for themselves and learn that Rand was more than a little off base?

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I think there's a hidden subtext to all of this that is missed. There are those of us who want to see Ayn Rand's banner flown high without apology or qualification. Given all that she accomplished, she deserves that much.

This quote is a real litmus test. This is not making Rand into a God and worshipping her. This quote expresses the feelings of a valuer, not a cultist. I'm with Jim.

Asserting something doesn't make it so. They're claiming it's virtuous to ignore parts of reality just to be able to "fly the banner high". That kind of virtue isn't part of a valuer's ethic. It's part of a cultist's.

Shayne

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Neil, if you differ with Rand on certain philosophical issues or positions, that's fine. I differ with Rand on a few things as well. But she is still my hero. What I am sick and tired of, is the insistence that Rand was fundamentally immoral, and the insistence that anyone who thinks she was good is some kind of a cultist. I don't care to see one of my heroes constantly picked at in that manner. Some on this site picked at Jim the same way when he asserted that he does not lie. I could almost see Nelson from The Simpsons, pointing and laughing, "Ha Ha! Jim says he doesn't lie! That's so stupid, everybody knows that everybody is dishonest!!" What does that say about Nelson?

Shayne, I think it IS virtuous to ignore parts of reality just to be able to "fly the banner high". Ignoring the minor flaws, or just personality traits you might not have liked, about your hero IS a good thing, just like it's a good thing to ignore the minor flaws of your spouse and focus instead on what you love about him or her. If that makes me, or Jim, a cultist, so be it.

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What I am sick and tired of, is the insistence that Rand was fundamentally immoral, and the insistence that anyone who thinks she was good is some kind of a cultist.

So, did anyone actually do this? Or is this just Perigo Propaganda?

Shayne, I think it IS virtuous to ignore parts of reality just to be able to "fly the banner high". Ignoring the minor flaws, or just personality traits you might not have liked, about your hero IS a good thing, just like it's a good thing to ignore the minor flaws of your spouse and focus instead on what you love about him or her. If that makes me, or Jim, a cultist, so be it.

There's a vast difference between evading flaws and regarding Ayn Rand as a hero in spite of them. The cultist crowd can't handle the truth so they evade, rational people can both regard Ayn Rand as a hero as well as recognize that she made mistakes.

What a shame that so many take her philosophy of independence and first-handedness and pervert it into a religious cult.

Shayne

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Neil, if you differ with Rand on certain philosophical issues or positions, that's fine. I differ with Rand on a few things as well. But she is still my hero. What I am sick and tired of, is the insistence that Rand was fundamentally immoral, and the insistence that anyone who thinks she was good is some kind of a cultist. I don't care to see one of my heroes constantly picked at in that manner. Some on this site picked at Jim the same way when he asserted that he does not lie. I could almost see Nelson from The Simpsons, pointing and laughing, "Ha Ha! Jim says he doesn't lie! That's so stupid, everybody knows that everybody is dishonest!!" What does that say about Nelson?

Shayne, I think it IS virtuous to ignore parts of reality just to be able to "fly the banner high". Ignoring the minor flaws, or just personality traits you might not have liked, about your hero IS a good thing, just like it's a good thing to ignore the minor flaws of your spouse and focus instead on what you love about him or her. If that makes me, or Jim, a cultist, so be it.

Laure, On this list at least we see Rand as fundamentally moral and good. I think she was a titanic hero of the 20th Century, certainly a hero of mine. While I also consider Objectivism to be a work in progress on many levels she's up there on top of the skyscraper--on top of the construction going on below. She'll always be there; the construction too.

--Brant

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My point was that this issue is much greater than a personality dispute.

Yes, it is. It's a continuation of the issue which resulted in the split between Leonard Peikoff and David Kelley. New guise, same battle. As I see the battle, it's that of which matters more to the Objectivist world, reality or Ayn Rand's image? Or another way of saying it, is Objectivism a philosophy or a religion with a deified human as its "supernatural" figure?

In a post of his on the SOLO list, James Heaps-Nelson let the cat out of the bag, I think, as to why those who are keen on having Linz talk at TAS are keen.

SEE

He wrote:

I think there's a hidden subtext to all of this that is missed. There are those of us who want to see Ayn Rand's banner flown high without apology or qualification. Given all that she accomplished, she deserves that much.

I respect Jim; I even sympathize with where I believe he's coming from -- for one thing, he's tired of all the dwelling on history instead of "getting about it" addressing the relationships between Objectivism and science (much more troublesome relationships, imo, than in what I understand to be Jim's opinion).

BUT. Asking for Ayn Rand's banner to be "flown high without apology or qualification" I can only view as asking for the acceptance of a myth which never should have been started in the first place and which Ayn Rand herself bought -- even partly started -- about herself. E.g., the biographical essay in Who Is Ayn Rand? -- which to an extent is a hagiography -- wouldn't have been published without her accepting the image presented.

Jim has said previously something to the effect, I don't recall on which site in which thread, that a reason he wants Linz invited is because Linz presents Rand in the way he wants.

That way I consider mythical. Thus I see the choice as one between truth or myth -- and this episode as yet another in the ongoing clash between the respective versions of Ayn Rand various persons want to have prevail.

Ellen

___

An additional problem that I have with many of Rand's "banner flyers" is that their idea of respecting accomplishments "without apology or qualification" doesn't seem to apply to anyone but Rand. It's perfectly acceptable to them to trash some of the most accomplished thinkers and creators in history (or to remain silent about the fact that Rand unjustly trashed them). Rand is the only one whose errors, contradictions and groundless moral judgments are not to be discussed as relevant to her work and character.

Btw, here's a suggestion to Rand's banner flyers: Don't claim that Rand was morally perfect, and don't dare people to come up with examples in which she consciously breached her own convictions if you really don't want to discuss the issue. Crying that people are Rand-bashers when you're not able to refute their answers to the challenges that you've posed isn't going to convert anyone to your cause. It's just going to make you look like religious zealots.

J

Edited by Jonathan
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I think there's a hidden subtext to all of this that is missed. There are those of us who want to see Ayn Rand's banner flown high without apology or qualification. Given all that she accomplished, she deserves that much.

This quote is a real litmus test. This is not making Rand into a God and worshipping her. This quote expresses the feelings of a valuer, not a cultist. I'm with Jim.

I'm a valuer, too, but what would you suggest that I do when someone I value is a little too full of herself and decides to trash other great achievers whose "banners I fly without apology or qualification"? My position has been to defend the achievers against the unjustified attacks, despite the fact that the attacks came from Rand or her banner flyers. When Rand used intimidation as a substitute for argument, made unsupported or contradictory claims about subjects on which she had no expertise, or made groundless psychological or moral judgments about others, including great achievers I admire, what would you suggest that I do, side with Rand (or silently overlook her viciousness) because her greatness was so great that she deserves my loyalty even when she was pissing on greatness?

I could understand the idea of forgiving Rand's nastiness, putting her stupid judgments in the past, and focusing on nothing but the value that we get from her art and ideas, but only after her most vocal "banner flyers" stop mimicking her viciousness as if it's the primary Objectivist virtue. The unfortunate dark aspects of Rand's personality are not minor issues that have long been dead and buried, but are alive and well, and in some cases are trying to lead the Objectivist movement.

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Shayne, I think it IS virtuous to ignore parts of reality just to be able to "fly the banner high". Ignoring the minor flaws, or just personality traits you might not have liked, about your hero IS a good thing, just like it's a good thing to ignore the minor flaws of your spouse and focus instead on what you love about him or her.

I just want to add that I think it would be disasterous to have a policy of paying attention only to the good in your lover and ignoring the bad (at least, concerning volitional issues). It denies psychological visibility, and it handicaps your lover rather than helping them change for the better. There is probably no worse thing you can do to someone than to pretend that their chosen flaws do not matter.

If that makes me, or Jim, a cultist, so be it.

This is practically the Peikoff quote, and it is a deplorable attitude. This is precisely the attitude expressed in: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself...", it is a totally irrational, whim-worshiping, self-indulgent and immature attitude.

Grow up!

Shayne

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What I am sick and tired of, is the insistence that Rand was fundamentally immoral, and the insistence that anyone who thinks she was good is some kind of a cultist.

Please name names and give specific examples. Who has said that Rand was fundamentally immoral? Who has said that anyone who thinks that Rand was good is a cultist?

Shayne, I think it IS virtuous to ignore parts of reality just to be able to "fly the banner high". Ignoring the minor flaws, or just personality traits you might not have liked, about your hero IS a good thing, just like it's a good thing to ignore the minor flaws of your spouse and focus instead on what you love about him or her. If that makes me, or Jim, a cultist, so be it.

By what standard do you judge a person's flaws to be minor and deserving of being overlooked? I'm an artist, and I both create and admire a wide variety of types of art. By both Rand's personal judgments and her formal philosophical ideas, her view was that my tastes mean that I lack self-esteem, that I'm monstrously immoral, that I'm disgusting, subhuman and vile. Her words were aimed at me, and at good people I admire. Am I to understand that you expect me to overlook those judgments as "minor flaws"?

J

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I'm a valuer, too, but what would you suggest that I do when someone I value is a little too full of herself and decides to trash other great achievers whose "banners I fly without apology or qualification"? My position has been to defend the achievers against the unjustified attacks, despite the fact that the attacks came from Rand or her banner flyers. When Rand used intimidation as a substitute for argument, made unsupported or contradictory claims about subjects on which she had no expertise, or made groundless psychological or moral judgments about others, including great achievers I admire, what would you suggest that I do, side with Rand (or silently overlook her viciousness) because her greatness was so great that she deserves my loyalty even when she was pissing on greatness?

I could understand the idea of forgiving Rand's nastiness, putting her stupid judgments in the past, and focusing on nothing but the value that we get from her art and ideas, but only after her most vocal "banner flyers" stop mimicking her viciousness as if it's the primary Objectivist virtue. The unfortunate dark aspects of Rand's personality are not minor issues that have long been dead and buried, but are alive and well, and in some cases are trying to lead the Objectivist movement.

I don't know, Jonathan. Is "nastiness," "stupid judgments," "viciousness," "pissing on greatness" and the like primarily what comes to mind for you when you think of Ayn Rand? You're not a member of an anti-AR cult here, you know.

--Brant

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By what standard do you judge a person's flaws to be minor and deserving of being overlooked? I'm an artist, and I both create and admire a wide variety of types of art. By both Rand's personal judgments and her formal philosophical ideas, her view was that my tastes mean that I lack self-esteem, that I'm monstrously immoral, that I'm disgusting, subhuman and vile. Her words were aimed at me, and at good people I admire. Am I to understand that you expect me to overlook those judgments as "minor flaws"?

I understand how an artist can feel the way you do, but I don't know particularly where you get this stuff from Rand. I'm not an artist myself so I've not focused strongly on these things.

--Brant

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I think discussing Rand's virtues and shortcomings should follow the same standard used for everyone else. There are times and places for each.

Here is a good example: TAS did the 50th Anniversary Celebration of Atlas Shrugged. I did a report on it. No Rand criticism. That was not the time nor the place. One does not bicker with a person at her birthday party.

When discussing issues like, say, Gary Merrill's criticism of Rand's written scholarship methods to understand why there is a resistance to Rand among academics, it might be a good idea to admit the documented shortcomings, chalk them up to personal quirks and focus on the value in her writing rather than try to defend the indefensible based on the wish to honor a heroine. There is no way to shove Rand down the throats of scholars and make them betray their own values (like sound scholarship) just because someone feels that Rand was a heroine. However, the soundness of some of her ideas can be demonstrated and, as has been happening, many academics are open to those ideas when presented in peer reviewed journals like JARS.

There is a time to celebrate Rand as heroine and a time to discuss her downside (and her upside). Trying to impose either on the wrong context is what makes a person a cultist or Rand-hater.

Neither is the case with OL posters in general. Once again, the standard is objectivity and context.

Michael

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