Why Nobody Takes PARC Seriously Anymore

[Brant Gaede]

Notice especially Valliant's iteration of Leonard Peikoff's description of Rand as "indeed, the person she had to be in order to have written Atlas Shrugged." Now that, in a sentence, states the primary myth about Ayn Rand, the myth she promulgated (and I think genuinely believed about herself): that she herself was a representative of the heroic characters of her novel.

Noticed! Now, this myth is necessary because Rand's complete personal integration with her philosophy is logically critical to the ortho-Objectivist movement. Why? Because her philosophy claims to be one "for living on earth"; she renounces unattainable abstract standards as fundamentally evil.

However, if not even the "discoverer" of Objectivism herself could not live up to the standards of rationality she proclaimed...

Valliant, today, keeps disclaiming any belief that Ayn Rand was "perfect." Linz says that all he, Linz, means in evaluating her as "perfect" is that she attempted to live by her own standards and never consciously breached them.

One of my favourite dimwit arguments. By these lights we might also say that, say, Aleister Crowley was morally perfect, or Son of Sam - or closer to home, William Hickman - in that they attempted to live by their own standards without breach; and even that they were only immoral when they were kind or merciful to someone!

Pretty good, Daniel, but Ayn Rand was a true hero, unlike some others today who live in her reflected light instead of generating their own.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Unlike Olivia on SOLOP I've never worshiped Ayn Rand. This religious attitude is pitiful. When you worship all rational considerations are washed out and you give yourself over in a gross diminution of self. Of course, Ayn Rand advocated "man worship," which is a problem--for both her and the would-be worshiped. I don't think she ever made an argument on why this was rational. In reality you get posturing, kind of like the posturing of "saved" Christian fanatics who hypnotize themselves into the required ecstasy but a great deal more subdued if not notably intellectual. Running about like a beheaded chicken is not, afterall, congruent with "rationality."

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen added another rhetorical device that I had not cataloged, but this pertains only to his method of argument online, not to his book.

Suppose someone says that, yes, a particular statement or detail of wording of Barbara's is an overgeneralization, he then promptly starts harping on the person's having conceded -- amongst his favorite words -- the point. When in fact the someone had probably noticed the glitch in question as far back as first reading Barbara's book when the book was published. As if the someone needed Valliant's help in order to see that detail!

Valliant takes credit for convincing someone who already had an opinion. I have seen him do this often, I just never paid attention to it.

It isn't exactly a rhetorical device which "pertains only to his method of argument online, not to his book." The specific sort of example I used pertains only to list discussions, but the use of concedes and variants to imply acknowledging something which hadn't in fact been questioned, he employs so constantly in the book, I started to mark instances as I was reading. "The Brandens concede [or, one of the Brandens concedes]" is a wording he frequently uses in cases where neither had ever disputed what he styles as a concession.

Ellen

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[Ellen Stuttle]

Valliant, today, keeps disclaiming any belief that Ayn Rand was "perfect." Linz says that all he, Linz, means in evaluating her as "perfect" is that she attempted to live by her own standards and never consciously breached them.

One of my favourite dimwit arguments. By these lights we might also say that, say, Aleister Crowley was morally perfect, or Son of Sam - or closer to home, William Hickman - in that they attempted to live by their own standards without breach; and even that they were only immoral when they were kind or merciful to someone!

Or, of course, Hitler -- an example which has been used multiple times against that approach to defining "perfection."

Nonetheless, I agree with Brant's remark that:

[...] Ayn Rand was a true hero, unlike some others today who live in her reflected light instead of generating their own.

Ellen

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[Daniel Barnes]

Pretty good, Daniel, but Ayn Rand was a true hero, unlike some others today who live in her reflected light instead of generating their own.

There is no doubt Rand was a brave, original and in some respects even heroic woman. But in order to say this, it certainly does not follow that we have to proclaim her as "morally perfect." In fact it is perfectly possible to attribute these characteristics to her while also accepting that she had grievous flaws in both her personality and intellectual system.

There is a name for this attitude. It's called being a grown-up.

[Dragonfly]

The term "hero" suffers from inflation.

[Brant Gaede]

The term "hero" suffers from inflation.

Not when I use it.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

Btw, Daniel:

I think that Rand DID have the nucleus of "a philosophy for living on earth."

The growth process went wrong; there are a whole lot of details which are wrong. But I do think that there's a nucleus there -- and that it's a nucleus of vital importance at this juncture in human history.

This is why I stick around O'ist venues, and try to enter correctives about the truth of Rand versus the myth of Rand.

Because I think that the nucleus which could flower in the right soil is of such immense importance at this time. And that certain scientific thinkers whom I much admire and appreciate, Dawkins foremost among them, won't find that nucleus without some help. Unfortunately, they accept as their ethical premises the premises AR was attempting to replace. They understand the needed epistemology far better than she did, but despite her errors, she understood where the ethics needs to go far better than they do.

E's proclamation nailed to the church wall -- or something like that.

Ellen

Edit: PS: Nor when I use the term "hero," either, Brant and DF.

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Edited May 25, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[Daniel Barnes]

The growth process went wrong; there are a whole lot of details which are wrong. But I do think that there's a nucleus there -- and that it's a nucleus of vital importance at this juncture in human history.

What do you have in mind?

[Dragonfly]

Rand was no hero, unless you call any famous writer, artist or sportsman a "hero".

[Brant Gaede]

We know you disdain her, DF. In any case, we are off topic and I'm not going to participate in any "Was Ayn Rand A Hero Thread?"

--Brant

[Dragonfly]

Where did I say that I disdain her?

[Robert Campbell]

Dragonfly,

I'm with Brant here.

The question about Ayn Rand that matters in this setting is not whether she qualified as a hero.

It's whether she attained Roarkhood or Galthood, doing no wrong and exhibiting a morally perfect character at all times.

It's the latter, not the former, that's relevant when we're taking on Mr. Valliant and his sad book.

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

Where did I say that I disdain her?

A while back while discussing William Hickman, I believe. If I was wrong, I apologize. I don't think you said that, but I thought it was very strongly implied.

--Brant

[Mikee]

"..there's a nucleus there -- and that it's a nucleus of vital importance at this juncture in human history."

Yes. The moral center of humanity is in the acts of rational individuals acting on their own behalf. The Nuclear weapon of evil is people presuming (or pretending) to act on the behalf of others.

I agree with Brant. And, as usual, Ellen.

[Ellen Stuttle]

The growth process went wrong; there are a whole lot of details which are wrong. But I do think that there's a nucleus there -- and that it's a nucleus of vital importance at this juncture in human history.

What do you have in mind?

I'm not going to assay a discussion of that topic on this thread, the subject of which is the futility of PARC not the non-futility of Ayn Rand.

And I'm biting my lips, so to speak, at Dragonfly's comments indicating that he apparently has no idea of the kind of courage AR displayed. I agree with Brant and Robert that AR's heroism isn't a point at issue in regard to critiquing PARC.

Maybe when the current dust over PARC settles into deserved rubble, we should start a topic:

What AR Did and Was which Was Right (nay, more than right, magnificent).

I only answered your comment re "a philosophy for living on earth," Daniel, to put on record in this thread that my denigrating of PARC shouldn't be construed as a denigration of AR's achievement. I think that her achievement needs re-working but that she saw with enough clairty to be of enormous help the core of where the battle lines lie.

Ellen

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[Philip Coates]

*the endless preoccupation with personalities, negatives, gossip, and with individual enemies*

There are people who are fascinated with reality programming and 'exposes' and sex and crime in the yellow press and the mass media. They'd rather read about what Britney did than about something less sensational. And there are their Objectivist equivalents.

If activity and posting levels seem to be flagging at a website, resurrecting a topic of the "Objectivist Personalities, Gossip, and Food Fights" type (in this latest case PARC, but one can multiply examples) can always be relied upon to generate the most activity. Whichever side you are on and whichever of several websites you are posting on, there are a number of things wrong with spending as much time as people do on these endless repeated sorts of topic -- the inordinate focus on individual people or personalities...and what they did when or who was unfair to whom or who is honest or who is a hero:

1. The wrong subject matter to focus inordinately on: Past flaws and errors -- people making mistakes or treating others unfairly, stupidly, or without grasping something germane -- whether drinking too much, getting angry, bullying and lacking empathy, not reading a previous post carefully, choosing poor associates, being insulting is of a "no shit, dick tracy" nature: People do this. Both your heroes and your enemies. Both people you deeply admire and those you despise . Get over it. Get on with your life.

2. Indirect and very distant or secondhand knowledge -- this sort of topic, in any of its mutations, tends to lean on psychological inferences or assumptions about the exact tenor of events which is not always directly accessible and it therefore has a large component of guesswork or speculation on your part.

3. Because of this (for example, all the tea leaf reading about an out of context action, statement, paragraph, or position taken decades ago...or even in a post made by your sworn enemy two hours agao), the discussion tends to be Epistemologically Corrupt: Even when it is not -blatant- psychologizing, you are, too often, expressing great precision and absolute certainty about complex matters which you do not really know, weren't a party to. Or where context -- context you don't have -- plays a very important role.

4. It always turns acrimonious and involves character attacks and name-calling, and most of the people involved in this - on whatever side - do not possess the maturity to avoid this sort of topic degenerating into name-calling and nit-picking about who-said-what-when.

5. Ideas over People: Philosophy, figuring out in principle how one should live and how to apply it to one's own life is of much greater importance ... and is not yet resolved or fully grasped by most of the people posting on these intellectually undemanding and low level 'gossip' or 'personalities' topics.

6. Degenerating Discussions: what starts with a discussion of the actions or personalities of major figures quickly degenerates into the same discussion of the actions of personalities of the debaters, the personalities who take a position on the prior topic.

7. It's a colossal, unproductive, endless waste of time: no one is ever convinced, every alleged 'fact' is challenged. And worst of all, instead of writing for an audience of seven hundred or seven hundred thousand, one is writing for an audience of seven: Almost no one is reading this. There is a hardcore of about six or seven people on each website who do all the posting and hurl disagreements at each other. So while it may momentarily make you feel good - "I'll show him! I won't let -that- go unanswered" - what you are doing is UTTERLY INEFFECTUAL.

8. The endless "muck-raking" topics (and the feces-hurling which seems to quickly accompany them) are actually destructive - they don't build anything positive but insted breed malevolence, contempt, back-biting among the participants and among bystanders who wonder what happened to the high-minded discussions of positive issues about how to live, how to build a better society, how to treat people well and intelligently.

9. Life and intellectual energy are finite - the time and emotion invested on these endless threads shoulders aside more productive use of your mind.

Conclusion: Don't be an obsessive-compulsive trying to answer every silly point.

Move on.

Get Over it.

Get on with your life.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Phil,

I used to agree with you. I don't any longer—not when an issue like PARC is run by a group of zealots to try to hijack the intellectual playing field and create a tribe just shy of a cult in the name of Objectivism. And not when that almost-cult is based on scapegoating persons of historical and intellectual importance to Objectivism.

Maybe way back when, when communications needed to be paid for, your arguments would stand. But not in an era where the only cost a person needs to invest in order troll endless Internet forums and smear whomever he wishes is an Internet connection and time on his hands.

Frankly, I am proud of what has been accomplished so far. The endless trolling has almost stopped entirely and become centralized into two venues. Now the people within the Objectivist subcommunity can actually look at the nature of the boneheads who claim to speak in their name and in the name of Objectivism and see them as if under a microscope.

They can make their own choices from there, as they do.

Incidentally, I do not agree with your estimate of 7 people only who read this stuff. There those who are "above it all" like you, but who always show up to comment whenever the discussion is PARC, and there are those who show up and read it but do not comment. I assure you, as a forum administrator with access to stats, I know for a fact this number is much greater than what you mentioned.

I personally think this work is productive (in the sense that a garbage removal service is productive) and, although I would not make it my life's work, I am proud to be a part of it at this juncture. It is providing a growing body of content to offer when the AS movie hits and the Internet trolling starts again. (And this material will be organized into one place for easy reference.) Then, a mere post or two with a link will be enough to provide proper options to an invaded venue. Maybe the trolling will be neutralized that way (and I think it will). And maybe people will be able to focus more on Rand's ideas. I expect it to be an exciting time to live in, watching Rand's ideas receive a major push, and I would hate to see it spoiled with discussions about something as trivial and boneheaded as PARC just because nobody prepared material to balance it for those interested or who become in doubt from the trolling.

This is honest, goal-directed work. Although there is a lot of yelling at times, the branding is actually a congnitive activity of identification and establishing clear concepts on who represents which brand.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Hi, Phil! I assume you posted this stuff on SOLOP too. (Didn't Linz tell you to take a hike a while back?)

I have now the same basic criticism of you I've had for a long time: You belong to the spread the Objectivist word crowd. Ayn Rand did that; the product appears to need some reengineering. Romanticism in ethics and politics doesn't work. It works in fiction. Before you've the hubris about what morality people should have you need to know a lot more about people than she ever did. Rational self-interest is a good, solid starting point and a basic principle of Objectivism, but a foundation is not the house you live in. At most you can pitch a tent on it, dig a latrine and gather some firewood, plant some crops and shoot and butcher a hog while you decide to build out of brick or straw and whether you want your in-laws with you. Such would constitute a minor part of the empirical inquiry needed for a brave new world. The big Basic Principle of Objectivism that wasn't/isn't is WE DON'T KNOW ENOUGH!, but let's investigate together using reason, reality, self-interest and capitalism as desired starting off points all in the name of human happiness, well being and freedom. That's all the Objectivism you need for that, not everything Ayn Rand ever wrote if not said too. We certainly don't need a phoney, iconic, perfect, Ayn Rand God presiding over it all.

--Brant

[william.scherk]

Phil's notes on folks who take interest in Mr Valliant's endless crusade to demonize the Brandens are interesting, but not as interesting as Valliant's endless crusade itself, at least to this reader. Since Phil hasn't read either the biography, the memoir, or Protocols of the Elders of Brandenia . . . I don't know why he would be so sniffy about the interest taken in countering the endless crusade.

Not that the endless crusade will ever regain Jerusalem from the hordes. Valliant and his toadies and sycophants have zero chance of seriously damaging the historical import of the Branden books. Who will ultimately care what he said about two books whose authors knew her very well? In fifty years, when Valliant will likely be in the grave along with every last person from the Collective era . . . who then will bother to hunt down one of the copies?

Ultimately, the Barbara Branden biography will trump Valliant's screed, for several reasons: it is comprehensible, being a biography; it is free-standing, and can appeal to anyone interested in Ayn Rand the person -- whereas readership for PARC is restricted; Branden is a good writer, whereas Valliant is an awful writer.

[Robert Campbell]

Phil,

Because the leadership of The Atlas Society considered themselves "above it all," they nearly ended up with a couple of gross Perigonian diatribes on their Summer Seminar program. The next step, you can be damn sure, would have been to insinuate Jim Valliant into some of the programs.

If people who draw their inspiration from Rand's ideas are to move beyond the dead end known as Peikovianism, the tribal, religious, and other irrational aspects (some of which were occasionally given encouragement by Rand herself) need to be drawn out into the open and challenged.

While Mr. Valliant's book has sparked considerable acrimony in some sectors of Rand-land, the ensuing inquiry and criticism, along with the less than cogent defenses of the book by Mr. Valliant and his minuscule cheering section, have now led to the book's being firmly discredited.

The work has been dirty and exhausting for all involved, but, yes, there is sometimes a need for intellectual garbage removal.

And there is real philosophical content here. Peikovian polemics, including Mr. Valliant's, rely heavily on the doctrine of the arbitrary assertion, which, I am now convinced, is a tangled mess that the Peikovians themselves do not really understand. (For instance, if you really believe that what Barbara Branden said about Ayn Rand is a string or complex of arbitrary assertions, what does this mean you should do? Investigate none of them? Investigate all of them? Investigate only those you feel like? Dr. Peikoff himself has issued contradictory directives.)

The discussions of Mr. Valliant's book (particularly when that contingent from the Ayn Rand Institute were involved in them) helped to prod me to investigate the doctrine. My article on it will appear in the Fall issue of the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. Michael Stuart Kelly has multiple pieces that he is working on; I hope he will come out with that catalogue of misleading rhetorical devices that he was mentioning recently (Mr. Valliant's book is an extremely rich source for those kinds of things).

Robert Campbell

[Daniel Barnes]

The big Basic Principle of Objectivism that wasn't/isn't is WE DON'T KNOW ENOUGH!, but let's investigate together using reason, reality, self-interest and capitalism as desired starting off points all in the name of human happiness, well being and freedom. That's all the Objectivism you need for that, not everything Ayn Rand ever wrote if not said too.

Brant, I agree with what you write here entirely with one exception: you don't need Objectivism at all, and thus not its presiding God either, for this. The same Big Basic Principle is behind Critical Rationalism. We don't know enough, but...

"I may be wrong, and you may be right, but together we can get closer to the truth" - Karl Popper.

Edited May 26, 2008 by Daniel Barnes

[Mike Hardy]

E's proclamation nailed to the church wall -- or something like that.

___

Well, Ellen, you know Martin Luther nailed 95 theocrats to the church door and invented the German language. Are you going to do as much?

(OK, let's qualify and clarify a bit: If I'm not mistaken, Martin Luther wrote quite a large number of books. And I think I heard somewhere (therefore it must be true!) that the version of the German language in which he wrote got adopted as the standard, so that modern German evolved from that. As for church _walls_, as opposed to church _doors_, there's one of those in the town of Breckerfeld, just a bit south of Dortmund in Nord-Rhein-Westfallen, that has been repeatedly written about by.... wait..... no, I don't think you want to know about that. Never mind, I've had my nightly half-ounce of red wine and I'm smashed......)

-- Mike Hardy

[Mike Hardy]

I'm not going to assay a discussion of that topic on this thread, the subject of which is

___

Um. I'm too lazy right now to reach for the dictionary, three feet away, so I'm going to be reckless and go way out on a limb and propose that maybe you meant "essay", one of those words like "refund" and "rebel" and "record" and "attribute" that are nouns or adjectives when the stress is on the first syllable and verbs when on the second. I think about 100 of those exist in the English language, occupying a region of grammatical space that belongs to words that are neither regular nor irregular (my own wild hypothesis that I may defend on another occasion---maybe in the morning when I get around to consulting that dictionary. (Actually four respectable dictionaries sit there, one of which is a big two-volume thing with the most beautiful illustrations that belonged to my grandfather, the only medical doctor for miles around in a rural region of North Dakota...... geez, am I wandering?) Anyway, look up "initial-stress-derived noun" on Wikipedia and you'll see what I mean). -- Mike Hardy

PS: My grandfather did appendectomies in his house. But ignore this silly postscript.

[Brant Gaede]

The big Basic Principle of Objectivism that wasn't/isn't is WE DON'T KNOW ENOUGH!, but let's investigate together using reason, reality, self-interest and capitalism as desired starting off points all in the name of human happiness, well being and freedom. That's all the Objectivism you need for that, not everything Ayn Rand ever wrote if not said too.

Brant, I agree with what you write here entirely with one exception: you don't need Objectivism at all, and thus not its presiding God either, for this. The same Big Basic Principle is behind Critical Rationalism. We don't know enough, but...

"I may be wrong, and you may be right, but together we can get closer to the truth" - Karl Popper.

You mean "you don't need Objectivism at all" because we got it and then discarded her?! Look, Jack, we need an integrated, rational philosophy from metaphysics through politics and that and the importance of that idea is what Ayn Rand gave us, plus. (Like saying we don't need Newton now that we understand gravity!?)

Thanks for "Critical Rationalism," Daniel. I'll check it out, even though it sounds like form but no substance. It sorta sounds like Rand's Newton vrs its Einstein, with CR being the cosmological (speed of light) constant, while back on earth ....

We don't need Rand the god, but we do need Rand the human being as an educational reference and her philosophy as a philosophy for human beings. Rand is intellectual food. That's the true Objectivism.

--Brant