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Christian: "Viva la rabbia! Bombs away!" But of course. Phil: You wrote that the question of whether "it is better that enormous numbers of innocent Iranians be killed than that one American soldier be killed" -- is a false alternative. That "it's not the choice which presents itself in reality." Thanks. You beat me to it. Victor, you asked if these "lepers of Objectivism" aren't such a small minority that they can be ignored. If it were merely the Solo poepole who held this position, I would say they certainly should be ignored as the lunatic fringe of Objectivism. But apparenty a great many ARI people also sanction the lepers' view -- as evidenced by Craig Biddle and his ARI staff of writers. And ARI has a public face; unfortunately, it is seen by many -- and by a substantial element in the media -- as the face and voice of Objectivism. Because of this, it should not be ignored; it should be denounced as anthithetical to Objectivism. You also asked if I think that most Objectivists share the same ideals and merely disagree about how to implement them. It's apparent to me that many who call themselves Objectivists -- and I'm speaking here of people within the Objectivist movement -- have psychological rather than philosophical reasons for some of the positions they advocate, and that, in such cases, psychology trumps philosophy. For instance, I do not see how advocating the nuking of millions of innocent people can be interpreted as even a wrong-headed commitment to the sanctity of the individual and to rational self-interest. Or how airbrushing "enemies" out of existence can be interpreted as even a wrong-headed commitment to honesty and integtrity. I could go on and on with a llist of such examples, which I intend to do in an article I'm writing on the subject. As for Objectivists who are outside the movement, my feeling is -- although I don't have hard evidence for it ---that the more intelligent and thoughtful among them probably do share, in a generalized sense, the actual ideals of Objectivism. Michael, thank you for defending my lack of "tolerance." Let me say that, as you know, I am endlessly tolerant of misunderstandings of Objectivism, of disagreements with it, etc; but I have not an iota of tolerance for those who attempt to translate Objectivism into a philosophy of hate and destruction, into an outlet for their own venom and inadequacies. In my talk on "Objectivism and Rage," I attempted to explain some of the philosohical and psychological reasons for such translations, but I did not say that they should be tolerated. They should be exposed and refuted. Barbara

Objectivism and Rage by Barbara Branden A lecture presented at the TAS 2006 Summer Seminar, July 4, 2006, Chapman University, Orange, CA One cannot avoid recognizing that we live in a very angry age. At one time, people spoke to “My worthy opponent” when addressing someone who disagreed with their views. That attitude of respecting differences has long disappeared. Today, in discussions of politics, of religion, of environmentalism, of war and peace, of abortion—of all the issues that concern and often divide us—we hear little but raised voices and enraged insults coming from all sides of every issue. Speak to an opponent of the Iraq war and suggest that it might have been a good idea—and a torrent of abuse washes over you. Say that Israel is morally superior to the Palestinians—and statistics about Israel’s supposed “atrocities” of the last 2,000 years fly furiously at your head. Say a kind word about George W. Bush—and you had better take to the hills at once. Objectivists are by no means immune to this rage. On the contrary, I find it to be increasingly prevalent among Objectivists. We see everywhere—particularly on the Internet—the spectacle of supposed supporters of reason and free inquiry erupting in fury at the least provocation and hurling abuse at anyone who opposes—even questions—their convictions. But what I call “Objectivist Rage” has a peculiar twist to it, unlikely to be found anywhere else except, paradoxically, in religion. It is almost always morally tinged. Those who question our ideas and those who oppose them, we are told, are not merely unintelligent, ignorant, uninformed; they are evil, they are moral monsters to be cast out and forever damned. And that is what I want to discuss today: the immensely presumptuous moralizing, the wildly unjust condemnations, and the towering anger and outrage exhibited by so many Objectivists. I want to explain, as best I can identify it, why this happens—that is, what are the mistaken philosophical ideas that lead to it, and what appears to be the psychology of many of its practitioners. If we are to defend ourselves against it and prevent it from contaminating our own dealings with others, our first requirement is to understand it. Let me say that I have found The Objectivist Center [now The Atlas Society] to be a significant exception to Objectivist rage, certainly an exception as regards its official policy. Although I have also found that by no means are all TOC members immune to it. And I am certain that many, perhaps most of you, have at one time or another had this sort of injustice very painfully directed against you. I am especially concerned with young people, new to Objectivism, who find themselves angrily accused of heresy, of evasion, of being “enemies of Objectivism” and therefore “evil” because they do not understand certain Objectivist ideas and/or because they disagree with them. Terrible damage is done to young people by this means. I have seen so many instances in which newcomers to Objectivism become rigid, fearful true believers in order to escape censure—or else they are driven away to lick their wounds in hurt and bewilderment. And sadly, often the victims in their turn become victimizers—spewing the poison that sickened them onto the next young Objectivist they encounter, having learned to treat even the most polite and reasoned disagreements with contempt and insult and morally-outraged fury. Let me give you an example, from a letter I recently received, of the damage this venom does; it's one of many such letters written to me over the years. "I was interested in the books and philosophy of Ayn Rand, but my few brushes with organized Objectivism have left not only a bitter aftertaste but also some emotional and social damage in my life. "I guess I should introduce myself a little more. I am university student, in my final year studying biomedical sciences. . . I turned 21 last October. I started reading Ayn Rand's works when I was 20. I have read Anthem, Atlas Shrugged and watched The Fountainhead movie. I attended one meeting of my school's Objectivist club (and decided not to go back after that) . . . I also corresponded with the owner of an Objectivist web site. . . . "Although my involvement with objectivism is relatively mild compared with some of the other horror stories I hear about, I still do believe it had a significant negative impact on me. It had a bad effect on my emotional and social life, made me rigid, humorless and judgmental, slowly lose friends and nearly precipitated a bitter split from my boyfriend of 3 years, whom I loved dearly . . ." This young woman now refers to herself as "a recovering Objectivist." This is a problem that has caused many well-meaning people to turn away from Objectivism after painful and humiliating encounters with moralizing Objectivists; it thereby endangers the future acceptance of the ideas that are important to all of us. I wonder if the Savonarolas of Objectivism have any idea how many men and women who were drawn to Objectivism, eager to understand it and to learn its application to their lives, are now saying: “If this obsession with finding and rooting out ‘enemies,’ this fanatical unearthing of villains—if this is Objectivism, I want no part of it.” I truly believe that Objectivism may stand or fall, as far as public acceptance is concerned, by whether or not this problem can be eliminated. Orthodox Objectivists may be willing to put up with being called "dishonest" and "evil" at the least imagined provocation; I don't think the public at large will stand for it or respect a philosophical system that they are told demands it. So we must consider very carefully the sources of this dangerous error. 1. Evil Ideas A major source of unjust moralizing and condemnations is the belief that ideas can be either good or evil—that it is not merely people, their motivations, the degree of their rationality, their characters, and their actions that are open to moral evaluation, but also and primarily their ideas and convictions. We can—and must, this view holds—judge people, judge the very nature of their souls, according to that which they hold to be true. It is what one thinks that determines one’s virtue or vice. Objectivists are not alone in holding such a view, although it is relatively rare among people who are not Objectivists. Several years ago, I had dinner with some liberal acquaintances when a discussion of the present Administration began. I mentioned that I liked George Bush and approved of many of his policies. No one asked me why. No one said a word. A dead silence fell over the table. Everyone stared at me, aghast, as if Satan, complete with horns, hooves, and a tail, had seated himself among them. They wanted nothing to do with me, they did not want to know me; I had established myself as irredeemably evil. Approve-of-Bush is an evil idea, is it not? Let me hasten to say that this attitude is not limited to liberals. Had I been at dinner with conservative or libertarian acquaintances and said I approved of many of the policies of Bill Clinton, I have little doubt that I would have met with the same appalled rejection and similarly been viewed as an advocate of the gentle art of well-poisoning. The view that ideas can be evil is held implicitly or explicitly by a great many Objectivists. If someone tells us, for instance, that he is religious, presumably we know—without knowing his context, the extent of his understanding, or the depth of his commitment—that this is an evil idea that cannot be accepted by a mind devoted to reason. Therefore, at least to the extent of his religiosity, we know that the person is evil. Or again, if a man tells us he is a political liberal, presumably we know—again without knowing his context, the extent of his understanding, or the depth of his commitment—that this, too, is an evil idea that cannot be maintained by a mind devoted to reason. Therefore, at least to the extent of his liberalism, we know that the man is evil. How do we know it? How do we decide which ideas are proof of evil? What the argument ultimately amounts to is that mistaken ideas of a fundamental sort—fundamental to whichever branch of knowledge is being considered—are evil. The concept of error, of innocence, vanishes, and error is transmuted into evil. And worse. What do we hold to be the mistaken ideas that constitute proof of evil? Why, those ideas that contradict our own, of course. We are not religious mystics, we do not believe that the use of force is permissible in human society, we despise non-objective art, we know that certainty is possible, we know that emotions are not tools of cognition—and those who do not recognize these truths are our mortal enemies, Satanic beings to be shunned, denigrated, denounced. It makes moral judgment so very easy, does it not? All we require in order to know that someone is worthless is to know that he holds convictions contrary to our own. And if we hold such a view, we necessarily will morally denigrate and verbally abuse those who do not agree with us. We will be indignant at our opponents’ presumption in asking that we even consider or attempt to disprove their evil ideas. Instead, to the cheers of those who agree with us, we will ringingly denounce their dishonesty, their irrationality, their evasion, so that the world will recognize them for what they are. And what superior and virtuous beings we are! And how incredibly smug and self-congratulatory! We cavalierly dispense with most of the human race for not agreeing with our philosophy. Socialists are evil, theists are evil, determinists are evil, so are Democrats and so are Conservatives and so are Libertarians, so is anyone who has read Rand and is not an Objectivist, and so are many who call themselves Objectivists but who don’t think ideas can be evil. As someone once said, “That leaves you and me, my friend . . . and I’m not so sure about you!” I have seen lifelong friendships end, families bitterly divided, savagely cruel things being said that cannot be forgotten or remedied because of such an easy ascribing of evil. Yes, momentous issues sometimes are at stake, but that does not automatically turn one’s intellectual opponents into moral monsters. So let’s examine a bit further the belief that ideas can be evil and a proof of evil. I think we all will agree that Muslim fundamentalism is a dangerous and deadly threat to our values and to our very survival, that it is the most pernicious force facing our world today. Surely we must damn as evil anyone who accepts its doctrines. Must we not? Imagine an Arab boy of twelve, born in a remote village in Saudi Arabia. He cannot read or write and he has no knowledge of the outside world. From the time he is five years old, he and the other boys are read to from the Koran by the village elders, the only role models he has. He is told that the Koran is the word of Allah. He is told that Allah demands that his servants kill all unbelievers, because their purpose in life is to destroy the Muslim world, to slaughter his parents, his sisters, his friends. The boy sees the men of his village go off to immolate themselves, cheered by the villagers, their victories and their deaths celebrated as heroic, as a valiant martyrdom to be rewarded by their acceptance in heaven. And he longs for the day when he can join these heroes. If this young boy considers himself a fundamentalist and upholds its doctrines, is he evil? If the boy were an adult who had seen something of the world, who had had an education, who had heard intelligent opinions in conflict with those he’d been taught, then yes, we could consider him evil—evil because he has so corrupted his thinking that he is willing to ignore the evidence he has heard and seen. But in so concluding, we would be taking his context into consideration, the fact that he is educated, that he has traveled, that he has learned of other ways of living and of thinking. Or consider Andrei Taganov, the Communist protagonist in We The Living. He is a man of great integrity, dedicated to the communist principles he believes are right; but when he finally understands that communism inevitably leads to inhuman conditions, he abandons his allegiance. But communism is an evil idea, is it not?—an evil idea which proves the evil character of the man who endorses it. Was Andrei evil while he endorsed communism? I suggest that in today’s world, most people who embrace communism are, indeed, intellectually corrupt, not because the idea per se is evil, but because the anti-life consequences of creating a communist state have so clearly and universally been demonstrated. Unless one lives under a rock, I see no way in which one can be unaware of this. Today, Andrei would not have been a Communist. And just as mistaken ideas are not proof of evil, so correct ideas are not proof of moral virtue. There can be many reasons why one adopts valid ideas—it might be because of peer pressure, because one believes that embracing a certain set of beliefs will raise one’s status in society, because one feels that they are true, because one believes they are the word of God, because endorsing them will lead to the advancement of one’s career, because one has been brainwashed—or because one has conscientiously examined the evidence and understood the rationale of the ideas. An idea, like an emotional reaction, is not a moral agent. Only men and woman are moral agents; only they can be good or evil. And the overwhelming majority of them are not wholly one or the other. Stalin was evil; your next-door-neighbor, who may believe he ought to be his brother’s keeper, is not. Thomas Jefferson, despite owning slaves, was basically a good and honorable man; the historical revisionists who focus malignantly only on his errors in order to “cut him down to size,” probably are not. Actions can be good or evil. Ideas cannot. To think something cannot make a person evil, just as it cannot make a person virtuous. Before we presume to pass moral judgment on a person, we need to remember that we, too, are fallible. We need to remember that knowledge often is hard-won, and that if we were immeasurably assisted in our pursuit of knowledge by the work of Ayn Rand and by many others, we ought to be grateful to them, not pompous about what we have come to understand. Nor should we denounce someone who does not understand what we learned only yesterday. Were we evil the day before yesterday? We need to grant to others, and to ourselves, the right to make mistakes, even serious mistakes, without being flayed alive for them. I do not wish to deprive you, and certainly not myself, of your inalienable right to anger—even to enraged, tempestuous, foaming-at-the-mouth anger. I am not suggesting endless civility, politeness, and the King’s English when one is driven up the wall in a discussion. You have a perfect right not to like some people and not to deal with them. I wish only to deprive you of specifically moral outrage when it is unjustly directed at your opponents. Be fiercely angry because you know the deadly consequences when certain ideas are translated into action. But recognize, recognize clearly, that it is likely that many of your opponents do not grasp those consequences—and that, if they did, they would change their convictions. In a very real way, it may be said that a great many people who hold ideas that many Objectivists judge as evil, do not really hold those ideas; that is, they do not understand the source, the full meaning, or the consequences of those ideas. Perhaps they need educating. They do not need moral damnation. As Nathaniel Branden has pointed out, we do not bring a person to virtue by informing him that he is evil. As people who hold unconventional ideas, we all know the experience of stating what we think—say, about ethics—and suddenly being treated as if we were plotting the immediate destruction of civilization. “What! You think people should pursue their own self-interest? How can you be so cruel? Why do you want the weak to starve?” We don’t like it when we are treated this way. Let’s not do it to others. I feel sometimes that I want to say to Objectivists: “Isn’t there enough pain in the world, my friends? Must we really create more? Must we leave so many bruises and scars in our wake as we move through our lives and our human relationships?” 2. Consequences as self-evident Now I want to consider a source of irrational anger and moralizing that results from quite a different sort of error. It consists of a failure to recognize the long chain of observations and reasoning required by philosophical or moral conclusions. I’ll give an illustration from my own experience. In my university days, when I first met Ayn Rand and was introduced by her to Objectivist ideas, I was quick to anger in intellectual discussions with my classmates and professors—probably in part because I was not yet totally sure of my ground. I don’t doubt that I quite often shed more heat than light. However, as time went by I learned to be calmer . . . most of the time. With one blatant exception. If the subject was the military draft, I immediately lost my composure in the face of disagreement, and anyone advocating the draft faced a torrent of outraged denunciation. I was emotionally convinced that such a person was a moral monster. Why? It seemed to me that I could see, as if it were a visual perception, the meaning of “military draft”—and what I saw was a field strewn with the butchered bodies of dead and dying young soldiers, soldiers who were scarcely more than boys, who had been sent to bleed and die for purposes that were not their own. I was certain that my opponent saw precisely what I saw, the same field, the same young bodies—and so it must be the case that either he wanted those consequences or he simply did not care. In either event, he was profoundly immoral, in the exact sense of that term: he was anti-life. But when, at last, I came to understand that not everyone “saw” what I “saw,” that my opposition to the draft was not a simple acknowledgement of a fact of reality easily available to everyone, then I was able to be relatively sane in such discussions. To understand the logical consequences in action of our ideas is not done by an act of perception. It results from a complex chain of reasoning. We don’t “see” those consequences; we understand them, and only if we have undertaken that chain of reasoning. With regard to the draft, that chain requires the understanding and acceptance of a moral code that rejects altruism and the sacrifice of some individuals to others. It requires the recognition of each human being’s right to arrive at and act on his own convictions. It requires the knowledge that we do not have the right to sacrifice others to our purposes and that we are not the owners of any lives but our own. By holding that to understand the immorality of the draft was a childishly simple matter of observing reality, I wasn’t seeing the meaning of the draft; instead, I was blurring my own understanding of why it was wrong. By vastly oversimplifying the errors involved, I was failing to understand and deal with the opposition of those who supported the draft As an aside, it was recognizing this mistake that helped me to understand, at least in one respect, Ayn Rand’s quickness to pass negative moral judgments. I believe that because of her remarkable intelligence, she often grasped the consequences of ideas, for good or for bad, with the clarity that was typical of her—as if those consequences were visual perceptions. And so she failed to recognize that the consequences so blazingly evident to her were by no means evident or understood by others. Instead, she decided they were evading what was so clear to be “seen.” Many years ago, when Nathaniel Branden was becoming acquainted with Rand and the sweep of her ideas, and was reading Atlas Shrugged in manuscript as it was being written, he wrote her a letter in which he said that although he was trying not to get angry in philosophical discussions, he had exploded at a man who was denouncing big business. In her reply to him, reproduced in The Letters of Ayn Rand, she wrote: “I was amused to hear that it is the words ‘selfish exploitation’ that blew you up. Can you tell me why? I suspect that this is the influence of my new novel. Is it because you see Hank Rearden when you hear those words? (italics mine) I know that’s the reason for my own anger at this sort of attitude.” Leonard Peikoff makes the identical error, and has attempted to justify it philosophically. He wrote: “A valuer is a man who evaluates extensively and intensively; his value-judgments are integrated into a consistent whole, which to him have the feel, the power, and the absolutism of a direct perception of reality.”(italics mine) In this connection, I cannot recommend too highly David Kelley’s The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand, in which he points out the many errors in this statement. It is true that many of our convictions may begin to seem almost self-evident to us. But we must recognize that this is not so, that we have learned the truth of them as a result of many complex and extended processes of observation and thought—which means that they are not self-evident to our opponents. Our opponents rarely disagree with us out of sheer perversity, willfully denying the evidence of their senses. We ought to treat them accordingly, to remember that we did not always know what is so clear to us today, and, very importantly, to remember the steps by which we came to know it. 3. Evasion Another major source of irrational moralizing is a belief that also vastly oversimplifies a complex issue. And that is the view that evasion—which Rand defined as “the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know”—can easily be recognized and identified. The science of psychology, despite its impressive progress in recent decades, is still a youthful one. It has existed for only a short period of time compared to the physical sciences, and is hampered because it often is impossible to apply the methodology of the physical sciences to the human mind: we cannot conduct potentially dangerous experiments on human beings. Further, there is no agreed-upon philosophical base to the science of psychology, no accepted starting point from which psychologists and psychiatrists conduct their investigations and do their theorizing. And we are immensely complex creatures psychologically, who often fail even in our best efforts to understand ourselves and our own motivation, much less to understand other people. Do we fully know, for instance, why we fall in love with a particular person? Oh, we probably can specify some reasons—perhaps we say that our lover is an honorable person, kind and strong and wise; but we forget that we have known others who were honorable, kind, strong, and wise with whom we did not fall in love. We forget that we may also have known others who, if judged solely in relation to our philosophical values, would rank higher on the ladder of values, yet we did not fall in love with them. We are less than satisfied if the psychiatrists we turn to for explanations tell is that we chose our lover because of an unresolved Oedipus complex, or because of our irrational value system—or even our rational value system—or because we were bottle-fed as babies. I believe the idea that self-esteem or its lack crucially affects our approach to life and its challenges, including the challenge of love and sex, points toward the day when we will not only better understand ourselves and others, but will be able scientifically to validate our understanding. But that day is still in the future. Thus, we must recognize that we cannot look into another human mind. We can know what we ourselves understand; we cannot know what others understand. And we certainly don’t have the right to accuse others of evasion, of the deliberate refusal to understand, until and unless we have incontrovertible evidence. We may feel bewilderment that a particular person fails to see the logic of an idea when we have explained it so clearly and carefully, and when the evidence appears to us everywhere to be seen—but our failure to understand this does not constitute knowledge that the person is evading. Often, it is difficult even for us, who have unique entry into the workings of our own minds, to say with certainty if we have or have not evaded in considering a particular issue. We might ask ourselves, about a decision we made which we later came to realize was a serious mistake: Did I think about it as carefully as I should have done? Or: If I did not, did I know that I ought to have examined it more closely? Did I allow any out-of-focus moments to blur my understanding of the alternatives? Did I have any small glimmer of awareness that there were more issues to be considered than I was thinking about and that my decision was questionable? Was there at times a fuzzy quality to my thinking that might have alerted me? Did I select only those facts to think about that supported what I wanted to do? Did I really do my best to understand? I submit that these are often difficult and sometimes impossible questions fully to answer. No one says to himself, as seems implicit in Rand’s description of evasion: “I’m not going to think about X because if I did so I would have to recognize truths that I am unwilling to recognize.” We do not knowingly evade. When evasion occurs—and of course it does occur—it is on a level that involves only minimal conscious awareness, perhaps only the discomfort of a nagging uneasiness. How much more difficult it is to see into other people’s minds. We cannot know precisely what information they possess or how their minds dealt with that information. We cannot know the degree of their intelligence or their context or their life experiences. We cannot know how or why they have arrived at ideas that we may find abhorrent and irrational. Yes, we may feel, when an opponent seems invincibly ignorant: “The world is racing toward disaster and we all face extinction because you refuse to think!”—but our emotions are not tools of cognition. Justice demands that we withhold moral censure where we do not have certainty. Life would be much simpler if the line between honesty and dishonesty, between intellectual integrity and evasion, were self-evident. But that line is not self-evident. Of course there are thoroughly dishonest people in this world. Of course there are people who deserve the strongest possible moral condemnation. Of course there are people who push away guilt feelings and continue to act destructively and irrationally. Of course there are people who act without thinking, who mouth ideas they do not take the trouble to understand, who refuse to examine their own motives and purposes. Of course there are people who would rather die than think—and often do. But the fact that someone holds ideas contrary to your own is not a reason to rush to judgment, to hurl accusations of evasion as if it were a scarlet letter rather than an ad hominem attack. Accusing someone of evasion should never be done casually, or on the assumption that disagreement is a sign of intellectual dishonesty. To do so is both unjust and presumptuous. We must recognize that most of the time, disagreement means . . . disagreement. 4. Some psychological causes of Objectivist rage Now, let’s consider some of the psychological reasons why so many Objectivists are quick to morally condemn and denounce. There is no single psychological syndrome that explains every judgmental person’s attitude or why such a person might be drawn to Objectivism, but there are some sources of moralizing that I’d like to point out, with others left for another day. It is generally recognized by psychologists that human beings often repress pain and fear and guilt and profound self-doubt, not wanting to recognize them as real, and instead of acknowledging and dealing with them, they turn them outward onto others, transmuting them into anger and condemnation. They blame everyone but themselves for their suffering, for their failures in life, for their damaged self-esteem. Most of us, if we have emotional problems, are our own worst enemies. That is, we, not others, are our primary victims, in the form of unfulfilling lives, and we are aware that it is not other people who have caused our suffering. But the sort of person I have described, who damns others for his own sense of inadequacy, leaves victims strewn in his path. He is incapable of experiencing empathy, like a psychopath for whom other people are unreal and for whom any context but his own is non-existent; he has no capacity and no desire to put himself in someone else’s place and attempt to understand the reasons for views other than his own, and he lashes out blindly with no concern for the damage he creates. Philosophy is not psychotherapy, and not even the most powerful philosophy is a cure for severe emotional problems. Objectivism doesn‘t magically elevate one to sainthood. Dependent people, cruel people, dishonest people, need more than philosophy to change them; in most cases, they need psychological treatment. And until and unless they get it, or have life experiences that awaken them to their mistakes, they will be dependent, cruel, dishonest adherents of Objectivism. If you were a nasty bully when you discovered Objectivism, the odds are that you still are a nasty bully. And you will have discovered an entire vocabulary that gives you an arsenal of weapons to use in your bullying that you did not have before—such as the concept that ideas can be evil and that the consequences of certain ideas are self-evident. Let me give you an example of what might happen if such a person considers himself an Objectivist—and even supposing that he has authentically embraced many of its principles but has not incorporated them into his psychology. A friend says something to him that he fears means that the friend secretly despises him. He does not want to acknowledge his guilty sense that he may have given his friend cause for such a reaction, and so instead he works himself into a rage and tell himself and others that it is he who rejects and despises his friend. The false friend has shown himself to be irrational, evasive, an immoral subjectivist or an equally immoral intrinsicist, intellectually bankrupt, a rationalist, a social-metaphysician, an enemy of the good for being the good, a whim-worshipper, a deliberate distorter of Objectivist principles, anti-conceptual . . . well, you all know the drill. “You don’t like me!”—becomes “You fail to meet the minimum standards of objectivity!” He insists—using concepts he has plucked from Objectivism as a set of buzzwords to feed his malice and to be brandished as a club—that he is the true defender of Objectivism and reason, and it is his friend who is the destructive and evil heretic. But how is it that such people—who, after all, are of little or no importance in themselves—acquire the power to create victims? Why are they not simply ignored—just as, once we are no longer children, we ignore the street-corner bully who once had the power to make us uneasy, because we have learned that all bullies are cowards? This leads us to another psychological phenomenon. We human beings find great value in the company of others who see the world as we see it, who share our sense of life and our intellectual commitments, and with whom we can experience the joys of comradeship and mutual affection. This is why young—and not so young—Objectivists seek out Objectivist groups, hoping not only to learn from them but also to be accepted by them, to be treasured as fellow-fighters in the same noble cause. But there are potential dangers involved in group membership, any group membership, dangers immensely magnified if one is not aware of them. I want to tell you about a fascinating—and blood-chilling—documentary I saw on television about the psychology of suicide bombers. But before I do, I hasten to assure you that it is not with the intent to compare Objectivists—even of the most misguided sort—to suicide bombers. Except in one significant respect. (I can see the headlines now: Barbara Branden likens Objectivists to suicide bombers!) In the documentary, psychologists and psychiatrists--who had interviewed unsuccessful suicide bombers in many different countries and over a period of years, and had also interviewed friends and families of those who had succeeded, in order to learn if such people had characteristics in common--presented their findings. What they found, despite what one might expect to the contrary, is that suicide bombers are not united by race, religion, class, intelligence, economics, or education. Nor do they tend to be wild-eyed, screaming fanatics; they are not psychotic, they are not paranoid; for the most part they tend to be average, commonplace, normal. However, there is one important characteristic that they share: membership in a group. They are not created in isolation and they do not function alone. They become part of a group—and then they become like that group, they take on its characteristics. It is group dynamics, the researchers contend, that creates suicide bombers. What is it that occurs within groups that can make this happen? Often its members find in the group a new family, superseding their real families in importance, and with whom they develop a powerful bond. They spend most of their time together; they become progressively cut off from the larger society, progressively more alienated from it. As a result of this deep alienation from a world they believe does not understand them, they cease to regard the rest of society as being fully human; people outside the group become things, they are de-humanized, they are evil, and thus it is not possible to feel empathy or compassion for them. It was clear to me, from what these researchers learned, that the group was now ready for the bully—the man who did not have to learn from others the art of de-humanizing one’s opponents, the man seething with hatred and resentment and the need to reduce the self-esteem of others to the level of his own. Such a man may, nevertheless, be highly intelligent, charming, able to dominate and intimidate. If the group he joins, or perhaps forms, consists of people who have embraced Objectivism, he will show himself to be well-versed in its principles, and especially well-versed in using those principles as his means of intimidation and control. The members of the group, eager, even desperate to maintain their membership in their new family, never to be thrown out into what has become an alien and threatening world, will follow his lead. They might have learned to be tolerant and kind if they were led in that direction; but they have submerged their identity into the larger social or ideological system, and will exhibit a degree of cruelty and hostility they would not be capable of if they were acting on their own. They glory in the self-importance of being a member of their group, and whatever its direction, that is what they will follow. Oscar Wilde wrote: “Most men are other people. Their thoughts are someone’s else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” Whether or not this is true of most men, it certainly is true of a great many—and particularly of those most tightly bonded to a group. Someone recently said, “I see the acts of suicide bombers at the far end of a continuum that starts with the deceptively simple ‘suicide’ of one’s individuality in the face of group identity.” And, I would add, in the face of group pressure. Let’s return for a moment to the television program. One of the researchers demonstrated a fascinating and relevant experiment. Six or seven people were asked to participate in a simple test: to look at several straight lines drawn on paper, and to say which one of them most closely matched a particular line in length. In fact, only one young male participant was, in effect, the guinea pig; unknown to him, the others had been told that each of them was to choose a specific wrong line—that is, a line that did not match the given line in length. The guinea pig at first looked startled at the selection of the others, and, shaking his head in bewilderment and uncertainty, he nevertheless gave the correct answer. But by the time he reached the second set of lines, he still gave puzzled looks at the others—but he gave the same wrong answer they had given. It was chilling to watch; the young man clearly knew that his answer was highly dubious, but he was intimidated and overwhelmed by what he experienced as the power of the group. Knowledge is power. If we do not know the potential dangers of group membership, despite its advantages, if we do not keep sacrosanct our own independent view of reality, we may not become suicide bombers, but we surely will become the Peter Keatings or worse of Objectivism. Of course, there are Objectivists who come to this philosophy in search of a new religion, a dogma they can blindly follow, a set of rules that will bring them the certainty they require, eager to lose their blemished selves, their sense of personal failure, in something larger than themselves. These are the true believers of Objectivism and they are epidemic in every intellectual movement, whether the movement be philosophical or religious, social or political—whether it upholds reason or mysticism, freedom or force, the individual or the collective. Any vital new philosophical system will attract true believers. The psychological needs that normally draw a man to faith and force may instead lead him to stumble into a philosophy of reason and seek his fulfillment there. But what he is seeking is not reason, it is not knowledge; he seeks a holy cause to which he can submit himself, he renounces intellectual independence and its attendant doubts, uncertainties, and errors—he renounces spiritual struggle and the sense of wonder—for the certitude of dogma and faith. My own understanding of maturity is that it requires the ability to live with uncertainty. Because no matter how much we know, how much we learn, we always are faced with many uncertainties—uncertainties about ourselves, about other people, about the world. No one can once and for all tie reality into one pretty parcel for us and tell us we need never doubt or wonder again. If we cannot accept this fact, and live comfortably with it, we are in very deep trouble indeed. How wonderful it is to find answers in an area where before we had only doubts and questions and uncertainties. And it can be equally wonderful to find new questions where before we thought we had certainty—and then to leap into the unknown in the search for knowledge. Surely this is a substantial part of what the richly lived life is all about. It is the people who cannot bear to live with uncertainty who are the greatest threat to Objectivism. They are the ones we must beware of. We must never let them tell us that we are culpable for what we do not know, for our doubts, for our questions, for our disagreements with aspects of Objectivism. We must wear our uncertainties as a badge of honor, for it is only through uncertainty that we will find the path to knowledge. And we must never give them the sanction of the victim by allowing their ugliness and hatreds to cause us to doubt ourselves. None of us is likely ever to forget the excitement of our first discovery of the works of Ayn Rand and of the exalted vision of the human potential that she offered us. Let us never allow anyone to turn that discovery into dogma, heresy trials, and excommunications. The real meaning of Objectivism in our lives is surely contained in The Fountainhead, in the scene with the boy on the bicycle, who found in Howard Roark “the courage to face of lifetime.” ------------------ Barbara Branden is a writer, lecturer, and author of the best-selling biography The Passion of Ayn Rand (Doubleday, 1986). An M.A. in philosophy (New York University), she was for eighteen years a close associate of Ayn Rand, the managing editor of The Objectivist Newsletter and The Objectivist, and executive vice-president of the Nathaniel Branden Institute in New York, where she wrote and lectured on the philosophy of Objectivism. Objectivism and Rage Copyright, The Atlas Society and The Objectivist Center. All rights reserved. 1001 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 425 Washington, DC 20036 Phone: 202-Ayn-Rand (202-296-7263) Fax: 202-296-0771 www.objectivistcenter.org toc@objectivistcenter.org

This is a letter I recently wrote to a friend with whom I was discussing the legality relevant to the abandoned child issue: "I've been thinking about it a great deal and I've finally come to some conclusions about what the problem is with the people who seem to be against any legal penalty for someone who does not help the child -- help either by feeding it, or by immediately alerting the authorities to the child's plight. "When I say 'people,' I do not include nuts such as some of those on other forums who are utterly indifferent to the child's suffering. Their problem is psychological, not philosophical. I'm referring to good people. "I strongly believe there should be a legal penalty, but I realize it's not as simple an issue as it originally appeared to be. Consider a related kind of instance. Say that I have firsthand knowledge that two men of my acquaintance intend to rob a bank; I know what bank, when and how they plan to rob it, and I can prove it. In this case, if I don't report it to the police, I am an accessory before the fact by most of our current laws, (which I consider appropriate) and I am subject to legal penalties. This explains and justifies the case of the terrorist now on trial, who knew about the planned 9/11 attacks but said nothing; he is subject to the death penalty, as he should be, as an accessory before the fact of mass murder. (I think that the decent people who opposed a legal penalty in the case of the abandoned child would agree that this is just.) But what if the terrorist didn't know for certain that there were be attacks? -- or what if it was only a rumor that he had heard? -- or what if he had only a vague suspicion about what was to come? His case would become tricky, and it could be argued, especially if he had only a suspicion and no actual evidence and could not really believe that such an atrocity was possible to human beings, that he should not be prosecuted. Similarly with the bank robbery and me: if I've only heard a rumor that there was to be a robbery, surely I should not be prosecuted for failing to report it and possibly damaging innocent people. "My point is that there can be complex issues involved in many such cases where a person does not report a suspected crime to the police. "Here is another example of legal complexities, not involving an accessory issue, but which at first glance might seem to be an indifference to crime and criminals. It has often been suggested that people who have sex with children should not only receive long prison sentences, but should be castrated. But to establish this as law would be a terrible mistake -- although when one looks at many sexual predators, such as the man who for two rears continually raped a baby, it seems totally justified. But what if the offender is seventeen years old and merely had consensual sex with his fifteen-year-old girlfriend? "It is now legal in some states to keep sexual predators confined, on the grounds that they cannot be rehabilitated, even after they have served their sentences. Much as I'd like to see the man who raped the baby off the streets forever, is it just to keep him confined when the jury has sentenced him, say, to twenty years in prison, and he has served those twenty years? Doesn't he have the right to be free at the end of his sentence? Doesn't the failure to release him make a mockery of trial by jury? "To go back to the man and the starving baby. In order to impose a legal penalty on the man, it would have to be proved that he was reasonably certain the baby had been abandoned, that its parents did not intend to return to care for it, that it had not been fed and that it would die if he did nothing. In that case, I certainly would say that he's an accessory after the fact of the attempted murder of the child by its parents. And I suspect that decent people would agree. But I think that issues of legality, of what laws should be on the books, are more complex that you and I first saw them to be. "I don't think that the failure to be morally outraged by the idea of abandoning a helpless baby (which is a separate issue from the legal one) is a problem for Objectivism, but it is a problem for some Objectivists of the true believer mentality. And even with regard to legality, I can't imagine that Rand would want the man who walked away from the baby he knew would die without his help to be considered legally innocent. But, tragically, there are people calling themselves Objectivists who are so literal minded, so blind, and so twisted psychologically that they take self-interest to mean the worst and most inhumane kind of ugly selfishness." Barbara

Roger, I think you have every right to call yourself an Objectivist for precisely the reasons you gave, despite the fact that Rand (and Peikoff) would disagree. In Peikoff's case, his definition of Objectivism becomes narrower and narrower as time goes by; today he tells us that we are not Objectivists if we vote for Republicans! And Rand, as time went by, in practice if not in the specific writings you quoted, kept narrowing the perimeters of Objectivism. For example, she would certainly say that Robert Tracinski is not an Objectivist because he doesn't accept her theory of history -- a theory, she believed, which is the only interpretation of history derivable from philosophical positions she approved. So Will Thomas' statement does not provide a great deal of guidance. The problem of deciding what Rand would and would not consider to be Objectivism is trickier than even her requirement for agreement with her on more and more issues, an agreement far beyond what she originally called the basic principles of Objectivism. For instance, you wrote that you accept the ideas of objective reality, reason, rational self-interest, life as the standard of value, rights, and capitalism. But do you agree with precisely Rand's definition of each concept? If there are subtle or not subtle differences, you would be drummed out of Objectivism as not in agreement with its basic principles. In summary, the essence of the difficulty in saying what is an Objectivist by Rand's definition lies in what she believed was and was not logically derivable from the basic principles of Objectivism she had enunciated -- it lies in what, in effect, came to be smuggled into the statement of Objectivism's basic principles. if you do not agree with her concept of volition, she would say that your concept cannot be derived from principles she approved, and so is not Objectivism and you are not an Objectivist. And I have no doubt that her view of "man as a heroic being" was a view she would say is essential to a fully consistent Objectivism. And certainly she believed that her view of man-woman relationships was necessitated by more basic tenets of Objectivism as well -- that a different view could not be derived from philosophical positions she would approve. So one cannot be guided by "orthodox Objectivism" in answering the question of who qualifies as being an Objectivist -- not even orhtodoxy of the Ayn Rand variety. We can only be guided by what would be the usual historical definitions, although they are none too precise, of what makes a person an Aristotelean, a Kantian, a Hegelian, a Platonist. Barbara

Thank you all for your very kind – and interesting – comments. What a pleasure it is to have such thoughtful responses to my article! Michael, you wrote: “A philosophy of rational self-interest has generated group-think in spades.” Tragically, this is so in many instances. It is not limited to Objectivists, as I’m sure you are aware, but Objectivists are certainly not immune to it. Ironically, it is Objectivism that can provide the vaccine against this disease: confidence in one’s rational mind. Yes, Kat, social metaphysics surely is involved, but I have concluded, from my own observations of cultists, that many of them are not obvious Peter Keatings – that is, their friends may see them as independent and intellectually rather fearless. But what they share is a profound feeling of alienation and a profound and probably unadmitted self-doubt which they experience as shameful; both the alienation and the self-doubt bring them to long for the sense of belonging to a group they admire, for a sense of “family,” for the sanction from that group that they perhaps never received from their real family. Inky, I’m very glad that you recognize this phenomenon among your schoolmates. And so long as you do recognize it, you are armed against falling into it yourself. Perhaps you once might have fallen into the mistake made by the young man in the experiment I cited, but would you now? Yes, I agree that fear is involved, and the sense that self-preservation is at stake. But in fact it is self-preservation that is sacrificed by cultists. Once a person turns against what his mind tells him is the truth, how is he to preserve himself? You asked if I could give you more information about the experiment. Sorry, but all I know about it is what I saw on the program and what I reported. Some years ago, there was a similar experiment, much more appalling in its implications, by a scientist named Stanley Milgram. One site presenting this experiment is http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm. If you Google his name, you will find a number of other sites that discuss it. Lydia, you wrote: “Every semester, I tell my students to be comfortable in a state of "finding out"; that is, to be at ease not knowing all the answers and to be willing to learn.” Amen! My own definition of maturity is: the ability to live with uncertainty. No matter how much we learn, we always face areas of uncertainty; if we are not comfortable with this fact, we inevitably will gravitate toward group-think. Your students are fortunate to have you. Mikee: “It's tough when it's family.” It appears that it’s even tougher to break away when it is, so to speak, an adopted family or close friends. One has chosen such people, and it can be difficult and painful to recognize and admit that one has made a terrible mistake. Rich, you wrote: “I think the thing that got to me the most was, as you mentioned, the relatively "normal" type of person seen, rather than the insane fanatic.” That’s what got to me the most, also. One expects suicide bombers to be foaming at the mouth, and it’s startling to discover in how many ways they seem just like the rest of us. That’s precisely why I wanted to report on this. Jody: “We all see people trying to shake off what their own mind is telling them, in order to belong to the group. Many of us can probably see ourselves doing that when we reflect upon things we have done.” During my years with Ayn Rand and my membership in the “Collective,” there were certainly times when I tried to accept an idea simply because Rand said it was true and the group agreed; sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I didn’t. The problem becomes much more difficult when one is presented, by the group’s leader, with an apparently reasonable case which one cannot immediately refute, and all one has is a powerful emotional sense that something is very wrong with the case. What I finally learned was to say to myself that I could not see an alternative to the case with which I’d been presented, but that I respected my emotions sufficiently to reserve judgment, to ask myself why my emotions were protesting, to try to understand what they were telling me, and to think about the issue as long and hard as I needed to until I could come to a totally first-hand decision. Roger: “Barbara, you wrote a very interesting essay. I hope it's going to be part of a book of psychological and/or sociological insights and observations.” Clearly, Roger, you are trying to drive me crazy! I’m torn among so many book projects at present that I don’t know which one I’m going to settle on. You said: “It is those who are oblivious to cultism in their own group and maybe even in their own psyches that really worry me.” I agree – and unfortunately this obliviousness seems to be true of most cultists. But as I said earlier, to be aware of the danger is the most crucial step in avoiding it. By the way, I think it was that great philosopher Groucho Marx who said he wouldn’t join any group that would have him as a member. Kevin, I won’t comment on parts of your post, because I agree with all of it.

Andre: "This constitutes an intolerable threat to America's safety and security." I fully agree. It must not be tolerated. Not only because the madman who rules North Korea is our enemy, who would like nothing better than to bomb American cities, but because he will almost certainlnly export atomic materials to Iran -- which, ruled by another madman, could well use them against us in Iraq and Israel if not in our own cities -- and to terrorists around the globe. The historian Hannah Arendt pointed out a very important fact. She said that Western nations act in their own self interest, or at least attempt to do so (however inadequately they might define their self-interest), and that the disastrous error these nations make is to assume that dictators are similarly motivated by the interet of their countries. She said that history teaches us that this is not the case -- that while we would try to do everything posible to protect the lives of our citizens, dictators are quite willing to sacrifice millions of their citizens in their lust for power. (As only one example, we saw, when the the USSR collapsed, the nightmare conditions of the Russian people in a country where every penny and every thought went to the arms race and nothing to the suffering people.) I think she's right, and that as a result economic and other sanctions against North Korea probably would not be successful; the dictator will not not be deterred by the death by starvation of millions of his slaves. However, since power is his overriding concern, he might care if he believes that they will rise against him. So we ought to take the outside chance, before going to war and losing American lives and treasure, of imposing the toughest sanctions possible on North Korea and bullying every nations we can into joining us. Unless there are relevant facts I don't know, which there well might be, surely it would be worth trying for a limited time. But if sanctions don't work, if they don't cause the North Koreans to topple the dictator or the dictator to back down, I don't see that we'll have any choice but war. We can't go on forever as we have been doing: limiting our actions to talking and talking and then talking still more while we allow nations that hate us to develop the means to destroy us. Barbara

Andre, I agree with you that the presence of human shields should not stop Israel from bombing terrorists and protecting itself, and that it should bomb what it needs to bomb for its own defense. The use of human shields is blackmail, and for Israel to give in to it is as blatant a form of the sanction of the victim as one can imagine. However, much as I think Israel is making a tragic mistake, I think your criticisms are too harsh. What is involved is more than simply a view of morality. Israel is a tiny country, hated by most of the world, victimized by a world-wide orgy of anti-Semitism that grows more virulent by the month. If it were not for the sanction of America, there probably by now would be no Israel -- and that sanction is threatened by the growing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in this country. Remember how Israel's bombing of civilian-inhabited military targets in Lebanon aroused fury, even here, in America. There can be no doubt that as relevant as its moral philosophy -- and I suspect more relevant -- it is the danger to its very existence which would result if America removed its support that has caused Israel to yield to American pressure and to refuse to fire on the human shields. In the final analysis, however, it seems that Israel has little or nothing to lose and can only gain by aggressively pursuing its own self-interest -- especially now that the American Congress is controlled by the left. The pressure on it to commit suicide by sparing Palestinian and other enemy--controlled civilians at the expense of its own citizens and soldiers will only grow stronger, until, at last, it is indeed forced back into the sea. I can only hope that the Israeli government will see this. So far, many Israeli citizens -- and Netanyahu -- do see it. Barbara

Gentlemen, I am constantly appalled by the amount of pointless bickering that goes on -- particularly on Objectivist forums -- simply because people do not define their terms in anything like a reasonable manner. UncleJim, Shayne, George Donnelly, and Michael are at each other's throats because of a variety of illogical and/or internally inconsistent and/or vague definitions that make agreement impossible. Here are the "definitions" of Objectivism so far in this thread: Uncle Jim: "You're not an Objectivist because you accept a specific principle. You're an Objectivist by fact of the way you act. When you're actions address the requirements of your specific kind of existence; then, that means you are acting objectively; i.e., you're an Objectivist." And: "A properly functioning human-being is, by definition, functioning objectively. He is therefore an Objectivist." And: "One could be an Objectivist without knowing any Objectivist principles simply by virtue of the fact that they act like Objectivists are supposed to act." And: "Objectivism establishes who falls under its umbrella. In my view; Objectivism says that properly functioning human-beings are functioning as Objectivism observes them to be functioning. In other words: The actions of properly functioning human beings came prior to the observation of them which eventually ended in the philosophy of Objectivism as documented by Ayn Rand." And: "If I am acting objectively; then, I am acting in accordance with the principles of Objectivism." Uncle Jim, you insist that to be an Objectivist is not an issue of one's philosophical principles, but pertains only to actions. But what does it mean to act objectively? Without the guidance of principles, how am I to decide which actions "address the requirements of your specific kind of existence?" How am I to know when I am acting "as Objectivists are supposed to act?" How am I to know when I am being "a properly functioning human being?" If I vote for Hillary Clinton, am I an Objectivist? If I work for a living, rather than robbing banks, am I an Objectivist? If I abandon my children in order to help my neighbor when he's in trouble, am I an a Objectivist? If I let my emotions determine my actions, am I an Objectivist? If I commit my life to God, am I a Objectivist? If I make my my decisions according to my best understanding of what is reasonable, am I an Objectivist? If I write a book which contains material taken from other writers and I do not give them credit, am I a Objectivist? If If I'm a terrorist, am I an Objectivist? By your definitiom, I have no way to answer these questions. To even begin to answer them, I would need to call upon the principles of reason, objective reality, rational self-interest, and capitalism. Shayne: "To be an Objectivist is to substitute Ayn Rand's thinking for your own." And: "Objectivism is what Ayn Rand said it is and nothing else." These two statements contradict each other, and therefore both cannot be true. Ayn Rand said that the essence of Objectivism is the supremacy of reason; religion requires the abdication of reason. George Donnelly: "O-ism is a philosophy, regardless of what you or I say about it." Yes, but which pholosophy is it? Your statement is of no assistance in determining whether one is or is not an Objectivist. Michael: "I use the term 'Objectivist' in the same way someone calls himself an 'Existentialist' or 'Kantian' or 'Marxist,' which means a person interested in, and highly influenced by, the ideas found in the bodies of thought designated by those words. Built into this concept is that fact that individuals exist and they are different from one another, thus there will be some differences of ideas between the author and the person interested/influenced." Michael, you are on rhe right track, but you have not defined or explained Objectivism. I don't think you mean that to be an Objectivist is necessarily to be influenced by all the ideas found in Rand's writimgs; presumably you are referring to the essential ideas. But what are they? When one attempts to argue on the basis of such definitions and concepts, it's no wonder there is blood on the floor. At the risk of being condemned as a heretic -- and at the risk of being told I sound like a broken record -- I suggest that in order to define Objectivism, as a starting point we go to the writings of Ayn Rand. Presumably she has a right to contribute to the debate about what is Objectivism. Rand: (from "Introducimg Objectivism," The Objectivist Newsletter, August, 1962) "My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that: "1. Reality exists as a objective absolute -- facts are facts, independent of man's feelings, whims, hopes or fears. "2. Reason... is man's only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival. "3. Man -- every man -- is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the the highest moral purpose of his life. "4. The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders.... It is a system where no man may obtain any value from others by resorting to physical force and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others...."

...the biggest stumbling block for me regarding Objectivism is the antipathy to altruism (or maybe 'altruism'). I live my life by a strict accordance to how people treat me. If they consider me, I consider them. If they think only of themselves and what benefits themselves, I don't consider them fully human. If they have no urge, hidden, vestigial, dormant or within reach, to empathize with others, to care about other people, and to occasionally put their own short term advantage aside while considering its implications for others, I withdraw from congress with them. I don't want to live in a community that is ruled by selfishness... To illustrate my point, during the hideous crash and sinking of Flight 90 in the Potomac on January 13, 1982, several people leapt into the freezing water to try to rescue the doomed. I wept, not for the dead and injured, but for the altruistic efforts of those rescuers. I regard that impulse, from whatever depth of humanity, to be part of human glory. What other animal would do that? It certainly wan't Kant who pushed them into the water at the risk of their own death. William, if I understand you -- and I think I do -- I agree with the intent of your post. The lack of empathy, the inability to identify with and to vicariously experience the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another person, the inability to care about other people, is a disease. In the psychological literature, as I'm sure I don't have to tell you, it is considered a prime symptom of a personality disorder. But feelings of empathy are perfectly consistent with the Randian concept of selfishness, although not with its usual definition. Rand spoke of rational self-interest as being synonymous with her concept of selfishness, and it is the term I prefer to use. To understand, care for, and to help others can certainly be to one's self-interest. And in your post you named the reasons why it can be. You wrote: "I live my life by a strict accordance to how people treat me. If they consider me, I consider them. If they think only of themselves and what benefits themselves, I don't consider them fully human." In other words, if you see a value in them -- in this case, the value being that they treat you with consideration -- you will treat them with consideration. If you see no value in them, you won't deal with them or be of assistance to them. What sort of person would you be if, seeing values in them, you treated them without consideration? As Rand said, "A value is that which one acts to gain and keep."(italics mine) Further, rational self-interest often requires putting our own short term advantage aside while considering its implications for others. If a friend is ill, you presumably would not take as a primary that you intended staying home and reading a book rather than taking your friend to the hospital. Again, the issue is one of personal, selfish values: you value your friend's health more than than you value reading that book that day. And similarly with the example you gave of people leaping into freezing water to save those who were drowning. Altruism would consist of doing so even if you knew that the people drowning were terrørists headed for New York. But if you are a good swimmer, you could very well weigh some risk to yourself against the horror pf certain death for others. Human life is a value, and short of knowing that the people drowning were killers or the equivalent, you would be right to consider the preservation of innocent lives to be a value. Rational self-interest is not solopsism, it is not indifference to human suffering, it is not the absence of fellow-feeling. It consists of the pursuit of values -- and of taking action to preserve those values. Barbara

William: "As I asked, 'what other animal would do this?' (act altruisticly, jump in the water, rush to do a Heimlich, be ready to offer assistance to the birthing Korean, lay down his or her life for another on the field of battle, etc). What does it suggest about the nature of the beast?" It suggests that most of us do value other human beings, and that perhaps "beast" does not describe us. Dragonfly: "Trying to base the notion of rational self-interest (in Rand's terms the negation of altruism) on the condition of pursuing values will lead to an empty tautology, as any action can be described in terms of the pursuit of values. Suppose someone is giving away all his money and possessions to save starving children in Africa. I'm fairly sure Rand would condemn such an action and would call it altruism, not rational self-interest." Rand would ask, first of all, why the person wanted to give his money and possessions to children in Africa. If the answer were that God had ordered it, she would certainly say the act was irrational and altruistic. But if, for instance, he had had a child who had been lost in Africa, and he had valid grounds for believing that saving lives there might save his own child, she would say it was to his rational self-interest to do so. But she would probably also say that to attempt to help by pouring money into Africa is ultimately futile and self-defeating; it doesn't go to the recipients for whom it's intended, it goes to their rulers, increasing the power of those who are responsible for widespread starvation -- and that it is not to one's rational self-interest to make oneself a pauper to help dictators. That, surely, is altruism. Personally, I am dubious of the Americans who rush around the world trying to save everyone but Americans. I wonder about their motives. And I am dubious of the people who donate money only to the handicapped, and ignore the many talented young people who cannot afford to do the work they should do, the young scientists and writers, etc., whose work would benefit all of us -- including the starving African children. Barbara

Ed, I have read your statement, "The Atlas Society Policy and the Summer Seminar," very carefully and thoughtfully. I want to say that I very much admire your good will and benevolence, as I have admired them during our conversations and through observing you over the past couple of years – that I am in full agreement with you that the goals of The Atlas Society are reasonable and appropriate -- and also that I think I understand you in the matter of the invitation to Perigo as I did not until now. I believe I have grasped the difference between us in this matter, which was bewildering to me before. I think it is not the case that we have a similar estimate of the man, but that we differ on whether TAS should extend an olive branch to him and can reasonably expect that he will change his behavior. I have followed Perigo to some degree for the last few years, as you have not and had no reason to do; I have done so not because of his continuing attacks on me, but because I've been fascinated by the psychological phenomenon that is Lindsay Perigo. You apparently see a man who might be open to reason if he is brought to grasp that his irrationality is self-defeating; I see a man driven by demons, by malice and by hatreds that make him impervious to reason when his self-image is at stake. And that self-image is, above all, of Perigo the Beleaguered Rebel – the rebel against everything conventional (whether a particular convention is good or bad), whose life is dedicated to a battle with the "Kassless" Babbitts of the world and who is prepared to go down to lonely defeat if he must. In a word, he believes he is doomed to martyrdom, and in some real sense relishes that fate and is determined to bring it about because it will establish his superiority to the rest of us and his dedication to his principles. And I see a man often befuddled by alcohol, which serves to make him still more grandiose and still more irrational. As you may know, he has very often in the past excused one or another of his forum tantrums by saying he had had too much to drink; apparently he hasn't done that lately, because even his cronies were not taking it seriously any longer. Now, he defends his invective-filled tantrums as "rational passion." Nor do I think you realize the extent of his deterioration since he last spoke at TAS. I agree with you that he once was a very good speaker, who could attract a large audience. But did you hear the talk he gave (the one that was supposed to be a refutation of my "Objectivism and Rage" talk -- which I had not yet given)? I suggest you listen to it; you will see what has been happening to him. His deterioration has vastly accelerated since that disastrous speech that almost no one attended — and that constituted a humiliation for him for which he never will forgive TAS or me. This is a man who is out of control, and if he agrees to your terms you will have on your hands a pathetic, (yes, even I can see the pathos of his deterioration) severely emotionally disturbed man who can be set off into total irrationality by any perceived slight – and who perceives slights in the least disagreement with his positions on any and all subjects. You have stated the terms you demand if he is to appear at the Summer Seminar. I see two possibilities: 1) He will feel that he would be "Kassless" if he acceded to you terms, and he will back out in a fury of invective; 2) He'll say he agrees to your terms, intending to do his work through conversations with Seminar attendees and through planting questions in the question periods following his talks that will clearly "require" him to discuss the evil of TAS and "the Brandens." I believe you underestimate Perigo's deviousness, and the amount of backstage plotting he and his cohorts do. As one example, in advance of anything said publicly, he carefully orchestrated the scurrilous attack on Chris Sciabarra, which came from Perigo, Diana Hseih, and one or two others. One could tell it by the similarity in wording of many of their posts, a similarity too great to have been accidental. You can be sure that if Perigo goes to the Seminar, he will do everything possible to arrange methods for the achievement of his purposes. I realize that to anyone who is not familiar with Perigo's excesses, this may seem an exaggerated, even hysterical, attack on a flawed man who is nevertheless dedicated to the principles of Objectivism. But to those who have followed his activities and his writings, it is if anything rather mild. Ask Robert Campbell or Robert Bissell or Michael Kelly – or Robert Bidinotto – or several dozen others who characteristically tend to be slow to condemn anyone. Here are just a few quotes from his posts to his forum that will give you the flavor of Perigo's communications: 1. Discussing the Objectivist Center's change of name to The Atlas Society: "…that motley collection of cowardly weasel-worders, those evasive sponsors of smearers and Rand-diminishers, they who are embarrassed by and are an embarrassment to the word 'Objectivist,' will no longer be using it [the name 'Objectivist']… What a relief! Even more edifying is the probability that this is the last nail in their lice-ridden coffin. Mealy-mouthed appeasement doesn't rule. How could it – except at TOC, its natural home?" 2. Perigo on Nathaniel and Barbara Branden: "The Brandens' place in history is secure… as lying, conniving, gold-digging, parasitical manipulators of an innocent and epochal genius." And: "Those two wrote the manual on insincerity, informed by Iago-like malice and cunning." And about me: "The lying, smearing, low-life bitch!" Ed, Perigo's vendettas have nothing to do with ideas, everything to do with his hatred of whoever crosses him. As an example, here is what he wrote about me before he decided that I had crossed him: "Barbara Branden. One of the world's great exemplars of the art of writing. Peerless in her elegance and eloquence, invariably leaves her readers, crusty Founder included, moist-eyed and wistful for more. Will go down in history as Rand's definitive biographer. Told the truth, lovingly, fearlessly. Kept her head while all about her were losing theirs. Honoured by Founder as 'Majesty.'" I echo Michael Kelly's question to you, here on Objectivist Living, about Perigo: "What I don't get—and this is not offered in a sense of hostility, I am genuinely perplexed—what I don't get is what makes you think that this time will be any different? "As a child I learned that you judge a person by what he says and what he does. And if he keeps doing wrong, but saying each time, "This time I learned my lesson and I will be good," you soon stop believing him. How many times does it take and why does Perigo get a free pass, anyway? He's an adult, not a child...." Because of his embrace of martyrdom, because he has never learned the difference between rational egoism and vanity, Lindsay Perigo is the suicide bomber of Objectivism. I do not want to see him take The Atlas Society with him. I want to comment briefly on your attempt at a rapprochement with ARI through Yaron Brook. Whatever the accomplishments of ARI, and I do not deny that there have been notable accomplishments, there are at least two particular issues that I see as being so beyond the pale, so appalling that they should make any rapprochement unthinkable. (These criticisms are not directed at the members and students pf ARI, many of whom, when they make public statements, are merely echoing the words of their teachers, and many of whom are unsympathetic to the policies I'll name; they are directed at those who are the setters of policy and the voices of that policy.) The first is the ARI position on foreign affairs. Are you aware that their writers have said, again and again, that we ought – today – to level Teheran and to kill its many millions of inhabitants with nuclear weapons? Do you know that they have said that those atomic weapons should be aimed not only at Teheran's government buildings and military establishments, but also at mosques and schools? – a horror even Hitler did not contemplate. This attitude has caused ARI to be widely seen as a organization of vicious cranks and cultists; and has caused me to conclude that any association of TAS with such ideas could only greatly – and legitimately – damage the fine reputation TAS has earned. Secondly, do you know that the Ayn Rand archives held by ARI are open only to those who are proven devotees of ARI and that legitimate non-ARI scholars are refused entrance? Do you know about the ARI "air-brushing" of Nathaniel's work? Do you know that in some of her published writings, Ayn Rand's credit to Nathaniel for one or another concept has been removed? Do you know that Tara Smith, an ARI writer, in a chapter on Rand's concept of self-esteem, gives credit to Leonard Peikoff for developing the concept, and that Nathaniel's name is not so much as mentioned? – despite the fact that Rand had said that his work on self-esteem, as published in The Objectivist Newsletter and The Objectivist, consisted of his own identifications and was an integral part of Objectivism? I think you can imagine the disgust all of this – and I'm only scratching the surface – would cause among scholars and writers were it to become known. And that it, too, would greatly damage TAS's reputation should TAS be associated with ARI. And surely it is only a matter of time until this will be known publicly. You wrote that the open approach of TAS "assumes a community of generally well-intentioned and intellectually honest individuals." Do you think that Perigo's vendettas and ARI's appalling lack of humanity and of the rudiments of scholarship are the hallmarks of generally well-intentioned and intellectually honest individuals? Surely you and the other TAS principals have worked too hard and too long to establish TAS's reputation as an organization of civilized, reasonable people to allow yourself to be associated in the public mind with the likes of Perigo and ARI. You wrote that: "We want to build a benevolent community of Objectivists and a benevolent culture and society based on reason and rational, responsible self-interest." Ed, you will not accomplish this by allying yourself with Perigo or ARI. About both Perigo's invective and ARI's bloodthirstiness and lack of integrity, I would say -- to quote your words: "The widespread perception that Objectivists are fanatical ideologues who speak of reason but do not practice it, and who are instead irrational, screaming loonies, continues to be fueled by such public statements and actions, which do incredible harm to the spread of the philosophy." With all good wishes, Barbara

Roger: "Jerry, someone needs to write a book on the morality of a free society. I don't mean something like Rothbard's (IMO) awful book The Ethics of Liberty. I mean a book making the case for rational self-interest and individual freedom. And against altruism and 'acting for a cause larger than yourself' (i.e., collectivism). I'm not the person to write it. Someone of Robert Bidinotto's stature and ability could do it, if he wanted to. And it would (or could) be a blockbuster." Roger, someone did write such a book, and it was a blockbuster. It's called Atlas Shrugged. The question is why it has not had a greater influence. I disagree with you about ARI. I believe their influence has been predominantly pernicious, despite the fact that they have published some good material. It is not the airbrushing and dishonesty per se that are the crucial problems; rather, it is what these signify -- which is a true believer mentality, a fanatical attitude toward ideas perhaps best typified by Peikoff's hysterical interview with Bill O'Reilly about the Iraq war, and Craig Biddle's injunction that we bomb mosques and schools in Teheran. They have become known for this sort of off-the-wall "philosophizing " -- and so has Objectivism. They need to go out into the real world, and deal with real people, from politicians to Joe the Plumber, instead of the stick figures resrepresenting good and evil whom they see as populating the world. With few exceptions, those who control ARI live in an ivory tower, as much as any Jesuit; and they create a host of little Jesuits in turn. They posture as being too pure to contaminate themselves with the battles that must be be fought if our ideas are to be heard. Is the Objective Standard going to reach people as the New Individualist was doing? Is refusing basic information to reputable writers and scholars going to enhance their reputation for fair-mindedness and rationality? Is refusing to sell George Reisman's Capitalism because he offended Harry Binswanger going to win adherents to capitalism? Is damning the movie "Titanic" as communist propaganda going to get Objectivism a fair hearing? Is demanding that we nuke Teheran going to spread the ideals of Objectivsm? How can such people expect to be taken seriously? An organization that has, for all these years, flatly refused to cooperate with and win the support and best efforts of the many talented people at the Atlas Society and the thousands who would happily follow them -- because they disagree over whether Objectivism is an open or closed system-- has defined itelf as monumentally silly at best, and self-destructive at worst. It hasn't the faintest idea of how to win the hearts and minds of people repelled by dogmatism and fanaticism. Barbara

Here is an important excerpt from a review of Anne Heller’s Ayn Rand and the World She Made, and Jennifer Burns’ Goddess of the Market. The review is entitled “Who is Ayn Rand?” and is written by Charles Murray. Th excerpt I have chosen is especially interesting, thought provoking, and relevant in view of the McCloskey controversy and Robert Tracinski’s article, “Anthemgate, the Objectivist Movement Commits Suicide.” ------------------------------------------------- Who is Ayn Rand? [by Charles Murray . . . Why then has reading these biographies of a deeply flawed woman—putting it gently—made me want to go back and reread her novels yet again? The answer is that Rand was a hedgehog who got a few huge truths right, and expressed those truths in her fiction so powerfully that they continue to inspire each new generation. They have only a loose relationship with Objectivism as a philosophy (which was formally developed only after the novels were written). Are selfishness and greed cardinal virtues in Objectivism? Who cares? Does Objectivist aesthetics denigrate Bach and Mozart? Who cares? Objectivism has nothing to do with what mesmerizes people about The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. What does mesmerize us? Fans of Ayn Rand will answer differently. Part of the popularity of the books derives from the many ways their themes can be refracted. Here is what I saw in Rand's fictional world that shaped my views as an adolescent and still shapes them 50 years later. First, Rand expressed the glory of human achievement. She tapped into the delight that a human being ought to feel at watching another member of our species doing things superbly well. The scenes in The Fountainhead in which the hero, Howard Roark, realizes his visions of architectural truth are brilliant evocations of human creativity at work. But I also loved scenes like the one in Atlas Shrugged when protagonist Dagny Taggart is in the cab of the locomotive on the first run on the John Galt line, going at record speed, and glances at the engineer: He sat slumped forward a little, relaxed, one hand resting lightly on the throttle as if by chance; but his eyes were fixed on the track ahead. He had the ease of an expert, so confident that it seemed casual, but it was the ease of a tremendous concentration, the concentration on one's task that has the ruthlessness of an absolute. 
That's a heroic vision of a blue-collar worker doing his job. There are many others. Critics often accuse Rand of portraying a few geniuses as the only people worth valuing. That's not what I took away from her. I saw her celebrating people who did their work well and condemning people who settled for less, in great endeavors or small; celebrating those who took responsibility for their lives, and condemning those who did not. That sounded right to me in 1960 and still sounds right in 2010. Second, Ayn Rand portrayed a world I wanted to live in, not because I would be rich or powerful in it, but because it consisted of people I wanted to be around. As conditions deteriorate in Atlas Shrugged, the first person to quit in disgust at Hank Rearden's steel mill is Tom Colby, head of the company union: For ten years, he had heard himself denounced throughout the country, because his was a "company union" and because he had never engaged in a violent conflict with the management. This was true; no conflict had ever been necessary; Rearden paid a higher wage scale than any union scale in the country, for which he demanded—and got—the best labor force to be found anywhere.
 That's not a world of selfishness or greed. It's a world of cooperation and mutual benefit through the pursuit of self-interest, enabling satisfying lives not only for the Hank Reardens of the world but for factory workers. I still want to live there. That world came together in the chapters of Atlas Shrugged describing Galt's Gulch, the chapters I most often reread when I go back to the book. The great men and women who have gone on strike are gathered there, sometimes working at their old professions, but more often being grocers and cabbage growers and plumbers, because that's the niche in which they can make a living. In scene after scene, Rand shows what such a community would be like, and it does not consist of isolated individualists holding one another at arm's length. Individualists, yes, but ones who have fun in one another's company, care about one another, and care for one another—not out of obligation, but out of mutual respect and spontaneous affection. 
* * * 
Ayn Rand never dwelt on her Russian childhood, preferring to think of herself as wholly American. Rightly so. The huge truths she apprehended and expressed were as American as apple pie. I suppose hardcore Objectivists will consider what I'm about to say heresy, but hardcore Objectivists are not competent to judge. The novels are what make Ayn Rand important. Better than any other American novelist, she captured the magic of what life in America is supposed to be. The utopia of her novels is not a utopia of greed. It is not a utopia of Nietzschean supermen. It is a utopia of human beings living together in Jeffersonian freedom. About the Author Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of such important books as Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980, which discussed th disasters of he American welfare system; The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structrue in American Life; Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in h Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950; and the forthcoming Coming Apart at the Seams, about racism in America since Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Barbara