Rational Men Must Be Tolerant of Others

[Paul Mawdsley]

Charles,

An amusing association struck me in response to your post: you were reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time approximately when my mother was giving birth to me. You began to call yourself an Objectivist when I was learning to crawl. I'm such a youngster.

I hope you and Anna have an enjoyable evening.

Paul

[Barbara Branden]

Charles: "While my wife and daughters now understood how I felt and they responded with love, I also felt a great disappointment that behavior that was clearly unprincipled and irrational could not be discussed on the basis of rational principles with any success."

I wonder if you're reading this correctly. I wonder if it was fully clear to your wife and daughters that their behavior was "unprincipled and irrational;" from what you've said, they don't seem like the kind of people who would be indifferent to this if they understood it. And I think it's a mark in their favor -- and in yours -- that the fact that they'd hurt you was so important to them.

I had a recent disagreement with a friend to which this issue is relevant. She had done something that disturbed and hurt me, and I began discussing it only in terms of her action being mistaken. For some reason -- and I'm not certain of the reason -- I couldn''t seem to get this across to her. But when I added that I'd been hurt by what she'd done, everything changed. She assured me that she would never willingly hurt me, and said she wanted us to continue discusssing my view of her action. Clearly, she was more than ever eager to understand my position -- but the path to that eagerness had been her new knowledge that she had wounded me.

I'm sorry I haven't been able to take part in this very interesting discussion, and in others that are in progress on Objectivist Living. I've been impossibly busy lately with both personal and professional business -- plus a sick little cat who is trying to break my heart. (If only she'd whine and complain, I'd be better able to handle it!) But I hope fairly soon to be able to return to the discussions.

Barbara

[Fran]

Barbara, I hope your cat gets better soon - I hear how upsetting this is for you.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Barbara, you wrote:

*I had a recent disagreement with a friend to which this issue is relevant. She had done something that disturbed and hurt me, and I began discussing it only in terms of her action being mistaken. For some reason -- and I'm not certain of the reason -- I couldn''t seem to get this across to her. But when I added that I'd been hurt by what she'd done, everything changed. She assured me that she would never willingly hurt me, and said she wanted us to continue discusssing my view of her action. Clearly, she was more than ever eager to understand my position -- but the path to that eagerness had been her new knowledge that she had wounded me.*

I think what I have said about the differences between male and female archetypical behaviour is relevant here. When you were “discussing it only in terms of her action being mistaken,” you were using a causal framework that is archetypically male– you were constructing you argument in terms of entities in action. The causal lens she was engaged in at that moment couldn’t process it. This is one approach of causally intuitive processing. When you added how you had been “hurt by what she’d done,” you converted it to another approach to causally intuitive processing: you were constructing your argument in terms of nodes in a web of relationships. Now her causal lens could process it.

I went onto your website recently and realized you contributed to a book that presented a feminist perspective on Rand. I think that is the next book I want to read. A course I took on post modernist/feminist philosophy went a long way to opening my eyes to the archetypically female causal intuition.

Paul

(Edit: I wrote this in a hurry. I may need to expand the ideas.)

[Charles R. Anderson]

Barbara,

I agree that the situations are very likely similar. I did not mean to imply that Anna and my daughters did what they did in full understanding that it was wrong. What had bothered me was that they were only willing to really think about the implications of what they had done after they knew that they had hurt me. They had already known that I was upset, but as long as that feeling was discussed analytically in terms of how people should act, they would not focus on the issue or even recognize that it might have hurt me. Only when I said that I was hurt and abandoned a rational argument as simply ineffective, at least at that time, were they willing to focus on what the effect of their actions was on me. They then became more understanding of what had happened and they were sorry it had.

One of the many irritating events of that day was a discussion between Kirsten and me of Affirmative Action. Early in the discussion or not long before, Kirsten had said with some exasperation that I was always right in our discussions. I responded that I thought that was unlikely in fact and that I did not wish her to accept my views simply because they were mine. But when you disagree with me, just give me rational reasons for disagreeing so we can both benefit from the discussion. Kirsten replied that, no Dad, I really meant that you really are always right. Then we really got into our discussion on Affirmative Action. Kirsten coming out of the very socialist Montgomery County schools of MD and having 4 years at the U. of Texas, knew that I was wrong to oppose AA because everyone agreed that it was essential. I argued that it was in principle discriminatory on the basis of race and that was the very evil it was supposed to combat. I argued that it was clearly unconstitutional, that it brought people to doubt the validity of the achievements of those minority people who attained professional positions and honors, and that it lowered the bar of expectations for many minority members. It also often put minority members into positions in which they did not have the ability to succeed, which only fed their and others doubts about their ability to achieve. Kirsten tried some counterarguments, but I think she recognized that they were not sufficient. She then angrily called me a racist. I am sure that I am not a racist, but it sure hurt to have someone I love call me one. It also made me angry. Kirsten now understands that she was wrong to do this, but that admission came well after the event.

When I was in the 8th and 9th grade, there was a boy who lived across the street and was a year older than me. We both liked basketball, but I had mostly played baseball before that and basketball was a bit new for me. He was taller and a better player than I was. At first, he was much better. I worked really hard at the game and by the end of the 9th grade, I could really push him hard in a game, but he still always won. I remember how frustrating that could be and I am sure that Kirsten feels that kind of frustration in our discussions when she has taken a different view from mine. But, we have to learn to deal with such things.

There is a great benefit in the emotional attachments and the loyalties that people do form for the people they love and admire. People make mistakes. Sometimes they just get caught up in their own emotional battles or their own affairs and they do not think what they say through. It surely is a good check that when we have hurt someone we love that we should step back and refocus our minds on how we might have done that. Our love for our family and friends and our respect for others generally is built piece by piece over periods of time and based on many interactions. Love and respect for the people who have earned it then serves to protect us from temporary mistakes and from thoughtless acts by reminding us to look at the complete context of our relationships and our mutual respect. As with my family and with Barbara's friend, this can focus attention and it can let us see an event in its true size, which may be much less a crisis than it seemed at the time. Whenever you are upset with someone you love or respect it is important to constantly keep reminding yourself of the larger context. It does wonders for temper management, among other things. Viewed this way, loyalty is a virtue.

I am delighted that you have found this discussion Paul and I got into worth following. It helps to disspell my concern that I have been indulging myself greatly. I admit to a hunger to have wise and thinking people to talk to about relationships and the nature of people in a sufficiently trusting atmosphere that we can talk about things that we find important in our own lives. In the world at large, people seem to hold the things most important to them very close to the vest. There is a great fear of sharing these things. Perhaps some of it is because of the discrepancy in what is often important to people and what their ethics says should be important. But, I think much of it is simply that people feel too vulnerable to disapproval. There really is not enough good will around. One of the biggest functions that churches seem to provide is a supposed group of people of good will. It does not entirely work this way, but they are a step in that direction and people want and need this.

Because Objectivists stand a bit apart from most people philosophically, they find it even harder to talk about the things that matter the most to themselves personally. Sure, Affirmative Action, tax cuts, limited government, and the many other things we can easily discuss among ourselves are important, but our family and our friends are important also. Perhaps it is also important to talk about our desire to supplement our work with hobbies or thoughts of writing a novel. We ought to be able to talk with other Objectivists about this in a context of good will, rather than one in which people seek to score points with constant criticism. There is a need for communities of Objectivists who share some loyalty born of respect and affection grown over time in their interactions. We seem to have a great start here at OL in that direction.

I also hope your cat soon feels better.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Charles,

You have a different take on Atlantis to most. I agree with your vision. No doubt self-esteem is central to one’s capacity for authenticity and vulnerability. Being an Objectivist does not guaranty healthy self-esteem. Allowing oneself to be authentic and vulnerable is a deep act of self-respect and it requires considerable self-confidence. Unfortunately, I think many choose Objectivism as a shield to cover their lack of self-respect and as a weapon in place of their self-confidence. Objectivism says you are important and gives you tools to attack those who would say otherwise. If you have poor self-esteem, you wear your objectivist armour to ward off the conviction of your low self-value and to attack those who threaten to expose the guarded truth. If you have healthy self-esteem, you don’t need the armour. Objectivism is then a tool for living, loving, growing, thriving. Healthy self-esteem opens up the door to let someone else’s perspective in, as well as letting your own deeply authentic perspective out.

Paul

[Ciro]

Because Barbara fights with boys all the time, it is strange to read her writing about a female friend. For unknown reasons, I have always thought that Barbara didn't have any close female friends, but just close male friends.

CD

[Charles R. Anderson]

Ciro,

Barbara has a rarely analytical mind, which makes her an unusual delight for men with analytical minds who hunger for conversation with women in analytical terms. This may give Barbara more male friends than most women have, but I don't know that it would imply that she has fewer female friends. Well, except maybe for some who might be jealous.

[Charles R. Anderson]

Paul,

It is very reassuring for my estimation of humanity, especially of the younger generations, that a man of your tender years can be so wise! Your last comment is entirely perceptive.

I am about to get back into your longer and earlier comments, but the writing will take a while, so I am rushing this comment to press.

[Charles R. Anderson]

Paul,

You wrote that:

Can we ever fully adopt someone else’s perspective? No. Is it desirable to do so? No. We want to develop a strong personal perspective distinct from anything we are able to experience through someone else. The essence of empathy is the ability to, automatically or willfully, attempt to recreate some portion of another’s perspective– another’s orientation to an event or issue, more so than their specific perspective. Our ability to recreate another’s perspective by aligning our psyche to a parallel orientation of consciousness and/or a parallel interpretive framework and/or a parallel motivational bias is a powerful and adaptive learning tool.

I agree that we cannot and should not fully adopt someone else's perspective. We can in varying degrees try to figure out someone else's emotional or intellectual state. Of course, I can best do this when dealing with someone whose sense of life, values, and thought patterns are more like mine than not.

There are emotions that I can empathize with readily. So readily in fact, that sad dramas in which the loved one dies at a young age leave me a wreck for 24 hours. I ration my watching such movies, because I have too much to do to be such a wreck. A Russian scientist once told me that I was a shallow person because I did not watch enough movie dramas. A man has to be sad to understand life, he said. But this man could watch such a sad movie and the feeliing left him as the credits rolled across the screen. For many years, I thought that I should go to the Vietnam Memorial, which is nearby. I did not go, because again, I did not want to go through that emotional wringer. Finally, I went to it with my family and I got through it better because they were with me. But, I was staggered by it. I had no problem thinking about how I would feel if my brother, my friend, or my child was on that list. Many were drafted like me and some volunteered. We shared a purpose and that purpose was given up by our country after they took so much from us. They took my liberty for 2 years, but their lives, and they did not allow us to achieve our purpose. There were many ways I felt this, but I know that there were many who saw much worse than I did in Vietnam who must have felt even more overwhelming emotions.

On the other hand, I cannot empathize with the man who leaves the wife he has loved simply because she had an affair. He loved her before it and he loved her during it until he found out and then he hates her. That would be an emotional state I could never manage to imagine, especially if she told me that she still loved me. How do men do such things? I do not see how you so simply turn off a love of longstanding. I cannot understand this. Or reverse the roles and I still do not understand this. Jealousy of this scale is more than I am able to comprehend. Or, as much as I love making love with a woman, I cannot share the feeling of revulsion that some feel for men who love making love to another man. My empathy here is that it is a wonderful thing that a man should have someone to love and enjoy sex with. Life without love and sex is tragic.

On the emotional level, my empathy is bounded by the emotions I know and my ability to imagine myself in someone else's place. This is a limitation, but within those bounds I have the ability to plunge myself deep into the feelings I would have in someone else's shoes. I may have somewhat more abilities in emotional empathy than I am inclined to fully realize. I came from a large family and my brother and sisters are all very different, yet we always found ways to get along well. They seem to think I was a great older brother, so my social skills are at least pretty fair, I think. I may have picked up some skills at such an early age that I am less aware of them than I might be had I had to struggle with them as a teenager. I always found it easy to resist seeing others from the perspective of a clique in school. That so many others did this always struck me as strange. I liked most people and treated them with respect and they largely responded in kind.

Intellectually, there are cases where I can manager to put myself to a degree in someone else's shoes also. But, it is often difficult being as unperceptive as some people are. There are facts that seem so obvious to me that I have a hard time understanding how other people can ignore them when they are pointed out to them or in some cases, how could you live 30 years and not see this? Again, my ability for intellectual perspective has some decided bounds. Sometimes I can figure some things out, such as religion, by remember how I thought about it when I was 12 or 16. This is still only a partial empathy when trying to figure out how someone is thinking when they are 40 or 50 years old.

I definitely have the impression that you have a greater ability in general to take on the perspective of others. You are no doubt less often as puzzled as I can be about how others act. In some ways, I have compensated for this by reading history extensively. At least in this way, I know that people have existed in large numbers who have various perspectives which I could not otherwise imagine.

Healthy is not comparative. It is actualizing potential. It is integrating the different parts of the self into a unity. It’s integrating who and what you are into how you live.

Very true.

I will soon read the Social Metaphysics tread under Chewing Ideas to try to find Ellen's comments on reading Atlas Shrugged. She is a fascinating woman with an analytical mind and a database of knowledge sufficiently complementary to mine, that I could listen to her in many a conversation for many hours. That would be a rare treat.

Sounds as though it would also be a treat if you were to get Shauna interested in joining in here. She is someone I would enjoy getting to know. Of course, with two children, she is no doubt very busy. No, wait, she is not any busier than you are because you help her, right?

Well, Paul, as usual this note was very interesting and I have enjoyed myself in responding to it. The 2nd of your longer notes, I will have to get to tomorrow night. It is 3 AM and I have to get back into the lab for a bit and prepare a deposited film sample for further analysis.

[Ellen Stuttle]

You guys are making it very hard for me to stay out of the discussion. You keep saying these things that I want to comment about (many more things than I possibly can comment about).

Charles describes me as having a good analytical mind. Without meaning to deny that, yes, I think I am rather skilled at analytical thought, the impression of me which comes across in list exchanges is misleading. It's partly an artifact of the medium, and of my difficulties with that medium. Looking at a computer screen tends rapidly to "freeze" my picture-thinking ability, which is a strong ability. Fact is, the way I talk -- conversing in person -- is much more like the way Jenna writes than it is like the way I write.

Even now, just in the time it's taken to type the above two paragraphs, I'm feeling the "freeze" setting in -- I'm losing all the thoughts which were bubbling as half-verbal/half-pictorial form when I sat down to type.

One image, though, if I can try to capture something of this... I've periodically been "thinking of" it (seeing it) the last week or two because of Paul's talk of alternate styles of "lensing" and of viewing people (in one style) as "nodes" in a network of relationships...

Some years ago, when on a bus headed toward downtown Hartford (I remember where I was: going down Woodland and then turning onto Asylum around the perimeter of the St. Frances Hospital property; often visual/kinesthetic images of the context in which it happened will stay with me with one of these visualization things), I had a vision/visualization of "the web of human influences."

(I describe this as a "vision/visualization" because it was halfway between, not quite a true "vision." A true "vision," as I use that term, is just there; it is what it is and is seen -- in "vision space" -- as one would see the perceptual surround one is in. It isn't alterable by playing with it; it's presented, not formed by one's actions. A "visualization," however -- again, as I use the term -- is subject to intent, to playing around with, to deliberate manipulating. Sometimes I have experiences which are a bit of each: the basic image is just presented, but then I can play around with the image and alter it.)

I saw the image of humans as if each human were a particle density -- rather like a particle concentration in a wave packet of "wavicles" -- on an extended plane, a plane going out, out, out beyond the boundaries of sight. The plane was the moving NOW -- the always-progressing, never-stopped current "time." Each human trailed and arose from, as from a sort of central personal "theme," a long, extended slim filament like a central "root," or maybe more like a slim axon of a neuron. Feeding into the node of each person on the NOW plane was a vast network (sort of "dendrite"-like) of prior influences converging from previous interactions with others as previous loci of the moving plane. And the persons were connected on that moving plane by current interaction tendrils. Plus extending forward from each -- into future, not-yet-realized possibility -- were thinner projective filaments of anticipatory thought and intent.

The actual image was "of course" (those prone to visualization will understand why I say "of course") MUCH more complex than is possible to describe using words. The whole image was of a constantly growing, interweaving and re-interweaving of, as I described it above, "the web of human influences."

I.e., Paul, your talk of "nodes" connects for me.

I add, re Jung: In his first major book -- the publiction of which decisively precipitated the break-in-the-works between Jung and Freud -- titled in the English version "Symbols of Transformation," he discusses at length what he calls "two types of thinking." I suspect you'd find much of value in that discussion. Sorry, I can't type in sections. (Jung is nothing if not long-winded; excerpting just doesn't quite do the job.) The book is available as a separate volume. But volumes from the Collected Works are unfortunately expensive. You might want to try used-book stores or a university library.

Ellen

PS: There's much more I'd like to comment on. My thoughts at this time keep revolving around issues of the "sociology" of the Objectivist world. There do seem to be some important changes occurring (Linz I think is right to that extent). Plus, since I'm good friends with Chris S., I'm paying much more attention to the details of current debates than I expect I would otherwise. I feel that my thoughts have been "detoured" from the concerns I'd anticipated I would be focused on at this time (meaning, in this general period of time). But I'm reading exchanges on other topics here -- for instance, on this thread -- and I hope that later I'll be able to revert to the subjects I'd rather be thinking about.

___

[Charles R. Anderson]

Ellen,

I am delighted that you made such an effort to contribute this very interesting insight to the conversation Paul and I have been having. I have had problems figuring out what Paul meant precisely by nodes, though I had some sense of it. Your visualization is one that I fully understand and is fully consistent with how I do think. We are the product of a long development process in which our own individuality has complex components due to our history of experiences, our biochemistry/genetics, our interactions with others, and our personal decisions in response to these. We can generalize your great image of personal interactions to each of these other factors that affect us and then we can try to throw them all together. The result is beyond complex and that complexity makes us even more marvelously individual than does our simple biochemistry and genetics.

Perhaps from the way Paul and I talk, it seems as though we see things more differently than I suspect we really do. I think we both understand how complex we are and that much of that complexity is due to an incredible complexity of interactions with others. I think we both greatly value the many advantages that those interactions have given us. He may be a bit more attuned to seeing things from other people's perspective, but I have a great propensity, at least compared to most Objectivists, to see other people as important in my personal life and broadly in a civilized country and world. Paul and I agree that we cannot truly see things from someone's perspective, though he may think he can come closer than I think I can come. I think that my ability is not too much greater than to put myself in their place in a somewhat limited time and situation. Those trailing roots and the many dendrites hanging off of them for every person are too complex for my meager mind to fully comprehend for anyone else. I admit to some struggle in understanding my own roots and dendrites!

I loved your wavicles. Traditional quantum mechanics people seem to be stuck on wavelets. Wavicles sounds like a fun and playful alternative. Of course, maybe I am out of touch and Larry or something you have been thinking about in newer work deals in wavicles. Maybe the theory of wavicles explains charm.

It would be fascinating to have you be more involved in our discussions. I would love to know much more about you and how you think. While what you produce on-line may be pale compared to what you can visualize, it is rich in insights. Your efforts to push your eyesight limitations are appreciated, though I am feeling a bit guilty (but what can I do about it?) that I am playing a role in tempting you to do painful things. I feel honored every time you comment on anything I have written. Thanks.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Ellen,

I’m so glad we are making your life difficult. I take it as a compliment to Charles and myself. I just wish there were no difficulty for very selfish and considerate reasons.

It’s interesting to gain an insight into your non-E-list persona. What information I have gathered about you suggests you might have a number of similarities to my wife, Shauna. She has a very strong analytical and absolutist side but is also one of the most deeply intuitive people I know.

I don’t have a lot of time right now but I wanted to say a couple of things. Thank you for letting me know you get it. I am not sure of my ability to communicate what I see in my mind’s eye. Thanks also for the feedback re Jung.

I have a question. You said:

*My thoughts at this time keep revolving around issues of the "sociology" of the Objectivist world.

There do seem to be some important changes occurring.*

I do not have the history in the Objectivist culture to put this comment into context. What important changes do you see occurring? I feel as though I have entered things in the middle of important changes but I’m not sure how to identify the causes of this feeling.

Paul

[JennaW]

It was so interesting to read through this discussion...

Can we ever fully adopt someone else’s perspective? No. Is it desirable to do so? No. We want to develop a strong personal perspective distinct from anything we are able to experience through someone else. The essence of empathy is the ability to, automatically or willfully, attempt to recreate some portion of another’s perspective– another’s orientation to an event or issue, more so than their specific perspective.

I agree here that we can not FULLY adopt someone else's perspective. First, I think it's because people may not fully know every single last drop of their own internal states at all times, and second that it would require the empathetic person to know everything about the other person. But I do think being willing and able to see things in different perspectives--- different contexts--- is highly important. Knowing that there is usually more complexity, or background, behind something or someone, is important--- this is always the one thing that I keep relearning. For me, doing this has allowed me a measure of understanding. One thing that endangers ourselves cognitively, intellectually, emotionally, etc. and makes ideas have negative consequences in general is the refusal (conscious or not) to understand and empathize. Empathy does not mean a too-soft heart; it has developed in us as social creatures for the purposes of when we choose to work with other people.

Therefore, when I asked about differing ways of thinking, I was thinking about how in lack of perspective played out--- the non-acknolwedgement that others think in differing ways and that is what makes individuals.

As for going overboard in picking up another person's perspective to the extent that the sense of self is totally ambiguous--- I can understand that to a certain extent. I remember in UCSD that I had a lot of trouble with many ideas because it seemed like I had no idea what to think. With hindsight, I recognize that the lack of knowing to think on my own is probably a combination of multiple factors: my Chinese upbringing, in which questioning an elder was "frowned upon", not to mention being in a less-than-individualistic cultural setting; that high school was not necessarily about thinking on one's own, as many people congregated into groups; that college consisted of more or less the same in the first couple of years; that I lacked life experience with which to work with. It was only after going through some extremely hard times, two years in succession, did I emerge out of that with a seed towards a deeper, and more developed, sense of self. I'd have to say that the years 19-22 were so intense that I still feel like I lived 10 years in 3.

Thus I'd have to say, in my own experience, that direct challenges are what made me more secure in myself. At 25, looking back, I felt that if I could handle what I did, I could handle a lot of stuff. While the actual experiences were terrible, they also erased a lot of fears. I still feel the same at 28; but I still know that there is more life to be lived. My experiences, and my essential personality, in many ways, was why some of Rand's ethics resonated with me: her individualism, her egoism, her use of 'selfishness & benevolence', her pro-reason and pro-happiness. Yet I make a huge distinction with myself that Rand did not change my life, because in the end, it is *I* who has to allow change, in order to change it. There is no greater authority in my life than me, but I do give Rand lots of credit for paving that path. Finding yourself is a process, life is a process, and art and science are processes. Who I am is not something I pick up out of a book somewhere to memorize. So in a sense, the scary ability to pick up too much of one perspective--- and not being to hold to myself--- was brought under control once I really knew what it was like to almost totally lose myself.

I don't think a person has to force a system upon themselves in order to prevent themselves from losing themselves. This tactic seems to be to be just another way of losing yourself--- by replacing who you are with a system. Perhaps this is a danger, that something else can, in essence, become your identity or your personality. Here I'm thinking this might be a lack of mental/personal boundaries, a lack of depth, a lack of challenge?, naivete, but I don't know--- I'm drawing from my own experience.

And this is where groundedness in the self is a good thing, so that there is always a root to return to, yet the freedom is still there to navigate and explore. I read a couple of great things today:

"Creativity always comes from such odd juxtapositions. Inventions and discoveries are often based on unexpected combinations and strange connections… This can’t happen when ideas a proffered, already polished, on silver platters, meticulously packaged in well-researched presentations, too precious to be thrown about. The best ideas rarely come in shiny boxes. They come off the wall. Off the wall means, simply, coming from somewhere unexpected. Being open to the unexpected is what play is all about." P. 165

"Like toddlers on tethers, the theorists are free to play in such dangerous ground precisely because at the end of the day, they're still firmly attached to the long arm of experiment. If their ideas are just hot air, eventually the experimenters will bring them to the ground." p. 238

Mind over Matter, by KC Cole

[Robert Campbell]

Jenna,

You said:

I don't think a person has to force a system upon themselves in order to prevent themselves from losing themselves. This tactic seems to be to be just another way of losing yourself--- by replacing who you are with a system. Perhaps this is a danger, that something else can, in essence, become your identity or your personality. Here I'm thinking this might be a lack of mental/personal boundaries, a lack of depth, a lack of challenge?, naivete, but I don't know--- I'm drawing from my own experience.

When I was a Randroid, I was essentially trying to identify myself with a system of ideas (Objectivism). Threats to the validity or credibility of those ideas came across threats to me, personally.

I never worshipped Ayn Rand, as some do. I'd formed an impression of her personality from reading her writings and talking them over with high school friends, before any of us met up with "organized Objectivists," and some of that impression was negative (that she had a bad temper and was too caught up in asserting authority).

So it wasn't disillusionment with Rand the person that brought an end to my Randroidism. It was realizing that there was much more to the world--even to the world of ideas--than Objectivism could encompass. That, and becoming a lot more tolerant of error.

Robert Campbell

[Charles R. Anderson]

Related to Jenna's post above:

When we picked up our first Ayn Rand book, the person who read it was simply ourselves. Who evaluated every page of that book? Who checked the logic of her heroes? Who felt the emotions that it triggered? Who drew parallels between the world of The Fountainhead and our world or between that of Atlas Shrugged and our world? Of course, the answer is that it was us as we had developed to that time. Each of us had developed a complex and pretty comprehensive character. We had already learned a great deal from our parents, our siblings, our schooling, and our friends. We had already seen much of daily life and something about how people made a living. Some of us actually knew something of the history of mankind. Some of us knew something of science. Sure, we may have been too young to be experts at anything, but we carried enough knowledge, enough joy of life, and enough reasoning ability that we could respond to Ayn Rand's great work.

We should never lose sight of the fact that we acted as judges to evaluate her work and if we are to be Objectivists, we can do nothing else but trust to our own minds, our own experience, and our own humanity to continually assess everything we learned from her or that we learn anywhere else. We learn from others and by ourselves. When we learn from others, we have nothing of value unless we have evaluated it carefully for self-consistency and consistency with our experience and that reported by others.

Any claim to being an Objectivist that does not come from a confident, self-motivated, independent, self-valuing, and reality-focused mind, is a fraudulent claim.

[Roger Bissell]

Robert, I completely identify with what you said. Rand, as I (rightly or wrongly) understood her in the late 60s, was the sometimes unpleasant founder of a school of thought -- and it was the school of thought that I identified with and tried to defend and extend (and correct) that was my guiding light, not Rand herself.

I always admired and appreciated Rand for what she did, but I was also impatient with her and aggravated by some of her writings, especially (but not just) the ones on aesthetics. I never had the unqualified reverence for her that some have to this day.

Thanks for saying it so clearly.

REB

[Paul Mawdsley]

Jenna:

*Yet I make a huge distinction with myself that Rand did not change my life, because in the end, it is *I* who has to allow change, in order to change it.*

This statement contains the essence of entity-to-action causation. You are an entity. There is no doubt that the rest of existence informs your actions, effects the flow of your identity, but it is who and what you are that determines what you do. The energy for action and the form of the action come from the entity. I say this applies to the human psyche, to human physiology, to billiard balls, all the way down to fundamental particles and quantum physics. This is the reason for quirky behaviour in quantum entities, living entities, and conscious entities. There is no breakdown in causality or in human understanding as such. There has just been a breakdown in the particular causal principles we have been applying.

Paul

(I still haven't finished reading Jenna's post. As I went back to it and completed the paragraph where I found the quote above, another thought entered my mind. Is not the act of taking another's perspective, to the point of displacing one's own, much closer to action-to-action causation? This essentially eliminates the effects of personal identity in determining one's actions. It makes us more the reactive beings most materialists would suggest we are. There is no will.)

[Paul Mawdsley]

Robert, you said:

*When I was a Randroid, I was essentially trying to identify myself with a system of ideas (Objectivism). Threats to the validity or credibility of those ideas came across threats to me, personally.

I never worshipped Ayn Rand, as some do. I'd formed an impression of her personality from reading her writings and talking them over with high school friends, before any of us met up with "organized Objectivists," and some of that impression was negative (that she had a bad temper and was too caught up in asserting authority).

So it wasn't disillusionment with Rand the person that brought an end to my Randroidism. It was realizing that there was much more to the world--even to the world of ideas--than Objectivism could encompass.*

Your perspective here resonates with my own. You and I have not yet had any lengthy discussions but I think we might share some similarities in perspective. You have clearly been very involved in the objectivist culture. Your history with Objectivism, and your perspective, make me quite interested in what you have to say.

Here are some thoughts I had on reading Rand:

*When I read an authors work, to some degree I take in the perspective of that author. I consider it a type of empathic experience, looking through the lens of another's principles and values. When the author's perspective resonates with my own I tend to sink more deeply into that perspective. When I first read Rand about 20 years ago I experienced a deep resonance with my own evolving perspective and began absorbing her principles and values at a faster rate than I could properly assess their validity. I began to evaluate the world around me through the lens of Rand's Objectivism just as [one poster] has done quite proficiently.

I remember how powerful I felt exercising my rational faculty applying the principles of Objectivism. I remember how insulated and righteous I felt evaluating those around me from the values of Objectivism. I remember how vicious I could be once I declared the verdict of irrational, or anti-life, or evil. I remember how much I began to alienate those I cared about. And I remember realizing that Rand's perspective no longer resonated with my own.* (From "Paul Mawdsley on differences between Rand and Branden" in the Branden forum.)

Paul

[JennaW]

You have clearly been very involved in the objectivist culture. Your history with Objectivism, and your perspective, make me quite interested in what you have to say.

I'd like to hear more perspective too. I've been "studying" Rand's works and the surrounding situations for 4 months, and I read Atlas Shrugged (again) and Anthem over the 3 months before that, during last semester. I think what "saved" me in general from "overdoing it" was that I had a lot of stuff going on at the same time: starting to write more often, classes, moving, personal upheavals, etc. So, in a very real way, real life is what happened concurrently. It made me know the difference.

*When I read an authors work, to some degree I take in the perspective of that author. I consider it a type of empathic experience, looking through the lens of another's principles and values. When the author's perspective resonates with my own I tend to sink more deeply into that perspective. When I first read Rand about 20 years ago I experienced a deep resonance with my own evolving perspective and began absorbing her principles and values at a faster rate than I could properly assess their validity. I began to evaluate the world around me through the lens of Rand's Objectivism just as [one poster] has done quite proficiently.

I get a little bit caught up in the rhetoric and semantics. Her descriptions are very powerful. However, as someone who has written on and off for a long while on personal issues, scholastic/intellectual issues, and have been creative in school and in profession, not to mention having studied media (including text), I was also able to "step back" to see the whole thing and to see the novel as a novel. What was going on was that I had more-or-less been on the same path that she described in terms of values--- but they were unwritten, although mostly realized. Rand helped me realize my own inclinations better, and it was that excitement that drew me; at the same time, I could most definitely keep myself separate as an individual from her.

She enunciated the necessity of values, but I knew that the values I was to have must be done on my own--- not supplied by her--- and that it was I who had to figure out the difference between universal values and personal values.

I remember how powerful I felt exercising my rational faculty applying the principles of Objectivism. I remember how insulated and righteous I felt evaluating those around me from the values of Objectivism.

I felt this way for about a few weeks last year. It balanced out because I have a tendency to seek out other perspectives; I am thoroughly uncomfortable with immersing myself in one area, rigidly, for too long. 100% of the time, it saves my mind.

I remember how vicious I could be once I declared the verdict of irrational, or anti-life, or evil.

My mom was like that; she has a very strong-minded practical, common sense outlook. However it restricted her from seeing things differently, and much of the battles between her and I were at the root battles of perspective. I could see the whole and interactions in my teen years, and she could see only principles and particulars. Eventually we both balanced out--- both of us through maturity.

I would more like to know how differing people have "gotten out of" their self-described "randroid phase". What they realized that stopped that, what they learned, etc. The only experience I can draw from in terms of ideological totalitarianism is the cult experience.

However, I really doubt that everyone who is emphatic is cultic--- I'm emphatic about my values, but I see cultish behavior as a specific leaning that (tries to) overrides the reality of the nature of individuality and being human.

[Dennis Hardin]

I emerged from my Randroid phase in 1968, in the aftermath of the "Great Schism" between Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden. The break forced me to evaluate their respective arguments independently. It was an epiphany. (Many relative newcomers to Rand’s philosophy may not be aware that, prior to their break, Ayn Rand had elevated Branden to a unique status. She had officially deemed him to be in every way her equal. And she had made it lucidly clear that they were the only two human beings in the universe who deserved that status. The fact that she did not choose to strip him of that unique title prior to their official break is, to me, strong evidence that she never gave up hope of resurrecting their romance until she discovered the truth of his affair with Patrecia Wynand.)

My initial inclination, of course, was to take the side of Ayn Rand, based on her article “To Whom It May Concern,” published in The Objectivist. Then, a few weeks later, I received the essays entitled “In Answer to Ayn Rand” from Nathaniel and Barbara Branden in the mail. I analyzed both articles word for word, struggling to find evidence of their corruption. Eventually I realized there were huge gaps in Rand’s explanation of what had occurred—gaps which did not get filled in until The Passion of Ayn Rand was published almost two decades later. In 1968, I finally took the position that I did not have enough information to take either side of the dispute. The evidence seemed overwhelming that there was much to this story that we were not being told—which, of course, turned out to be true.

The “learning curve” for me was appreciating the crucial importance of never again relying on anyone else’s judgment but my own, of never accepting an authority over my brain. Because independence and rationality are so crucial to the Objectivist ethics, it could be argued that the “schism” actually transformed me into more of an Objectivist than I had been before. Thus, even though I was taking a contrary viewpoint, I strongly believed that I was acting consistent with Rand’s teachings. From that point on, I continued to consider myself an Objectivist, but I discovered more and more aspects of Ayn Rand’s thinking which I did not accept. I have never considered those disagreements to be fundamental. And I have never doubted for an instant that she is the greatest philosophical genius of our age.

As I indicated in “An Objectivist Retrospective,” I first became aware of the Rand-Branden break during a trip to the New York offices of the Nathaniel Branden Institute. When I walked out of the Empire State Building that morning, I remember having an overwhelming sense that my dreams about the future had suddenly been radically altered. Until that moment, my attraction to cultism had been strongly tied to my wish for a universe like the one I had discovered in Atlas Shrugged. I had desperately wanted to live in that universe. My emergence from Randroidism began that morning as I walked the streets of Manhattan, realizing that, alas, it was never going to happen. But that sad recognition had an upside: if the world was not going to change, then my life had to change. The only future I could truly control was my own. Confronting that harsh reality at the age of 20 was a profound contribution to my personal growth.

[Charles R. Anderson]

Since we have been known to have the occasional disagreement, it is a great pleasure to tell you that I greatly enjoyed your last post.

[JennaW]

Utopianism is an interesting phenomena. I think in everyone there is a desire for balance, freedom, happiness, and joy, but sometimes some of us get lost on the way there by imagining this wonderful ideal and then being angry that the world is not like that.

Instead of anger at the world, why not compassion and education? How could anger and other destructive tendencies ever hope to convince anyone of a free and progressive future? Maybe this happens when the image of the ideal supercedes actual reality--- when, like clothing, you put on the "ideal" costume and forget that you have it on, and thus, never take it off.

I'm not comfortable with holding up an ideal that I cannot reach. I tried that and paid for it in spades--- and those spades were both good and bad. I'm careful of what I mean to myself by saying "ideal" now. In no way would I ever elevate an ideal to God-status, or divinity, or a pedestal.

I think Rand was brilliant in her integrations of many facets of thought, and so she made a new invention. But since Objectivism is a system, it has to be seen as such, and overdwelling on particulars may cause the user to miss other balancing points of the philosophy. In that, I agree that it lays a groundwork, either to start off from, or to inspire others to do as she did, not as she said. I think of Rand's ideas as in a marketplace... she wasn't the greatest, but she's one of them.

But as it is a fact of reality that things change, and any system that works within reality's boundaries must adapt. I'd like to study deeper into this aspect, to find out what allows for balance, adaptiveness, wisdom, insight, complexity, and change.

[Dennis Hardin]

Charles,

Many thanks for your kind remarks. If nothing else, perhaps we are demonstrating that Objectivists can have strong disagreements without engaging in mutual condemnation, insults or obscene tirades. When an honest intellectual exchange contributes to clarity and understanding, it is win-win. Only good things can come from that.

Dennis

[Charles R. Anderson]

When an honest intellectual exchange contributes to clarity and understanding, it is win-win.

Hear, Hear

Now, if I could only get clarity from you on your war views, I could figure out what we agree on and what we disagree on there!

I really am interested to hear more about your idea for getting the Muslims to give us their oil for free! Am I right to expect that the plan will involve no American deaths?

I must like you, to be playing with you so. Grin and bear it, my friend.