Barbara Branden

Dennis, take a chance! Don't let your own "cynicism, resentment and bitterness" stop you. Do you remember the line spoken by Johnnie Dawes to Kay Gonda in Ideal? "We can't give up the earth to all those others." Barbara

Dennis, I haven't had occasion to use Roger Callahan's technique myself, but I know several people who have used it and found it tremendously effective in ridding them of phobias. Barbara

Dennis, you wrote: :"It is because the borderline is re-experiencing his or her past abandonment crisis in the here and now that so much of their behavior is situationally inappropriate and seems to come at you from left field in a way that is utterly bewildering." In The Passion of Ayn Rand, describing Rand's enraged denunciation of Nathaniel during their last meeting -- a denunciation, however great his transgressions against her, that was far removed from reality -- I wrote: "She was no longer screaming, her voice was guttural, choked, and all at once her accent was startlingly heavy -- and it seemed for a moment that she no longer knew it was Nathaniel she was denouncing, she was in Russia, she was a girl again, she was damning those who had inflicted upon her a lifetime of rejection -- damning her mother who had required as the price of love that she be glamorous and social and pretty, damning her father who had never touched her hand in affection, damning her shoolmates whio had profited by her intelligence and excluded her from their lives and activities, damning all the men through all the years who had feared the power of her brain and so had been blind to the woman's body it inhabited - and damning Leo most of all, damning the man to whom she had offered her heart and her soul and who had been indfferent to them. Leo had been born again, more than fifty years later, when she had become everything she had wanted to become and achieved everything she had wanted to achieve - and once more he had done to her the unthinkabe, the unendurable, once more he had tried to destroy her life, once more she had offered him her heart and her soul and he had thrown them in her face." Barbara

Dennis, I agree with you that Armstrong is on to something important. But he has not quite named it. I don’t think women – or at least not this woman –“experience the issue of safety on a daily basis.” They do not, I believe, experience it consciously. That is, unless I am in a physically threatening situation, the issue of safety rarely enters my mind. However, I do think the issue is present in women on a subconscious level, that a woman carries with her the implicit awareness that men tend to be physically stronger than she and can become threatening to her. So I agree with you– and Armstrong -- that women value protectiveness in men. Indeed, that it Is part of what we mean by “masculinity.” But we need to e careful about what we mean by “protectiveness.” It’s not the so-called “protectiveness” of a man who treats women as fragile little dolls who need a big strong man to stand between them and a harsh reality. That, to me, would be a complete turn-off, and an insult. Rather, it’s the protectiveness of a man who communicates that if the woman should need his superior physical strength, it will be there for her. And this, indeed, can be communicated by such simple things as offering his arm when they are crossing a busy street. I must add, however, that few things are absolutes. I was once in a situation where a man I cared for was threatened by a hoodlum with a knife. Without a thought in my head, I instantly leaped between them, to protect the man I loved -- who was, it so happened, unusually physically powerful and perfectly able to protect himself. Barbara

George: "I never knew Jack very well, but during the early '70s I would sometime hang out with him and some of his USC philosophy buddies. "Jack was quite the adventurer; he once disappeared into some jungle for so long that his friends and family feared he was dead. When he finally reappeared, he explained that he had stumbled across some natives who took a liking to him, so he stayed with them for a few weeks. "This is probably an urban legend, but several people have told me that Jack was the prototype for Indiana Jones. With his PhD in philosophy and many adventures, he certaintly fits. "What is Jack doing these days?" I had lunch with Jack and Rebel, his wife, at Freedom Fest. He looks wonderful, is as energetic and as thoughtful as ever, and still is embarking on adventures-- as is his eldest son. who, if I remember correctly, had climbed Mount Everest at the age of fourteen. Years ago, Reason published a small book of recipes gathered from various libertarians. Jack's entry was for Elephant Steak. The recipe began: "First, you shoot the elephant ..." Barbara

George:"Does anyone know what became of Bob Berole and Ed Nash (of Nash Publishing, the original publisher of ATCAG, the first several books by NB, and other Objectivist/libertarian books during the 1970s)? I did a quick search on Google but no recent info turned up." Bob Berole s alive and well and living in Southern California. He has retired, and is happily playing golf. reading, traveling, and making making improvements to his house. Ed Nash is definitely alive. I believe he's in advertising in Chicago, but I'll make some inquiries and let you know what I find out. Barbara

I can understand that you find the events in We the Living, like Schindler's List, painful to encounter. But they are real events, they occurred in the world you live in, the world you need to know about and understand. What these books do is to give such events a iiving reality not found in newspaper headlines or history textbooks. You need to know what these books show you: not only that such horrors occurred, but what they did to the lives of people one comes to care about, to people like oneself. If we have any hope of banishing such atrocities from our future, it will be only by allowing them full reality in our minds and emotions. Barbara

I am shocked at Lenny’s behavior. Actually, I am shocked that McCaskey or anyone else at ARI would be the least bit surprised at Lenny's behavior. Peikoff: “I hope you still know who I am and what my intellectual status is in Objectivism.” ROFALMAO! Why would he feel the need to say that? Is he completely nuts? Dennis, here are a few more for your "Why-would-he-feel-the-need-to-say-that?" file. In “My Thirty Years With Ayn Rand,” Peikoff wrote that one faced a dilemma in judging whether or nor Rand practiced what she preached. “Ladies and gentlemen: in my judgment, Ayn Rand did live by her philosophy. Whatever her errors, she practiced what she preached, both epistemologically and morally. As a result, she did achieve in her life that which she set out to achieve; she achieved it intellectually, artistically, emotionally. But for you to judge these matters yourself and reach an objective view of Ayn Rand, you must be an unusually philosophical kind of person, because you are living in a Kantian, anti-value culture, and you are going to be offered some very opposite accounts of the facts of her life. So you have to know: what is objectivity? What sort of testimony qualifies as evidence in this context? What do YOU believe is possible to a man-or a woman? What kind of soul do YOU think it takes to write Atlas Shrugged? And what do you WANT to see in a historic figure? “I am not a Kantian. I do not believe that we can know Ayn Rand only as she appeared to somebody or other. But if I were to grant that premise for a split second, if I were to agree that we all construe reality according to our own personal preferences, then I would still draw a fundamental moral distinction between two kinds of preferences: between those of the muckrakers and those of the hero-worshippers. It is the distinction between the people who, confronted by a genius, are seized with a passion to ferret out flaws, real or imaginary, i.e., to find feet of clay so as to justify their own blighted lives-as against the people who, desperate to feel admiration, want to dismiss any flaw as trivial because nothing matters to them in such a context but the sight of the human greatness that inspires and awes them. In this kind of clash, I am sure, you recognize where I stand.” In his course on “The Art of Thinking,” Peikoff issued the moist shocking statement about the nature of learning - or at least about how he learns -- that I have ever encountered. Learning apparently consists of brain-washing oneself. “You have to go through an interim period, after you know the proof of the right ideas, where you say, 'I'm not asking those questions, I am not voicing those doubts; I am turning off that whole context even though I want to pursue it. Even though I feel it is essential to my being clear about this issue. I am resisting this feeling - I look at it as neurotic or diseased or at minimum erroneous. In any event it is a part if my thought which is built in but which I am in process of repudiating. “Now if you follow that process, ultimately you will automatize, stabilize, institutionalize the right context. And then when you return to the old questions, doubts and problems, you will undoubtedly have the experience that I did, because I went through this experience many times - had all these burning questions, but I said I am going to get Objectivism, to hell with all those questions, I just won't ask them, and it was almost like they were 'banned in Boston' and they couldn't come up. But then of course I was conscientious, I never forgot what they were, I just didn't think about them. When I finally did get Objectivism solid in my mind, I returned to those old questions you know with a certain degree if trepidation that well, now I am ready to take them on, and I found that the great majority seemed puerile to me pointless, silly, needless.” In an ARI interview, Peikoff was asked: “What do you like or dislike about being the spokesman of Objectivism?” He answered: “I like having the power to make definitive statements on philosophical issues.” When discussing the George Reisman episode, during which Binswanger and Schwartz bullied Peikoff into siding with them and denouncing George as immoral, Peikoff is widely reported to have said: “”A rejection of Peter and Harry is a rejection of me, because I support them. A rejection of me is a rejection of Objectivism.” Barbara

Dennis to Dennis: Thank you very much for the validation and the kind words! Barbara: My apologies for the slight detour, but I couldn't resist. Dennis H, I'm glad you didn't resist. Barbara

I love the fact that so much today -- especially in the world of science -- requires absolutely new thinking if it is to be understood and built upon. So many of the old stupid certainties are gone and need to be replaced. It never seemed more the case than now, in this brand new century, that "there are more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in {our} philosophy." Barbara

"The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." --- Alvin Toffler

Neil and Bill, you are quite right. The problem of pagination is very real and often very annoying. I hope Kindle will soon find a solution for it. Barbara

My favorite Woody Allen story is The Whore of Mensa. http://woodyallenitalia.tripod.com/short-uk.html Here is an excerpt: "I'm on the road a lot. You know how it is - lonely. Oh, not what you're thinking. See, Kaiser, I'm basically an intellectual. Sure, a guy can meet all the bimbos he wants. But the really brainy women - they're not so easy to find on short notice." "Keep talking." "Well, I heard of this young girl. Eighteen years old. A Yassar student. For a price, she'll come over and discuss any subject - Proust, Yeats, anthropology. Exchange of ideas. You see what I'm driving at?" "Not exactly." "I mean my wife is great, don't get me wrong. But she won't discuss Pound with me. Or Eliot. I didn't know that when I married her. See, I need a woman who's mentally stimulating, Kaiser. And I'm willing to pay for it. I don't want an involvement - I want a quick intellectual experience, then I want the girl to leave. Christ, Kaiser, I'm a happily married man." "How long has this been going on?" "Six months. Whenever I have that craving, I call Flossie. She's a madam, with a Master's in Comparative Lit. She sends me over an intellectual, see?" So he was one of those guys whose weakness was really bright women. I felt sorry for the poor sap. I figured there must be a lot of jokers in his position, who were starved for a little intellectual communication with the opposite sex and would pay through the nose for it. Barbara

Can I help it if you have weird tastes? Barbara That's the point. If the convenience of instantly having a popular text matters to you, and you don't mind reading from a screen, then Kindle obviously makes sense. I am rarely in a huge hurry to get a book, since I already have about three dozen books on the tale next to the bed. The books I do want are usually more obscure academic ones. I might buy about a dozen popular titles a year, and those I get on discount in hardcover from the Strand, or Amazon if the Strand is not, as it normally is, cheaper. Ted, it's not the case that Kindle makes available predominantly popular as opposed to more academic books. For instance, I recently purchased Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolution, Classic Philosophy, Langer's The Power of Mindful Learning, Schwartz' The Mind and the Brain, Jefferson's State of the Union Address, Dehaene's Reading in the Brain, Halpern's Thought and Knowledge, Alinsky's Rules for Radicals -- and last but never least, Tarzan the Terrible by Burroughs. Potboilers all? Barbara

Can I help it if you have weird tastes? Barbara

I resolved all my problems of buying books online by buying a Kindle. I decided I had to get a Kindle when I realized that my bulging bookcases soon would require an apartment of their own if I continued buying books, But in advance of buying a Kindle, I was concerned that i might miss the experience of holding and reading physical, three-dimensional books. In fact, I did not miss it at all. I have even bought some of my favorite books, which I already owned and which I reread every few years, for my Kindle, since I soon preferred to do my reading there. Some of the reasons for my love affair with my Kindle: E-Books are substantially cheaper than their bookstore counterparts; one rarely pays more than $9.99 for a Kindle book, often much less (although it appears that prices are rising slightly, as are all prices). A great many books are free, particularly among but not limited to the classics. For instance, , the price of the complete works of Charles Dickens or Shakespeare, or Tolstoy or Victor Hugo, the price of the Odyssey or the Iliad -- is $.00. When one orders a book, it usually appears on one's Kindle within minutes, sans the cost of postage. Type sizes are easily adjustable. Kindle has an excellent telephone help service, I've found the people there to be very helpful, patient, and knowledgeable. I take my Kindle almost everywhere. (It fits easily into a purse.) I thus avoid the frustration, while waiting, say, in a a doctor's office, of being reduced to reading a 1970's magazine article on breast feeding. And for business or personal trips, it beats lugging three or four heavy books and then deciding none of them is what I want to read. My Kindle at present has about 350 books (it will hold 35,000) so there is always something I want to read. But it not, the Kindle Store is a button or two away. Upon request, Kindle will send a free sample chapter of any book one is interested in; one does not have to buy a book despite having little or no knowledge of its content. One has a means of knowing, ahead of making a purchase, if it suits one's interests or not. If you then decide you want the book, you buy it; if not, you simply delete the sample. The Kindle enables you to bookmark pages, to make marginal notes, etc. The Kindle enables you to keep indefinitely every book you buy. After you've read a book, you simply press the Archive button and the book goes into an area separate from the books you are now reading. The books remain there permanently, and can be called up at will. Just in case your Kindle is destroyed, lost, or stolen, Amazon keeps a separate list or all the books you've bought, from which you can pull up some or all of them. When one goes to a bookstore, one tends to look at and for books in the categories in which one is accustoned to find books of interest -- perhaps philosophy, or science fiction, or astronomy. etc. But I've found that the Kindle store makes browsing in all sorts of fields so easy and attractive, that i've been reading more than ever and in fields that I hadn't explored before and now am fascinated by. My horizons have expanded Amazon reports that the Kindle is the biggest-selling product they market. It deserves to be. Barbara.

I could forgive almost any of the book's flaws except the fact that it so paralyzingly boring. Scarcely adding an idea that we have not already encountered and re-encountered in Rand's works, Peikoff manages to remove all the color, the drama, the excitement, the graceful ballet of words that makes Rand such a joy to read. His literary style is hopelessly, irritatingly pedantic; like an old-fashioned fire-and-brimstone preacher, he constantly lays down the law, telling his benighted readers what they must do, think, believe, accept if they are to achieve anything but endless misery and self-contempt. I cannot imagine that this book has won a single convert to Objectivism. Barbara

The most important thing said about the proposed mosque is that its creation would not be a religious act, it would be a political act. Barbara

Great Suggestion of the Week: Greg Gutsfeld of Fox's "Red Eye" suggested that in order to further spread the message of tolerance, understanding, and community, a gay bar be erected next door to the mosque :that is to rise near Ground Zero. Barbara

The threat of a theocracy in this country is non-existent. Whatever the homage paid to religion by many-- but by no means all -- Republicans, they are advocating policies that, however abhorrent, fall light years short of theocracy. And when they did have power, the policies Republicans advocated still fell light years short of theocracy. :Let's look at reality! The threat of Obama and his cohorts is today; it is upon us; we are hurtling toward fascism at a terrifying rate. If Castro were running on the Democratic ticket, would any of you say you'd vote for him because some demented Republicans think they can establish a theocracy n America? If you would not, but plan on voting Democratic now, then look more closely at Obama and those who advise him. Barbara

Phil, I didn't know Edith well enough to say with certainty, but my impression is that you are correct in your assessment of her. As for the others -- Jeez, Phil, where have you been until; now? Barbara

Christopher, I' agree with Phil that your statement desperately needs examples. As it stands, it is a series only of broad, complex abstractions, which you give us no reasons, nothing about our own experiences of reality, to believe are true,. You do not connect your abstractions to the realities observable by your reader. So your statement reads as a string of unsubstantiated assertions. If one happens to agree with you -- which I do in part, if I understand you -- it can only be because one has already had experiences which bear out your abstractions. Barbara

But wasn't the NBI dedicate to teaching "her [Rand's] philosophy"? Although I don't know, I think it's possible that Rand's mind may have changed as the years went by. Even after '68 there was a lecture service. Rand also served as "philosophical consultant" to "The Objectivist Forum." It's hard to imagine a movement getting traction in society without some formal organization behind it. I think it's highly unlikely that she called anyone her "intellectual heir" again. -Neil Parille Yes, NBI was dedicated to teaching Rand's philosophy. She was comfortable with that because she trusted Nathaniel completely, But after their break she no longer was willing to trust anyone to speak for her. (You will notice that NBI did not use her name as its title; even then, she was opposed to that.) After the closing of NBI, Rand did not object to their being various lecture series, so long as they were not formally a part of an official organization backed by her and to which she had given a blank check . For the same reason , she was willing to be a philosophical consultant. It's true that she came perilously close to violating her own decision about endorsing organizations and people.. And I'm happy for her that there remained enough benevolence in her to make that possible. The fact of the matter is that she always would have been content to have her ideas spread only through her novels, and to achieve as much as those ideas could achieve solely through that means. I for one, am not prepared to say that she was wrong. Barbara

Ellen wrote: "Well...whether 'genuine Ayn Rand heroes or not,' both Schwartz and Binswanger are reported to have had their disagreements with Leonard Peikoff. Indeed, the joke back at the time of the Reisman split was that Leonard was in danger of being excommunicated by Peter. Harry and Leonard had some sort of falling out, the reason for which I do not know. They haven't for a number of years been exactly 'friends.'" When I read, on the internet, Peikoff's exchanges with Reisman, Binswanger, and Schwartz, I had a very different impression of the distribution of power -- an impression that fits my prior and subsequent understanding of Peikoff. It seemed evident to me that Peikoff did not want to excommunicate Reismam , and would not have done so if Binswanger and Schwartz had not made it an issue of morality that he do so, and of loyalty to them -- which was again, so they informed Peikoff, a moral issue. Leonard, who has always had deep-seated self-doubts about his ability to judge moral issues, and had always needed someone to tell him what to think and how to act in such matters, was extremely vulnerable and was rather easily intimidated, as presumably the other two were well aware of, and he unhappily caved in. Barbara

Following the publication of Heller’s biography, has Peikoff offered any evidence that she is wrong? Because if Heller is right about Rand’s will—and I want to stress the fact that I don’t know whether she is or not--it looks as though her self-appointed “guardian” may be the one who is actively defiling Rand’s legacy and honor. Only, in his case, Ayn Rand cannot be accused of creating an impossible situation or participating in the deception---and Peikoff’s personal campaign of lies and outright fraud continues until this day. I have read Rand's will, and can confirm Anne Heller's statement that there is no reference in it to Peikoff being designated her "intellectual heir." And she had told me in 1968 that never again would she name anyone as her intellectual heir. It was the same conversation in which she said she never wanted anyone to form on organization that used her name in its title, and, in fact, wanted no formal organization to be created that was dedicated to teaching her philosophy. You will note that during her lifetime, no such organizations were created. Barbara