Barbara Branden

"Original innocence??"

Dragonfly, she is gorgeous!

L.W. Hall: "On the left hand/right hand thing although I have never paid attention to my emotional state when gesturing I find the idea fascinating and will start to do so." I'll be interested to learn what you find.

Angie, I'm greatly relieved. You obviously do love your cat. As, of course, she deserves. If you'd like to see a beautiful cat, rush to my web site: www.barbarabranden.com -- and see the About Barbara Section.

Ellen: "The term to which I keep reverting is "naivety," but that doesn't do justice to why she'd have been so slow to see. It's just the best term, thus far, I've found for describing her ignorance about the details of the psychology of real people." I think what was also involved -- and "naivety" is certainly relevant, because in other ways as well it was typical of Rand -- was a failure to question certain of her own convictions, specifically in the realm of psychology. One has to remember that in her dealings with people, she tended to judge their psychology by what she understood to be the meaning of their stated philosophy. If one was what she termed a mystic, one was a Witch Doctor, with all that that implied; if one was a materialist, one was an Attila. These were, to her, not merely apt metaphors, they were descriptions of real mental and psychological states. In judging Nathaniel’s apparent growing indifference to her, she faced an insuperable problem in understanding him. I'll explain in probably somewhat oversimplified terms, but I believe they are accurate. First, she had concluded, at least in significant part because he appeared to understand and accept the total of her philosophy, that he was the equal of her fiction heroes; second, she was convinced that such a man, according to her theory of sex, would have to be sexually and romantically drawn to her above all other and lesser women. In order to doubt him seriously, she had to be convinced that he was not philosophically what she had thought him to be. She was able to do this to a significant degree only after Nathaniel presented her with his paper attempting to explain that the age barrier between them was, for him, an insuperable problem to their romance. It was when she knew that he was not sexually in love with her, that she was able finally and fully to damn him.

Angie: "Obviously my cat is missing some brain cells, maybe I should lay off the nip. But he's my baby and so much fun to be around when he's wide eyed and crazy." PLEASE don't give your cat any more cat nip. If he's crashing into walls, he's not in control of himself and could do himself great damage. If he's your baby, take care of him. Barbara

Jonathan, I'm quite sure it was an original, and no, it wasn't anything like the ones you suggest. (The el Greco looks beautiful.) Barbara

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

Paul: "We can think of this motivation in terms of the self image it enables us to create but, while a value, our future self-image is not generally what motivates helping behaviour in the moment." I agree with you that empathy is a prime source of our desire to help others, but I believe self-image also is involved -- not future, but present self-image. For example, if I see a person, say, struggling with something that I can help with, I would have a very unpleasant feeling about myself if I failed to help. It isn't that helping makes me think better of myself, but that not helping would detract from my self-image. I have the concept of myself as decent and honorable, as someone who cares about others unless I have a strong reason not to do so; if I fail to act on that self-concept I am lessening it in my own eyes. Barbara

I saw a painting a number of years ago that I fell in love with, but I have never been able to find a reproduction of it or learn who the painter was. I'll describe it, in the hope that one of you may be familiar with it. I was in Granada, Spain, in a small gallery that was, as I recall, in the basement of a church. The painting was of Christ on the cross. His body was twisted, contorted in agony -- but the head and face were emerging into sunlight, and the face held as ecstatic an expression as I have ever seen. One knew that he was dying in fearful pain, but that the pain no longer had the power to touch his spirit -- because he was looking into the face of God. The room was not well lit, and I could not make out the name of the painter. Does anyone know this painting? Barbara

Phillip: "Does this mean I'm a thoroughly evil person or only two-thirds??" Only two-thirds. Barbara

Charles R. Anderson wrote: "[...] Barbara Branden's Passion of Ayn Rand [...] constantly gives me the impression that it was a work of love for Ayn Rand, not one of hate, as it is too often misrepresented." Thank you, Charles, and also Ellen, for understanding this. Barbara

Jody: "Demonstrates how the best poems, not only sing, but dance as well." Wonderful conmment, Jody. Barbara

Mike Hardy and John: Oops! Thanks for the correction. Barbara

Mikee: "The 'true believers' want a prescription method for every situation, any deviation threatens their security. They are not truely individualists. They cannot stand that thought that there might be unanswered questions." Somewhere -- I think on Solohq -- I stated my personal definition of maturity. It is the ability to live with uncertainty. We'd better be able to do so, because we've got a lot of it. Barbara

Robert: "This greatest and most dangerous enemy did not originate, as one might expect, as an outsider, an alien, or a stranger. Satan is not the distant enemy but the intimate enemy—one’s trusted colleague, close associate, brother." I discuss in PASSION that Rand was careful not to let into what I called her "safe haven" -- that is, the realm of complete acceptance, the realm of those people whom she believed were not only intellectual but also spiritual allies -- any but a handful of people. This was true throughout her life. And when she had allowed that entry and later felt betrayed -- as was the case with Nathaniel and with me -- she reacted not only with rage, but, I am convinced, with an unacknowledged terror. Such people, in her mind, had invaded the only space where she expected to be safe, and protected, and understood -- in a world where she felt unsafe, unprotected, painfully misunderstood.

After a number of years, I've just reread David Kelley's The Contested Legacy of AynRand: Truth and Toleration. It's a brilliant and fascinating work. In the Notes -- page 110 -- Kelley discusses the claim by the orthodox that non-orthodox Objectivists are enemies of the philosophy. It's a beautifully succinct statement, which applies to his own position and that of TOC, as well as to Nathaniel and me and a number of other excommunicees. (Did I just coin a word?) He writes that to many people the most puzzling aspect of the tribal attitude of the orthodox is the fact that people sharing the same philosophy should be such bitter enemies. He writes: "But in fact it is the logical extension of the attitude I have analyzed in the text, and it is a common historical pattern. The early Christian church never went after infidels and pagans with the same ferocity it exercised toward Jews, and even more toward heretics within Christianity. The Freudian psychoanalysts never attacked behaviorism, their polar opposite in the field of psychology, with the same venom they expressed toward innovators in their own movement like Carl Jung. "The reason for this pattern is that apostates, heretics, innovators do not simply challenge some of the movement's ideas. If that were all, then it would indeed be incomprehensible why orthodox adherents of a creed are much more bothered by these relatively small areas of disagreement than with the wholesale differences from their philosopohical or idealogical opponents. But innovators also challenge -- they reject -- the authority of the movement's leaders. This is an issue of method that goes far beyond the substance of any new idea or reform that the innovator puts forward. In susbstantive terms, he may have called into question only a small portion of the movement's system of belief. But he has completely rejected the method by which true believers embrace that system. Nothing could be more threatening. The apostate also threatens the true believer by his willingness to risk exclusion from the movement, putting his own ideas and his own judgment ahead of membership in the group. To those for whom membership is essential to their very sense of identity, again, nothing could be more threatening -- especially if the doctrine they profess is one that regards independence as a virtue." Barbara

I must say that I am vastly tickled by the idea, as often clearly implied or stated by the orthodox, that a biographer must never dare venture to investigate the psychology of his or her subject. Presumably, biographies should consist of the listing of events in chronological order. Fascinating!

Michael, you mentioned left or right handedness as innate. If I understand your point, my own experience leads me to think that more is involved. I write with my right hand -- and I don't recall it ever being different. But in a great many instances, I do things with my left hand, and I could easily learn to write with my left hand. If I am doing something I've never done before -- such as batting during a baseball game -- I have to try it with each hand in order to discover which hand feels most comfortable. What makes it more confusing is that as time passes I find myself doing more and more things with my left hand. So I am in the position of becoming a leftie, when I wasn't at one time. Also --and I'd be curious to know if I'm alone or not in this experience -- I find that when I'm talking, if I'm gesturing with my right hand, I tend to be relatively cut off from my emotions; it I'm gesturing with my left hand, my mind and emotions are integrated. I discovered this when a friend pointed out that as I had gotten rid of repression, I, who had been a right-hand gesturer, had become a left-hand gesturer. And I've been fascinated to observe that this integration of emotions with left-hand gesturing appears to be true of other people as well. I'm either very wierd or I'm onto something.

I. M. Hall: "... doesn't the idea of tabula rasa really mean that we are born without conceptual knowledge (based on the view that all concepts must be formed through a process of thought), not a lack of 'hard-wiring' that allows one to learn languages, for instance. Our natural ability to quickly pick up languages when we are young isn't a form of conceptual knowledge -- it's a 'first nature' ability, where the language is something we acquire 'second nature'. Conceptual knowledge is also something acquired 'second nature'." Thank you for making this point, and sparing me the need to do so. Certainly this is what Rand meant by "tabula rasa" -- that whatever we may or may not be born with, we are not born with formed concepts already in our brains. _________________

I knew I'd forgotten some top favorites. Amadeus is definitely up there; what a beautiful movie!

Atlas Forced into Early Retirement by Edward Hudgins Executive Director The Objectivist Center & The Atlas Society Governments often get their wealth-destroying, morally depraved ideas from our often misnamed institutes of "higher learning." The latest that's popping up in bulletins, newsletters, and probably soon in legislation is from a 2005 study on "The Economics of Workaholism," co-authored by Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan and Daniel Hammermesh of the University of Texas in Austin. The study starts by stating that "Economists have recently re-considered whether a range of individual behaviors are self-destructive, and possibly addictive, and have proposed that it may be Pareto- superior to tax them in order to induce people to abandon or cut back on them." "Pareto superior" is an economic term that refers to some alternative distribution of wealth or resources that makes some individuals better off and no one else worse off. In this context the term means that would-be philosopher-kings pretend to know what's good for us and what is not and are probably poised to grab our freedom or our wallets and have their way with us. Sure enough the authors go on to say, "The focus of this 'new paternalism,' associated with the burgeoning field of behavioral economics, has been on a set of activities (smoking, drinking, overeating, and gambling, in particular) ... and on public policy responses in the form of 'sin taxes' that are highly regressive." The authors go on to state, "Here we begin to explore the economic implications of a self- destructive behavior that is likely to be more prevalent among affluent people -- workaholism." How utterly brazen they are about their immoral intent! They admit that they're paternalists, that is, they treat their fellow citizens like children who need the care of, well, economists like themselves and they will manipulate tax policy to run others' lives. The authors look at individuals who delay retirement and make the awesome discovery that "individuals with more education are less likely to follow through with their expressed plans for retirement. Similarly, those with higher personal incomes" tend to delay as well. Hmmm, so the smartest, most prosperous people work more than others and this is bad why? The study goes on with page after page of pseudo- science and psychologizing about the utility functions of individuals who just don't know what's good for them and about how they create negative externalities -- read: harm -- to their families, friends and others. The authors summarize: "For some people, current work increases the desire for future work (known as 'reinforcement')" -- just like taking certain drugs today will increase your desire to take them tomorrow. Further, current work "lowers the utility from a given amount of working ('tolerance')" -- just like getting less of a jolt from certain drugs over time, meaning you need larger doses in the future. The authors conclude that "If workaholics either do not recognize these effects, or do recognize them but have ... imperfect self-control, then government intervention arguable can increase their utility as measured consistently," that is, make them better off. And, of course, workaholism "is likely to be highest among highly compensated, highly educated individuals, so that the appropriate corrective tax scheme will be highly progressive." Atlas isn't shrugging. He's being forced into early retirement. With dark humor the authors give their study -- a manifestation of all that's wrong with academia -- the subtitle, "We Should Not Have Worked on This Paper." Damned right you shouldn't have! Pause and catch your breath. Where to start dissecting this stunning arrogance? To begin with, if the government forced the most productive individuals into early retirement, there would be less wealth in the society and we'd all be poorer. Even if one accepts the authors' presumption that those individuals would be better off in a retirement home than in the office of an enterprise, how is that "Pareto superior?" The authors could argue that individuals who work too much create extra costs, for health care, for example, because of high blood pressure, stress and the like. But this is a "social" problem only if governments, that is, taxpayers foot the bill. If individuals pay there own way, there is no Pareto balancing act to worry about. Asking in this context whether a certain situation is Pareto superior proceeds from a collectivist premise and conceit. Here Austrian School economists like Ludwig von Mises have it right when they observe the methodological futility and foolishness of pretending to be able to look into the soul of others, discover what their scales of values are, judge what preferences would be better for them and try to engineer a society to change the preferences and values of millions of individuals. That's what socialism and the welfare state attempt to do and the debris of those attempts litter our country and our world. Slemrod’s and Hammermesh's rot is simply a new way of packaging the so-called “progressive” income tax system which, in fact, punishes productivity and wealth creation. An oft-stated excuse for such a redistribution scheme is that it is good for society as a whole. Poorer people will be better off and prosperous people have enough anyway and won't be hurt too much if their mansion-and-Mercedes money is trimmed back a bit. The deeper motive behind the punitive tax is often envy of the prosperous. But the reason that individuals become rich is because they make others prosperous by making more stuff. Bill Gates is a billionaire because he created billions of dollars of products that we were willing to purchase. The authors of this study take a different tack. Instead of arguing that such a tax is for the good of society or the poor, they call the most productive individuals “workaholics” and say the higher tax rate is for the good of these wretched job addicts. Thus the authors aren't seen to act as hate-driven wrecking balls; they're simply kind altruists providing a labor policy version of AA. Of course, their tool – higher tax rates on the most prosperous -- is the same old political blunt instrument used for a century to punish productivity per se. Are they suggesting that the vast majority of prosperous and productive people suffer from their made-up disease? What about people who are wealthy but who don’t overwork, retiring early as nannies Slemrod and Hammermesh would have them, or who inherent wealth or who win a lottery? The reality is that many of these so- called “workaholics” love what they do. They love the challenge of building and running an enterprise; the challenge of developing in their minds a plan and translating it into concrete reality; the challenge of realizing the best within them --their intelligence, honesty, integrity and fortitude. If Slemrod and Hammermesh want to do something to help these producers, they can remind them that they should reflect on their own virtues, which allow them to be productive, and take the deepest pride in their achievements. And they certainly can refrain from suggesting that they be punished for those virtues, which is not only economically stupid but immoral. It’s those producers who create the wealth that, in the form of voluntary contributions or, sadly, mandatory taxes, fund pretentious elites like Slemrod and Hammermesh who seek to cripple and destroy those producers. The producers pay for their own executioners. It’s rare to find an idea so consistently wrong and on so many levels -- epistemological, ethical and political. And it's stunning to find the paternalist arrogance so openly and unapologetically displayed. So many assaults on liberty begin with evil ideas from a few morally confused or corrupt professors that pass unchallenged into professional literature, conferences, classrooms and elite culture. By the time politicians are spreading such viruses it's too late to stop their spread. It is thus crucial that we expose nonsense like the "workaholism" study to the radiation treatment of our analysis, scorn and derision before it metastasizes.

I happened to come across something I posted, some time ago, to Solohq. It is relevant to the discussion here, so I've included it below: We know very little about the subconscious sources of our attractions and love -- for instance, why a certain face seems to us the most beautiful in the world even when we know that objectively it is not -- why a certain voice seems to have magical intonations -- why a particular combination of masculine and feminine qualities seems to us the ideal. . . I could go on an on. I think that when we love we feel a sense of completeness with the person we love, as if -- and it may really be so -- the person possesses qualities which add to those we possess in just the right measure. I've observed about others, and it certainly is true in my own case, that we usually tend not to be drawn to someone exactly like we are, but rather to someone who is quite unlike us in many ways. For instance -- to oversimplify -- in my introvert days I was drawn to more extroverted men; when I lived much too much in my mind, I was drawn to more earthy and practically-oriented men. I'm interested in other opinions on these matters. What do you think? Rand: "the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another." I think that where Objectivism went wrong is in the concept that what we love in someone is solely his philosophical virtues. This means that if we discover that virtue 3 & 4 really are not present, only 1, 2, and 5, we can and should reasonably stop loving the person. That, in effect, is what Rand did, or said she did, with regard to Nathaniel. She concluded that he did not possess certain qualities she thought he had, and so she decided, like turning off a tap, to stop loving him. She did not succeed, as she could not have; she merely mixed her love with hatred, and turned it into a poison that nearly destroyed her. What we love in another person is precisely that person, the total, the gestalt in effect. Not this virtue or that, this way of speaking or that, this turn of phrase or gesture, this shape or limb or that, but the complexity and richness of the whole person. We love even the idiosyncrasies that in someone else might not be loveable; we love them because they are part of that richness. This is not to say that if your lover turns out to be an axe-murderer, you would continue to love him. You would not, because you were deluded -- likely deluded yourself at least in great part -- about the entire nature of the person, about everything that made him tick. He is, in his entirety, someone other than you thought him to be,

Kat, Michael is a fortunate man, and you are a fortunate woman. A boy friend of mine once told me a story that I loved. He said that many of us once lived on Rigel, where our days were filled with happy, carefree play with our friends. But one day, God flung us out of our heaven to all different parts of the earth. And now, we spend their lives searching for our beloved playmates. I think you and Michael have found your playmate from the stars.

Ellen, you asked what one's reaction would be to "To Whom It May Concern" if one knew nothing of the people or events involved. I can give you a very telling example, which I recount in PASSION. Nathaniel and I considered suing Rand for libel because of her accusations -- although we soon rejected the idea, unwilling to subject ourselves to more years of dealing with an issue we wished only to leave behind us. "But before rejecting it, we made an appointment with George Berger, an attorney in the Louis Nizer office. He knew nothing about us, nothing about our conflict with Ayn; he knew only that we wanted his legal advice rearding a possible libel suit. Before saying more, Nathaniel handed him Ayn's 'To Whom it May Concern.' He read two or three pages, looked up and asked, 'How old is she?' We answered, puzzled by the question, that she was sixty-three; he coninued reading. After a few more moments, he shook his head sadly and said, 'Hell hath no fury. . . '"