Kevin Haggerty

Phil, Playing by Heart is a great place to start appreciating Angelina Jolie as an actor. It's a really good movie, little seen by just about everyone. As I said above, she's amazing in Alexander, making you actually believe that she's Colin Ferrell's psychotic mother. She's got a hell of a range, actually, she's just a huge celebrity and has become unfortunately associated with a character from a video game.

I can't really imagine a more practical, more functional--more supremely capitalistically effective casting choice than Angelina Jolie right now. Anyone here have the peculiar fortune to see Oliver Stone's Alexander? Lousy movie, but Jolie was amazing. As they say in Hollywood, this woman will open a movie, she will get the proverbial asses in the seats. Jodie Foster? Maybe, maybe not. Ms. Foster's excellent, don't get me wrong, but casting her at this point in her career could cut the box office take in half. She's a little older now and, to my mind, frankly a little too white bread. I think the much more difficult casting decision is gonna be What's-his-face. Right now, I think Hugo Weaving would be an amazing choice.

Good morning Sujane, You're right on track. The best writing always starts with autobiography, anyway. Don't let anyone tell you different. We can dress it up with research and fanciful anecdotes but we always come back to imagining ourselves even in the most far-flung situations and ask, "what would I do if..." Furthurmore, I have found that the more we personalize our writing, the more specific and often even peculiar we are in our choices, the better our chance of striking a universal human chord. You've got a good start with "The Driving School," you have a firm grasp of the situation. I think it may be a bit too, well, objective? People are social creatures, we like to hear about other people mainly, what they think and feel. You've created an authoritative map of the story, now you have to inhabit it. Even though you've chosen a third person perspective, you need to center the story on the people in it. For instance, you describe the office in great detail right away and only much later introduce your main character and describe her first experience of the office with this: "A half-hour later, during which Jane had a chance to sit and take in the unimpressive surroundings..." If you let Jane's first taking in of her surroundings coincide with the reader's, you not only avoid having to make bland summary comments like this but you allow us to see the office as if through Jane's eyes. That "half-hour" really struck me as I read the line. What did Jane think about during that half-hour? Was she bored out of her mind? Was the thinking about her children? What is she expecting? Does she realize that other folks in the office are laughing at her? Etc. Even in a third person narrative it's a good idea to stay as close to the human awarenesses within the story as we can to keep the reader grounded in the action. Barbara's complaint that the description is overdone seems to me more to do with its placement in such an abstract, impersonal context before we've gotten to know anyone really. The first question a reader wants to know is not "what?" but "why?" Why are we here? Why this particular umimpressive office? The answer lies in the characters. I hope that's helpful. Best of luck with your story. -Kevin

Ah, the flypaper theory...

Heya Rich, Hmph. Now that I've actually gone and listened to Linz's talk I'm just as bemused as ever by him and his vaunted convictions. It is obviously and completely lost on him how shabby the whole escapade of flying out to Orange County simply to bad-mouth a former friend like that truly is. The man has balls, I guess you could say. It's as if he's lived so much of his life now in cyberspace that he can't see the difference between refuting someone's argument and reading the mere title of that argument and constructing a totally hypothetical denunciation based on emails and forum posts from years gone by. Again, serious cojones to leave such an impulse uncontrolled. This goes far beyond framing the debate or constructing a convenient strawman to, what? Guilt by free-association? "It occurs to me that you might make such-and-such an argument, and for that I denounce you!" To coin a phrase: LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL And a couple picky, picky points while I think of them: what's this about Linz not being invited to the Seminar? You know, he says at one point some smug trash along the lines of "One wonders why I wasn't invited..." and it isn't even true! :---) IIRC, he refused to go, the big weeny! Am I wrong about that? And secondly, he compares Rand freaking out on national television to Barbara posting on SoloHQ, implying that Barbara is a hypocrite because she said the same things Rand said on the Phil Donahue Show. Again, he's lost any sense of distinction between cyberspace and the real world; the problem with Rand freaking out on national television is not that she refused to answer a rude question as Barbara did on SoloHQ, but that she freaked out on national television. -Kevin

Hey Victor, This is a sentiment shared by many of us here at OL. The whole issue of negative emotions in Objectivist circles is about as hot a topic as you can find on any Oist board. Here's a thought that keeps crossing my mind (and excuse me if I'm hijacking your thread a little bit with this): the Objectivist movement is the only non-fundamentalist religious group I've encountered that puts such a high premium on judging others and judging them harshly. It is my experience that most people, across the board, do not enjoy being judged by others. Such a combination (a community founded upon harsh judgement and the human discomfort with being judged) is a recipe for "us and them" thinking. "Us and them" really means "the judgers and the judged." And the judged tend to hate being the judged and will do their best to reverse the polarity. How in the world do you get around that? Maybe what the Objectivist movement needs most is to find a way to make "being judged" attractive to people. It sounds like a joke, but I'm quite serious. Maybe the first thing Objectivism should teach the neophyte is how to accept and integrate harsh criticism by others. That is no easy task. It requires a level of self-awareness and self-acceptance that, to my knowledge, comes only with the passing of the years and a lot of good will and good luck! But without such wisdom, being judged will sting, sometimes mightily, and people will want to sting back. Where does it end? All too often it ends in the Objectivist community looking like a snake pit. If this movement is ever to become healthy, judging must be understood as a two-way street. All too often I believe, people sign on with Objectivism just as people sign on with fundamentalist churches--to escape being judged by others by becoming perminent, self-appointed and infalible judges themselves. -Kevin

Hey there, Victor! Sorry if this feels like double posting on ya, but I gotta clarify something. I know you plan to respond at greater length when you have time, but maybe this will help focus your response. It occurs to me that I don't agree with your premise: that hatred of Objectivism is the hatred of objectivity. I believe it is possible to judge Ayn Rand harshly without hating objectivity. More to the point, I also think it's possible to hate objectivity without ever having heard of Ayn Rand. I absolutely agree that subjectivity (the whole infuriating don't know/can't know thing); the fear of reality masquerading as academic rigor; our culture-wide, people-pleasing p.c. cowardice; the abject obeisance to tradition--or just the latest intellectual fad coming out of France--are all rampant in modern academic life. I just don't see it having anything necessarily to do with Ayn Rand. -Kevin

Heya Victor, I, of course, do not presume to speak for William, but seeing as there are several of us having similar trouble with your article and seeing as you're getting farther from the issue and not closer, by my lights, I have this to say: I don't believe anyone is asking for a laundry list (I don't believe that you truly believe William is--it doesn't help the communication process to willfully misrepresent the other person's argument when you don't like it). I don't think anyone's saying that your argument, per se, is wrong or illegitimate even. What I think William was getting at, and what he very eloquently and no less logically set forth--and what I definitely believe--is that your article adds nothing new to a rant that's as old as Objectivism itself. Why simply repeat Rand's thoughts? Sooooooo many Oists are content with doing just that, I know--and if that's your goal, great! You did it! But OL is singularly concerned with personal creativity, which means making a personal contribution to the culture and the living discourse. I may be missing something, but do you truly think you're adding anything to the discourse with the article in question? Giving examples, bringing the article closer to you as a living, breathing person will make the piece stronger. I'm talking as a fellow writer here. Michael Kelly's genius (Kat's too!) in creating this board was putting the focus squarely on creativity. The focus here is not so much on being right (which, I think, is the focus of your article and the focus of a lot of Objectivists full stop) so much as being good (good in a dual sense, good morally and good aesthetically within the context of Objectivism). So, in my not particularly humble opinion, your article is "right" but it is not very "good." I'm not setting up a dichotomy, I'm not talking about right vs. good, style over substance. I'm talking about capital "A" Art. Some art is good and wrong; some other art is bad but none the less proceeds from solid premises. The art we all want is both good and right in the same moment. Objectivism is a fascinating subject to me; on the one hand there's all this emphasis on context and specificity, and on the other hand, objectivists really seem to love making broad context-free generalizations about every damn thing! I'm learning that the context, in the best such cases, is fully understood by others in the Oist community. But in a lot of cases, the context is far more nebulous. One thing's for sure: specificity and solidly implying context are hallmarks of good writing. There's a lot of real benevolence on this board, if you look for it. People here really want others to succeed, excel and thrive. I wish you and your writing only the best! -Kevin

Hey there Victor, Do you mean to suggest that paintings have objective, denotative meanings? Or that Rand believed they did? 'Cause Ayn's (and your?) assessment of the "Beautiful Woman" sounds like pure subjective Ayn talking about her own serious issues with her own looks. I can't imagine seeing such a painting and perceiving it as some miserable indictment of human aspirations toward beauty. A cold sore errupting on a big night is a pretty common occurance, owing to the stress and hormonal chaos associated with fancy parties, particularly if you're looking to "get lucky" as they used to say before STD was a household acronym. If you love human beings, you take this into account. A cold sore is not, even when rendered in art, the end of the world. The darkest I'd go with this painting would be something along the lines of a "best laid plans" kinda thing: our efforts, particularly in the short run and constrained by our vanity and expectations and the often very narrow time frames of modern living, are often thwarted. It's life. But at the same time, these "set-backs" when looked at from a loving perspective are more'n likely extremely trivial. If I were to paint such a painting, I might put the woman before a mirror and show her face expressing some level of profound disappointment upon seeing her cold sore. And yet I'd invest the woman and her magnificent dress with all the grandeur and longing and statuesque beauty I could muster, so that the over-all effect of the painting were of a magnificent woman (two women counting the reflection) who cannot help but be utterly beautiful and poised, despite a mental preocupation with the "tragedy" of imperfection. On the other hand, we painters often find ourselves falling utterly and unjudgementally in love with our subjects. I can easily see myself painting a portrait of a beautiful woman who happens to be afflicted with a cold sore during the sitting and going right ahead and painting the cold sore with as much loving attention as I give to any other detail of the radiant reality before me. I can imagine the woman looking at the finished painting and punching me in the arm for not omitting the cold sore. It would prolly take me a moment to grasp what the heck she's on about--and remembering the absurd catagorizing that we so-called civilized people do outside of artists' studios, I might laugh and tell her, "But I wanted to paint you exactly as you are, because you are absolutely and completely beautiful tonight." Hopefully, I'd keep it to that, but knowing me, I'd prolly go on for another 15 minutes at least about culture, philosophy, body image, dermatology, child rearing practices, scarification rituals, dead sea scrolls, and anything else I could think of to assure that I would not be getting lucky that night. -Kevin

Hey I just checked the little "most users online ever" thingy at the bottom of the first page and it read 133 on Thu Jun 29, 2006 2:49 pm! What the heck happened? Who are these people? Wow. Just...wow.

Is humor, by its nature, anti-heroic? Is that why Ayn didn't likey? Is that why Mr. Perigo & friends loves the funny at the expense of their enemies, but get hissy and prickly when the laughs are on them? Is that why Nick objects to certain jokes, because they don't uphold the heroism of the oppressed, don't honor and respect their struggles? Because some humor says, "You're oppressed? So fucking what? You want a medal?" or "Yeah, you're oppressed! Frickin' deal! And shut up while yer at it!" or even "You feelin' oppressed? Well, obviously not enough! Here, bend over!" Such sentiments, though caustic, are nonetheless expressive of realities and feelings anyone can recognize in themselves--feelings that are in most cases, contrary to accepted norms. Isn't the reason that any mean-spirited joke stings us is because it's true--not absolutely, nor definitively, but true, real, valid--specifically, in a way which we're trying to deny? At times, all of us take our suffering into the realm of self-importance and moral superiority; all of us have felt at one time or another that the world owes us because of our hurts, haven't we? And all of us, secretly at least, have revelled in the power our suffering can give us over other people who are susceptible to guilt? I didn't find that tsunami "song" funny. I might even go so far as to say the folks that do find it funny are some species of "sick puppy." But then, such overwhelming catastrophes tend to make everyone connected with them at least a little sick and at times puppy-ish. Haven't you heard of nervous laughter? I don't know what tangible good it does to "denounce" a joke. We can't really help what we find funny, all we can do is stifle it or let it be. I'm in favor of letting it be. Oh, and here's a sick joke you haven't heard: Q: How many incest survivors does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: I can't remember but I have the scares. -Kevin

Hey Michael, I've been good, very productive and I've actually gotten paid for my creativity (not much, but more than I've made for what I do best in a good long while). It's a great feeling, one that I dearly want to have occasion to feel more and more as time goes by. Y'know, I gotta stick to my disagreement here. I don't think Rand has a clue about humor. Really. I'm gonna stick my neck out and say that if we can look at humor objectively (very difficult when we have such strong reactions to some people's idea of a joke), humor is, in terms of reality, healthy. Period. If folks are truly busting a gut over the most disgusting, vicious joke, it's doing their mind and body some good. We can mix our hatreds into it, of course, our racism, sexism, etc. but I believe that what makes the joke funny qua funny is not the racism, sexism, etc. but, and you can quote me on this, the inversion of accepted norms. Thus in a clausterphobically p.c. context, an un-p.c. joke will be much funnier than in a context that is more free of fauning social conservatism. Children (and childish adults) are far more likely to laugh at prat-falls, fart jokes and the like because children are still learning that life is a whole lot messier and chaotic than their well-intentioned parents would have them believe. A fart joke in that context is a moment of relief (sorry) from the conventional lies we teach children about being "good boys and girls." A wise friend of mine once told me that people ridicule other people whom they feel have unjustified power. Boys on the virge of adolescence will be particularly aggressive in their ridicule of girls because they intuitively know the power such creatures will soon have in their lives. We ridicule out of fear and out of envy, but the underlying meaning of ridicule is psychological balance. Psychologically, girls can be too powerful in a hormonally overwhelmed boy's world and so he conpensates by making fun of them. To the degree that his joke is actually funny (i.e.: makes him laugh) the balancing is certainly necessary and healthy. Of course a joke can be taken too far; it can start out as a healthy expression of ambivalence and turn into an ugly, humorless put-down. I think the exchange in this thread between Nick and Gary illustrates this in Gary's responses. He begins by finding holes in Nick's argument and ends by being simply insulting. As always, what makes a joke a hateful insult or delicious irony comes down to that old Oist favorite: context. -Kevin

Hey everybody, I'd like to go back to Ayn Rand's explanation of why the rich man slipping on the banana peel is funny and disagree with it unreservedly! It's gotta be tough to come up with a unified theory of what's funny, particularly if you are not yourself a very funny person. If you don't spend any time trying to make people laugh, how you gonna generalize about what does the trick? On the contrary, if you don't practice being funny, then your personal encounters with humor will tend to be as the butt of the joke; the technical term for humorless sour-puss is, after all, "easy mark." In order for Rand to understand humor she'd have had to learn to "walk in the other guy's shoes" once in a while. And that, to the best of my knowledge, never happened. Y'see, from where I sit, humor is metaphysical afirmation. Laughter comes into play precisely when reality busts through the lies constructed by our minds in order to fit in with the community. Laughter is at it base anarchic, unsocialized and exstatic (interestingly, as Michael noted, laughter is "contagious" so does seem to have some "community building" characteristics of its own, but communities based solely on a shared sense of humor don't tend to be organized enough to be politically significant--Stewart/Colbert '08!). Now take the tophatted fellow slipping on his banana skin. It's not funny because it "contradicts reality!" (Y'know, I gotta make an aside here about ol' Ayn: that seems like just about the illest usage of the word "reality" coming from a philosopher as I can imagine! What in the man's wardrobe or pretentions denotes "reality?" What in blazes is she talking about? She uses this word "reality" because it suits her argument to do so, but there is nothing more real in her example than the Newtonian physics of the prat-fall.) As I say, it's not funny because it contradicts reality, but because reality marches right up and hits this bozo between the eyes! People like the gentleman in the example tell us they're better than everyone else, wiser, more beautiful, more deserving, etc. and we believe them. We do. We idolize the rich, the famous, the more fortunate than we. We accept their pretention every day, we translate their lies into pleasing fantasies, we bow and scrape in hopes of "promotion," we buy their product 'cause the ad said it was "new and improved;" we elect them to public office because their lies reflect our prejudices better than the other guy's--and then we see "one o' them" slip and fall on his ass like anyone and something clicks in our heads, for a precious exstatic moment negating a lifetime of indoctrination and comforting lies, we laugh. -Kevin

Heya Victor, Just checking back with the site after a couple months of RL creativity/productivity (yay me, paid my rent with the money I got from a puppet show I created!). I think there is a great deal to be said for rationality, I greatly appreciate it in the people that I encounter on a daily basis and it is the central, defining reason why I have ever posted on an Oist message board--clear thinking is a thing of beauty, isn't it? Now to your article. I disagree strongly with a lot of what you said, but my strongest reaction to your words is a pretty thorough-going sadness. There's a "rollicking" quality to rants like yours; it's easy to climb onboard and just go for the ride if you're so inclined. Yeah! Damn Intellectuals! Damn hate-filled Subjectivists! Rah! "Us and Them." It's as old as civilization itself. But have you ever thought seriously about "hate?" You say that "modern intellectuals" have a "deep hatred" of Ayn Rand (you go on to say that it's a greater hatred than that they reserve for Hitler--um...I'd love to know where you found that "fact;" most intellectuals that I've known--and I've known my share--barely know Ayn Rand ever existed). One of the saddest things to me about human interaction is that it is far easier for most people to shout "fuck you" when they've been hurt, than for them to say "ow, that really hurts." Ayn and her adherents over the years have said a lot of hurtful, condemnatory, intolerant, prejudicial things about other intellectuals, ancient and modern, so it doesn't surprise me one jot that many folks would answer in kind. Your article amounts to the same thing, you're reacting to antagonism with antagonism. What I most respect about Michael Kelly and Barbara Brandon is that they are committed to recovering the rational value of Objectivism from the swamp of human cyclical viciousness that has all but consumed the movement at the highest levels of organization (all but consumed our planet at the highest levels of organization, for that matter). I think what makes philosophy a "game" is its remoteness from reality--hold on, hold on. What makes philosophy remote from reality, when it is remote from reality ('cause it's not always), is it's lack of emotional coherence with the life of the individual espousing the philosophy; it is a metric of alienation, rather than a personal expression of values (an awful lot of philosophy is heady, disconnected stuff, you gotta admit). There's a point, pretty early on, in a lot of philosophical discussions, when the grounded, heart-felt philosophy leaves the earth and becomes intellectual strong-arming and logical intimidation. In your piece, the disconnect happens in the first sentence. Obviously, something has infuriated you, something you generalize as "modern intellectuals," but what that is, we're left to guess. So what did these people say to you most recently to set you typing? As a person like yourself, trying to find communion with other intelligent people on the internet, I'm much, much more interested in your personal experience than with your, I'm sorry, pretty standard polemic. Y'see, Victor, what happened between you and the person or persons behind your article is unique, individual and therefore, interesting, possibly even illuminating or inspiring. But you gave us what I call a "bad people are bad" rant. People who reserve a greater hatred for Ayn Rand than they do for Adolf Hitler--even if such exist!--are a sorry straw man to hang your argument on. Furthermore, by occulting the actual, individual experience which prompted your article, you end up making a basically collectivist plea for agreement and validation when you assume that your reader will project his or her "similar" experiences onto your generalization. "Us and Them" is about as collectivist as you can get! It makes me very sad to read articles like yours. In relationship counseling we ask the question, "Would you rather be right or happy?" The point being that forcing the other person to agree with you, decimating them by force of mere logic and rhetorical facility does not lead to a happy union. Maybe if more Randians would allow people to disagree with them without the Randians feeling honor-bound to destroy them with words, more Randians might find the world to be a little more receptive to their ideas. -Kevin

Michael, You realize that the only reason I read anything on SoloP or RoR these days is because y'all make it sound so wacky that I have to see for myself. I usually regret it. I'm not exactly sure if I regret reading "Objectivists Reeling" or not, though. It's just so fuckin' fascination, y'know? Really. Like a car wreck or something. It's a genuinely surreal experience. What is he lampooning exactly? I get that there are certain people for whom he has nurtured a thorough contempt (the height of which he expresses by picturing them giving someone head--this from a gay man? Does that seem right to you?), but beyond that what is the subject of his little fantasy? Well there's the alcoholism thingy. I'm not saying Linz is an alcoholic, but maybe it wouldn't be totally out of line to refer to him as an Alcoholist? He certainly finds the subject to be an endless source of inspiration. The closest approximation I can come to a legitimate rhetorical theme of his satire is that Linz hates people who admit they've made errors or changed their minds, specifically, objectivist leaders who have made errors or changed their minds. Such people deserve nothing but scorn. All that accountability and honesty is really just too much to stomach, I guess. And I know what "ass licking" you've done, Michael, to get Barbara to post on your board--exactly none, unless one considers respectful correspondence and honest admiration for another living human being "ass kissing." Well, it seems Linz does. Damn, I cannot imagine the self-styled leader of any political movement in history making such a gratuitous ass of himself so publicly with the expectation that people would applaud--unless it be Nero, or Caligula or maybe Louis XIV. -Kevin

Good morning Ellen, Charles, Thanks for your comments. Ellen, I certainly understand your time constraints. I mentioned my previous post only in hopes of jogging your memory, in case you'd been intending to get back to it and it had slipped your mind or some such. I certainly did not intend to exert pressure on you in any way. Getting back to the topic at hand, you wrote: Yes, it's difficult, but that does not mean it's impossible or better left unattended. That you know of "some cases" of incest that you would consider healthy is distressing. What is the nature of these healthy incestual relationships? I expect our notions of what is and is not healthy may be at odds. Developmental psychology is a new and unfortunately, still pretty "wonky" science. As I understand it, there are many journeys the psyche must undertake throughout life if it is to develop fully (incidently, what I'm talking about may very well be historically unprecidented, the human species has been so hampered in its psychological development by the need to simply survive, that very few individuals have heretofore had the quality of life necessary for healthy development). Humans have devised every conceivable way to shorten these journeys by skipping steps, and psychological science is only now beginning to take note of the cost of such abridgements. Charles, you propose just such an abridgement in your post, suggesting that a healthy sexual encounter between two adults might successfully skip the otherness of which I speak as an early stage akin to infatuation. But I would say this "skipping" is precisely the psychic strategy behind incestuous intimacy. This is precisely where uninformed rationality ceases to be our friend, because what you say seems reasonable enough, but it ain't AFAIK the way the human animal works. What's more, I disagree that the encounter with "the other" is only relevant in the beginning phase of adult intimacy, but an awareness that must be maintained if a relationship is to thrive and grow psychologically throughout its life, a relationship mirrored in the constantly growing and developing relationship of each participant with him or herself. "Comfortable" and "reassuring" are not necessarily hallmarks of health in conscious beings, though many, many people no doubt long (regressively, I'd say) for just such conditions. For example, living as a literal slave is not without its comforts; true freedom can create enormous anxiety in people and many, many would and do choose something else. Now I would say this aversion to freedom is regressive and by no means contributes to the proper development of one's psyche; it ain't healthy. The greatest obstacle to any of this being made clear to a scientific mind is that the scientific mind barely acknowledges the existence of what I'm talking about. I imagine all manner of studies could be undertaken in which people living as slaves were hooked up to EKG's and what have you, along with a group of nonslaves and the results suggesting that the slaves where as "healthy" and "happy" as the free ("along certain gradients even more so"). What I'm talking about is an emerging awareness of what actually is good for the human psyche beyond mere survival and freedom from pain. Do you, Charles and Ellen, disagree that such things may actually exist as yet unquantified by science?

I think we have the makings of a false dichotomy in the instinct vs. reason debate. With the advent of modern psychology we have a third category which seems to partake of both faculties to some degree and that is, psychological health. In addition to actions being moral or immoral, instinctual or reasoned, our actions as conscious beings may be psychologically healthy or unhealthy. Interestingly, how one adheres to psychological health partakes both of instinct (accepting and responding to one's limits, one's nature, not trying to be something you're not) and reason (mindfully assessing the psychological toll our actions do or do not take on our well-being). As I suggested much earlier in this thread (Ellen, still waiting on any comments you might have on that post, btw), what is philosophically compelling may be psychologically unhealthy or at least "hazardous." Unfortunately, the science of psychology is still largely in the conceptual stage. The whole area of "psychological health" is still considered to be purely "subjective" by a lot of people. But what if certain actions in certain situations were objectively healthier than others? What if certain emotional reactions to certain situations were inherently healthier than others? This incest business: healthy adult sexuality involves a relationship with "the other." Healthy adult romance is all about reaching across differences and risking intimacy. With incest the possibility of healthy adult romance is virtually destroyed. At the heart of an incestuous affair is the psychologically sopporific effect of familiarity and familial safety, a feeling of riskless merging. Psychologically, siblings may be driven to incest as a reaction against a profoundly hostile experience of the outside world, tyrannically invasive/psychotic parenting, or a profound sense of affective scarcity which drives the siblings to seek whatever comfort they can in each other. In short, it ain't good, folks. Healthy people, by virtue of their health, know this. They instinctually shudder at the thought of incest. Unhealthy, broken people, by virtue of their unhealthy brokenness do not. Now you see where this leads? Some folks reading this may disagree with me. From where I sit, I pretty much would have to conclude that anyone disagreeing with me on whether incest is inherently unhealthy or not was damaged sexually or developmentally in some way (our culture is plenty effed up about sex to accomplish all kinds of damage). Now, I don't have the hammer of hard, scientific certainty to back me up, and yet I'm pretty sure that I'm right on this. And of course, the incest argument, like the starving child scenario, are cherry picked for their extremity. Psychological health has much more subtle implications in our lives, but until science figures out how to perceive this stuff adequately, our understanding is necessarily limited by our individual--and more often than I'm sure any of us would care to admit, collective--psychological health.

Hey Angie, all, The shoelace thing isn't really the issue, is it? Certainly concious choices can become automatic with practice--that's not what's got the Doctor feeling so poorly and behaving so uncivil. Here's an example that most people come up against if they live long enough and are paying attention: the repeating partner thing; most of us have had a lousy relationship in our lives, gotten shut of it and have begun dating someone who on the face of it looked totally different from our ex--different looks, different taste in clothes, different values, different everything--only to discover somewhere down the line that this new model's got the same maddening habits, the same trust issues, the same controlling weirdness as our ex did! Some of us have had a string of partners that seem to have the same effed up programming (you know who you are). In such cases, we think we're making conscious choices to dump an ex, pick someone different, etc. Turns out, however, that our subconscious (boo!) is zeroing in on these folks, one after another, right under our rational noses! (Achoo!) Repetition compulsion, I think it's called. There are lessons to be learned from these folks, generally lessons about our subconscious compulsive selves. As long as we continue to blame the repetition on our partners, the same issues will continue to manifest with each new person we invite into our lives. Until we take responsability for the craziness we keep subconsciously pulling toward us, we're stuck. I'm betting the Doctor in question has run affowl of the repetition compulsion and given up on getting to know himself. He's got some integrating to do, but it doesn't sound like he's gonna be doing it any time soon. Luckily, his subconscious will keep turning up the vollume until he can see his part in it, see the free will he's got at his disposal and use it. :D/ -Kevin

Hey Marsha, thanks for your thoughtful comments. You've given me a lot to think about. I'm sorry I wasn't clearer about the source whom I was quoting. Micheal has the right page. Who exactly wrote it is a mystery to me, as it was presented as "general info" for folks coming to the site and wanting to know what it was about. I assume the thing was at least sanctioned by Joe Rowlands and Lindsey Perigo, if not written by one or the other of those gentlemen, and that in itself was pretty disturbing to me. That was in large part what bugged me about the essay, actually, it being presented without any specific ascription as if it were the plain truth. First, thanks for pointing me in the general direction of those writings and comments of Ayn Rand that deal with the emotions. I've seen a lot of talk about emotions in Objectivist discussions, but my search for primary texts on the subject has been roundly unsuccessful. Is that essay of yours easily accessible? The title alone recommends it to me. I think this issue of Rand's context is very important. It makes partial understanding of her philosophy practically unavoidable--it's taken a life time for me to gain a rational foothold on my own context, and now I'm supposed to understand the full context of a person as complex and paradoxical as Ayn Rand??? Without knowing her full context for any of her very stark and emphatic remarks, on virtually any subject, we are--objectively it would seem to me--doomed to only partial appreciation of what she meant. Logically, the primacy of context in objectivism would seem to make "objective" statements about Rand next to impossible for anyone but Rand herself, if you see what I mean. I can find meaning in what she says, but it is definitively my meaning. I ain't a big fan of or an authority on Peikoff, for instance, but what I've read of him clashes resoundingly with what I understand of Rand. To my mind, he "doesn't get it." But then, he knew her and he's certainly read every dang thing she's ever written; while I've read maybe three of her books--so what am I gonna do? Even if I were to read her entire opus and watch every video recording twice, would I necessarily have her full context? "Close enough for government work," I guess, but objectively? At least rhetorically, there's a kind of Xeno's paradox here. The kind of paradox readily and often exploited by Internet Gladiators for their coups de grâce. Anyway, I see your point about Rand and I agree that she presents a much more complicated understanding of emotion (particularly in the novels, of course) than she or her intellectual heirs sometimes explicitly state. You said, "In a language you don't know, you can't relate the symbol to its meaning. I think that was the point." I'm not sure that words aren't simply a convenient and approximate marker for emotional response. What to casual observation looks like an emotional response to words, seems to me to have more to do with the images and visions they provoke in us. We respond to these visions, not as we respond to symbols, but as we respond to the actual events they portray. I'd be curious to take a look at the studies you mention. That a lot of people have emotional responses concurrently with reading certain words is not surprising, but that these emotions are somehow intrinsic to the words themselves and not the associations the subjects of the study have attached to the words over the years, is not at all clear to me. It seems plausible to me that people who have had more therapy or meditation experience for instance--those people who are adept at simply experiencing their reality without judgement or compulsive thought--would experience less "reaction." To simply state that "people" have emotional reactions to words like "rape" and so on, is at least misleading if not intellectually complacent. The idea that "only understanding triggers emotion" is inadequate in my view. As my understanding of emotion develops, I see more and more at least two distinct levels of emotional response. That level which is subject to cognitive manipulation and another level that simply isn't. For much of my life I have been what I'll call "a cringer:" when faced with a sudden intrusion, my body quite involuntarily used to retract in the direction of fetal closure. Someone tossed a ball at me that I didn't expect, my fists would fly up toward my face as my neck contracted and I would shy away from it with my eyes closed. As a kid, this mechanism in me was often abused for the general amusement of my peers. I was always deeply embarrassed by this little fact about me. More gravely, I was once almost hit by a train as a result of the three step--cringe, realize that cringing would in no way protect me from the locomotive, leap to safety--process, I was doomed in such circumstances to perform. I did everything I could to teach my mind courage and rationality, learned everything I could about PTSD to achieve peace of mind and rational functionality, but always, in the clinch, I would cringe in the face of danger. Then I studied martial arts. I learned to punch and kick and move my body efficiently. I subjected myself to meditations. I did a million things in martial arts the purposes of which I have yet to understand, even partially. So, one night after practice, I was walking across the street on my way home and a van came speeding toward me. Absolutely without thinking, I turned toward the thing and shouted, "Hey!" The van screeched to a halt. The windows were tinted ominously, and the driver's door opened. For a moment I imagined all sorts of Hollywood gangster style reprisals from the driver, when he peaked his head from around the door and blurted, "Oh my god, are you okay? I'm so sorry!" "I'm fine" I said to him distinctly and calmly, and turned back toward home. That's when I realized what all had happened, that my instincts in the face of danger had finally been changed. I have no doubt that if the thing hadn't stopped I would have leapt precisely and ably out of its way. All of this totally circumvented my cognitive awareness; deep, life-affirming change conducted entirely under my rational radar. Animals, of course, experience emotions without anything like the level of cognition human's enjoy. We human beings seem to partake of this level of emotional experience to some degree, but our minds complicate the situation. Human beings are unique in the animal world in that we experience emotions in reaction not simply to reality itself as other animals do, but to thoughts about reality--even thoughts about emotions. This is why cognitive therapy works. So many of our emotions are reactions not to reality but thoughts about reality. The emotions we experience around mere thoughts are, in the face of reality, second hand, malleable, of much lesser importance than our rational encounter with reality. But those other emotions, the animal emotions that we can't argue ourselves out of, these are the emotions I'm primarily interested in understanding. I think Michael's discussion of the starving child is concerned with these more essential emotions as well. Do you know of Ayn Rand ever touching on anything of the kind? Well, that's enough for now. Thanks again for your thoughtful post. And thanks for giving me this opportunity to expand upon these ideas that, to my mind, would go to the heart of understanding our life as human beings. -Kevin

Hey, Landon, just a note 'case you didn't know: the latin word for morning star is "lucifer." Literally, lucifer means, "light-bringer" or "dawn-bringer." In addition to being considered a synonym for "Satan," the term lucifer has variously refered to Venus, the Sun and, and somewhat obscurely, Jesus Christ. I suspect a lot of your readers will assume you intended to name your cult leader after the Devil--I know I did!

Hey Ellen, I've been trying to fathom the answers to these questions since first I encountered Objectivism several months ago when I joined SoloHQ. I find it oddly satisfying that I come to Oism by its people first and by its founder only secondarily. What I mean is that I have the peculiar freedom, so rare in these parts, of not being a fan. Fandom is an inescapable part of Oism because of the novels (and to a lesser degree, because of the personality of Ayn Rand herself). People are usually fans first and Objectivists second. Also, people tend to read the novels in adolescence, a time when they're looking for heroes to worship and Rand gives them that with a vengeance. Now, from where I sit, hero worship seems an odd thing to bundle with Oism. I find it particularly difficult to square hero worship with high self-esteem. I was recently afforded an opportunity to reacquaint myself with the Bible for the first time since college (long story short: I did it as a favor to a friend, nothing to worry about). This time around, I was distinctly underwhelmed. I was struck by Jesus' ordinariness. Sure, the guy had some revolutionary things to say for his time, and he was prolly a pretty decent guy beyond the death wish and the delusions of grandeur (delusions reported by only one of the 4 evangelists, btw), but what's the big deal? Judging by his words, what made Jesus anything more than a pretty decent guy? Why would any self-respecting person devote his life to him above any other above averagely decent guy out there? You can tell me that he was an evil altruist and I won't argue with you, but people worship him as a hero and many of his worshipers do everything they can to be just like him. As far as I can see, it's not healthy, no matter who you want to be "just like," unless the person you want to be just like is yourself. But that's a big problem with Oism. Actually there's a fat cluster of problems I've been trying to unravel here. There seems to me to be a conflict between what makes for good philosophy and what makes for good psychology. I first came across this discrepancy in a discussion of the benevolent universe premise on the old SoloHQ. It became clear to me that the benevolent universe premise was a crucial foundation of a healthy self-esteem; we as living creatures need to believe that our focused attention and willful action will produce positive results. Without that belief, we will cease to strive, become apathetic and fall into depression. This is true of animals as well. A baby elephant is tied to a stake. No matter how hard he tries he can't pull the stake out of the ground and free himself. So he learns that he is helpless against the stake. But then the elephant grows until he can uproot whole trees, but he won't even try to free himself from the now inconsequential stake. What that elephant needs is a healthy self-esteem that teaches him to keep trying in spite of his many experiences of failure. But the benevolent universe premise runs into all kinds of trouble from strict philosophical inquiry. Even Peikoff has to soft-peddle the thing and rationalize it away as mere "poetry" or "metaphor." (I'm sure Ayn would love that!) Similarly, free will is a fundamental building block of a healthy self-esteem and an integral counterpart to the benevolent universe. Free will is psychologically necessary for a healthy self-esteem. As appealing and simple as determinism may be philosophically, emotionally it is deadly, simply dehumanizing and discouraging. So there are aspects of Objectivism that make for excellent psychology, but remain philosophically questionable unless we understand the central importance of healthy self-esteem in our existence. Then there's the matter of "A is A," rock solid philosophy, the very definition of logic, but what happens when a Rand fan tries to apply such a formula to psychology? Take our emotions, for instance. The difference between anger and grief can be as little as a few moments' of simple attention. But where does that attention come from? Emotion is not a physical object; nor is it static. All repressed emotion starts to look the same eventually. The process of repression causes rigidity in our natures and even our bodies. The only way to feel repressed emotion once it's been walled off from the conscious mind by these barriers of will and habit, is if it comes with a charge of explosive harshness. Who hasn't experienced a rush of anger at not being heard, only to realize that he himself had been ignoring his own needs all along? Eventually all repressed emotions come to look a lot like rage. But if we apply A is A to our emotions, then Anger is Anger and introspection stops when we assign a rational cause and go gladiate on someone! I think Rand tried to apply A is A to her emotions and it got her into a whole lot of trouble. Now, o'course, Rand was no dumby, she knew emotions were mercurial and elusive, so she didn't go for a ham-handed "emotional materialism" but rather conceived of emotion as something happening only as a result of "the thinking we have done, or failed to do,"--a kind of foot print in the sand of our natures left by our premises--which put her on seemingly much firmer ground, because in the realm of ideas and principles, A will remain A no matter how long you sit with it. Thing is, if A is A and emotions are unreliable and constantly changing, then emotion stands in need of extensive and constant manipulation by the rational mind to keep it in line. And this kind of constant self manipulation is a sure recipe for repression and profound estrangement from the self, not to mention, a fair amount of knee-jerk rage. "The Affair" and "The Break" undermine Rand's particular pose of rational control of the emotional realm thoroughly and irrevocably. Regardless of who's interpretation of the events in question you credit, the fact remains that Rand profoundly misjudged the man she chose to be her intellectual heir. Rand's own "reality gap" is a major stumbling block for a philosophy founded on a direct encounter with reality. Nathan was not the man she thought he was. In spite of all her thinking and her exquisite premises, what she never quite got around to considering was emotional honesty. For Rand, the emotions were merely the afterglow of glorious thinking. With the proper premises, emotion was supposed to work like clay under logic's hand, or like the tulips that bloom after careful preparation. Really, the only meaningful honesty, therefore, was intellectual honesty, and in that arena Rand was unmatched. Obviously, she gave emotional integrity a lot less significance than philosophical integrity and paid a terrible price. What's at stake in the Rand/Branden conflict today is exactly what was at stake for Ayn Rand when it happened, because she (and by extention, her followers, fans, and intellectual heirs) was unable to integrate what she learned from Nathan's betrayal. Her first hero, whom she "recognized" in young adulthood, turned out to be only the body of her ideal. Her second hero had the mind, certainly, but not the soul. Sadly, she never integrated the data from this second heroic trial and Objectivism remains broken and unfinished to this day. -Kevin

(Edit: Roger and Michael, so sorry for dragging my feet on resubmitting this. When I saw your original discussion of the problem of authorship in the other thread, I took one look at the top of the page and my by-line and assumed that Michael had fixed it on his own. Michael was finally able to set me straight on what the problem was. So here's the new thread. Hope this clears up the issue of authorship. #-o) Objectivist Emotional IQ Now, most people here know that I am no expert on Objectivism, but as an interested student of Objectivism I have to say that the party line on emotional reality leaves much to be desired. Here's some typical analysis of emotional reality from SOLOHQ: I read a statement like this that is so patently wrong and I'm tempted to simply walk away and never come back. I wanna get ahold of this guy and ask him if he really believes this guff, I mean really! Is this how he lives? Having emotional reactions to mere words? But this kind of thing is typical of what I've read. How 'bout, no? I just read those words and I had no emotional response to them. Oh my goodness, I just typed them into my computer and...still nothing. They're just words, utterly without context. As you may have noticed, I'm having a much stronger reaction to this Oist's beliefs about emotions than those four words. Is this how Objectivists think? Clearly the Oist who wrote that thinks like that (or at least thinks he thinks like that, or wants us to believe he thinks like that--seriously, it's hard for me to believe that someone who values critical thinking would come to such conclusions). And he goes on: Words cannot express my astonishment at these assertions. ;) I mean, a lot of Oists are notorious lovers of opera, and this one's telling me that unless I know italian, Puccinni will be totally lost on me? I don't know a lick of italian, but when I hear Povarotti sing Nessun Dorma I'm moved to tears every single time. What am I thinking that brings these tears? His version of that aria is amazing because the emotion always takes me by surprise. I'm listening to this beautiful melody and his amazing instrument and then suddenly his voice goes up an octave and I'm crying. The more I think about it, the more absurd my emotion seems; the more I think about it, reason would suggest, the less I should feel, but I know that if I put it in the CD player I'll cry.Okay, so that example didn't work for me, so I read the next one: This one just sounds mental. :-k I'm sorry, but he's talking about PTSD. I hear the word "rape" and I'm supposed to have an emotional reaction just 'cuz? Well, maybe if I'd just been raped. The mere sight of a man with a gun fills me with fear? Unless I've recently been the victim of a hold-up, I am not going to be reacting to the mere sight of a gunman. I am going to react to the way the guy entered the room, the look on his face, the sound of his voice. I may not even see the gun before I sense what the guy intends. What good is fear if I have to think some thought before I duck for cover?Look, I'm not a big expert on philosophy, a lot of the finer points leave me cold (the free will/determinism debate for instance, bores me senseless), but emotional reality is something I've put a lot of thought and research into. I like to think I know something about how emotions function and I can only imagine arguments like this working on people who've never given emotional causation a second thought. Frankly, I don't get the impression that the typical Objectivist is really all that interested in exploring his emotions. Rand places them in a distinctly deemphasized position in her thoughts. I find that what gets deemphasized in Oism, often ends up ignored, or taken totally for granted and unexamined. That's okay, I got no problem with people focusing their energies on what they're most interested in, but I don't appreciate what amounts to a mere lack of affinity for a thing (exploring one's emotions) being globalized into a final objective judgement on the thing (naval gazing and subjectivism). One of the things that accounts for this lack of affinity may be cultural. Culturally, we tend to attach emotion to a "source" in the outside world. We say so-and-so "made me mad," or that movie "made me cry." This is psychologically dangerous territory and can lead to many very harmful distortions. This kind of thinking often reduces us to victims of our emotions and enslaves us to the actions and intentions of others. I've learned that an important tool of healing is to refrain from attaching my emotions to other people. No one "out there" is to blame for my feelings. It's really changed my sense of life, and freed me from a lot self-destructive ideation. I have found that simply saying "I'm angry" in an argument, without leaping to obvious conclusions about "why" frees me to interact with the emotion directly as information rather than a moral imperative. I often find that the other person is able to interact with the feeling more objectively as well, volunteering their own insights like, "Well, I can understand why you might be angry right now, because..." Importantly, the anger, once named, will often spontaneously shift into another more "difficult" emotion like grief. Therapy has taught me that we often leap to blaming others for our feelings to avoid the much healthier, but more painful, process of grieving. So, as a culture, we tend not to explore feelings when an obvious scapegoat presents itself. In this way moral judgment of others can make an authentic encounter with one's self more and more difficult and ultimately impossible. -Kevin

Thank you for a fine article, Barbara; very concise and eloquently stated. There seems to be an astonishing loneliness in humans that we as a species will sacrifice so much just to belong. I see the acts of suicide bombers at the far end of a continuum that starts with the deceptively simple "suicide" of one's individuality in the face of the group identity. In this way cults have always fed upon the low self-worth of its victims/membership. Odd that an apparent survival mechanism like the desire to "fit in" would have its ultimate expression in self-extermination. Terrible. I see a world-wide crisis of self-esteem threatening to destroy whole nations of people just so individuals can share the illusion of being better than some others. The capacity to demonize the "other" has a direct connection to the low self-worth of the demonizer; what we imagine as appropriate action towards others, we secretly sanction against ourselves. Implicit in the choice of that unfortunate young man in the study you mention is not only the expendability of his knowledge, but of his mind and ultimately his self; greater and greater desperation is all the gradient he needs. All this puts me in mind of the Jungian archetype of the Orphan. It can be profoundly difficult to face our ultimate aloneness. Intellectually, it's deceptively easy, like shooting fish in a barrel, but to really, deeply feel our "outcast state" may not ever come in one's life time until its very last moments. At the present level of cultural evolution, even those who do come face to face with the Orphan within--generally through mischance and profound grief--are far more likely to react by leaping head first into the nearest cultic system than they are to sit down and get to know the Stranger gazing back at them when they look in the mirror.

Hey, Landon, I just got the Eisner/Miller conversations for x-mas. When I first started reading Miller back in the 80's I thought he was the first guy to actually use the medium of comix to its full potential since Eisner; to read these two talking shop is a dream come true. Other books under the tree: A Southern Tragedy, in Crimson and Yellow by Lawrence Naumoff, A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin--oh, and a biography of some Russian-American philosopher from the forties or something. :-$

Objectivist Emotional IQ Now, most people here know that I am no expert on Objectivism, but as an interested student of Objectivism I have to say that the party line on emotional reality leaves much to be desired. Here's some typical analysis of emotional reality from SOLOHQ: I read a statement like this that is so patently wrong and I'm tempted to simply walk away and never come back. I wanna get ahold of this guy and ask him if he really believes this guff, I mean really! Is this how he lives? Having emotional reactions to mere words? But this kind of thing is typical of what I've read. How 'bout, no? I just read those words and I had no emotional response to them. Oh my goodness, I just typed them into my computer and...still nothing. They're just words, utterly without context. As you may have noticed, I'm having a much stronger reaction to this Oist's beliefs about emotions than those four words. Is this how Objectivists think? Clearly the Oist who wrote that thinks like that (or at least thinks he thinks like that, or wants us to believe he thinks like that--seriously, it's hard for me to believe that someone who values critical thinking would come to such conclusions). And he goes on: Words cannot express my astonishment at these assertions. ;) I mean, a lot of Oists are notorious lovers of opera, and this one's telling me that unless I know italian, Puccinni will be totally lost on me? I don't know a lick of italian, but when I hear Povarotti sing Nessun Dorma I'm moved to tears every single time. What am I thinking that brings these tears? His version of that aria is amazing because the emotion always takes me by surprise. I'm listening to this beautiful melody and his amazing instrument and then suddenly his voice goes up an octave and I'm crying. The more I think about it, the more absurd my emotion seems; the more I think about it, reason would suggest, the less I should feel, but I know that if I put it in the CD player I'll cry.Okay, so that example didn't work for me, so I read the next one: This one just sounds mental. :-k I'm sorry, but he's talking about PTSD. I hear the word "rape" and I'm supposed to have an emotional reaction just 'cuz? Well, maybe if I'd just been raped. The mere sight of a man with a gun fills me with fear? Unless I've recently been the victim of a hold-up, I am not going to be reacting to the mere sight of a gunman. I am going to react to the way the guy entered the room, the look on his face, the sound of his voice. I may not even see the gun before I sense what the guy intends. What good is fear if I have to think some thought before I duck for cover?Look, I'm not a big expert on philosophy, a lot of the finer points leave me cold (the free will/determinism debate for instance, bores me senseless), but emotional reality is something I've put a lot of thought and research into. I like to think I know something about how emotions function and I can only imagine arguments like this working on people who've never given emotional causation a second thought. Frankly, I don't get the impression that the typical Objectivist is really all that interested in exploring his emotions. Rand places them in a distinctly deemphasized position in her thoughts. I find that what gets deemphasized in Oism, often ends up ignored, or taken totally for granted and unexamined. That's okay, I got no problem with people focusing their energies on what they're most interested in, but I don't appreciate what amounts to a mere lack of affinity for a thing (exploring one's emotions) being globalized into a final objective judgement on the thing (naval gazing and subjectivism). One of the things that accounts for this lack of affinity may be cultural. Culturally, we tend to attach emotion to a "source" in the outside world. We say so-and-so "made me mad," or that movie "made me cry." This is psychologically dangerous territory and can lead to many very harmful distortions. This kind of thinking often reduces us to victims of our emotions and enslaves us to the actions and intentions of others. I've learned that an important tool of healing is to refrain from attaching my emotions to other people. No one "out there" is to blame for my feelings. It's really changed my sense of life, and freed me from a lot self-destructive ideation. I have found that simply saying "I'm angry" in an argument, without leaping to obvious conclusions about "why" frees me to interact with the emotion directly as information rather than a moral imperative. I often find that the other person is able to interact with the feeling more objectively as well, volunteering their own insights like, "Well, I can understand why you might be angry right now, because..." Importantly, the anger, once named, will often spontaneously shift into another more "difficult" emotion like grief. Therapy has taught me that we often leap to blaming others for our feelings to avoid the much healthier, but more painful, process of grieving. So, as a culture, we tend not to explore feelings when an obvious scapegoat presents itself. In this way moral judgment of others can make an authentic encounter with one's self more and more difficult and ultimately impossible. -Kevin (Edit: Thanks, Michael, for moving this.)