Philip Coates

I just want to add one more point to my post about the loss of lots of material when the live sessions were edited into a book: You need -both-. Each format has value. Each has an appropriate context. While I described the brilliance of the unedited sessions, there are audiences (general layman audience, not long time objectivists - who want a condensed series of entry level lessons on how to write, for example) for whom the two condensed FW and NFW books are excellent. I do recommend those books and that condensation for that purpose. I think they were very good in that sense. Phil (Marsha said: "He left out sooo much from the tapes, that the meaning of Rand's comments are seriously changed." This is a separate issue. I don't know if I'd agree without this being further concretized. Then seeing the original and the book side by side.)

Michael, I just saw this and it brought tears to my eyes. A great poem is one that is universal, captures an emotion (or state or event or perspective) with economy, precision, and grace. This poem does all of these things and, if you someday publish it somewhere where it can gain traction and be seen, will over time become a treasured classic. It's that good.

If one of the purposes of your novel is to dramatize WBSHGPD (when bad shit happens, good people die), then you have to kill them off. Otherwise you're unfaithful to your theme. And to preventing more good people from dying in the future.

> We need to appreciate the heroic acts that many people do and rather than constantly griping that they are not always heroes, we need to encourage them with praise for those acts that are heroic...No mass acceptance of Objectivism will ever occur until Objectivists offer more people encouragement for maximizing the best in them. Very well put, Charles. There's a strong tendency to have a Platonic rather than an Aristotelian standard of perfection among Objectivists: If you ever make a mistake, you're evil or an evader and not worthy of praise or support or admiration. > One of the great fears that many Objectivists have is that they would not be invited to Galt's Gulch. I need to inform you that John Galt has read your post and has just emailed me to extend you an invitation to the Gulch. (If you are attending the summer TOC conference, I can hand you the actual invitation in person.) Unfortunately, he told me I either needed to do more writing or help him market his static electricity motor, so I'm still on probationary status.

Thank you, Jenna, for this heartfelt, honest, and moving article. While I like many things in it (it is simply and directly told), I would particularly like to see the part about the cult -- and how they sucked you in and what they did to you and how you struggled out of it -- published somewhere so that it can warn people against cults and against the self-abnegation of religions. As a San Franciscan, I think one of the local free papers (or the East Bay Express) or something of that nature might be eager and happy to publish it. You have a lot of courage.

Dragonfly, To just post the repeated one-liner or one word question "why?" or "how do you know?" expects someone else to go to the trouble of composing lengthy answers while your end of the conversation doesn't require comparable effort.

> I discovered a new method for generating "Pythagorean triplets" Roger, sort of away from the topic of this thread, but there are math websites where teachers and experts answer questions, make comments. If you submitted or posted it there, you might find out if it's original.

> I remember reducing Joan Mitchell Blumenthal to literal tears of frustration as she tried vainly to explain some theorem to me; however hard I tried to understand, my mind seemed to snap shut the moment I saw those squares and triangles on paper.) Barbara, I can explain anything from algebra or geometry to anyone. You're not going to force me prove this to you at the summer conference, are you? :-)

" I've left the Oist community. I've no plans to return...the vast majority of Oists have followed this tradition of malice and intolerance toward all dissent, rational or otherwise -- the mark of fundamentalism. Once I started seeing myself act like that, I had to leave. " I think this quote probably explains why the majority of people who were once attracted to Objectivism have drifted away over the years (if 80,000 people were on NBI's mailing list that means that the -majority- of those interested in the philosophy have abandoned interest in it or in the movement around it). Another reason, not unrelated is that they didn't understand it well enough before revulsion set in. This is a "baby with the bath water" overreaction, of course. But it is understandable if someone found himself behaving unjustly or like the Lord High Inquisitor or otherwise irrationally in the name of Objectivism -- and had so much revulsion that he reacted violently against it all in toto. [i hope Barbara will discuss some of this in her Rage talk. Although rage is not the entire issue, it is enough to cover thoroughly in a single talk.] In other words, it's the Objectivists who are killing Objectivism. This is not a minor issue, and it's a key part of why I wanted TOC to start a soup to nuts training program covering skills, attitudes, implementation not just or primarily technical philosophy.

Jenna, I think you may be over-analyzing this or trying to read too much into it. It just means that what a bowling ball is determines that it can't fly to the moon, what a man is determines he can breathe, think, etc. but not run a mile in two minutes, what a gamma ray is determines what it can do and what particles it can and cannot interact with - even if we haven't yet discovered all the properties of men and gamma rays. The properties or actions of anything in the universe are limited and determined by what kind of things it is. It's just meant to be simple common sense...unless someone is a postmodernist or a relativist or a philosophical skeptic.

>If a person came across a certain way, she would be very benevolent in her treatment...She could change her judgment from one time to the next, though, sometimes without apparent carry-over. Everyone responds to people based on the attitude they see in front of them: hostile, interrupting, or insensitive begets a negative or angry or contemptuous response; smiling, friendly, respectful, listening begets a very different response. I don't have a problem with this aspect of Rand's behavior. Someone can behave arrogantly or inappropriately and get a negative or abrupt or scowling response from me one time and a different one when their tone or attitude are different. And, within certain muted or broad limits, they should get that kind of response or feedback. (I would say, though, if you are a role model or someone's hero and you know you are dealing with a socially inept or young or brash subculture, you might take that into account and try to be gentle with them - which she seems to have tried to be. Not always, but there is no perfection in this kind of thing - it's all very instantaneous and spur of the moment.)

Ellen, I wasn't necessarily taking Childs as an example of 'Objectivist cynicism'. I was broadening my post to include that, to broaden my post to take it into account since I've seen a lot of it (and it seemed a couple other posts on the thread might have hinted at it.) The whole "we live in a corrupt culture and you can't trust any of the intellectuals" thing that Oists sometimes recite as a mantra.

Marsha, I had a similar experience with her at one of those lectures, but in this case I had actually been rude or obnoxious with her. She took me aside and quietly, gently pointed out where she disagreed with an esthetic position I took...but without mentioning my rudeness or embarassing me. It occurred to me how few people I knew would do this, Objectivist or not. Phil

> History is a selective recreation of the events of the past, according to a historian's premises regarding what is important and his judgment concerning the nature of causality in human action. [Childs] As someone who has probably read (all or part of) perhaps a hundred history books of all kinds on all eras, I'm struck by how *seldom* the historians I've read, left, right, and center, are heavily biased or off target on what are one or more of the important causal factors. Any fashionable Objectivist cynicism that historians are completely...or even predominantly...led astray by their philosophical leanings is completely misplaced. Didn't happen.

Identity. Reason. Egoism. Capitalism. :-)

John, there was something I heard of but never saw called "The IREC Review". I don't know who put it out. Two pennies for guessing what the four letters stand for in less than 15 seconds....

John, I don't remember it. But that may be because if someone gets angry or yells at someone and then it's over soon or a momentary flash in the pan, I tend not to attach much importance to it. People have emotions and they get mad. As a teacher, every once in a while I'm likely to say "goddammit, whatsamatta with you" or "pay attention dammit"...or raise my voice. No big deal. I think emotional volatility is ok. [i know we are too often horrified at this in this WASP culture.] Have you ever raised your voice, etc. with your children? I don't know if I've ever had a friend or girlfriend who never said "Phil Coates you are a f**** idiot." (Please don't make the obvious comeback.)

(Note from MSK, begging Phil's pardon): This post and the rest of the thread was split off from one started by Roger Bissell in Aesthetics called "A Critical Note on the Boeckmann Transcript (2000).") Since the subject of some of the posts overlapped, I repeated the pertinent ones under my own name on that thread, identifying the poster. (I deleted the posts relative to splitting the thread, with thanks to Marsha Enright for providing a suggestion for the split point, leading to the solution.) I had a chance to listen to the -unedited- tapes of fiction writing and non-fiction writing (much longer than the tapes which were eventually sold) when I lived in NYC. I listened to them in their entirety, start to finish over the course of many months. (Allan Blumenthal if I recall had loaned them to several people and I was allowed to join in listening to them once a week). What struck me was that editing destroyed lots of little asides and witticisms and insights and tangents on many other issues. When Ayn Rand 'rambled' a bit, she was always illuminating and interesting. It was a great loss to cut -any- of it. She didn't just talk about the weather. You learned how a great mind worked, which to me is at least as valuable as the insights on FW or NFW. (Especially since a number of the insights she has on FW and NFW are not unique to her and can be found in other books on this subject.) Besides, if you are going to sell the edited form in a book, then the taped form you sell should be -different-, i.e., completely unedited with the explanation attached that if you want writing in a nutshell, get the book, if you want Rand on many things and interactive, get the tapes. Listening to those tapes, with not a single word changed, was one of the great experiences of my life to that point. [Also, I find it hard to remember her getting angry at anyone...she was always relaxed and calm and gentle and supportive in those sessions, sort of the ideal teacher, if I recall correctly... another reason to hear the tapes in original form.] Phil

> I think it is especially the legal issue that is the central point here [Dragonfly] But there is already a thread on this site for that. -This- thread was started specifically to discuss the questions Nathaniel Branden raised in his letter. If you think the moral issue is already cut and dried, at least let those of us who don't discuss it here anyway...instead of cloning multiple threads on politics rather than ethics (socialism, what role government has to compel on this issue, what the law should be). It's as if someone were discussing whether it is moral to be selfish or honest or just and somoene else comes along and say, no, what I want to talk about is whether the government should enforce this. This is an important issue to me because over on RoR people are constantly hijacking threads to continue whatever topic they are most energized about. One reason I come over here is (so far) people are more respectful and one can have a fairly concentrated and on topic discussion. If that no longer remains the case, then there is nowhere to go.

> If you saw a passer-by, with plenty of food in his knapsack, ignore the abandoned, starving child on the roadside...Yes, wrong, but by what standard? By what moral principle? [Nathaniel Branden] (First one has to stipulate a normal, advanced civilization or everyday context such as in prosperous America out in a national forest or something like that. I.e., we are assuming that this is not a metaphysical disaster, not a visit to Darfur or Somalia where one is surrounded by ten thousand starving children and one's backpack doesn't have enough food to help them all...and where they will starve after you only give them one meal to get them through the day.) Envision a person who doesn't experience the visibility principle, who doesn't enjoy the healthy living vitality of a plant or a pet (in Dr. Branden's original discussion of the visibility principle), doesn't admire genius or successful people or the ability of a hero in the movie or book to overcome obstacles. He just doesn't *care*. You wouldn't precisely say that his vice is the lack of any one of the original seven Objectivist virtues - rationality, honesty, independence, integrity, justice, productiveness, pride. You would be closer to call it a lack of the virtue of benevolence, which has generosity as a component. But you would only say he lacks benevolence if you take benevolence as a *wider* virtue than the way David Kelley characterizes it: "the function of benevolence...is to create opportunities for trade." [unrugged Individualism, p. 26]. In his otherwise excellent book DK ties benevolence too exclusively to the trader principle (this is a point I've made in posts elsewhere, and I believe Dr. Branden said something similar at the Vancouver? summer seminar). That would exclude such actions as helping those one will never trade with or helping a plant or person grow as part of benevolence. This post is not the place to give a precise definition (I discussed it a bit in my TOC talk on benevolence). Instead, to focus on what is lacking, and what is immoral in this person: it is that he is "anti-life" in a very profound way, lacking benevolence in the deepest way possible. A healthy person who values his own life, and values his own growth and success and would experience revulsion and the desire to act to prevent his own death, or stagnation, or decay cannot help but value life, growth, and success and want to act (within his power and context) to prevent death, disaster, destruction, etc. more generally. To standy and watch painful death of an innocent in this example, when you could non-sacrificially stop it is, as in the case of not dialing 911 in the Kitty Genovese case, is an act of profound immorality, of deadness inside. You can't be a moral person if you are dead inside. How could that be overlooked in an assessment of your state? How could you have any -other- kinds of values if you don't value life itself? There is a story we learned in middle school, "the man without a country" about another kind of man impervious to values. To apply to this person, it would have to be retitled "the man without a soul." I think I probably will have more to say on this (even though this is an extremely unpleasant thing to think about...like thinking about necrophilia), but this is the pattern of the answer. INDIFFERENCE TO EVERY OTHER LIVING THING IS NOT A FORM OF EGOISM. --Philip Coates

Alas, John, if you even thought to do some research or investigation on the subject beyond schoolboy consultations of the blind leading the blind nature, you were more advanced than I was at 17..or 18..or, well, let's just stop there before I embarrass myself.

Jesus, John, you had sophisticated insight into sexual and romantic relationships at that age! At 17 I still wasn't even quite sure what organ went in which orifice :-) --Phil

Roger, I'm going to have to do this quickly and not address every issue, but basically Binswanger is grotesquely wrong on a number of issues regarding the right to immigrate, borders, and terrorism. (I'm assuming there weren't any other pieces to his arguments than the ones you've reported.) 1. You can't do away with all threats of terrorists coming across the borders by "scaring the Islamofascists". First of all, you can scare governments like Iran, but not individuals or small cells. And there are dozens of terrorist groups, it's no longer all Al Qaeda. Harry should read a magazine or a book or follow the news and educate himself regarding basic facts about terrorism instead of constructing the rationalistic fallacy that a "cowboy" would make them all magically disappers. Nor would any such results be instant (let alone universal)...so, yippee, open the borders and dismantle Homeland Security. 2. As far as it being impossible to seal the borders, the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. Platonic perfection is not the standard. You patrol the streets in a city or hunt for terrorists to reduce crime or lessen the threat, not to eliminate it 100%. 3. A major reason for not allowing unlimited immigration is that we are not a free society and immigrants from collectivist societies who have not shaken off the "welfare state/regulatory state/legislate morality" ideas...which almost all still retain, once they acquire the vote, whether it be in five or ten years, can vote to abrogate your rights and further shred the Constitution. There is no right to admit people who choose to seize your money and property and freedom once they come here. As long as the system allows people to come here and point a gun at you via "democracy", an Objectivist must be against unlimited immigration. [in fact the most recent immigrant groups *overwhelmingly* vote on the side of expanding government services, interventionism, social interventionism, state support of religion, anti-abortion, pro-drug laws, and a generally paternalistic state.] Here's a thought experiment: Suppose there is unlimited immigration for twenty years. The population of the United States doubles in that period. (That's conservative. Remember that -everyone- wants to come to America.) The new voters never grew up in schools that taught them about the Bill of Rights and the virtues of capitalism and inalienable rights. They vote to repeal the Constitution (not outright of course) and shred the Bill of Rights, an alien document unlike anything they had in their country of origin. So would Harry Binswanger just say, well too bad it turned out that way, but I didn't want to violate the rights of the immigrants, so too bad they shifted the delicate balance and voted overwhelmingly for the most socialistic Democrats and voted our freedoms out of existence? "Well, maybe the last, best hope of freedom for the human race is gone, but at least we didn't impede their freedom to travel and our economy is a little stronger."

I'll settle for either like, love, or unreserved hero worship.

Kat, that is a really great sign...and I love the graphic design.