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Posted

Good one, Michael.

ARCHN is narrow focus of course, but Barnes is fiendish smart and such an entertaining writer, and occasionally there are illuminating points brought up.

I see that Rand's booksales are again mentioned...now up to half a million a year according to Anon! Are they distributing to the kindergartens now?

I know that she is sold and read "independently", but is there any way these days to distinguish those numbers from the copies that are purchased and donated to schools etc. by ARI and other groups?

Posted

Carol,

Rand's book sales are actually about that high. And I don't believe it's from donations of books by ARI to schools.

If you really want to know and don't mind jumping through the hoops, you can get the procedure to consult the Ingram Warehouse stats here.

The post in that link is from 2006. I imagine the procedure is still the same, but I'm not sure.

Michael

Posted

I've been thinking lately that the devoutly religious people I've known in my life, mostly Christians, have been way more rational and way less religiously zealous than the new generation of Objectivists over at OO. The OO brats are much more difficult to reason with, much less open to reality.

J

Posted

I've been thinking lately that the devoutly religious people I've known in my life, mostly Christians, have been way more rational and way less religiously zealous than the new generation of Objectivists over at OO. The OO brats are much more difficult to reason with, much less open to reality.

J

I think the same.

The comment strikes a particularly painful, poignant feeling for me at the moment, because just on Friday (10/11) I learned of the death of a person who's been a beloved classical music radio announcer for 35 years on a station emanating from the Catholic Archdiocese seminary. I wouldn't be surprised if a million people cried on hearing the news of Ivor Hugh's death. Heartfelt tears for the passing of one of the kindest, most loving, most beneficent humans a person could hope to meet. (Ivor died several weeks ago, but I didn't learn of his death until Friday.)

He was a devout Catholic.

I know many other sincere believers in Christianity whom I would choose any day as neighbors over many self-professed Objectivists I see posting on-line. Indeed, some of those sincere believers in Christianity are neighbors. (I live in an area which is about 90% middle-class blacks of Caribbean Islands descent.)

I'm sad to see that Objectivist characteristics don't seem to have improved in the younger generations. Since Rand has been dead for more than 30 years, it can't be her personal charisma which is still producing the problems.

Ellen

Posted

Ellen, I know what you speak of. I remember the day that the comic actor John Candy's death became known. He grew up here, and retained his neighbourhood ties very closely. Everyone knew someone who of his great generous love of his family and community. His talent was known to the world, but our tears here were very personal. His funeral was broadcast on national television ... incidentally, he was a devout Catholic.

Posted

http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=24954&page=6#entry309805

If you look back a few pages I think you'll see what I think probably deserved censorship. Granted, it was directed at some Christian wacko who was going off about how the dark ages weren't all that bad but still, I wasn't being exactly rational or coherent either.

And that's really wierd, Johnathan; especially since you're clearly right.

If artistic value was based in ethics as such then Rand's explicit praise of Victor Hugo would be wildly inconsistent- especially since she chose to include it in the Romantic Manifesto.

Anyway. When did this happen? Because I've actually had several debates with that guy about IP rights and, while I don't think he was completely willing to follow things to their logical conclusion, I was saying outright that Rand was wrong (in that specific instance) and he didn't censor me.

Maybe O.O wasn't always what I know it as, today?

Posted

Hey! I'M one of those O.O brats! :-P

Some of the people there need to stop and grasp the contextuality of knowledge. I was lucky; shortly after that little outburst I linked to one of the moderators started asking me about epistemology and really got me thinking about it.

And honestly, these fanatical tendencies you're referring to aren't caused by Rand or Objectivism; it's just kids like me who were raised Christian (intrinsicist), discovered Rand and started running around preaching Rational Selfishness while still carrying that mystic baggage.

There's a very simple solution: put more emphasis on context and objectivity, because those are what they still drop every now and then. Hell; I still do it sometimes, too.

But even aside from that I'd still take one of those O.O brats over a Christian, any day of the week- at least they're trying to be more rational.

Those Christians want to get to their after-life, and you can't pretend this doesn't affect their derivative values.

Posted

I think it's just that being the voice of reason is exciting; reexamining your oldest premises is hard and boring. So people tend to find Rand and take her word as the "gospel truth", just like they were taught to as children; it's a fairly common automated response.

And when Objectivist conclusions get thrown on top of garbage premises, without any real integration, well. . . You end up with people calling homosexuality immoral, essentially "because Rand said so".

Posted

They have other defenses. Name-calling, disappearing from discussions, accusing me of being dishonest and therefore of suddenly being unworthy of their time, etc. Oh, and keeping me on moderation and sometimes only letting my posts go through after the thread has disappeared from the recent posts page, thus trying to leave the impression that my opponents had a resounding last word to which I couldn't muster a reply. Most of the members aren't fooled by that tactic, though. Mostly just Nicky.

J

This is standard operating procedure for OO. A few years ago, someone posted a thoughtful critique of "The Objectivist Ethics," showing that in theory one could carefully pursue one's rational self-interest and still commit theft and even murder. The resulting debate went on for many days until one of the moderators shut it down. The original poster was never heard from again--no doubt banished for life. Shortly thereafter, a new thread was started, this time with only hard shell Objectivists contributing, all in perfect accord that respect for the rights of others must follow logically and invariably from rational egoism.

Then there was another thread in which someone had argued with some cogency that intellectual property rights should not be treated differently from rights in physical property. In other words, that patents and copyrights should come without an expiration date. The best response anyone could offer was that the original poster was defending a form of theft, as the patent holder would be monopolizing something he had no right to. There was no real effort to provide a rationale for the legal distinction between intellectual and physical property.

This thread disappeared entirely. Apparently for want of a good comeback, the moderators decided the challenge to Rand's position on IP should not exist on the web at all.

Posted
This is standard operating procedure for OO. A few years ago, someone posted a thoughtful critique of "The Objectivist Ethics," showing that in theory one could carefully pursue one's rational self-interest and still commit theft and even murder.

It was not a thoughtful critique of "The Objectivist Ethics" if it included theft and murder.

Shortly thereafter, a new thread was started, this time with only hard shell Objectivists contributing, all in perfect accord that respect for the rights of others must follow logically and invariably from rational egoism.

Respect for the rights of others is part of Ayn Rand's version of rational egoism.

Posted
This is standard operating procedure for OO. A few years ago, someone posted a thoughtful critique of "The Objectivist Ethics," showing that in theory one could carefully pursue one's rational self-interest and still commit theft and even murder.

It was not a thoughtful critique of "The Objectivist Ethics" if it included theft and murder.

Shortly thereafter, a new thread was started, this time with only hard shell Objectivists contributing, all in perfect accord that respect for the rights of others must follow logically and invariably from rational egoism.

Respect for the rights of others is part of Ayn Rand's version of rational egoism.

As I recall the criticism of "The Objectivist Ethics" centered on this paragraph:

The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals. But just as animals would not be able to survive by attempting the method of plants, by rejecting locomotion and waiting for the soil to feed them—so men cannot survive by attempting the method of animals, by rejecting reason and counting on productive men to serve as their prey. Such looters may achieve their goals for the range of a moment, at the price of destruction: the destruction of their victims and their own. As evidence, I offer you any criminal or any dictatorship.

The author of the OO post pointed out that there are men who do in fact survive by preying on other, more productive men--and a number of such men do so successfully, not "for the range of a moment" but rather over the course of a lifetime. In our own mixed economy, one does not have to look far for examples.

Rand says the proof of her theory that "the price of destruction [is] the destruction of their victims and their own" can be found in "any criminal or any dictatorship." But there are bookshelves full of accounts of men who pulled off crimes and were never brought to justice. Similarly, history provides us with long lines of dictators who were never destroyed in any meaningful sense of the word.

Posted

And that's an accurate observation; one can continue to postpone death by all sorts of coercive means.

The quote provided does seem a bit of an exaggeration, in that regard. But Objectivist Ethics isn't about simply avoiding death.

I don't think that murder is very conducive to love of one's own life. Theft is debatable there, precisely because a thief recognizes objective value (failure to think actions through, I think) but armed robbery, as in a dictatorship, is much closer to murder than actual theft.

Posted

And that's an accurate observation; one can continue to postpone death by all sorts of coercive means.

The quote provided does seem a bit of an exaggeration, in that regard. But Objectivist Ethics isn't about simply avoiding death.

I don't think that murder is very conducive to love of one's own life. Theft is debatable there, precisely because a thief recognizes objective value (failure to think actions through, I think) but armed robbery, as in a dictatorship, is much closer to murder than actual theft.

This is where we reach the "is-ought" gap in Rand's thinking. If it were literally true that "the price of destruction [is] the destruction of their victims and their own," then Rand's argument would be simple and straightforward.

However, since the world abounds in instances of successful human parasites with disgustingly long lifespans, Rand and the Objectivists must resort to the "qua man" hat trick. It goes something like this: since reason is man's necessary means to survival, man's goal in life must be to live as a rational being.

The problem is that the second part of the proposition does not follow from the first. The fact that you need a boat or an airplane to get from London to New York does not imply that the goal of your journey is to be on a boat or an airplane.

Nor does it follow that that those who prey on others are acting without reason. Any serious study of modern government will show that the system by which wealth is regularly transferred from from the productive class to the non-productive class is quite ingenious. It is not a system invented by an animal.

Posted

However, since the world abounds in instances of successful human parasites with disgustingly long lifespans, Rand and the Objectivists must resort to the "qua man" hat trick. It goes something like this: since reason is man's necessary means to survival, man's goal in life must be to live as a rational being.

It's worse than that. Since "reason" is man's essential characteristic, and the exercise of reason is volitional, you aren't, properly speaking, "man" (or she sometimes says "human") if you don't activate reason.

"...to be human is an act of choice." - Galt's Speech

"The Objectivist Ethics"

[bold emphasis added]

Man cannot survive as anything but man. He can abandon his means of survival, his mind, he can turn his life into a brief span of agony - just as his body can exist for a while in the process of disintegration by disease. But he cannot succeed, as a subhuman, in achieving anything but the subhuman - as the ugly horror of the anti-rational periods of mankind's history can demonstrate. Man has to be man by choice - and it is the task of ethics to teach him how to live like a man.

Ellen

Posted (edited)

The idea is not to be a victim of parasites. One way is to use your brain to avoid it as much as you can. Recognize that for most people there is a ratio between productivity and parasitism within, a product of the mixed economy, philosophy, ethics, the general cultural milieu. Publicly Ayn Rand was as pure as the driven snow. Privately . . . . In her the world of art--her art--was dominant, to the point of purblind delusion. Consider how she blew up at people who would say otherwise, as she did at her attorney (Pincus?) who told her everybody did [had done] wrong, regretful things, even she.

If you want true Objectivism you need to take the philosophy of Ayn Rand to a refinery and refine her out for separate consideration by using reason.

--Brant

nothing wrong with holding on to Ayn Rand, just not too much Ayn Rand--Ayn Rand in her proper place, both within and existentially

Edited by Brant Gaede
Posted

The idea is not to be a victim of parasites. One way is to use your brain to avoid it as much as you can. Recognize that for most people there is a ratio between productivity and parasitism within, a product of the mixed economy, philosophy, ethics, the general cultural milieu. Publicly Ayn Rand was as pure as the driven snow. Privately . . . . In her the world of art--her art--was dominant, to the point of purblind delusion. Consider how she blew up at people who would say otherwise, as she did at her attorney (Pincus?) who told her everybody did wrong, regretful things, even she.

If you want true Objectivism you need to take the philosophy of Ayn Rand to a refinery and refine her out for separate consideration by using reason.

--Brant

nothing wrong with holding on to Ayn Rand, just not too much Ayn Rand--Ayn Rand in her proper place, both within and existentially

Unfortunately Rand became a Den Mother for some rather strange people.

Posted

The idea is not to be a victim of parasites. One way is to use your brain to avoid it as much as you can. Recognize that for most people there is a ratio between productivity and parasitism within, a product of the mixed economy, philosophy, ethics, the general cultural milieu. Publicly Ayn Rand was as pure as the driven snow. Privately . . . . In her the world of art--her art--was dominant, to the point of purblind delusion. Consider how she blew up at people who would say otherwise, as she did at her attorney (Pincus?) who told her everybody did wrong, regretful things, even she.

If you want true Objectivism you need to take the philosophy of Ayn Rand to a refinery and refine her out for separate consideration by using reason.

--Brant

nothing wrong with holding on to Ayn Rand, just not too much Ayn Rand--Ayn Rand in her proper place, both within and existentially

Unfortunately Rand became a Den Mother for some rather strange people.

The problem with Objectivism is the complete lack of true critical thinking aside from what went into it to make it Objectivism originally. Here is Objectivism: teach, teach, teach--learn, learn, learn. Test, test, test (optional). It had to be done that way for the financial and psychic rewards of teaching it. It was the only model that made NBI possible--the Galt's Speech model. It's hard to blame the brilliant and young Nathaniel Branden for taking and running with it. In his entire relationship with Ayn Rand, he was in over his head and really didn't know it as he was too busy being the entrepreneur of Objectivism while each kept feeding the other complements. That's why he said The Break was one of the best things that had ever happened to him as it blew him out of that situation. Unfortunately, he lost most of his moral voice. Fortunately that was not incongruent with the way he came then to do psycho-therapy, for moralism is psycho-therapeutic poison. Being a moralist was statedly Ayn Rand's moral biggie--the ability to pass moral judgments. Without that she considered herself to be nothing. Another right and wrong situation where the right becomes wrong by being over-done.

--Brant

Posted

And that's an accurate observation; one can continue to postpone death by all sorts of coercive means.

The quote provided does seem a bit of an exaggeration, in that regard. But Objectivist Ethics isn't about simply avoiding death.

I don't think that murder is very conducive to love of one's own life. Theft is debatable there, precisely because a thief recognizes objective value (failure to think actions through, I think) but armed robbery, as in a dictatorship, is much closer to murder than actual theft.

This is where we reach the "is-ought" gap in Rand's thinking. If it were literally true that "the price of destruction [is] the destruction of their victims and their own," then Rand's argument would be simple and straightforward.

However, since the world abounds in instances of successful human parasites with disgustingly long lifespans, Rand and the Objectivists must resort to the "qua man" hat trick. It goes something like this: since reason is man's necessary means to survival, man's goal in life must be to live as a rational being.

The problem is that the second part of the proposition does not follow from the first. The fact that you need a boat or an airplane to get from London to New York does not imply that the goal of your journey is to be on a boat or an airplane.

Nor does it follow that that those who prey on others are acting without reason. Any serious study of modern government will show that the system by which wealth is regularly transferred from from the productive class to the non-productive class is quite ingenious. It is not a system invented by an animal.

Going from memory 25 years removed here, but I am reminded by your post of Eric Mack's Objectivist golfer, i.e., the guy who makes a ton of money on a stock tip or some such, and then spends the rest of his days golfing. The goal of his life becomes golf, more or less, and because he is wealthy, it is by no means a necessity that he use his reason. If I recall, Mack also thought there was some slight of hand in the use of man qua man mantra under the circumstances.

Posted
Nor does it follow that that those who prey on others are acting without reason. Any serious study of modern government will show that the system by which wealth is regularly transferred from from the productive class to the non-productive class is quite ingenious. It is not a system invented by an animal.

Excellent observation.

Having been inside NY City government and high-up in the structure, I was astounded how ingenious it is.

Robert Caro, The Power Broker is a textbook on politics.

Posted

However, since the world abounds in instances of successful human parasites with disgustingly long lifespans, Rand and the Objectivists must resort to the "qua man" hat trick. It goes something like this: since reason is man's necessary means to survival, man's goal in life must be to live as a rational being.

It's worse than that. Since "reason" is man's essential characteristic, and the exercise of reason is volitional, you aren't, properly speaking, "man" (or she sometimes says "human") if you don't activate reason.

"...to be human is an act of choice." - Galt's Speech

"The Objectivist Ethics"

[bold emphasis added]

Man cannot survive as anything but man. He can abandon his means of survival, his mind, he can turn his life into a brief span of agony - just as his body can exist for a while in the process of disintegration by disease. But he cannot succeed, as a subhuman, in achieving anything but the subhuman - as the ugly horror of the anti-rational periods of mankind's history can demonstrate. Man has to be man by choice - and it is the task of ethics to teach him how to live like a man.

Ellen

Precisely Ellen.

Additionally, using his "male" syntax and semantic, Morlist was making the same points.

Becoming a fully rational human is a choice,

A...

Posted

http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=24954&page=6#entry309805

If you look back a few pages I think you'll see what I think probably deserved censorship. Granted, it was directed at some Christian wacko who was going off about how the dark ages weren't all that bad but still, I wasn't being exactly rational or coherent either.

Yup, as I said, you were on the "right side" of the issue and were attacking someone that the moderators enjoyed seeing attacked, therefore you were free to ignore the site's rules, at least probably until the moderators started getting enough complaints about the double standard that was being used.

Try using the same tone while being critical of any specific example of Rand's irrationality or Objectivism's contradictions.

Anyway. When did this happen? Because I've actually had several debates with that guy about IP rights and, while I don't think he was completely willing to follow things to their logical conclusion, I was saying outright that Rand was wrong (in that specific instance) and he didn't censor me.

August of 2012. But, yeah, Louie is actually one of the least frantic and intrusive of the moderators. The thread that I linked to contained other examples of other moderators' ridiculous behavior.

Maybe O.O wasn't always what I know it as, today?

OO has improved in many ways, but there's also a lot that goes on behind the scenes. Certain members of the moderating team are pretty abusive in their treatment of members, I think primarily because they take punitive actions privately and assume that no one will ever find out how abusive they're being. Anonymity also plays a role. Have you noticed how many moderators haven't used their real names or their full names, and how many use pseudonyms? More of them have publicly identified themselves lately, but the attitude lingers of not having the guts to come out of hiding and stand behind their words and deeds.

J

Posted

Unfortunately Rand became a Den Mother for some rather strange people.

Second time (that I've noticed) that you've described Rand's "Den" as composed of "strange people."

Will you please name who you think was "strange" in the Den?

I'll re-list the members:

Nathaniel Branden

Barbara Branden

Leonard Peikoff, philosophy student

Allan Blumenthal, psychiatrist

Joan Mitchell Blumenthal, painter

Alan Greenspan, financial whiz

Elayne Kalberman, hospital nurse

Harry Kalberman, stock broker

Mary Ann Rukavina, art history student

Which are the ones you consider "strange people"?

Ellen

Posted

I've been thinking lately that the devoutly religious people I've known in my life, mostly Christians, have been way more rational and way less religiously zealous than the new generation of Objectivists over at OO. The OO brats are much more difficult to reason with, much less open to reality.

J

I think the same.

The comment strikes a particularly painful, poignant feeling for me at the moment, because just on Friday (10/11) I learned of the death of a person who's been a beloved classical music radio announcer for 35 years on a station emanating from the Catholic Archdiocese seminary. I wouldn't be surprised if a million people cried on hearing the news of Ivor Hugh's death. Heartfelt tears for the passing of one of the kindest, most loving, most beneficent humans a person could hope to meet. (Ivor died several weeks ago, but I didn't learn of his death until Friday.)

I'm sorry to hear that. I didn't know of him, but I'm sorry that you've lost someone who was dear to you.

J

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