Harriman/ARI and/or Peikoff rift?

[Brant Gaede]

Like I say in my profile, "All science is an expression of philosophy, but not all expressions of philosophy are science."

Something like that.

--Brant

[Peter]

Imagine Ed Sullivan saying, “The really big rift.” The original rift could be when anarchists were “dis-associated” but the really big rift was actually not philosophic and began with the Branden’s. Speaking of that rift . . . it will soon be 50 years, and it is continuing on with young Amy Peikoff and people like “software nerd” on OO. How strange.

Talking about the healing of the rift is soothing. And derisively discussing the “shunners” like Leonard creates a vengeful feeling of “good riddance,” so absolutely no good is coming from the rift.

"Peanuts" was BB’s favorite comic strip. Here is a psychiatric exercise that could come from the character Lucy. Draw an X on a piece of paper. Write “important” at the end of one line and “not important” on the opposite end. At the end of the other line write “urgent” and on the opposite end write “not urgent.” Then start placing dilemmas in your life in the boxes that most correctly identify your concerns.

“Important urgent” will be completed without any darn ex’s. “Not urgent not important” should be routinely dismissed. “Urgent not important” might be the old lady who just banged into your shopping cart. Be polite and then forget about it.

So, into what box do you place the end of Pseudo-Objectivist Authoritarian rule? Pay the closest attention to the box “important not urgent” because that is the box within which Charley Brown will procrastinate, so don’t do that. Support the people who are the best at healing the rift. That will be two cents.

[Ellen Stuttle]

If you want some more from Biddy Bob (Kat's affectionate name for Robert), he did a second installment.

[....]

Interesting stuff in Biddy Bob's references to what Ayn Rand herself said about an organized movement, and the way Leonard weaseled in on that particular issue.

Yes, but. There's the other side of it, Rand's own providing what Tracinski calls "the template" for the top-down, hierarchical model.

Tracinski is negative against the role of Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, and his remarks are likely to occasion hot-button responses from people on this list.

However, I think he does have a point in a comment which was quoted by Rick Wilmes on the Judd Weiss thread (be warned; Wilmes is a big fan of PARC).

link

[bold emphasis added]

[...] the following from Robert Tracinski.

"So why do I say Ayn Rand has some responsibility for the Branden fiasco back in 1968? You can interpret that history as Tom does, that Ayn Rand was drawing exactly the right conclusions given the evidence at hand, but that she was deceived. But from what I can tell--and again, this is about events I didn't observe first-hand--there were warning signs she missed. I have in mind particularly the way that Branden built the movement in concentric circles of intellectual authority emanating outward from Ayn Rand, with him as the gatekeeper for those who wanted access to her authority. It has, unfortunately, been the template for the movement ever since.

[....]

I'm reminded of something I said in my long-ago projected outline for The Woman Who Became God (quoting from memory):

"Knowledge flows from the font, and it's a one-way street."

EDIT: I looked it up. What I wrote in the outline was:

"[....] For the Objectivist, life is perpetual studenthood, and knowledge flows straight from the font, it never goes the other direction." - link

There was an item, I think by Rand in "The Objectivist Newsletter," pertaining to how one can help with the spread of Objectivism.

(from memory) "It's our [Rand's and designated associates') job to say what Objectivism is; it's your job to tell people that it is."

I could sympathize with Rand's desire to maintain "brand purity," what with her being in the process of enunciating her views, in the face of the misrepresentations rife in unfriendly commentary about her views.

However, the attitude as to how philosophic investigation is done was bad and produced an authoritarian atmosphere - students were there to learn, not to speak.

Ellen

PS: I don't know where the remark I quoted above from Tracinski was posted. Second time someone posting on the Judd Weiss thread has referred to an active Tracinski thread but not provided a link.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Ellen Stuttle

[Ellen Stuttle]

A word of censure against Harriman and Kelley (if the latter was complicit) in arranging to hook up at the memorial service for Barbara. Really uncouth, imo.

When I first heard about Harriman's being photographed at the gathering, I thought, dumb, dumb of him to go there to meet Kelley, didn't he realize that someone might recognize him? I thought that the photo was one of him inadvertently caught in the frame of a candid wide-focus shot of attendees. Instead, the photo is obviously posed. There isn't, however, anything to identify the place except his and the photographer's say-so. From Harriman's own casual identification of the place, and reason for his being there, I have to think that he wanted it known that he was there, and why he was there.

I find his using the occasion of a memorial service for Barbara as a place to "make a statement" yucky, lacking in manners and taste.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

The way to make ________ "vanish" from the Objectivist "scene" is to stop talking and writing about him.

So by analogy, the way to get Michael Mann and others to "vanish" from the climatology "scene" is to stop talking and writing about them. Yeah, sure, lots of luck.

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

The way to make ________ "vanish" from the Objectivist "scene" is to stop talking and writing about him.

So by analogy, the way to get Michael Mann and others to "vanish" from the climatology "scene" is to stop talking and writing about them. Yeah, sure, lots of luck.

The two scenes are quite different. One concerns only one man, Mr. Harriman, who seems to have riven himself out of one context and into--what? "Climatology" is up to the scientists and the quality of the science reflects the quality of the scientists.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

If you are talking about public opinion, you don't have to worry about Michael Mann.

You have to defeat Avatar and Noah.

Michael

[william.scherk]

I am an AGWer, I suppose. To list out results which would disprove 'their theories' it's necessary to examine the building blocks of what we might call CO2-warming theory. From my reading over the years and especially reading of The Discovery of Global Warming by Weart, there have been many steps and lines of inquiry converging on the modern consensus.

What do you mean by "the modern consensus"? Do you mean that a consensus of all scientists agree that global warming is primarily caused by man's activities, or do you mean that a consensus of a relatively small group of scientists who were selected to attend certain conferences agree that it is likely that man's activities have contributed to one degree or another to global warming? Or do you mean something else?

'The modern consensus' is shorthand. Even shorter would be 'AGW is happening' ... but implied is 'scientific' agreement.

Individual achievements are many but seldom noted: here's a timeline from Weart's online version of the book. I recommend the book highly. Results or findings contrary to a modern AGW theory would then be expected at any stage along the timeline, from Tyndal to Arrhenius to Revelle to Keeling and to more recent panoptic science.

I just quickly reviewed the timeline, and I see that it notes findings during certain years that have been contrary to AGW theories, but it dismisses them as anomalies or enigmas rather than as disproof of the theories. It seems that when confronted with findings which don't support AGW theories' predictions, the idea is to not abandon the theory, but to move the goal posts and concoct an explanation for the "anomaly" that is more conjecture than science.

Also, I'll have to dig a little deeper before saying for certain, but the timeline appears that it might be selective in what it contains and what it leaves out, and it appears to possibly contain some anachronistic airbrushing of errors and terms used at different times.

The timeline is good for jumping off into the associated material at Weart's website. For me, it is the early workers that stand out. Before I read into the work of the guys named above, I didn't really know how the concept we now know as AGW emerged in such detail, step by step or block by block.

For example, several lines of evidence converge to separately support that atmospheric CO2 is vital to Earth's relative warmth, and those lines were supported by more fundamental findings on exact mechanisms. Each component that has withstood falsification contributed to the understanding of long-term climate characteristics and changes. For this AGWer, a demonstration that CO2 does not act as advertised in the consensus, does not contribute to a 'greenhouse' effect, does not have a relationship with Earth's long-term temperature swings, that would tend to make me question the fundamentals.

Specifically which "consensus" are you referring to?

This Scientific American blog-post wryly explicates: About that consensus on global warming: 9136 agree, 1 disagrees.

I am inclined to save this Harriman/Peikoff thread from drowning due to AGW; there are a couple of global warming-ish threads already. I'll add this to "Scientific Fraud becoming endemic?" and elaborate my short answers here over there.

After a cycle in the warm spring sun.

[Jonathan]

After a cycle in the warm spring sun.

I could use some AGW, Billy. We've got another snow storm headed our way today. Fuck, I'm sick of winter!

J

Btw, I did reply to your above comments on the other thread.

[Ellen Stuttle]

I am inclined to save this Harriman/Peikoff thread from drowning due to AGW; there are a couple of global warming-ish threads already. I'll add this to "Scientific Fraud becoming endemic?" and elaborate my short answers here over there.

Thank you.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen,

If you are talking about public opinion, you don't have to worry about Michael Mann.

You have to defeat Avatar and Noah.

Michael

I wasn't talking about public opinion, but I disagree that one wouldn't have to worry about Michael Mann in regard to public opinion.

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

Average people who vote know about Michael Mann and what he writes?

That's news to me.

I wouldn't say that about the elites, but the elites are a very small minority at voting time. I would agree that Mann influences the propaganda and culture machines--and not even them so much, instead the people who fund them. But that's two to three times removed. I was talking about direct influence.

Michael

EDIT: Before we get into a tangle of who's right and who's wrong, the perspective framing my comments comes from The Curse of Knowledge. (See here and here for quick and better explanations than Wikipedia.) I see science-oriented people suffer with this constantly and get bewildered and hostile when they perceive their message did not get across. Then they start yelling at each other, but that's another issue.

[Ellen Stuttle]

The way to make ________ "vanish" from the Objectivist "scene" is to stop talking and writing about him.

So by analogy, the way to get Michael Mann and others to "vanish" from the climatology "scene" is to stop talking and writing about them. Yeah, sure, lots of luck.

The two scenes are quite different. One concerns only one man, Mr. Harriman, who seems to have riven himself out of one context and into--what? "Climatology" is up to the scientists and the quality of the science reflects the quality of the scientists.

--Brant

No, the two scenes are not quite different.

Brant, just because you have never been interested in issues of Objectivism vis-à-vis science - or in epistemology more generally - doesn't mean that no one else has been interested. Rand herself was interested and was desirous of pinning a case on Kant as the origin of ruination in science. Peikoff was interested and was looking for the right physicist to help provide a case at least as far back as 1969 (my husband might have been the first candidate Peikoff considered as a possibility, in 1969, though there might have been others before). Many candidates later, Harriman was the golden boy who helped Peikoff with the job Peikoff wanted done, and more, with providing a supposed demonstration from the history of science supporting Peikoff's "Objectivist" theory of induction.

I've seen things by more than a few Objectivists who aren't connected with ARI but who believe that Peikoff/Harriman have done the job as advertised, with maybe some minor blips.

The sound of what's going on is that Kelley might be one of those Objectivists and that Harriman might end up connected with TAS. I consider this prospect undesirable in the same way, on a lesser scale, as the infection of the scientific enterprise by dishonorable scientists.

And long-range, unlike you, I consider issues of Objectivism vis-à-vis science important to the future of rational thought.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen,

Average people who vote know about Michael Mann and what he writes?

That's news to me.

I've gotten into conversations with sales clerks, restaurant staff, folks buying their lottery tickets at convenience stores, yard maintenance people, oil delivery people, car maintenance people, farmers...who recognize Michael Mann's name and his connection with the hockey-stick model.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

Ellen,

Average people who vote know about Michael Mann and what he writes?

That's news to me.

I've gotten into conversations with sales clerks, restaurant staff, folks buying their lottery tickets at convenience stores, yard maintenance people, oil delivery people, car maintenance people, farmers...who recognize Michael Mann's name and his connection with the hockey-stick model.

Ellen

In my personal experience, it's about 50/50: half recognize him as the hockey-stick guy, and half think that I'm talking about the guy who produced Miami Vice.

J

[Jonathan]

The sound of what's going on is that Kelley might be one of those Objectivists and that Harriman might end up connected with TAS. I consider this prospect undesirable in the same way, on a lesser scale, as the infection of the scientific enterprise by dishonorable scientists.

If there's a bright side to Harriman's possibly hooking up with TAS, it would be that he might be more likely to face criticism. I'd think that Q&As at TAS events would include questions from people who aren't under the ARI spell or easily intimidated by denunciations/tantrums/etc. It might be fun to see how he deals with living outside of the cloistered walls of Peikoff's safe little monastery. Plus, now that Harriman is probably seen as the new Evul Public Enemy Number One, Peikoff's followers might also join in challenging some of his views, at least until they're warned off about which of his views cannot be attacked because they're actually Peikoof's.

J

[Brant Gaede]

The way to make ________ "vanish" from the Objectivist "scene" is to stop talking and writing about him.

So by analogy, the way to get Michael Mann and others to "vanish" from the climatology "scene" is to stop talking and writing about them. Yeah, sure, lots of luck.

The two scenes are quite different. One concerns only one man, Mr. Harriman, who seems to have riven himself out of one context and into--what? "Climatology" is up to the scientists and the quality of the science reflects the quality of the scientists.

--Brant

No, the two scenes are not quite different.

Brant, just because you have never been interested in issues of Objectivism vis-à-vis science - or in epistemology more generally - doesn't mean that no one else has been interested. Rand herself was interested and was desirous of pinning a case on Kant as the origin of ruination in science. Peikoff was interested and was looking for the right physicist to help provide a case at least as far back as 1969 (my husband might have been the first candidate Peikoff considered as a possibility, in 1969, though there might have been others before). Many candidates later, Harriman was the golden boy who helped Peikoff with the job Peikoff wanted done, and more, with providing a supposed demonstration from the history of science supporting Peikoff's "Objectivist" theory of induction.

I've seen things by more than a few Objectivists who aren't connected with ARI but who believe that Peikoff/Harriman have done the job as advertised, with maybe some minor blips.

The sound of what's going on is that Kelley might be one of those Objectivists and that Harriman might end up connected with TAS. I consider this prospect undesirable in the same way, on a lesser scale, as the infection of the scientific enterprise by dishonorable scientists.

And long-range, unlike you, I consider issues of Objectivism vis-à-vis science important to the future of rational thought.

Ellen

I don't understand the case for "ruination in science." Good science produces good technology--technology that works. Bad science, aside from sincere mediocrities who might produce it, has a lot to do with morality--if not politics--or lack of integrity. Technology is transforming societies on an accelerating pace.

All I can see is emphasizing integrity in Objectivist ethics and sticking science on top of that instead of mere epistemological issues. So instead of thinking reality + reason + science I'll now go with reality + reason + integrity (in ethics) + science as an integrated whole.

Improved thinking or discoveries to same that better inform scientific methodology--go right ahead. What are they? The light of pure philosophical reasoning (unique to Objectivism?) leading to scientific discoveries? It's easier to posit supposed irrationality leading to advances in science, as in creativity, with the rationality applied afterwards seeking and reseeking verification.

I don't claim to have yet gotten my brain around what you are after.

--Brant

this is more than pin the tail on Kant so how does Pekoff's induction help science--or does it?

does Objectivism have a Holy Grail?

[Brant Gaede]

Maybe the key to problems in and about Ayn Rand's philosophy is she called it a name.

--Brant

defend the name, not the ideas!

tell 'em that it is, not what it is!

[Ellen Stuttle]

I don't claim to have yet gotten my brain around what you are after.

--Brant

this is more than pin the tail on Kant so how does Pekoff's induction help science--or does it?

does Objectivism have a Holy Grail?

I don't understand your post, or why you would ask me if I think Peikoff's induction helps science. No. I think "Peikoff's induction" is a most unfortunately timed botched effort.

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

Ellen,

Okay. Then Objectivism is now seemingly at a dead end concerning issues "important to the future of rational thought" and Peikoff and Harriman are obscuring this preventing others from proceding to improve the philosophy and/or science? If it's science, why is this an issue for a philosophy per se--or is it? After all, shouldn't science already encompass realitry, reason and ethical behavior (qua science)? If the issue is purely epistemological then we are talking as much about scientific methodology as anything else including Objectivism, so it would seem this is more important to the future of Objectivism than rational thought. After all, we can deal with rational thought and leave science completely out of the whole question of what we are talking about leaving science to applaud and absorb such improvements as are found.

If all this is besides your point then it seems to me we are tallking about taking rationality and injecting more of it into the culture, not improving rationality as such, only making people more rational. Now we are up against the fact that biologically most people don't have to be particularly rational to survive and to even to some extent thrive. There are 7 billion people on the planet mostly doing tribal group think. Howard Roark need not appear, but if he does it is he who won't survive unless he hides. He surely won't thrive in most places. What can we say about Ayn Rand? Only in America. (Imagine she had immigrated to Great Britain--the novels she would have written if she had written. I sure can't; it doesn't compute.)

It is America--the living idea of America--that is the future of rational thought. If Peikoff and Harriman are in the way it's because they are irrationally(?) preventing the promulgation of Objectivism with their induction ideas implicitly attacking rationality for those ideas are irrational(?) and thus damage the philosophy as a vessel carrying rationality into the culture allowing science to continue to be corrupted by its resident corruptors(?).

But it is Ayn Rand herself who is responsible for the practical irrationality of an essentially rational philosophy she labelled "Objectivism" by truly eschewing critical thinking and individualism in favor of an heroic Ayn Rand (look at me!) cult. We are heroic! We are rational! Reason is our "only absolute" and reality our only god (and NBI was a mighty fortress injecting rationality into the culture up against collectivist, altruist irrationality).

The heroism in Atlas Shrugged is only possible in the world the strikers were striking against. There was nothing heroic about John Galt until the baddies got their hands on him and he beat them off with his left hand while enjoying their hospitality. I don't think his pulse went up until they turned on the ironic electricity. Ragnar was an heroic pirate. Francisco was an heroic playboy. Dagny and Hank--need I go on?

Galt's Gultch was a rest home for fed up heroes who wanted another world to be active in so they picked up their marbles (their brains and competences) and left. It's the old story of Noah and the flood, frankly, in bright, fresh, modern clothes. (Noah had to be heroic to build the ark for it was all done in public.)

--Brant

I've thrown at lot of stuff at the wall, but I can't tell if anything is sticking respecting what you are about here

[edit: somehow deleted by the software--not important]

edit 2: after going over the R of R thread and the first 80 posts on this one, there really isn't much about epistemology and induction and less on deduction--the link that started this thread here to R of R was the last post on its thread there

[Brant Gaede]

Has there ever been an article written from the perspective of people who were Students of Objectivism at the time of the Rand – Branden split? I remember living in Charlottesville, and two people were willing to discuss it though we did not know the truth at that time. I rebuffed them but I do not know why (except I could not stop looking at one man’s wife which made me uncomfortable and her also, though she also was willing to discuss the split. I was 18 at the time and an idiot.) Several others who were leaders and associates of the campus Objectivist group refused to discuss it. One of the leaders literally walked away from me. I could have used some support but . . . I should have done something other than write a letter to Ayn Rand. I think I severed all ties to Objectivist “persons” when I went into the Army and after I was discharge, though I kept receiving “The Objectivist Forum.” And sometime in the late seventies I saw an advertisement for Laissez Faire Books and I remember actually speaking to a very nice lady on the phone who may have co-owned the book store. It was So long ago.

Since you were talking about Objectivists and jumped over to Laissez Faire Books you may have been thinking of the book service run by the Hessens in California which carried all that stuff back then, not L F Books, but the Palo Alto Book Service and that would have possibly been Bea Hessen (d). (Some idiot on eBay is trying to sell a contract drawn up by the Hessens that Rand only countersigned for $20,000. She wrote not a word of it. It should be no more than $1,000 opening bid, no reserve. I wouldn't pay anything over $100 myself.)

--Brant

[Reidy]

In LA we talked of nothing else for at least two years, and nobody sided with Rand.

[Brant Gaede]

In LA we talked of nothing else for at least two years, and nobody sided with Rand.

I suspect that's because you talked about it--and were in LA. Quite the different place than NYC.

Taking about it defaults to something rational. Taking Rand's side meant genuflecting and zipping your lip and if social ripping up friendships and marriages.

I was in the NYC scene and had no social being a commuter to the city living in northern NJ. I didn't know anything was wrong at NBI on September 20, 1968 (Friday evening) when I came in after being away over a month to watch a movie or two. Imagine my shock to see the dishabille of NBI with Barbara Branden sitting behind the front desk. "What happened?" I asked, the first time I had ever spoken to her. After she told me I wandered around a bit and maybe purchased a few items. Then left. A year earlier I had returned from Vietnam and had been going to NBI in NYC since late April. Leonard Peikoff gave a one or two or three lecture(s) on the book he was writing that spring--The Ominous Parallels--and there was Nathaniel Branden up on the stage with him adjusting the mic about Leonard's neck in some good humor as if all was right in his world. It was the only time before the Break of '68 he made a much of a good impression on me although in fairness I only saw him a few times outside the course on BPO he was giving live. What was nice was Ayn gave a guest lecture as did Barbara. Most students there were afraid to ask her questions out loud, me included--me the combat veteran--so they were written down and sent up front. Her lecture was on esthetics. My question was "What about the esthetics of making a novel into a movie?" which I saw as something inbetween two items she had been talking about. "What about them?", she conrtempuously replied. "If you mean" this or that then that would require a whole course in itself.

The only time I actually met her was in the intermission of an acting showcase Phillip and Kay Smith put on in February 1969 at Carnegie Hall. There was a theater next to the huge auditorium where they did opera. It did not go at all well and meant I would never have a follow up meeting as such but told me a lot about what she was about: playing a role, as was I. The lack of authenticity was a cauterizing minor disaster or the cauterizing of a minor disaster. (This is all the detail I'll ever come up with to anyone--except, no, nobody made a scene.) It was interesting that she sat between her husband and an extremely attractive young man--red hair I think--who had his arm protectively on the back of her chair. It was strange, almost weird to me. Why wasn't Frank's arm there? I never saw the guy again unless it was Robert Hessen. Hard to believe it was for the age except he had red hair too.

So there I was. I had read Atlas Shrugged in my ignorant 19th year in the summer of 1963 over five days in my sister's house--paperback--in Flagstaff, Arizona--I was a college student there--went into the army in 1964 wherein I read most of the rest of the extant Rand--I still have all those paperbacks I think--and was so excited to be in the heart of the Objectivist beast not understanding it was a beast. Then I got bitch slapped. Taking Rand's side--I hadn't yet grown up--I saw her and Peikoff in several different venues the next few years and took acting lessons from Phillip J. Smith--he'd be in his late 80s now if still alive (if anyone knows about him please PM me)--wondering about Nathaniel and Barbara Branden in California. Reading Nathaniel's first Reason interview (1971) in 1972 blew me out of that context. I sent Nathaniel a letter which he liked and which he showed Barbara and I sent her a dozen red roses. I've spent the next years growing up and individuating myself to this day. 1972 was just the start of that.

What did I do wrong? Nothing, really, I just grew up having been too immature and undeveloped to understand what was really going on and what I was about at any one time. My Father was wiser. When he heard about the Break--he was no Objectivist btw but had read The Fountainhead right after it was published ("Nietzsche")--he said he had seen the same thing happen with other such people and wasn't that uncommon. (As an American-Firster Nationalist writer he had gotten mixed up with a lady who had an estate in or around Chicago for a while. She kept a Great Dane. I have my suspicions about what they did on the side. One of his publications was, I think, The American Nationalist or Nationalist Letters [i'd have to go dig them out] of which I have a set with the only known remaining one in the New York Public Library with a paper insert "Very rare, cannot be replaced." The Library of Congress asked for a set for free but he refused unless they paid. They didn't.

--Brant

[Peter]

Peter Reidy wrote, “In LA we talked of nothing else for at least two years, and nobody sided with Rand.

And Brant responded:

I suspect that's because you talked about it--and were in LA. Quite the different place than NYC.

end quotes

Wasn’t NB in LA around that time? Did he ever speak publicly with a question and answer period around the early seventies? Left to my own devices with no one to talk to, I shifted my focus like someone watching a tennis match. In the end Rand’s viewpoint won because I was receiving a lot of her new material, every month, and nothing from The Brandens’ side of the court. This validated Rand’s backhand and philosophical correctness. Then I bought a copy of the Branden’s responses in the early seventies and a copy of Ghs’s book ATCAG which mentioned the Brandens. When I heard about Barbara’s book I searched it out, which I think may have been from Laissez-Faire, though Brant may be correct about my phone call to someone where I asked about the schism.

Nathaniel Branden wrote:

A policy of independent thinking can bring us into conflict with the opinions of others. And then the question becomes: What matters more to you-your own perception of reality or someone else's approval? If this is not a spiritual issue, what is?

end quote

And that is exactly what I did: I stopped looking for mythical Randian approval though I remained an Objectivist, or more correctly I became a better integrated Objectivist. My moral take on the situation is still the same. Rand should never have “hooked up” with a younger associate just as a CEO should not date his secretary. A good business person, or philosopher cannot MAKE BUSINESS DECISIONS FOR NON-BUSINESS REASONS. It is not ethical. A personal relationship between superior and subordinate eventually becomes SOME version of harassment.

Nathaniel Branden wrote:

In the nature of reality, sometimes there is no choice but to act instantly with no time for reflection. It is an act of consciousness to recognize such moments and take your chances-and know that you will live (or possibly die) with the consequences of your actions.

end quote

I wonder if Mr. Branden took more than a second to emotionally break with Ms. Rand? I am sure he did but there was some point where deception clearly was better for him than honesty. Yet, in many ways without the business connection between them what he said to her, was “a big white lie.” Of course the big white lie eventually blew up in everyone’s face. If history had been kinder to Rand and if NB had remained by her side would Objectivism have become even more authoritarian?

Peter

Here are a few more quotes from Nathaniel Branden:

The age of the muscle-worker is past; this is the age of the mind-worker. That your mind is your basic tool of survival is not new; what is new is that this fact has become inescapably clear. The market is rapidly diminishing for people who have nothing to contribute but physical labor. In an economy in which knowledge, information, creativity-and their translation into innovation-are the prime sources of wealth, what is needed above all is minds. What is needed are people who are able and willing to think. - Nathaniel Branden

What is the specter that makes self-assertiveness feel so terrifying? The image of someone frowning in disagreement or disapproval.

Out of fear, out of the desire for approval, out of misguided notions of duty, people surrender their selves-their convictions and their aspirations-every day. There is nothing noble about it. It takes far more courage to fight for your values than to relinquish them.

Blaming is a dead-end. What is needed is to focus on solutions, which entails discovering your own resources and mobilizing the will to use them. What are you willing to do to make your life better?

Taking on responsibilities that properly belong to someone else means behaving irresponsibly toward yourself. You need to know where you end and someone else begins. You need to understand boundaries. You need to know what is and is not up to you, what is and is not in your control, what is and is not your responsibility.

If you choose to move through life blindly, you have good reason to be anxious.

When you fight a block or a resistance, it grows stronger. When you acknowledge, accept, and experience it fully, it begins to melt.

end quotes

[Brant Gaede]

I don't mind that two people had an affair, not even with a 25 year age difference. Big deal. Go for it. It was the other stuff that mattered.

It shouldn't have mattered to me either--or anyone else than the principals--why it did is what mattered and it goes right to the heart of the teaching of Objectivism starting in the 1950s, presumably in Rand's apartment with meetings of the "Collective."

There were four principals--two primary and two secondary--and Rand was responsible for the screwup starting by trying to protect her privacy with lies and rationizations--or, she wanted her affair and to eat it too. Eventually, it ate her--and the other three went along with it including Frank, the model for her ideal man heroes. (A problem reveals itself: how to have a rational relationship with a powerful artist who keeps twisting reality around to meet her artistic expectations and own personal desires?)

--Brant