Two General Comments

[Philip Coates]

> I think Objectivists on the internet are a bad sample to draw a conclusion about concerning Objectivists in general. [Jim]

I agree with Jim on this. If you haven't attended a summer conference, it is striking the extent to which the bitterly angry and personally condemnatory people don't show up at all. The people who come have a certain benevolence, openness, and hopefulness and have their lives well in enough in order that they can plan far enough in advance and commit the resources to do this. People are friendly and in a good, holiday mood for the week. I find it hard to remember a time when I heard a voice raised at an Objectivist summer conference and when I wasn't surrounded by laughing, happy, smiling people who want to have an enjoyable time and learn something without a lot of darkness, a lot of endless bitching and moaning.

I've been to many summer conferences across many years and, with perhaps only the exception of the 'schism' conference of 1989 when the Kelley-Peikoff thing blew up right in the middle, the above has been the case.

Phil

PS, I personally find that I am critical of the Oist movement and online and in articles I have negative things to say and improvements I want to see, but when I go out among people such as at a conference, that is not the time when I personally want to dwell on these things. I want to socialize. I want to laugh, be among old friends. And meet new ones.

And put problem areas off to the side or on a back burner for one shining summer week which has often given me a taste of Atlantis.

(That seems to also be the general attitude of other conference attendees.)

[Philip Coates]

Barbara,

I'm so glad you'll be at this summer's conference. It will be great to see you again. And the topic you've chosen is enormously important... I hope you are not speaking at the same time as me.

(If so, then one of us will have to bail out and go attend the others talk. ha, ha. :-)

[Roger Bissell]

Michael S-K wrote:

If a person comes to the conclusion that the ideas he holds are bad for him, then he gets rid of them and distances himself from whence they came. Often the good goes out with the bad like that. This is all the more reason to find out why Objectivism affects so many people in a manner that turns them into rip-roaring assholes and try to come up with corrective ideas.

Michael, maybe this should go in the addiction folder, instead, but it seems to me that Objectivism does not work much differently from beer or wine or hard liquor. Some people are perfectly wonderful people as Objectivists and/or imbibers, but other people are just plain MEAN when they are "under the influence," because what they are "altering their consciousness" with loosens their inhibitions against the ugly behavior they might normally suppress.

And don't even get me started on abusive Objectivists who drink or do drugs! Needless to say, anyone I've ever seen try to arm-wrestle them on the Internet learns quickly enough that the only sensible way to deal with them is to withdraw and let them find someone else to abuse.

I've already written on religious addiction, and I'm not going to expand on it further. But I do think that there is something deficient in people who get MEAN as they become more deeply involved with Objectivism, and it is not Objectivism's fault that they become this way. It is just a tool, like guns or alcohol or math. Whatever man has invented to make his life better, some unhealthy souls will find ways to use that invention to make himself and others miserable.

I really don't know how else to deal with this problem in Objectivism except to detach from the sick ones and to focus on what is right for me. Which is what I should be doing anyway, instead of trying to fix (or argue with) people with obvious self-esteem problems. So, Michael's whole emphasis here on benevolence and productivity seems to me to be just what the doctor ordered!

Oh, and I agree that it is very enjoyable to go out to Objectivist events and enjoy the exchanges of ideas and inspiration and the socializing with old and new friends. I'm very much looking forward to this year's TOC Summer Seminar. :-)

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I have a HUGE temptation to delve into the psychology of those who are dog-down nasty when they are safely behind a computer on the Internet, but are "benevolent" when they are up close to you in reality. But hell, all this has gone on long enough.

I want to thank you guys for bringing focus back to the positive. (I certainly get sidetracked when I get wound up.) Also, I have been neglecting my plots thread, but another chapter will be going up in a few minutes.

On the negative, but from a benevolent angle, I want to make a pre-announcement right now that I have one hell of a satire on the mean and/or quirky side of Objectivism outlined. (Even dear Chris Sciabarra does not escape!) I don't know how long it will take before it will be done, but hopefully it will be hilarious and also will get deeply under the skin of the fuddy-duddies.

btw - Kat and I are planning on attending TOC this year. It sounds wonderful.

Michael

[Philip Coates]

> Kat and I are planning on attending TOC this year.

Michael, that's great. I will look forward to having a chance to meet you both!

Phil

[Barbara Branden]

James H-N: "In many cases it is much more effective to assimilate Objectivism as the questions come to you naturally rather than through systematic study. "

This is a very important statement. I have long thought that to be given answers to question that have not arisen in one's own mind, and which therefore have no understood relevance to one's own life, tends to be useless. Such answers simply become part of one's unattended intellectual baggage, they may convince the possessor that he's an intellectual, but that's about all they do, and they are unintegrated with the rest of one's authentic and first-hand knowledge.

Barbara

[Barbara Branden]

Philip: "I'm so glad you'll be at this summer's conference. It will be great to see you again."

Thanks so much. I feel the same way.

Barbara

[Barbara Branden]

Michael: "btw - Kat and I are planning on attending TOC this year."

That's wonderful! I can't wait to meet you.

Barbara

[Kat]

Independence and balance are so important and James and others have made some very important points here. Objectivism is a philosophy of strong individualism and that is what I believe draws people in. Once the person integrates the ideas into their life it can go either way, good or bad. I feel that Objectivism has been good for me personally and is helping me grow, but I have always been good. I think Objectivism helps make good people better and nasty people unbearable.

Sure, others can influence your thinking, but I am not about to accept Ayn Rand's ideas 100%, or anyone else's for that matter. Michael is probably the closest I have ever seen to someone who thinks just like me, and he expresses my thoughts wonderfully, most of the time. It is nice to know someone who is almost always right.

The problem is that things get all screwed up when people lose their individuality by letting other people tell them what to think. I don't get how anyone can turn off their mind like that. Like I said over at the other place, it is so very important that Objectivism is used as a tool, not a rule. Never, ever lose sight of who you are and to thine own self be true.

Kat

btw - Roger, how big is your couch?

8-[

[Roger Bissell]

Kat...we have both a couch and a love seat in our living room, but one of them is already spoken for during the Summer Seminar, if that's what you're asking about. My suggestion, since you guys are from out of town, is to spend the extra bucks and hunker down at the Seminar site. (We live about 3 miles from Chapman College.)

However, if our house guest bails out of the Seminar, you and Michael would be welcome to crash on our living room furniture. I'll keep you posted, if that should happen.

REB

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Kat,

Roger's right. You should stay at the Summer Seminar site, although for a completely different reason. If you're anything like I was at my first Summer Seminar, you're going to crash immediately at 4 AM after animatedly conversing with people all day, get 3 hours sleep, grab some Fruit Loops and scrambled eggs and make it to the first lecture in the morning. Although I was 23 years old then :-).

Jim

[Philip Coates]

> I have long thought that to be given answers to question that have not arisen in one's own mind, and which therefore have no understood relevance to one's own life, tends to be useless. Such answers simply become part of one's unattended intellectual baggage, ... they are unintegrated with the rest of one's authentic and first-hand knowledge. [barbara]

This is an important matter. I wonder if it depends on the type and level and pacing of the information? For example, sweeping philosophical abstractions or other matters on a very or prematurely abstract level which you swallow without any attempt (or prior to the ability) to understand I would think might fall within the above. But there are many things I learned in grammar school in terms of the three R's, the earth is round, how hummingbirds fly, that "air pressure" exists, and almost a whole educational curriculum which I learned prior to fully understanding or without the question or surrounding issues having occurred to me...

It seems that there is a distinction between outside-generated or outside-proposed lines of thought which are unintegrable or wildly premature, and the ones which "plant a seed", ones which are educationally mind-expanding and begin to gradually stretch a child's or adult's appreciation of what is relevant to their own lives ... and will be more fully integrated over time?

In any event, I agree, Barbara, that way too often our educators and over eager Objectivists try to stuff material down throats for which we are not ready or have no context (I've seen this as a classroom observer, for example)...or to do it too hurriedly without time, distance, and perspective for digestion and integration.

Phil

[Kat]

Roger I wasn't really serious about crashing on your couch. Thanks for the hospitality but we really need to get a room. Where do you recommend?

On the other hand, if you just so happen to have plenty of Froot Loops, maybe I'll send the kids up there for the summer.

Seriously, I am looking forward to meeting all of you at TOC Con.

Kat

[Roger Bissell]

Hey, Kat, you're wondering about accomodations for the Summer Seminar?

Why not just stay at Chapman College in one of the double rooms? That's what I've always done when I attend them. The prices are really quite reasonable -- though the rooms are not as private or as luxurious as a motel room would be. The information on lodging at Chapman should be available along with the registration forms, once those are sent out (or downloadable from TOC's website?).

If you're really interested in staying away from the Seminar site, but close by, I'll have to get back to you once I return from Arizona this weekend. Let me know a little more what you're looking for.

REB

[Jody Gomez]

How far is the conference from Pasadena? I'm partial to that area. Some great food!

[Reidy]

About 60 miles - freeway close, in local parlance. A tolerable commute if you only have to do it for a week.

Peter

[Philip Coates]

Jody, I wouldn't try to fight L.A. traffic. and, same comment to you and Kat, you really miss out on a lot of the experience and interacting with the people if you are off campus. Plus parking when I lived in LA or was in Orange County is a constant headache, the roads and freeways super-crowded. And it's a long day. People who stay off campus, even in conferences not held in southern calif. tend to regret it...

Wait till conference brochure is out.

[Barbara Branden]

Phil: "But there are many things I learned in grammar school in terms of the three R's, the earth is round, how hummingbirds fly, that "air pressure" exists, and almost a whole educational curriculum which I learned prior to fully understanding or without the question or surrounding issues having occurred to me... "

True. But was this information of any use to you at that time? You might have been able to repeat it on cue, but I don't see how it could have been integrated into your firsthand knowledge that, for instance, "reading stories is fun," or "gym is a waste of my time when I could be climbing trees." I think such information just sat there uselessly in your mind until or unless you discovered or were taught something you wanted to know to which you could integrate it. Let me give you an example from my own experience. I was taught geometry in school, but I was not given and did hot have on my own the least understanding of its value or purpose; as a result, I did not authentically grasp it, I could integrate it to nothing I understood, and I did it very badly. (To this day, I consider it a miracle that I passed the tenth grade, which required geometry.) On the other hand, I loved and did very well in all my literature classes, despite the fact that the beauty of most of what we read was never made real and the value of reading never so much as mentioned -- because I had discovered it on my own, I wanted to devour whatever I could, and I had learned to see its beauty without anyone's explanation.

Barbara

[Roger Bissell]

Barbara, you wrote:

I was taught geometry in school, but I was not given and did hot have on my own the least understanding of its value or purpose; as a result, I did not authentically grasp it, I could integrate it to nothing I understood, and I did it very badly. (To this day, I consider it a miracle that I passed the tenth grade, which required geometry.) On the other hand, I loved and did very well in all my literature classes, despite the fact that the beauty of most of what we read was never made real and the value of reading never so much as mentioned -- because I had discovered it on my own, I wanted to devour whatever I could, and I had learned to see its beauty without anyone's explanation.

We are like night and day on this, Barbara! Your description of your love for literature sounds exactly like my love for mathematics (and, in particular, geometry -- in which, for the first time, I learned a lot about deductive logic and coming up with proofs to validate propositions). In contrast, literature for me was excruciating -- though my own personal reading (which I did voraciously) was, and still is, a high value in my life.

My wife, Becky, was also a voracious reader, but she had one on me: since early adolescence, she was an excellent, fluent and expressive, writer, while I hacked my way through assigned essays and wouldn't have dreamed of journaling as she did. It wasn't until I got to college and was put through the forced-march of weekly essays in advanced placement English (figure that!) that I got the hand of writing.

I think I owe my eventual development as a writer largely to Ayn Rand. Her essays, many of which I read the summer following high school graduation, really had an impact on me, not only for their substance, but for her style, especially her way of clearly and intensely stating an issue. The real breakthrough writing experiences for me were letters to the editor of the college newspaper. Once I got a taste for that, my essays were almost too easy to write, and they required some goodly amount of editorial toning down before submitting them to professors or editors!

While I'll never hope to be a good fiction writer, I really do enjoy writing essays, and I have met with success in that area that I couldn't have envisioned back in high school, when I struggled to finish such projects.

REB

[Philip Coates]

> I think such information just sat there uselessly in your mind until or unless you discovered or were taught something you wanted to know to which you could integrate it. ... I was taught geometry in school, but I was not given and did hot have on my own the least understanding of its value or purpose; as a result, I did not authentically grasp it, I could integrate it to nothing I understood, and I did it very badly. [barbara]

I agree that much early knowledge sat uselessly in my mind for a time. Facts about history. Rules of arithmetic, for example. But I don't think that is a bad thing, as long as the child is not resistant and it doesn't turn him off on school or learning. Eventually I was happy I had learned all this "stuff". Children go through a sponge stage in early childhood where they eagerly sop up lots of material they don't know how to use yet and this is not harmful to them. Moreover, with material that doesn't seem to integrate to much else, there is a degree of integration at least within the subject that is being taught. I learn Latin. But only later do I see how powerful it is with regard to vocabulary and with regard to understanding English grammar.

In your case, how and when was geometry first introduced and taught? If geometry is not taught as a "game" or a puzzle-solving challenge which gets kids interested, if it doesn't emerge from the historical challenge of how the egyptians were able to measure their fields, or the challenge of being able to tell the height of a tall building, if it is not real world connected, then it's a long tedious exercise in memorizing theorems and postulates and weird shapes. Not every child is interested in everything or finds everything relevant. But you can't let them fall a decade behind in learning the basics or the core curriculum. I believe that the classic core curriculum of history, english, math, science (along with other electives) is necessary for the mind to be fully stocked or furnished with the data for thinking and the different methods needed. But the trick is to teach each core subject in a way that makes it relevant, fun, age-appropriate. Kids I've been with usually like to learn almost anything just out of sheer curiosity unless they had bad teachers or poor textbooks or its taught in floating abstraction fashion (all of which is a definite problem). One trick is Socratic: to make -them- come up with the questions themselves, which would fit into your ideas on education: that one doesn't remember things very well unless they are apropos of one's own self-generated questions.

In my case, there were many occasions where I didn't have the wit as a child to have any self-generated questions, but was content just to accept the learning of new stuff until such time as something lit a spark. Children are often willing to be led in this manner because they trust adults to take them to places where they will -want- to learn or make new connections. I recently taught a lego engineering class after school hours to young kids. They didn't see the point for a while, but after a time it all began to make sense and be interesting adn wheels and levers and pulleys *became* a bit more relevant. Although there would still be a large distance between their level of childish interest and wanting to become an engineer, for example.

I think my view in a nutshell is: the relevance and possibility of integration must exist in -some- degree for the "answers" or material to be appropriate, or even remembered over time. The degree can be very slight and the relevance tentative or remote; one doesn't have to wait for a child to always already know fully why he is being taught math or science or history or literature or its relevance to any real extent.

Example: in third grade, "The Emperor's New Clothes" is a great, fascinating story. The child doesn't already know that he is learning a lesson about integrity and thinking with one's own mind and holding to one's conclusions despite public pressure. He loves the embarrassed emperor, the idea he is naked and doesn't know it. And the fact that a little kid gets the best of a pompous bunch of adults. I think it can be described as providing "answers to question that have not arisen in one's own mind, and which therefore have no understood relevance to one's own life", in your words. But in time the relevance will grow, and it will provide moral sustenance. In my case I had long forgotten it until it came time for me to try to teach a lesson about reason and independence to young kids and I was very glad I had been, uncomprehendingly at the time, been taught this story.

(This has been over-long and somewhat scattered, flitting from point to point. I will have to use Jefferson's excuse that if I'd had more time I would have been able to write something more essentialized.)

Phil

[JennaW]

Not that I know what exactly a "Popperian" is, I'm wary of such labels. Labeling is one of the favorite pastimes of Objectivists, they're quick to brand you as a Kantian, a rationalist, a pragmatist, a collectivist, an empiricist or whatever -ist or -ian they may come up with, as long as it isn't an Objectivist. Of course this is a Very Bad Sign!

I've had this done too. Instead of whipping it back, I look the crap up, debate its validity to *my* life (because after all, they're telling me who I am, right?), and wait for them to come up with another one. It's ridiculous. I had no idea there were so many -isms. There's probably one for every neuron we have, judging by the flood here and there and everywhere. Insanity.

I call it name-calling. That's it. Name-calling so you can attack the other person somehow. Push them into some category so they can be ripped down. Whatever, I'm better than that. I refuse to engage in destructive discourse. I want to make the world a better place, not worse.

[Barbara Branden]

Roger: "We are like night and day on this, Barbara! Your description of your love for literature sounds exactly like my love for mathematics (and, in particular, geometry -- in which, for the first time, I learned a lot about deductive logic and coming up with proofs to validate propositions). In contrast, literature for me was excruciating -- though my own personal reading (which I did voraciously) was, and still is, a high value in my life."

Unfortunately, to this day a statement such as one's love for geometry has the feel to me of something I might hear from ET about life on his planet. (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.) But I did love deductive logic, because I saw its purpose and it fitted my purposes.

At UCLA I took a course in logic from Hans Reichenbach, a famous logical positivist -- and Phil, this is relevant to our discussion of integration --who did something quite wonderful. He presented the class with murder mysteries, which we had to solve by the use of deductive logic. It was fun, it was instructive, and it tied logic to reality.

Roger, you wrote: "I think I owe my eventual development as a writer largely to Ayn Rand. Her essays. . . really had an impact on me, not only for their substance, but for her style, especially her way of clearly and intensely stating an issue." I think that would delight her. I may have mentioned this on Solo at some point, and I know I mentioned it in Passion, but the greatest literary lesson I ever received consisted of three words from Rand. She and I were discussing writing, fiction and nonfiction, and she said: "I'll tell you the three most important principles of good writing. They are: Clarity -- clarity -- and clarity."

I remember very clearly my discovery of the magic of words. One day when I was not yet five years old, I noticed that my brother, who was ten, was looking intently at a newspaper, and I asked what he was doing. I don't recall exactly what he said, but he communicated to me that words on paper contained thoughts and feelings. I was stunned and thrilled. What I grasped in childish terms was that it was possible to take what was locked up inside my head, to take it and put it down on paper, and thus to make it real in the world. This seemed to me the most wonderful phenomenon imaginable, and I then and there decided that that's what I wanted to do. It still seems wonderful to me.

Barbara

[Barbara Branden]

Phil: "I think my view in a nutshell is: the relevance and possibility of integration must exist in -some- degree for the "answers" or material to be appropriate, or even remembered over time. The degree can be very slight and the relevance tentative or remote; one doesn't have to wait for a child to always already know fully why he is being taught math or science or history or literature or its relevance to any real extent."

Agreed. But sometimes, and this was the case for me with geometry and with math in general, a bad teacher, who gives his students not the least idea of why they should study a particular subject, can cause a student to rebel (perhaps not fully consciously) and refuse to learn that subject.

This whole issue is relevant to Objectivists. We often see people who have swallowed Rand's writings whole, without recognizing what they have been able to integrate and what not, so that much of Objectivism consists for them of floating abstractions. (I'm not criticizing them; enormous enthusiasm for what one is learning can lead to this quite innocently.) And the result can be that they feel required to passionately defend what they do not truly understand, and they feel guilty because they sense that their defense is insufficient. This is why one so often sees people throwing around Objectivist slogans in contexts where they are not relevant, or quoting Rand at great length as opposed to stating and defending a principle in their own words, or becoming indignant that they aren't able to win agreement and deciding that the problem is human evil.

Barbara

[Barbara Branden]

Glenn: "A question I've had for a while is: what do "recovering Objectivists" do? In other words, after being "turned off" by people involved with Objectivism, do they revert to their former philosophies? Do they no longer accept that A is A, that altruism is bad, that the emotions are not tools of cognition, that the meaning of a concept is its units, etc. "

The young woman I quoted wrote that of course she still accepts reason, individualism, and capitalism. I don't doubt that this is true of most "recovering" Objectivists. I think that they come to believe that the moralizing and general brutalizing to which they have been subjected are integral parts of Objectivism -- which is what they have, in effect, been told by those who presumably understand the ideas better than they do -- and it is this aspect that they reject.

[Barbara Branden]

Dragonfly, one of the problems leading to the attempts at intimidation you describe is simply the psychology of the intimidators. If someone is a bully, or would like to be brave enough to be a bully, before he discovers Objectivism, he is likely to have the same psychology after he has read Rand. We don't easily jump out of our psychological skins. Objectivism doesn't magically elevate one to sainthood. Dependent people, nasty people, cruel people, dishonest people, need more than philosophy to change them; in most cases, they need psychological treatment. And until and unless they get it, or have some life experience which awakens them to the mistakes they are making, they will be dependent, nasty, cruel, dishonest Objectivists.