The Plight of the Objectivist Egghead

[Philip Coates]

"-egghead- is..directed at people considered too out-of-touch with ordinary people and too lacking in realism, common sense, virility, etc. on account of their intellectual interests. The British equivalent is -boffin-...the term has largely been replaced by ... -elitist- (political), and -geek- or -nerd- (social)." [wikipedia]

The term 'egghead' brings into focus a very important and destructive phenomenon that exists in reality. It's directed at those who misuse their intellects in a certain way. It identifies a rather profound lack of realism and common sense [i'd remove the term virility from the common usage] to such an extent that it puts eggheads out of touch not just with ordinary people, but with many practical and important aspects of reality.

It's not the same as being an intellectual or interested in ideas as such. (Both of which are good things.)

My first contact with 'eggheads' in this pejorative sense was when I encountered a unique phenomenon freshman year, the standard issue college professor. I hadn't met the real equivalent among my high school teachers. Like NCO's as opposed to higher -ranking officers in the famous saying, teachers actually work for a living.

But my college professors at a prestigious school weren't rewarded for teaching and had a different attitude toward it.

They were actually quite non-productive in a crucial economic sense...

(to be continued)

Edited June 22, 2010 by Philip Coates

[dan2100]

"-egghead- is..directed at people considered too out-of-touch with ordinary people and too lacking in realism, common sense, virility, etc. on account of their intellectual interests. The British equivalent is -boffin-...the term has largely been replaced by ... -elitist- (political), and -geek- or -nerd- (social)." [wikipedia]

The term 'egghead' brings into focus a very important and destructive phenomenon that exists in reality. It's directed at those who misuse their intellects in a certain way. It identifies a rather profound lack of realism and common sense [i'd remove the term virility from the common usage] to such an extent that it puts eggheads out of touch not just with ordinary people, but with many practical and important aspects of reality.

It's not the same as being an intellectual or interested in ideas as such. (Both of which are good things.)

My first contact with 'eggheads' in this pejorative sense was when I encountered a unique phenomenon freshman year, the standard issue college professor. I hadn't met the real equivalent among my high school teachers. Like NCO's as opposed to higher -ranking officers in the famous saying, teachers actually work for a living.

But my college professors at a prestigious school weren't rewarded for teaching and had a different attitude toward it.

They were actually quite non-productive in a crucial economic sense...

(to be continued)

But recall the old saying, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

Edited June 22, 2010 by Dan Ust

[Brant Gaede]

But recall the old saying, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

Whatta lot of cliche crap. It's circular. I mean if you can't teach you can't do? If you can do you can't teach? This is a merry-go-round without the cute horses and music. Go tell Stephen Hawking he can't do.

--Brant

[dan2100]

But recall the old saying, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

Whatta lot of cliche crap. It's circular. I mean if you can't teach you can't do? If you can do you can't teach? This is a merry-go-round without the cute horses and music. Go tell Stephen Hawking he can't do.

--Brant

I don't totally disagree with you, but what exactly does Hawking do aside from teach? (And, no, this isn't some tasteless joke about his disability.)

[9thdoctor]

My first contact with 'eggheads' in this pejorative sense was when I encountered a unique phenomenon freshman year, the standard issue college professor.

Why is this in the TAS Corner? Are the intended targets David Kelley and/or Ed Hudgins? Your only example is an unnamed “standard issue college professor” from your freshman year, yet you title the thread “…Objectivist Egghead”. How about spelling out whom you are talking about, and supplying some illustrations of their plight. I’d suggest Peikoff’s DIM inspired voting pronouncement and subsequent Flip-Flop, but that hardly reflects on TAS.

As it stands, I think I know where you’ve been taking your morning walk:

"Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

"And those who can’t teach, teach gym."

Woody Allen

[Brant Gaede]

But recall the old saying, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

Whatta lot of cliche crap. It's circular. I mean if you can't teach you can't do? If you can do you can't teach? This is a merry-go-round without the cute horses and music. Go tell Stephen Hawking he can't do.

--Brant

I don't totally disagree with you, but what exactly does Hawking do aside from teach? (And, no, this isn't some tasteless joke about his disability.)

I believe Hawking started out as a teacher but couldn't continue. Exactly what his theoretical work in physics consists of I cannot tell you or comment upon. If I used a bad example, you can easily come up with a better one. There are many, many brainy people in academia who could do quite well outside it.

--Brant

[dan2100]

But recall the old saying, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

Whatta lot of cliche crap. It's circular. I mean if you can't teach you can't do? If you can do you can't teach? This is a merry-go-round without the cute horses and music. Go tell Stephen Hawking he can't do.

--Brant

I don't totally disagree with you, but what exactly does Hawking do aside from teach? (And, no, this isn't some tasteless joke about his disability.)

I believe Hawking started out as a teacher but couldn't continue. Exactly what his theoretical work in physics consists of I cannot tell you or comment upon. If I used a bad example, you can easily come up with a better one. There are many, many brainy people in academia who could do quite well outside it.

--Brant

Which is why I wrote, "I don't totally disagree with you..." I was merely being snarky.

By the way, a little googling and the saying seems to have come from Mencken... Well, at least according to:

http://www.watchfuleye.com/mencken.html

[dan2100]

"Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

"And those who can't teach, teach gym."

Woody Allen

Woody Allen is brilliant at that sort of comeback.

Have any of you seen the Joan Rivers movie?

[Philip Coates]

> Why is this in the TAS Corner? [ND]

I don't know. Shouldn't be. I just clicked on 'new topic' before I wrote it.

> Your only example is an unnamed “standard issue college professor” from your freshman year, yet you title the thread “…Objectivist Egghead”. How about spelling out whom you are talking about, and supplying some illustrations of their plight.

What part of introductory post is unclear: Did you miss the - to be continued - at the bottom? Why don't you wait until the series is finished before you pull your knife out or complain about what's not included?

[9thdoctor]

> Why is this in the TAS Corner? [ND]

I don't know. Shouldn't be. I just clicked on 'new topic' before I wrote it.

It’s good to have that cleared up. Was I wrong to draw an inference? What forum did you intend? I bet the powers that be will move it if you ask.

Why don't you wait until the series is finished before you pull your knife out or complain about what's not included?

I await your next contribution to "the series" with great interest. Far be it from me to dissuade you from composing your memoir.

Edited June 23, 2010 by Ninth Doctor

[Philip Coates]

Michael,

Could this be placed under "Articles" since I'm writing a series of posts? I think it's wider than Objectivism, since I'm finding the problem of eggheadism to be broader, especially in my early posts.

BTW, I didn't know that the Start a New Topic button at the bottom of a page I'm reading creates the topic within that folder. Is there a simple way to override that and make my own choice of folders?

[Philip Coates]

Subject: The Plight of the Objectivist Egghead, Part 2

College professors, especially at a prosperous or prestigious school, are prime examples of feather-bedding. They are too often given tenure and promotions and recognition for writing in academic publications. Not for teaching. If this were generally valuable work, one could call it productive. But academics themselves point out that in many fields, especially in the humanities as opposed to the sciences or the technical and professional fields, it's often extremely long, scrupulously footnoted work concerning minutiae. The dissertation files and journals are full of this. In fact, if you attempt too wide or ambitious a topic (like the one I'm addressing now) you will attract intellectual nitpickers, people who will quarrel with your definitions, with every comma, with whether or not you read some obscure volume published long ago and then (deservedly) forgotten. Safer to write a tiny addition on a tiny subject. And years of doing this breeds a certain habit of mind.

The professoriate tends to look down on teaching as an inferior or simple or mundane skill. They never took a single course in how to teach, the thing their paying customers expect of them. In their arrogance, most of them unthinkingly (and often inaccurately) assume their own brilliance and that their hard-won Ph.d.'s automatically make them skilled at educating people. (Or at writing.)

If you have achieved a safe sinecure, such as tenure at a university, there is a temptation to sort of relax and, finally, feel able to indulge your interests rather than always respond to market pressure, consumer demands, troublesome questions from those who are not in your little niche or fraternity. Other than in the sciences and in the professions, cutting edge businesses and innovations and great works of art or literature are not often made by academics. Even before the rise of the university system, the greatest innovators, such as Michelangelo and Newton and Edison and Beethoven had to please customers or at least wealthy and sometimes demanding patrons. They didn't have tenure.

But the successful 'egghead' today is often protected, sheltered, insulated. He seldom has to face the market or customer complaints. He can indulge a tendency toward impenetrable writing, toward jargon, toward otherworldly flights of fancy, toward the obscure and irrelevant [e.g., "New knowledge about Shakespeare's cousins on his mother's side"], toward a lack of common sense or toward indulging his own emotional preferences [e.g., hopping on the bandwagon in regard to global warming]. He can lazily indulge in long-winded, jargon-filled, pedantic writing [e.g., note how few op ed writers are academics]. And he doesn't have to teach for very many hours. The teaching and student interaction loads of full professors are a fraction of that of a secondary school teacher.

The academy is respected in our intellectual culture and so even the most undeserving professors can gain a reputation for brilliance, can get chances to write for major publishing houses, can get contracts and speaking gigs for the most arrant nonsense.

An extreme example in philosophy or literary criticism would be the deconstructionists and postmodernists. No matter how bad their ideas or how incomprehensibly expressed, they will not necessarily suffer any adverse market effects, as long as they stay on the right side of the intellectual elites.

(Note: There are exceptions to every rule, and there are professors for whom none of the above applies. But the tendencies are far more widespread among that group than among accomplished and highly trained professionals who don't work in the academy or have to meet primarily non-academic standards. Doctors, engineers, lawyers, software specialists, scientists. )

But what about intellectuals who are outside of the charmed circle, who do not have tenure, who are not 'in with the in crowd'? Whose ideas might even be deeply against the conventional wisdom? What happens to those who have rarefied or less-marketable interests?

And here's where we come to the Objectivists across five decades . . .

(to be continued)

Edited June 23, 2010 by Philip Coates

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael,

Could this be placed under "Articles" since I'm writing a series of posts?

Phil,

Living room is probably better since it is a work in progress.

Michael

[Philip Coates]

Okay. Sounds reasonable.

[Philip Coates]

Subject: The Plight of the Objectivist Egghead, Part 3

There are many ways someone who is intellectually inclined can be an egghead in the sense of being somewhat out of touch, lacking common sense, or simply lacking realism, either in small or large ways. The famous caricature is of the absent-minded professor who can't remember where he parked his car. But being out of touch with reality can be far less extreme or only partial and far easier to let happen to oneself on a more subtle level.

Some years ago I knew an Objectivist who was a newly minted Ph.D. in philosophy. She had, (characteristically--Oists over the last few decades have always been trying to start magazines, start schools or colleges, start nationwide networking ventures, sell Objectivist products, get a syndicated column, get their own radio program) a very grandiose intellectual project, an undertaking in which she was going to change the world of ideas in short order. Unlike her, I had some business and marketing and entrepreneurial experience and was able to point out several obvious pitfalls that would have sunk her almost instantly. "Oh, don't tell me that! Don't tell me that! Don't tell me that! I need to keep my motivation up."

What's more important, keeping your motivation up in the short run by ignoring practical realities, or keeping your motivation up a couple years later after running headfirst into business barriers and having wasted a lot of time and money?

The classic example we've all heard of is the half-century old idea in Ayn Rand's inner circle that if the newly published Atlas sold ten or fifty thousand copies, the culture was doomed. The gross out-of-touch failure of common sense by everyone concerned there, the speculation without historical basis, was a failure to actually investigate the real world. The real world causal and psychological mechanisms by which highly abstract and controversial and counter to the culture ideas spread. Or in this case encounter resistance. Another form of failing to be grounded or realistic is the idea of many Objectivist writers that they can change anyone's mind by merely stating that capitalism is a moral not a practical issue, or merely stating that man should be selfish in an op ed. Or reciting Rand's (incomprehensible to the outsider who is not a philosophy grad student or who hasn't already spent some time reading the books and studying the philosophy) standing on one foot mantra.

The person who becomes an intellectual -- whether a college professor to be or an ordinary person who read some books which awakened him -- is attracted by the beauty and the reach of the world of ideas. They give him great power, great articulateness. It is then natural to allow the pursuit of abstractions, of theories, of philosophies, of systems of ideas to so completely captivate someone to the extent that he sweeps aside more mundane or practical concerns to far too great an extent. (If he combines lack of attention to them with a level of contempt for them or their supposed simplicity or imperfectness, then he develops an attitude similar to the one Plato held toward the shifting, tacky, messy, recalcitrant world of 'appearances'.)

The problem with this is that everyday life, practical consequences, how people think in reality, what it takes to be persuasive, what an intellectual entrepreneur must master -- are not inconsequential things. In fact, they can sink you, make you ineffectual if you don't spend a lot of years attending to them at the same time as you are polishing your intellectual specialty and reading all the books in that area.

The difference between the tenured professor at an Ivy League college who has taken this route and an Objectivist intellectual who has no giant institution, no prestige, and no funding or support system, is that the former can very often still be influential and get away with being out of touch.

(to be continued)

Edited June 23, 2010 by Philip Coates

[Philip Coates]

Subject: The Plight of the Objectivist Egghead, Part 4

But the Objectivist doesn't have the prestige, the blind acquiescence, the cap-doffing respect, the centuries-old support system. Far from it. Given the reviled or baffling nature of what he has to sell intellectually, the wind is never at his back but always blowing gale force in his face while he slides in the mud trying for a moment's traction on an uphill slope. He will gain traction in a crisis with temporary allies and appear on Fox news or speak at a right-wing meeting, but that rug can be pulled away very swiftly. And, in many cases, it's anathema to the intellectuals, to the colleges and professors, to the publishers that he needs to gain access to. He needs to make permanent and full scale inroads and converts and to get tenure at colleges or respect at the intellectual journals and regular publishing in The Atlantic or the New Yorker or the equivalent. He actually needs to have the skills to -change- the culture. And you can't change the culture if you are only talking to yourself or to a handful of tea party suburban moms and gun nuts and wall street investors.

He has to have at least some of the world class intellectual skills Rand had with almost none of the liabilities.

What all of that means is the last thing he can be is an out of touch "egghead". He can't let loose the occasional stupid or uninformed remark about a field where he hasn't done research. He can't write the incomprehensible or unpolished or tedious piece. The gatekeepers or his outright intellectual opponents will pounce on it ruthlessly and argue that he shouldn't be given another chance. He has to be skilled both as an entrepreneur and as an intellectual. He has to be a good to great writer, a good to great teacher, a good to great speaker, a good to great persuader. Or at least one or more of those, and then stay in that niche until he gets better (realistically, not in his own inflated sense of grandiose self-worth).

( Aside: We've seen how enemies will pounce on any dirt they can find in Rand's life to discredit her or portray her as a monster, will take any rash statement in a journal or notes to herself to smear her philosophy. Anything to not have to deal with the actual ideas. Perhaps it's fortunate that the second and third strings, the bench players who followed Rand, are generally seldom noticed, have not really impacted the culture, because they would likely be demonized and laughed back into obscurity by the same kind of discrediting or distorting or context-shifting, but without millions of admiring readers to write angry letters and set the record in context and carry them through dark times. )

Edited June 23, 2010 by Philip Coates

[Brant Gaede]

The "Objectivist egghead" needs something to sell that wasn't sold by Ayn Rand. Something people would buy. That egghead should have a personal expertise apart from being an intellectual per se. Edith Efron identified this in 1978 in Reason magazine. She called it "The Petr Principle" in honor of Petr Beckmann.

People flocked to Rand's ideas because she wrote two great novels reflective and presentative of her ideas. Her recognized expertise was as a novelist first, philosopher second. Leonard Peikoff has always had trouble getting off the ground because he is an Objectivist philosopher first, philosopher second and only an Ayn Rand derivative consequently.

The U.S. economy and American society is a falling safe and there is no real fixing anything before it goes splat. Take care of you and yours.

--Brant

Edited June 23, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[9thdoctor]

So the plight of the Objectivist egghead is that he/she can’t successfully practice eggheadedness because of institutionalised opposition from adherents of other ideaologies? Is this a fair summary? And to disprove this there would need to be an example of someone succeeding in academia in spite of eggheaded statements/actions made because of Objectivism?

[Philip Coates]

I'll try to respond more fully to a lot of questions like the ones just asked more by the end.

I apologize for the length of this series. I have seldom been accused of shortwindedness .

But, to be fair, there are several topics intertwined here and it all stretches across a number of decades and so there are a number of points and examples to cover separately.

However, I can at least suggest for now that if Reisman had broken his book into parts, if the philosophy Ph.D. had started small and addressed the entrepreneurial obstacles from the start, if the 1957 inner circle had been aware how hard it would be, if the people trying to start schools or magazines from scratch had treated the "crawl-walk-run" or baby steps principles with less contempt and more respect -- they would have each had a better chance at greater success or influence.

It's not just an issue of having something else to 'sell' than Rand's ideas but of realism and practical skills such as business sense, people awareness, marketing know-how, etc. Throughout history, many people have been very successful retailing or applying some other fundamental thinker's ideas. The Brandens with the rapid spread of NBI from one room to tens of thousands of students (and growing rapidly) enrolled every year worldwide with varying levels of sophistication proved that. As well as tens of thousands of much more hardcore subscribers to a very elite and philosophical magazine, The Objectivist.

Had it not been for it sordidly imploding in 1968 and embedding permanent and distracting animosities everywhere, we might be looking at a far different prospect for Objectivism four decades later due to the traditional "multiplier effect" in the exponential spread of new and powerful ideas -- as all those graduates of multiple courses applied all that knowledge to their fields and gained positions of influence or wealth or great respect in some cases.

Edited June 24, 2010 by Philip Coates

[Brant Gaede]

Had it not been for it sordidly imploding in 1968 and embedding permanent and distracting animosities everywhere, we might be looking at a far different prospect for Objectivism four decades later due to the traditional "multiplier effect" in the exponential spread of new and powerful ideas -- as all those graduates of multiple courses applied all that knowledge to their fields and gained positions of influence or wealth or great respect in some cases.

The NBI model was appropriate to the 1960s. It was a good thing it ended in 1968. It did end then in spite of Peikoff's attempt to carry on. A new educational template was needed along with a fresh understanding of what Objectivism really was about way back then and what Objectivism properly is. That was not Objectivism the philosophy of Ayn Rand et. al, just Objectivism a la creative destruction. That is you tear the whole thing down and build it back up and you do this again and again over generations forever. What is rebuilt may from time to time exactly resemble what was torn down. The multiplier effect you want can only be based on critical thinking, one thing not taught in government schools, and a true liberal arts education.

--Brant

Edited June 24, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[RightJungle]

I'll try to respond more fully to a lot of questions like the ones just asked more by the end.

I apologize for the length of this series. I have seldom been accused of shortwindedness .

But, to be fair, there are several topics intertwined here and it all stretches across a number of decades and so there are a number of points and examples to cover separately.

However, I can at least suggest for now that if Reisman had broken his book into parts, if the philosophy Ph.D. had started small and addressed the entrepreneurial obstacles from the start, if the 1957 inner circle had been aware how hard it would be, if the people trying to start schools or magazines from scratch had treated the "crawl-walk-run" or baby steps principles with less contempt and more respect -- they would have each had a better chance at greater success or influence.

It's not just an issue of having something else to 'sell' than Rand's ideas but of realism and practical skills such as business sense, people awareness, marketing know-how, etc. Throughout history, many people have been very successful retailing or applying some other fundamental thinker's ideas. The Brandens with the rapid spread of NBI from one room to tens of thousands of students (and growing rapidly) enrolled every year worldwide with varying levels of sophistication proved that. As well as tens of thousands of much more hardcore subscribers to a very elite and philosophical magazine, The Objectivist.

Had it not been for it sordidly imploding in 1968 and embedding permanent and distracting animosities everywhere, we might be looking at a far different prospect for Objectivism four decades later due to the traditional "multiplier effect" in the exponential spread of new and powerful ideas -- as all those graduates of multiple courses applied all that knowledge to their fields and gained positions of influence or wealth or great respect in some cases.

Phillip, this is very helpful to those of us who are relatively new to actively "selling Objectivism". I hope that you will keep doing this sort of educational writing. I suspect that some of us will have more questions in the future, but right now, I just want to say thank you for your efforts.

[Philip Coates]

Thanks, Mary Lee. People like to criticize others but seldom enjoy criticism that comes too close. And thus many people will resent or deny (or pick a nit with) what I have to say, but the topic is an important - practical rather than academic - one.

There are many ways Objectivists could be highly successful in the world, and one can learn from a look at obstacles and from a frank recognition of past mistakes.

Edited June 24, 2010 by Philip Coates

[Philip Coates]

The Plight of the Objectivist Egghead, Part 5

Every since I first met other students of Objectivism in college when I started a campus club, I have been constantly amazed at how a philosophy of reason could so frequently attract people who didn't apply it, or at least not in a full and realistic way, or (worse) people who used the abstractions as a source of pride yet who lazily coasted on the basis of having the right abstract, intellectual system. Sort of like the smug academics, the college professors I mentioned at the start.

Sometimes the rank and file Out-Of-Touch Objectivist is a person who constantly interrupts everyone else's conversations or is always angry in person or has zero social skills. Sometimes he can't use simple jargon-free English. Often, very often, he turns people off on Objectivism rather than making them want to consider it more closely as soon as he opens his mouth or puts fingers to keyboard.

Sometimes even the movement leaders are OOTO's in some crucial area. Preaching and teaching are not doing and acting. Mastering or creating the theory doesn't guarantee understanding or implementing the practice. Verbal skill does not guarantee common sense.

(i) For Rand it was her alienation and her anger and her moral condemnation of people who didn't automatically agree.

(ii) For Branden it was a character flaw that made him a liar and bully and a deceiver in personal affairs (at least early on; he now has repudiated much of this).

(iii) For Peikoff, it was some of the same mistakes as Rand, plus sometimes a rationalistic tendency as in trying to deduce and proclaim as a blanket policy which party you should vote for and then reversing it two years later or creating an inflexible educational curriculum of four core subjects only regardless of context.

(iv) For Kelley and others at TAS, it's first an inability to communicate in simple, vigorous, direct, and compelling ways about the issues that most concern ordinary people, not epistemologists. And second a profound lack of organizational skill - an inability to finish projects, be productive, get things done, a sense of lack of accomplishment in their organization. (An inability even to get something as basic and practical as a website right.)

(v) For ARI, it is not organizational skill or project implementation [at which they are so far ahead of TAS that it's laughable], but lack of external persuasiveness or ability to reach outside Objectivist ghetto. Sometimes they publish pieces which simply assert Objectivist principles as intrinsic bromides in a rash or brash manner without patient explanation and full persuasion or they drop context in the application (as in the armchair generalship of the 'nuke Tehran' essays or prescribing detailed rules of engagement without actual military knowledge.)

For almost all of the Oist leaders across more than a half century, the 'eggheadism' (the inappropriate or unrealistic form of being an intellectual severed from or unserious about practical reality in crucial ways) takes its most obvious form in an inability to grasp and implement proper strategy and tactics in order to persuade the culture. I say almost all, because Branden (or probably Nathaniel and Barbara together) were the only ones across a long span of years who actually had implemented something that actually was starting to change the culture. And there are lessons in what they did that, because of disgust with how the thing blew up or with the bullying and intimidation that seems to have gone on, or because of 'egghead hubris' have simply been swept aside.

[Philip Coates]

The Plight of the Objectivist Egghead, Part 6

When I went around to more than a half dozen campuses and started campus Objectivist clubs, I was able to see the problem very starkly, In case after case, the new club leaders had no concept of how to run a meeting, how to publicize, how to plan for an outside speaker. I was years older and gave them very sound advice. But they didn't want to hear it. They wanted to make their own mistakes. And so the clubs I'd started which, since I knew how to publicize them on a college campus, attracted thirty people to the first meeting, all very enthusiastic and thrilled to know that there were others who loved Ayn Rand on their campus and a majority who had read some of the non-fiction as well, those clubs under the student leaders dwindled down to twenty, then fifteen, then nine, then four people - the hardcore - after just four or five meetings.

The root problem is one common to students of Objectivism and many Objectivist leaders, to academic intellectuals, and to the kids getting the top grades in school. As a teacher, I've often found the bright kids are the ones most in their comfort zone and the hardest to get to make any fundamental change. They were told what great writers they are and don't want to stop always using the pompous and inappropriate big words. They don't want to adopt "The Elements of Style". They dislike suggestions.

The problem is that once someone thinks they are successful intellectually, once they have a subject they love, once they are in a comfort zone, oonce the wheel only seems to squeak once every fifty turns, you get smug. You build up an image of yourself as superbright, get complacent, think you are on the top of the mountain.

But the reality is, unless you are fortunate enough to be in a protected sinecure or have a wealthy patron or are supported by changeproof and loyal member contributions, real life is much harder once you are out of school and your actual success will be proportionate to how willing you are to learn new skills. And to break with old habits. I'm reminded of the movie "Rudy", of the pint-sized runt who had a burning desire to play college-level football. Rudy knew he had to work his butt off, attempt new things. But the bigger and stronger players didn't put in that kind of time. They had made the varsity. They were "set", they thought. No one was going to beat them.

And in the case of Objectivist intellectuals, the reality is that they are the Rudys and if they don't act like Michael Jordans or Kobe Bryants or Ayn Rands, they will be ineffectual in massively changing minds and hearts on a fundamental level. As they have largely been (other than Rand's fiction writing and the rapid spread of the NBI courses) for more than half a century.

Michael Jordan became great because he was the first guy in the gym and the last one out. He was already great, but lacked hubris and complacency. And realized each summer he wanted to add a new skill. Kobe Bryant, imitating his example, is now the same, working on his game, taking endless shots in practice. In each case of a great player with a long career, each summer or in the off-season, he worked on adding a new component to his game. This past summer, Kobe realized he was being double teamed more successfully and his outside shot more contested, so he went to one of the great retired centers, Hakeem Olajuwon, and asked him to teach him how to play the postup game and what the footwork was involved. There are similar stories in other sports, other fields such as music. Practice, Innovate, Broaden, Practice, Practice.

Ayn Rand wanted to master every aspect of being a writer. She had to learn a new language, read systematically through world great literature, reflect on what she'd seen and write in endless journals. How many Objectivist intellectuals who work at the think tanks or are published writers or try to attract people to Objectivism or run an educational venture have taken a course at AERI or the Leadership Institute? How many of them have read and heavily annotated "Guerrilla Marketing"? How many lower-level intellectuals have done any of this, have tried to lift themselves up by their bootstraps in ways analogous to this? How many when they write a piece are actually willing to seek out criticism....and act on the good suggestions or critiques?

In particular, even for those who have polished their writing and speaking skills and their knowledge of Objectivism is comptele, the tendency for a high-level "intellectual" -- just as it is for the college professor -- is to let the non-academic or non-intellectual or administrative or practical or marketing or people skills things slide. They are not fun, they are alien, they are not part of one's previous experience, they are outside the comfort zone.

The campus clubs would only announce a speaker and put up posters or send out a press release a day or two before. People already have plans, they haven't had time to see the posters, student papers need press releases a week or two in advvance. Result: Student-organized events get ten or twenty to show up. Experienced adult-organized events get forty or eighty. George Reisman has written "Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics", a brilliant comprehensive book on economics, breaking new ground, and with a powerful writing style. It has been called "the most remarkable textbook written by any economist in this century." But the book appeard in 1998 and hasn't seemed to sell at all or make much of a ripple in twelve years. The remarkably influential "Road to Serfdom" it has not been even though it is a much more innovative book. Just as one example, within its pages is perhaps the most unanswerable and devastating intellectual demolition of 'environmentalism' ever penned. But --- in flagrant defiance of publishing 101 and of basic common sense being in touch with reality --- it is the length of an encyclopedia and with very small print and physically too tall to fit on bookstore shelves and actually physically hurts if you hold it in your lap and the price for something this massive is $93. By this time and after the book had been going nowher for a number of years, I'd had lots of experience with Oist intellectuals contemptuously brushing aside or bristling at good practical suggestions. But I knew him and emailed him: "Since the first third or so of the book is introductory and readable by non-economists and the last third or more is very technical and aimed at the economics profession, why not come out with a two-volume (or even three) edition? Those who are tentative or newbies can buy the first, and if they get hooked buy the rest. Each book would be less expensive, could have somewhat larger print, could be less tall so Barnes and Noble and Borders can fit it on their shelves." Care to guess whether the suggestion was found to have merit? (There's more on the design and marketing of books. Ask me about major self-inflicted damage with regard to Ayn Rand's non-fiction. Or the material she didn't write or approve for her fiction.)

I've been around Objectivism for a long time and involved in both its intellectual side and its marketing side. These are just a small fraction of the elementary mistakes I've seen made, attributable to eggheadism. But also to a certain quiet hubris on every level. To complacency. To unwillingness to learn and stretch and absorb new and practical ideas.

[Brant Gaede]

If all these brainiacs screwed up popularization of Objectivism maybe the problem is somewhere in the philosophy commonly understood by those very familiar with it and not with them. Some ideas seem to flow into society almost instantaneously, new Apple products for example.

--Brant