Rand & Human Nature 10

Pride & Hubris. The Objectivist view of pride is actually much more conventional than Rand and her disciples make it out to be. Earned pride (i.e., pride based on "objective" accomplishment) is held as a virtue; unearned pride (i.e., pretensions to pride based on no real accomplishments) is considered mere arrogance or pretention.

These views are considered daring because they stand in opposition to Christian-inspired admonitions against the "sin" of pride. But fact is that such admonitions don't really exercise much influence on the attitudes and behavior of most people, whether they profess a theoretical attachment to Christian doctrine or not. Most people are proud of their accomplishments and proud of their country, regardless of theological attachments, just as most people abhor the false pride of pretension and hubris.

Objectivists begin to lose sight of reality on this issue when it comes to two main issues: (1) detecting hubris in themselves and (2) evaluating hubris in others.

One of the long standing problems in Objectivism is a tendency to frame issues in very simple, broad abstractions, to the detriment of any and all important details. It's all very well to say that pride should be based on real accomplishments. But how does one know that a specific instance of pride is or is not based on something genunine? Often, in the situations we confront in everyday life, we're not in a position to know such a thing. And what makes it even more difficult is most people are not very good at evaluating their own accomplishments or the accomplishments of other. Experimental psychology has found that most people engage, quite unwittingly, in spin about their personal accomplishments and their own moral worth, while being overly critical (or sometimes overly uncritical) toward other. Nor is such behavior necessarily at odds with self-interest, enlightened or otherwise. As Desteno and Valdesolo explain:

John Galt Revealed.

He must get really, really tired of that one.

Defending the Impossible

Over at amazon.com, there's a bit of a philosophical duel going on between myself and Rand apologist Paul Beaird. While it hardly reaches the exalted rank of Lincoln-Douglass or Wilberforce-Huxley, it will give Rand watchers a chance to witness an intelligent advocate of Rand trying to defend three impossible positions, namely: (1) that Rand logically derived an ought from an is, a value from a fact; (2) that there exists no equivocation between "man's life" and "man's survival qua man"; and (3) that Hume denied the possibility of any connection between fact and value. Since these positions are indefensible, Mr. Beaird spends most of his time try to divert attention through various debating tricks, particular the old the best defense is a good offense trick. Instead of defending Rand, he attacks what he imagines are my failings, with predictable results.

Empirical responsibility is not exactly one of Mr. Beaird's virtues. He twice insists that "Rand's use of observable facts and the relationships between them [which facts and relationships are those? can he state any?] to demonstrate the natural foundation of the concept 'value' is so well-known by now that, for you to still insist Hume had not been refuted reveals an uncomprehending mind..." Of course, no evidence is brought forth to back this extraordinary claim. Rand critic Michael Huemer expresses a very different point of view:

Objectivists seem to find "The Objectivist Ethics" completely convincing. But hardly anyone else finds it at all convincing. This is not a trivial observation—one often finds that people who do not accept a whole philosophical system nevertheless find certain parts of it plausible. And one often finds that people who are not ultimately persuaded by an argument nevertheless see some plausibility in it. But neither of these things is true of the argument of “The Objectivist Ethics”—hardly anyone finds that argument even slightly plausible, unless they also buy into virtually all of Ayn Rand’s views. This is not true of most of her other views: one would not be surprised to find a non-Objectivist who nevertheless thinks Rand’s political views are reasonable, or her epistemological views, or her aesthetic theories. The explanation is simple: the theory of “The Objectivist Ethics” is simultaneously the most distinctive and the least plausible, worst defended of all of Rand’s major ideas. (Here is a nicer way to say that: all of Rand’s other major theories are more plausible and better defended than that one.)

Now who is right? Is Rand's argument in "The Objectivist Ethics" so "well known by now" that only an "uncomprehending mind" would fail to understand that Rand had "refuted" Hume? Or is the argument only accepted by Objectivists, who are committed to accepting everything by Rand, in defiance of fact and logic? Huemer's contention is by far the more plausible. I can't think of a single non-Objectivist who accepts Rand's argument. And most people have never heard of it at all, and would not be able to make heads or tails of it if it were explained to them.

In my exchange with Mr. Beaird, I have made repeated calls for Beaird or any other Objectivist to back their talk and produce this marvelous refutation of Hume. Of course, no such proof will ever be produced. Ironically, however, the aforementioned Michael Huemer has attempted to state the Objectivist argument in logical form. I have linked to it before, but its worth the occasional perusal. Huemer finds all of Rand's premises to be dubious for one reason or another. Nor is Huemer able to complete the chain of reasoning all the way to Rand's "man qua man." That, of course, is impossible, since it involves a palpable equivocation ("'man qua man' and 'rational' [are] fudge words" is Huemer's verdict).

Objectivism & Politics, Part 52

Ayn Rand contra Conservatism 6. Rand, in her essay '“Conservatism: an Obituary” attacks what she calls the “argument from depravity.” Part of her attack involves a curious distortion of the so-called conservative argument, where she draws out a presumed implication of the argument which no conservative would ever endorse. “Please grasp fully the implications of this argument,” abjures Rand: “since men are depraved, they are not good enough for a dictatorship; freedom is all that they deserve; if they were perfect, they would be worthy of a totalitarian state.

Now no conservative has ever said anything of the kind, and it is hard to imagine that any ever would. Nor does the conservative argument imply such a thing. There is a conservative (and classical liberal) argument that goes something as follows: that whatever annoyances or defects that can sometimes be associated with representative institutions and a government by checks and balances, these annoyances are a small price to pay for the dangers associated with dictatorship and tyranny. Conservatives accept Lord Acton’s dictum that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. From this tenuous strand, Rand attempts to weave her claim that conservatives believe, or at least imply, that people are not good enough for dictatorship.

If conservatism really implied such an absurdity, you would expect more critics of conservatism to have made the charge. But Rand is the only one to have ever made it. She backs it with no quotes from any conservative and, as far as I know, never made the charge again, nor did she ever make it a venue where she could have been challenged by an articulate conservative.

What makes Rand’s distortion particularly appalling is that for years she was involved conservative movement, talking with and exchanging correspondence with conservative intellectuals such as Isabel Patterson, Channing Pollock, and Ruth Alexander. She was in a position to know better. Hence, it is difficult not to suspect an element of dishonesty, or at least evasion, in Rand’s accusations. If Rand had been passionately committed to honesty and fair practice, she would not have distorted the conservative argument as egregiously as she did here. This is yet another example of Rand making a great deal of virtuous noise about not engaging in behavior X, and yet wallowing in behavior X all the same. Despite all her histrionic denuciations of dishonesty and evasion, here we find her evading and spewing mendacity with the best of them.

Out of Ideas

With the world in the grip of an unprecedented economic crisis, a barrage of hype from right-leaning media commentariat, and sales of Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" surging in the early part of this year (though it has subsequently dropped out of the Amazon Top 100), one would have thought this would have been the ideal time for the Ayn Rand Institute to undertake some striking new initiative to capture the commanding heights of the public discourse.

Not content with their Atlas Shrugged Pledge on Facebook (only 1762 takers since May, with even Yaron Brook producing a not very impressive 45 out of 68 pledges himself) the ARI is now attempting to raise $2,000,000 with the amazingly original aim of..yes, you guessed it...promoting "Atlas Shrugged".

Yes, it seems that half a century after its publication, it's telling that the only trump card the ARI feel they have remains Atlas Shrugged. Even when its selling in record numbers, the Big Idea for Promoting Objectivism always comes back to...more Atlas Shrugged. And if that doesn't work, throw more, more Atlas Shrugged at the problem.

Someone at ARI HQ needs to do the math. As we at the ARCHNblog have already pointed out, Atlas has already been read by some 18,000,000 people in the USA over the last 50 years, far more than any other allegedly philosophical work (unless you count the Bible). Yet it's produced only a tiny trickle of Objectivists to date - probably less than 100,000. And even that small amount is famous for its inability to agree on much at all. In fact the ARI's Never Ending Atlas Shrugged Initiative is feeling more and more like one of those Big Government projects that is hopelessly ineffective yet continues on for year after year because of the political commitments of the players involved. If the ARI was a commercial business, with a conversion rate of just 0.5% one suspects the Atlas promotion would probably have been cancelled long ago.

The question is why, if Atlas is such an ineffective conversion tool, the ARI stick to trying to flog it as their primary strategy. One can only suspect that far from being all about ideas, it's because they're all out of them.

These Are John Galts Speaking...

Dr Helen interviews three people who claim to be "going Galt." Apparently in reality this means anything from deliberately taking less well paying jobs through to giving up your health insurance (Shome mishtake, shurely? - Ed) to giving up smoking. Yes, really!

Note: segment starts around 9 mins in.

Objectivism & Economics, Part 13

Objectivism and Austrian Economics: Salsman as “hyper-inflationist.” Stefan Karlsson over at mises.org complained a few years ago that many ARI-affiliated economists have “abandoned Mises” in favor of “supply-siders”:

[I]f you look at their articles on economics [over at capmag.com], you will ... find the pro-inflationist supply-side economics advocated there.… This is particularly true if you look at older articles from 1999 or 2000. There you'll find many articles strongly attacking Ayn Rand's former associate Alan Greenspan—but not because he has abandoned his former hard money stance. No quite to the contrary, in true supply-sider fashion he was attacked for not being inflationist enough. Of course, in true supply-sider fashion they profess to be anti-inflation only to go on to attack the Fed for not lowering interest rates and increasing the money supply.

Karlsson has discovered a glaring contradiction at the heart of those Objectivists who, like Salsman, reject Austrian economics: they are all inflationists! It is this sort of thing that causes those of us at ARCHNBlog to be so very unimpressed whenever we hear Objectivists making virtuous noise about “reason” and logic and “rationality.” In practice, those who talk a great deal about “reason” are almost always found to be mere rationalizers of their own personal interests and private shibbeloths. Salsman, for example, is an investment analyst for his own company, InterMarket Financing, which “quantifies market price indicators to guide the asset allocation decisions and trading strategies of institutional investors. [InterMarket Financing helps] pension plans, asset managers, financial institutions and hedge funds use disciplined methods to outperform benchmarks.”

Given how embedded such financial advising firms have been in the speculative excesses of the last quarter century, it is not surprising that Salsman would favor an economic ideology that supported the economic conditions that feathered his own nest. The difficulty for Salsman was trying to harmonize his supply side ideology with orthodox Objectivism’s traditional allegience with Austrian economics. It turned out to be easier than many of us might have expected. There already existed points of difference between Rand and the Austrians (e.g., Mises’ neo-Kantian epistemology and “radical subjectivism”), and Salsman merely exaggerated these differences and added several more of his own, nearly all based on absurd economic heresies He has even had the gall to excuse for Rand for her advocacy of Austrian economics: “By the way, I do not fault Ayn Rand for having promoted the Austrian School in the 1960s,” he writes. “I suspect she was merely trying to suggest the best economics books then available, realizing they weren't perfect.”

What is puzzling about all this is that no one over at ARI should raise a word in protest. Since economics is considered a non-philosophical subject-matter, differences of opinion in that discipline are allowed. While that is entirely understandable, shouldn’t there be at least some limits? After all, would ARI wish to be affiliated with an individual who denied that the earth is a globe? Wouldn’t they, at the very least, wish to be on record as not advocating so obvious a detour into blatant evasion of reality? Well, as it happens, Salsman’s view are nearly on the same plane as those of the flat-earthers. He scorns what he calls the “myth of scarcity” and holds that the Stock Market of early 2000 was not overvalued!

Incidentally, George Riesman, who represents the traditional view among orthodox Randians that seeks to integrate Objectivism with Austrian economics, had a reply of sorts to Salsman’s criticism of Austrians for favoring interest-rate hikes by the Fed:

Austrian economists ... actually do advocate this and it’s perfectly correct for them to do so [Riesman wrote]. This is because we would all be better off if the Federal Reserve refused to lend except at an interest rate that was too high for anyone being willing to borrow at. In that case the Federal Reserve would be unable to affect the market in any way and might as well not exist. The Federal Reserve exists in order to make interest rates lower than they would otherwise be. It tries to achieve this by creating new and additional money and lending it out. The new and additional money appears on the market as an increase in the supply of loanable funds and in this way brings interest rates down. However, once the new and additional money gets out into circulation and is spent and respent, sales revenues and profits tend to rise throughout the economic system, which serves to increase the demand for loanable funds. If the Fed does not raise interest rates but simply provides more new and additional money to meet the additional demand for funds, the problem grows worse and worse. A rise in interest rates is essential to choke off the flow of new and additional money—to prevent a continuous acceleration in the creation of new and additional money. In objecting to this rise in interest rates, Salsman is in the position of advocating hyperinflation. Hyperinflation is profoundly destructive of wealth and rests on the total obliteration of any kind of objective standards in the economic system.

Binswanger:"The Universe Is All About Me"

Objectivism's fondness for egoism and introspection leads naturally, if unwittingly, into solipsism and subjectivism. For an example of this tendency, here we have Harry Binswanger from his July 08 Monthly Enticement (a free email essay to draw paying customers to his subscriber-only list):

Binswanger: Since the theme here is anti-selfishness, I'll close in my own, selfish voice. Ayn Rand showed me that it *is* all about me. "When I die," she said, quoting an Ancient Greek philosopher, "the universe goes out of existence." And though that is false, "from the outside,"it is absolutely true "from the inside." When my life ends, there's nothing *for me*. The universe is all about me. So you'll forgive me if I'm not only addicted to oil, but to money, values, life, and, at root, addicted to existence.

Objectivism & Religion, Part 17

Abortion. Rand and her followers tend to be unapologetic defenders of abortion, including abortion right up to the moment of birth. Objectivists are not only uncompromising on this issue, they also give it a high priority as a cause to champion. According to the Objectivist site abortionisprolife.com, “Any one who advocates the outlawing of abortion (especially in the first few months of pregnancy)—like Steve Forbes—is an enemy of individual rights in principle, and thus an enemy of capitalism.” Since many advocates of the free market are opposed to abortion, the uncompromsing stance of Objectivism on this issue serves merely to prevent Rand’s followers from making alliances with other pro-market forces.

The issue of abortion rests on whether the fetus is regarded as a human being. Peikoff recognizes this in his article celebrating the Roe vs. Wade decision. “[A]bortion-rights advocates [should not] keep hiding behind the phrase ‘a woman's right to choose.’” Peikoff wrote. “Does she have the right to choose murder? That's what abortion would be, if the fetus were a person.” Objectivists are certain that a fetus is not a human life. How do they know this? Because, as Rand argued, a fetus is only a “potential” human life. But why is it only a potential life? To say that a fetus is only a potential, rather than an actual life, is merely to repeat that it is not an actual life in other words. It is, in short, to assume the point at issue. If we are to be strictly honest about his issue, we have to admit that it is not obvious whether a fetus should be regarded as a human life or not. At the stage of conception, it is only a few cells—and how can a few cells consitute a human life? Quickly, however, in the matter of a few weeks, it develops into something more interesting and substantial, gradually taking on human form and characteristics. Perhaps the most reasonable position would be to regard a fetus as an emerging life. Granted, this would mean that we couldn’t quite determine when a fetus becomes a human life. Abortion would thus remain what it is for most people: morally problematic. That, indeed, appears to be the attitude of the majority of Americans who, while regarding abortion as immoral, nevertheless believe it should remain legal in the first (and possibly second) trimester(s). Where many Americans differ decisively from Objectivism is in their view that late term abortions (i.e., partial-birth abortion) should in most instances be illegal.

Objectivists in their own way are every bit as unhinged and extreme on the issue of abortion as are those “pro-lifers” who would charge those who have abortions with first degree murder. They are constantly comparing fetuses to tissues, useless body organs, collections of cells, etc. Peikoff goes so far as to describe a fetus as a “cluster of lifeless cells”—a contradictio in adjecto if ever there was one! Such descriptions, besides betraying an imbalance of mind, are in bad taste. Whether we are for or against the criminalization of abortion, surely there is no reason to regard a fetus as only a clump of meaningless cells!

The arbitrary and inconclusive nature of the Objectivist argument for abortion rights can easily be appreciated if we compare it to Objectivist-based arguments against abortion. Yes, such arguments do exist: there are indeed self-proclaimed Objectivists who delight in using Objectivist modes of argumentation to reach the opposite conclusion on the question of abortion. Mark La Vigne argues as follows:


[The Objectivist position on abortion], of all things I have read and understood of objectivism, as advocated by A.R.I., is the single most inconsistent area of the Institute's intellectual endeavors. Human life is human life. "A is A." Mr. Peikoff would lead a reader to believe that an infant developed instantaneously, at the moment of birth, into a "real human being." This defies all known logic. Rather than simply stating the facts, perhaps what is needed is a further demonstration of them:

Mr Peikoff claims that the embryo "exists as part of the woman's body." True or false? False. It is dependent upon the woman's body, but the real test of it as an integral part of her body is whether it can successfully be removed without harm to her, and implanted in another woman without harm to either the surrogate or the embryo. The answer is "yes" in each instance. Can it, at this stage, exist independent of some woman's body, other than by freezing? No. That does not, however, make it part of a woman's body.

La Vigne makes a few good points against Peikoff’s arguments, but his points hardly constitute an argument for the pro-life position. It is merely an argument against Peikoff’s bad arguments. Nor does the “A is A” reference help one jot (unless it is inserted for reasons of satire).

A more serious argument (perhaps too serious) along Objectivist lines is presented by G. Stolyarov.

The question then becomes, “When does a potential cease being a mere alternative among many?” Prior to the conception of a child, there is absolutely no guarantee that a particular genetic code will be furnished to serve as the basis for the uniquely adjusted rational faculty of a child-to-be. Therefore it is moral to prevent conception by means of abstinence or contraceptives, and the couple will therefore possess a genuine choice of whether or not to expend a substantial portion of their lives and finances on the upbringing of offspring. However, once conception has occurred, the peculiar genome is already in place, which will result in the inevitable development of a rational creature absent intervention. Granted, the fetus does not yet possess volitional consciousness, but neither does a man who is asleep. Does that grant a serial murderer the right to enter his home, loot his property and kill one whom he mistakenly judges to be “potentially awake”? The fact that that particular man (or child) will, if unhindered, be able to exercise his volitional consciousness, classifies him as a human being.

Although hardly a convincing argument, I must give Stolyarov credit for originality. A fetus is not a “potential” human life because, once conception takes place, there exists a guarantee of a particularly genetic code for a uniquely adjusted rational faculty! Okay, if you say so Mr. Stolyarov! Yet once again I must belabor the obvious: all such verbalist arguments, regardless of which side of the debate they come down on, are utterly futile precisely because no one would ever change their mind after being exposed to them. They seem effective only to those who have already made up their minds and agree with the positions asserted in them.

Web Weirdness

The internets are a strange place. I give you the site of one Dave Michael Linehan, allegedly associated with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville yet apparently working from Thailand. Dave is shooting for something called the Atlantis Research Project, which is a synthesis of the environmental work of Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, and King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand with Noam Chomsky and "Dr" Ayn Rand.

We here at the ARCHNblog admit that we didn't see that one coming. But why do we care? Because as well as the Randian connection, oddly, if you click on the link "Enter the Discussion Area" he has for some unknown reason made the ARCHNblog said "Discussion Area". However we know nothing of Dave's work, which seems if nothing else at least highly original. Methinks some fat-fingers coding has gone on here, which Dave, should he be reading this, may care to correct at some point.

"Concepts In a Hat"

No, not a droll putdown of Rand's epistemological disarray, but apparently an Objectivist party game - I suppose the New Intellectual equivalent of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon". But of course this being Objectivism, it could never merely be just a game; it would have to aim at "developing a deeper understanding of Objectivist ideas" too, right?

The idea is to put 25 or more Objectivist concepts into a hat, then draw any two at random and explain the connection. Just as many a true word is said in jest, this simple game really does unwittingly give us a greater understanding of the Objectivist method in action ie. a series of purely speculative rationalisations, the more vaguely and speciously connected, the better. Here is a perfect example, apparently cited from one of Peikoff's tape lectures

"...Peikoff says that when he started playing the game many years ago, he was stumped when he was asked to explain the connection between "private roads" and "the validity of the senses." But eventually he made the following connection: Private roads are an expression of the fact that the purpose of government is only the protection of individual rights. Individual rights are defended on the basis that man is a rational being who survives by the exercise of his mind, so he has to be left free. Finally, the validity of man's mind depends on the validity of the senses because the mind is the conceptualization of sensory data. Therefore you can see from this rough analysis that it is useless to argue for private roads with someone who rejects the validity of the senses."

Priceless.

(hat tip to Meg's Marginalia)

"Showtime"

A while ago, Greg Nyquist wondered "Is Objectivism Dangerous?" He concluded that the answer was no, despite the often fantastic theorising and overblown rhetoric of some of its proponents.

However, here in New Zealand we have the interesting situation of the former leader of the Libertarianz, Objectivist Lindsay Perigo, on Tuesday taking the quite unprecedented step of calling for the violent overthrow of the presiding government, a coalition of several parties dominated by the Labour Party. Comparing the situation to the American War of Independence, he said:

"...the time for mere marches is past...It is the right and duty of New Zealand citizens to throw off this government, which has long evinced a desire—nay, a compulsion—to subjugate us to absolute despotism. We should not wait for the 2008 election...New Zealanders must now ask themselves if they are a free people—and if so, are they prepared to act accordingly? Which is to say, are they prepared forcibly to evict all tyranny-mongers from their positions of power?"

In a followup comment, "So, now to overthrow!" Perigo continues:

"Private feedback this evening indicates overwhelming acceptance that the time has come...Everything from this point until Showtime must of necessity be clandestine..."

He then seems to try to soften his original position with some of his trademark outre humour, before returning to his theme:

"All right, I'm getting flippant already. Seriously, don't fret at the absence of progress reports. Needs must that this project go underground. But help is on the way."

One commenter described himself as "shocked" yet applauded Perigo's stand, to which Perigo replied "Bravo to you! At least you took in its import. And yes, this is where we've got to..."

This is the first time in my recollection that the former leader of a longstanding political party has called for the overthrow by force of a sitting government. The issue that has apparently brought him to make these threats is the Electoral Finance Bill, a controversial attempt to stop anonymous election funding that is currently before Parliament. The bill appears flawed in many ways; but does not appear to be serious enough a threat to free speech to require revolutionary action.

Should we take this sort of literal call to arms seriously? Probably not. These days Perigo seems to largely act as a figurehead in the Objectivist/Libertarian movement, issuing various provocative pronouncements and leaving others to do the organizational donkey work behind the scenes. The Libertarianz themselves, while composed of some highly competent and intelligent people, also do not have much of a reputation for organizational prowess, and have struggled to gain political traction. A former media personality, Perigo's star has fallen significantly over the past decade or more since leaving employment in the state-run Television New Zealand. His naturally contrarian tendencies have made him an interesting figure in the political landscape, but other than sporadic fill-in media gigs, inflammatory web posts and a short run in a student newspaper column, his actual output has reduced to a trickle. How seriously he is taken in Objectivist circles is also uncertain.

It is most likely that this is either a simple cri de coeur, to be quietly regretted in the cold light of day, or a kind of publicity stunt intended to re-ignite media interest in his views. The danger, however, in these sorts of things lies not so much with Perigo himself, but more with some of the figures on the fringes of these movements who perhaps might take calls for some kind of "Showtime" more seriously than their author may have intended.

At any rate, I will email Bernard Darnton, current leader of the Libertarianz, for a reaction to these statements.

UPDATE: Perigo has now deleted his later "So, now to overthrow!" comment. However, I had archived it, and will put up a link to it later.

The Binswanger Loyalty Oath

A commenter on this thread reminds us of ARIan Harry Binswanger's odd requirement for joining his email list:

The HBL Loyalty Oath
I have created this list for those who are deeply and sincerely interested in Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and its application to cultural-political issues.

It is understood that Objectivism is limited to the philosophic principles expounded by Ayn Rand in the writings published during her lifetime plus those articles by other authors that she published in her own periodicals (e.g., The Objectivist) or included in her anthologies. Applications, implications, developments, and extensions of Objectivism--though they are to be encouraged and will be discussed on my list--are not, even if entirely valid, part of Objectivism. (Objectivism does not exhaust the field of rational philosophic identifications.)

I do not make full agreement with Objectivism a condition of joining my list. However, I do exclude anyone who is sanctioning or supporting the enemies of Ayn Rand and Objectivism. "Enemies" include: "libertarians," moral agnostics or "tolerationists," anarchists, and those whom Ayn Rand condemned morally or who have written books or articles attacking Ayn Rand. I do not wish to publicize the myriad of anti-Objectivist individuals and organizations by giving names, so if you have questions about any such, email me privately and I will be glad to discuss it with you.

If you bristle at the very idea of a "loyalty oath" and declaring certain ideological movements and individuals as "enemies," then my list is probably not for you. To join my list while concealing your sanction or support of these enemies, would be to commit a fraud. Again, if you have any questions on this policy, please let me know

Oh Yes, They Called Him The Streak

Guest poster Neil Parille from Objectiblog tells the tale of Ayn Rand's odd reaction to a famous prank at the 1974 Academy Awards.

Objectivists often accuse non-Objectivists, anti-Objectivists and apostates from ARI Objectivism as suffering from “rationalism.” This term appears to mean something like applying principles to situations without taking into account the facts of experience. A recent example is Leonard Peikoff’s 2006 statement that anyone who considers voting Republican or abstaining from voting “does not understand the philosophy of Objectivism, except perhaps as a rationalistic system detached from the world.” Incidentally, the term does not appear in this sense in either The Ayn Rand Lexicon or the index to Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Ellen Stuttle has drawn attention to the following from Leonard Peikoff’s 1987 talk “My Thirty Years With Ayn Rand,” reprinted in The Voice of Reason:

About a dozen years ago, Ayn Rand and I were watching the Academy Awards on television; it was the evening when a streaker flashed by during the ceremonies. Most people probably dismissed the incident with some remark like: "He's just a kid" or "It's a high-spirited prank" or "He wants to get on TV." But not Ayn Rand. Why, her mind, wanted to know, does this "kid" act in this particular fashion? What is the difference between his "prank" and that of college students on a lark who swallow goldfish or stuff themselves into telephone booths? How does his desire to appear on TV differ from that of a typical game-show contestant? In other words, Ayn Rand swept aside from the outset the superficial aspects of the incident and the standard irrelevant comments in order to reach the essence, which has to pertain to this specific action in this distinctive setting.

"Here," she said to me in effect, "is a nationally acclaimed occasion replete with celebrities, jeweled ballgowns, coveted prizes, and breathless cameras, an occasion offered to the country as the height of excitement, elegance, glamor--and what this creature wants to do is drop his pants in the middle of it all and thrust his bare buttocks into everybody's face. What then is his motive? Not high spirits or TV coverage, but destruction--the satisfaction of sneering at and undercutting that which the rest of the country looks up to and admires." In essence, she concluded, the incident was an example of nihilism, which is the desire not to have or enjoy values, but to nullify and eradicate them.

[. . .]

Having grasped the streaker's nihilism, therefore, she was eager to point out to me some very different examples of the same attitude. Modern literature, she observed, is distinguished by its creators' passion not to offer something new and positive, but to wipe out: to eliminate plots, heroes, motivation, even grammar and syntax; in other words, their brazen desire to destroy their own field along with the great writers of the past by stripping away from literature every one of its cardinal attributes. Just as Progressive education is the desire for education stripped of lessons, reading, facts, teaching, and learning. Just as avant-garde physics is the gleeful cry that there is no order in nature, no law, no predictability, no causality. That streaker, in short, was the very opposite of an isolated phenomenon. He was a microcosm of the principle ruling modern culture, a fleeting representative of that corrupt motivation which Ayn Rand has described so eloquently as "hatred of the good for being the good." And what accounts for such widespread hatred? she asked at the end. Her answer brings us back to the philosophy we referred to earlier, the one that attacks reason and reality wholesale and thus makes all values impossible: the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

The event in question was the 1974 Academy Awards. By that time, streaking had become the national prank. Ray Stevens’ song “The Streak” had been written but not published. Based on the little evidence available to Rand that night, the most likely explanation was that the streaker was just another “kid” pulling a prank, and the Academy Awards program chosen because it would give him maximum “exposure.”

In fact, the streaker was one Robert Opel, a thirty-three year old variously described as a photographer and an advertising executive. Opel wanted to make a statement about public nudity and sexual freedom (he was for it) as well as jump-start his career. His motive, then, does not appear to have been nihilism or tearing down the Academy Awards.

Rand’s discussion of the streaker incident highlights a couple of problems common with her analysis of historical and cultural events. First, she tends to draw conclusions in the absence of evidence. Second, she tends to ascribe philosophical motivations to individuals without considering more mundane explanations. In short, it was Rand who was guilty of rationalism in this case.

In the above excerpt, Peikoff continues that hearing Rand that night inspired him to write the chapter on Weimar culture in The Ominous Parallels. This misguided work, in which Peikoff all but blames Kant for Auschwitz, illustrates the streaker problem in reverse: the facts available to the historian are so vast that determining the one philosophic principle explaining it all (if there is just one) is close to impossible. It is more likely that a number of philosophical trends converged in 1933 which, when combined with the German public’s frustration over the economy and the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles, resulted in the Nazi takeover. As Greg Nyquist argues in his book, if Hitler’s adversaries had adopted a better strategy, it is possible that the Nazis might not have seized power.

- Neil Parille

Who Is The John Galt Corporation?

No, this is not a joke.