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The tragic irony of Objectivism is perfectly captured in Peikoff's life story. A man who dedicated himself to a philosophy of radical independence ended up defi

by gcp123 1y ago

The tragic irony of Objectivism is perfectly captured in Peikoff's life story. A man who dedicated himself to a philosophy of radical independence ended up defining his entire existence through dependency. First on Rand, now apparently on his caregiver-turned-wife. I met Peikoff at an ARI event in 2009. He was surprisingly warm in person, but you could see the weight of being "the heir" in how defensively he responded to even mild questions about Rand's work. Now reading about the fracture with his daughter over the estate, it's like watching Atlas Shrugged's plot play out in real life: the bitter disputes over Rand's intellectual property mirroring the novel's battles over physical resources. What's most disturbing isn't the personal drama but what this reveals about how Objectivism operates in practice. For a philosophy obsessed with reason and independence, its institutional guardians seem remarkably focused on excommunication, loyalty tests, and controlling access to primary sources. The gap between preaching individualism while demanding conformity has always been the movement's central contradiction.

MrMcCall 1y ago
[flagged]
- guhidalg 1y ago
  I agree with you that the most consistent theory for explaining the current GOP going off the rails is a lack of compassion and empathy for their fellow human beings, replaced by a hope that Trump will smile upon them and be compassionate to them. It's a vicious cycle of signaling, since Reagan, that your government is not compassionate towards you therefore you should not empathize with your government and instead trust corporations (but don't think about their need to make money). I don't know how to promote empathy and compassion without relying on religious arguments. I usually find the strictly secular and over atheists are very compassionate and empathetic, but the mildly religious and definitely the evangelists in my life and the absolute _least_ compassionate people to those outside their tribe.
  - MrMcCall 1y ago
    > I usually find the strictly secular and over atheists are very compassionate and empathetic, but the mildly religious and definitely the evangelists in my life and the absolute _least_ compassionate people to those outside their tribe. Sadly enough, I am of the same opinion, too. That is because true spiritual seeking must accompany humility and love for ALL others, not just of those of their tribe, and most religious practitioners fail that miserably. That is why universal compassion is the only real purpose of religion, as it is the target that we must all aspire to, or we will fall well short of the mark. Most people of all ilks fall prey to selfish self-superiority, thinking incorrectly that their path is the only one that is "saved". They are just coldly and completely wrong. That is why one of the Masters said, "That which you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, that you have done unto me." > I don't know how to promote empathy and compassion without relying on religious arguments. I have settled on this fact: that no human being can survive the first years of their life without selfless, compasssionate care from adults in their orbit. This is the template for human life, but most people do not realize that this care should be attended to by every human being to every other human being as we grow older, where we are hopefully lucky enough to transition from the helped to the helper. We know that those with a more comfortable upbringing tend to do better in life, financially, mentally, and physically. If we were to invest, as societies, in the "least of our brothers", we would essentially be the water that lifts all boats, and our entire world would flow more smoothly. The problem is that it would take those who have more to give more, and generosity is a virtue of the spirit that has its counterpart vice, greed, active in our being as well. Every human being resides in the crux between the various vices they are susceptible to and the virtues they are presupposed to manifesting. It is incumbent upon us all to honestly search ourselves to find out in which ways we are less virtuous and then seek to become better. There are 19 pairs of vice/virtue pairs in the human being, so that's a lot of whack-a-mole to perform along our lives, but few of our fellows care enough to care enough about others to "Know thyself" deeply enough to do what Gurdjieff called "The Work". Caring for the happiness of others is the best balm for not only our own spiritual development, but for the ills of the world. Please remember that religion is always a personal affair, involving the internal relationship between the human being and our Creator. It does not enforce Its suggestions on our free will, which is truly given -- that's why there is so much mischief upon our world, and so much resulting suffering. As we Sufis say, "When you take one step towards God, It comes running." Self-evolution is the act of manifesting the miracle of defeating our selfish ego over many battles with many losses and less victories. It is how we learn humility, grace, mercy, kindness, and compassion, among all the other virtues. Of course, that requires the person to truly want to become a better person; most people are simply satisfied that they perform certain practices in accordance with their traditions, but that ain't love and doesn't count for shit in the grand scheme of things. As Rumi says, "The Way goes in." Peace be with you, friend. I am at your service.
- IncreasePosts 1y ago
  Republicans on average are more charitable than Democrats: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/your-money/republicans-democrats-charity-philanthropy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/your-money/republicans-de... Maybe Democrats are less charitable because they are more likely to live in Democratic controlled areas that provide more government services to the needy. However, does that really reflect compassion if you merely live in a system which provides those services through mandatory taxation? A republican moving from Kansas to NYC doesn't become more compassionate simply by paying more in taxes because they have to.
  - JKCalhoun 1y ago
    Might Christianity (and the likelihood one group or another is more Christian) have something to do with their charitable giving?
    - MrMcCall 1y ago
      In addition to tax write offs.
      - IncreasePosts 1y ago
        Tax write offs are available to Democrats equally.
        MrMcCall 1y ago
        That doesn't mean they use them to the fullest, and GOPers are really, really into avoiding taxes. It's like a religion to them, and they are about to crush our economy to make more absurd tax cuts for their rich friends and sycophants.
    - IncreasePosts 1y ago
      Sure, but why would it matter if it did?
cmrdporcupine 1y ago
Whenever I go reading about these people and this ideology and community it reminds me a lot of the various Trotskyist or other far left sects and personalities I encountered when I was younger. Similar dramas and egos and personality quirks and strident philosophical emissions, ideologically-focused groups built around persons/personalities. Often involving sexual relationships and dubious power dynamics. Just from, y'know, 180 degree philosophical positions. Maybe it was a product of her original linguistic/cultural extraction, but when I read Rand's "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" as a teen it reminded me very much of Stalinist or Trotskyite tracts I encountered around the same time. Different positions, same tone of absolute certainty and similar polemical flourishes. All of which to say, it all strikes me as more theological than philosophical.
- mapontosevenths 1y ago
  I think this is an astute observation. Taking any extreme position will inevitably put someone in the position where they find it difficult or impossible to live up to their own ideals. At the far ends of the spectrum everything starts to look alike. Ayn Rand herself died while collecting Social Security and Medicare.
  - Ray20 1y ago
    I don’t see any contradiction or failure to follow own ideals here. It's like blaming a slave who believes that slavery shouldn't exist, for eating his master's food.
  - cmrdporcupine 1y ago
    I mean, I dislike Rand's outlook passionately but I would not hold it against her to withdraw from a system she paid into or from living in the framework of society she lived in, even if she resented it.
    - stevenAthompson 1y ago
      She wanted to let the disabled starve or beg on street corners so she'd have a tiny fraction more wealth to fritter away. We don't owe her the benefit of the doubt.
yapyap 1y ago
That is pretty funny, in the ironic sense. What it feels like to me is the leaders of the Objectivism movement are all narcissists and the followers are paradoxically not Objectivists because they’re following a philosophy instead of being guided by the self. Being a peak Objectivist would be to not care about being an Objectivist or not, basically making it impossible to be an Objectivist if you follow the philosophy, even at the top of it because you are dependent on your followers for influence, status and power. The irony of it all, turns out a philosophy based on self sufficiency is as big of a grift as a political movement trying to convince everyone that in this day and age self sufficiency is the best move, mostly cause they can’t fathom sharing. One of the _most_ ironic bits being that if everyone were truly self sufficient there would be no social hierarchy and no money anymore.
- seanhunter 1y ago
  Objectivism has many of these sorts of contradictions. Most famously, Ayn Rand herself collected medicare and social security as her health deteriorated towards the end of her life.
  - lumenwrites 1y ago
    Is that really a contradiction? We all have our ideals, and we all fail to live up to them sometimes, because life can be brutal.
    - stevenAthompson 1y ago
      To be fair, Rand herself said (to paraphrase) that because the state took it from her against her will it was fair play to take it back and I think that was self-consistent. That said, she wanted to let the disabled starve to death so I don't think anyone really has to be fair to her at all. Empathy is only for the empathetic.
      - marknutter 1y ago
        Ayn Rand did not "want to let the disabled starve to death". What a ridiculous lie.
kashunstva 1y ago
> what this reveals about how Objectivism operates in practice...the movement's central contradiction Is it only the gatekeepers of Rand's legacy that exhibit this discrepancy, or was it contradiction from the beginning? I seem to remember the first Objectivist herself accepted assistance from the Federal government near the end of her life. Anyway, to someone with a distant outsider's view of this movement, it can seem that it misses something fundamental about the human psyche as it evolved to operate in co-dependent groups.
- thrance 1y ago
  Not really a defense of this clown ideology, but Rand would be acting rationally (if a bit hypocritically) by accepting the Government's check. In her views, it's the State that's acting irrationally by offering support in the first place. On a similar subject, she believed disabled people (or more generally, people unable to work) should not receive any help other than from "voluntary charity" [1], a fact I find absolutely disgusting and should discredit this ideology to any sane person. [1] https://youtu.be/rM4HqlqQYwo https://youtu.be/rM4HqlqQYwo
- notahacker 1y ago
  Even her fictional utopia Galt's Gulch is basically a commune, a commune where people cosplay at being hardnosed capitalists who won't give anything for free by charging each other token amounts for everything...
  - lazystar 1y ago
    Exactly - theyre all non-conformists, and you can be a non-conformist and join them in their commune if you act just like them in every way.
  - fireburning 1y ago
    [dead]
- kbelder 1y ago
  She addressed the problem with accepting assistance in relation to student tuition assistance. Briefly, she said hate the game, not the player. The students have a structure imposed upon them, and it's not irrational or unethical to take the aid the government provides since the government still regulates them and taxes them in various ways. However, it would be unethical to advocate for increasing that assistance (because the benefit is taken forcibly from others).
jollyllama 1y ago
> The gap between preaching individualism while demanding conformity has always been the movement's central contradiction. Check out Adam Curtis's documentaries for work that zeroes in on this.
hinkley 1y ago
Something life and then later therapy has taught me is that intellect can paper over a lot of shortcomings, but it’s just paper. At the end of the day situations that involve humans always involve feelings. And you stunt your growth (personal or organizational) if you try to pretend it isn’t the case. The problem with intellectualizing is that it’s very good at employing itself to avoid all other options. If you get too old pretending otherwise, the road back is full of brambles and many would rather double down than accept it. Once you understand this it’s easy to see the hollowness in what Rand offers, if it wasn’t already patently obvious to you before.
- kibwen 1y ago
  > At the end of the day situations that involve humans always involve feelings. My more cynical take is that humans are emotional beings first and foremost, and reason is a distant second at best. And even our pretenses to reason can't be trusted, as they are often just emotion masquerading as reason, and the most insufferable of the reasonpilled are those that refuse to understand this. I'm not trying to say emotion/reason are good/bad. What I am trying to say is that any hopes for a human society that place reason above emotion are fundamentally unachievable.
  - hinkley 1y ago
    I know some people are pushing back on Thinking, Fast and Slow’s assertions but whether everyone’s brains work that way or not, there’s at least a visible minority of people whose brains do, and I’m among them. We do many things based entirely on intuition, and then afterward gin up a reason for having done them that doesn’t make us sound insane, or like five year olds. It’s part explanation/excuse and part description, but presented as description. And if you’ve read anything on anger management, there’s a split second where the angry individual is experiencing some other emotion, like vulnerability or betrayal, before they sublimate it into anger. The problem is in how fast and to what degree they perform the substitution, and often even they miss the event, which takes away their own agency in the response. Recovery involves clawing back that agency.
    - 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
cle 1y ago
The irony isn't one of dependency. The philosophy celebrates interdependence and the achievements of groups of cooperating people who take care of each other. The irony and tragedy is broader and encompasses both the cult leaders and the cult detractors who are both unwilling separate the ideas from the people.
glenstein 1y ago
Could not have put it better myself! After finding myself very inspired by the novels, mostly as an introduction to the virtues of critical thinking and how those can be foundational to a worldview (which is good!), the cracks in the armor really started to show when looking at the community, and especially Rand's relationship with Nathaniel Branden. There's lots to say about how Objectivism oversimplifies and attacks caricatures, and doesn't address itself to sophisticated economic thinking. You can get good out of it (I read it during the Bush admin and felt like it was making the same warnings against the excesses of state power that 1984 was), and it's not terrible to expose a person to the virtues of philosophy, and critical thinking. In my case it opened my eyes to moral realism, at which point I traded in any interest in Objectivism for that instead. Even if you want to take the novel on its own terms that it has super-intellectual heroes, how humans work is every bit as much a part of reality as the physics of inventing a new metal. And the talent of administering human organizations is never present. It also never really models how mere mortals can reconcile their imperfections to the standards articulated, and is not self aware enough to speak to the population of mere mortals who would misdiagnose themselves as misunderstood heroes.
richardanaya 1y ago
Your understanding of objectivism is deeply flawed if you think the philosophy sees no possible value in the trade between two people. Radical independence in objectivism as a virtue is independence of judgment, not some caricature you present of being an irrational loner.
btilly 1y ago
The central problem of Objectivism is that they tie their logical conclusions into emotional knots. You can see this in their use of loaded language such as "theft". The problem is that this causes them to believe that their conclusions are purely logical, even when they are not. Therefore any disagreements are "proof" that the other is being illogical and should be rejected. This leads to an intolerance of disagreement, that in turn leads to the excommunication, loyalty tests, and so on. All of which will be expressed in the rhetoric of the philosophy, which is designed to appeal to reason while connecting to emotion. It is perfectly predictable emotional behavior. As is the inability to process inconvenient information that does not align with what the philosophy wishes to believe is true.
_wire_ 1y ago
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace - Adam Curtis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(TV_series) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines... See ep-1 "Love & Power," on contradictions of Ayn Rand's life versus her philosophy; can be found on yt / vimeo Series supplies interesting history for any nerd interested in systems analysis and provides a survey of California Ideology. His documentary on the legacy of Henritta Lacks' immortal cells and biology, "The Way of All Flesh" is also interesting food for thought on systems analysis.
trhway 1y ago
>What's most disturbing isn't the personal drama but what this reveals about how Objectivism operates in practice. For a philosophy obsessed with reason and independence, ideology. People pervert everything into ideology. > its institutional guardians seem remarkably focused on excommunication, loyalty tests, and controlling access to primary sources. The gap between preaching individualism while demanding conformity has always been the movement's central contradiction. that can be said about any ideology. Ideologies can be different yet those guardians and the gap between declaration and practice is always the same.

by gcp123 1y ago

MrMcCall 1y ago

[flagged]

guhidalg 1y ago
I agree with you that the most consistent theory for explaining the current GOP going off the rails is a lack of compassion and empathy for their fellow human beings, replaced by a hope that Trump will smile upon them and be compassionate to them. It's a vicious cycle of signaling, since Reagan, that your government is not compassionate towards you therefore you should not empathize with your government and instead trust corporations (but don't think about their need to make money). I don't know how to promote empathy and compassion without relying on religious arguments. I usually find the strictly secular and over atheists are very compassionate and empathetic, but the mildly religious and definitely the evangelists in my life and the absolute _least_ compassionate people to those outside their tribe.
- MrMcCall 1y ago
  > I usually find the strictly secular and over atheists are very compassionate and empathetic, but the mildly religious and definitely the evangelists in my life and the absolute _least_ compassionate people to those outside their tribe. Sadly enough, I am of the same opinion, too. That is because true spiritual seeking must accompany humility and love for ALL others, not just of those of their tribe, and most religious practitioners fail that miserably. That is why universal compassion is the only real purpose of religion, as it is the target that we must all aspire to, or we will fall well short of the mark. Most people of all ilks fall prey to selfish self-superiority, thinking incorrectly that their path is the only one that is "saved". They are just coldly and completely wrong. That is why one of the Masters said, "That which you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, that you have done unto me." > I don't know how to promote empathy and compassion without relying on religious arguments. I have settled on this fact: that no human being can survive the first years of their life without selfless, compasssionate care from adults in their orbit. This is the template for human life, but most people do not realize that this care should be attended to by every human being to every other human being as we grow older, where we are hopefully lucky enough to transition from the helped to the helper. We know that those with a more comfortable upbringing tend to do better in life, financially, mentally, and physically. If we were to invest, as societies, in the "least of our brothers", we would essentially be the water that lifts all boats, and our entire world would flow more smoothly. The problem is that it would take those who have more to give more, and generosity is a virtue of the spirit that has its counterpart vice, greed, active in our being as well. Every human being resides in the crux between the various vices they are susceptible to and the virtues they are presupposed to manifesting. It is incumbent upon us all to honestly search ourselves to find out in which ways we are less virtuous and then seek to become better. There are 19 pairs of vice/virtue pairs in the human being, so that's a lot of whack-a-mole to perform along our lives, but few of our fellows care enough to care enough about others to "Know thyself" deeply enough to do what Gurdjieff called "The Work". Caring for the happiness of others is the best balm for not only our own spiritual development, but for the ills of the world. Please remember that religion is always a personal affair, involving the internal relationship between the human being and our Creator. It does not enforce Its suggestions on our free will, which is truly given -- that's why there is so much mischief upon our world, and so much resulting suffering. As we Sufis say, "When you take one step towards God, It comes running." Self-evolution is the act of manifesting the miracle of defeating our selfish ego over many battles with many losses and less victories. It is how we learn humility, grace, mercy, kindness, and compassion, among all the other virtues. Of course, that requires the person to truly want to become a better person; most people are simply satisfied that they perform certain practices in accordance with their traditions, but that ain't love and doesn't count for shit in the grand scheme of things. As Rumi says, "The Way goes in." Peace be with you, friend. I am at your service.
IncreasePosts 1y ago
Republicans on average are more charitable than Democrats: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/your-money/republicans-democrats-charity-philanthropy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/your-money/republicans-de... Maybe Democrats are less charitable because they are more likely to live in Democratic controlled areas that provide more government services to the needy. However, does that really reflect compassion if you merely live in a system which provides those services through mandatory taxation? A republican moving from Kansas to NYC doesn't become more compassionate simply by paying more in taxes because they have to.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  Might Christianity (and the likelihood one group or another is more Christian) have something to do with their charitable giving?
  - MrMcCall 1y ago
    In addition to tax write offs.
    - IncreasePosts 1y ago
      Tax write offs are available to Democrats equally.
      - MrMcCall 1y ago
        That doesn't mean they use them to the fullest, and GOPers are really, really into avoiding taxes. It's like a religion to them, and they are about to crush our economy to make more absurd tax cuts for their rich friends and sycophants.
  - IncreasePosts 1y ago
    Sure, but why would it matter if it did?

cmrdporcupine 1y ago

Whenever I go reading about these people and this ideology and community it reminds me a lot of the various Trotskyist or other far left sects and personalities I encountered when I was younger. Similar dramas and egos and personality quirks and strident philosophical emissions, ideologically-focused groups built around persons/personalities. Often involving sexual relationships and dubious power dynamics. Just from, y'know, 180 degree philosophical positions. Maybe it was a product of her original linguistic/cultural extraction, but when I read Rand's "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" as a teen it reminded me very much of Stalinist or Trotskyite tracts I encountered around the same time. Different positions, same tone of absolute certainty and similar polemical flourishes. All of which to say, it all strikes me as more theological than philosophical.

mapontosevenths 1y ago
I think this is an astute observation. Taking any extreme position will inevitably put someone in the position where they find it difficult or impossible to live up to their own ideals. At the far ends of the spectrum everything starts to look alike. Ayn Rand herself died while collecting Social Security and Medicare.
- Ray20 1y ago
  I don’t see any contradiction or failure to follow own ideals here. It's like blaming a slave who believes that slavery shouldn't exist, for eating his master's food.
- cmrdporcupine 1y ago
  I mean, I dislike Rand's outlook passionately but I would not hold it against her to withdraw from a system she paid into or from living in the framework of society she lived in, even if she resented it.
  - stevenAthompson 1y ago
    She wanted to let the disabled starve or beg on street corners so she'd have a tiny fraction more wealth to fritter away. We don't owe her the benefit of the doubt.

yapyap 1y ago

That is pretty funny, in the ironic sense. What it feels like to me is the leaders of the Objectivism movement are all narcissists and the followers are paradoxically not Objectivists because they’re following a philosophy instead of being guided by the self. Being a peak Objectivist would be to not care about being an Objectivist or not, basically making it impossible to be an Objectivist if you follow the philosophy, even at the top of it because you are dependent on your followers for influence, status and power. The irony of it all, turns out a philosophy based on self sufficiency is as big of a grift as a political movement trying to convince everyone that in this day and age self sufficiency is the best move, mostly cause they can’t fathom sharing. One of the _most_ ironic bits being that if everyone were truly self sufficient there would be no social hierarchy and no money anymore.

seanhunter 1y ago
Objectivism has many of these sorts of contradictions. Most famously, Ayn Rand herself collected medicare and social security as her health deteriorated towards the end of her life.
- lumenwrites 1y ago
  Is that really a contradiction? We all have our ideals, and we all fail to live up to them sometimes, because life can be brutal.
  - stevenAthompson 1y ago
    To be fair, Rand herself said (to paraphrase) that because the state took it from her against her will it was fair play to take it back and I think that was self-consistent. That said, she wanted to let the disabled starve to death so I don't think anyone really has to be fair to her at all. Empathy is only for the empathetic.
    - marknutter 1y ago
      Ayn Rand did not "want to let the disabled starve to death". What a ridiculous lie.

kashunstva 1y ago

> what this reveals about how Objectivism operates in practice...the movement's central contradiction Is it only the gatekeepers of Rand's legacy that exhibit this discrepancy, or was it contradiction from the beginning? I seem to remember the first Objectivist herself accepted assistance from the Federal government near the end of her life. Anyway, to someone with a distant outsider's view of this movement, it can seem that it misses something fundamental about the human psyche as it evolved to operate in co-dependent groups.

thrance 1y ago
Not really a defense of this clown ideology, but Rand would be acting rationally (if a bit hypocritically) by accepting the Government's check. In her views, it's the State that's acting irrationally by offering support in the first place. On a similar subject, she believed disabled people (or more generally, people unable to work) should not receive any help other than from "voluntary charity" [1], a fact I find absolutely disgusting and should discredit this ideology to any sane person. [1] https://youtu.be/rM4HqlqQYwo https://youtu.be/rM4HqlqQYwo
notahacker 1y ago
Even her fictional utopia Galt's Gulch is basically a commune, a commune where people cosplay at being hardnosed capitalists who won't give anything for free by charging each other token amounts for everything...
- lazystar 1y ago
  Exactly - theyre all non-conformists, and you can be a non-conformist and join them in their commune if you act just like them in every way.
- fireburning 1y ago
  [dead]
kbelder 1y ago
She addressed the problem with accepting assistance in relation to student tuition assistance. Briefly, she said hate the game, not the player. The students have a structure imposed upon them, and it's not irrational or unethical to take the aid the government provides since the government still regulates them and taxes them in various ways. However, it would be unethical to advocate for increasing that assistance (because the benefit is taken forcibly from others).

jollyllama 1y ago

> The gap between preaching individualism while demanding conformity has always been the movement's central contradiction. Check out Adam Curtis's documentaries for work that zeroes in on this.

hinkley 1y ago

Something life and then later therapy has taught me is that intellect can paper over a lot of shortcomings, but it’s just paper. At the end of the day situations that involve humans always involve feelings. And you stunt your growth (personal or organizational) if you try to pretend it isn’t the case. The problem with intellectualizing is that it’s very good at employing itself to avoid all other options. If you get too old pretending otherwise, the road back is full of brambles and many would rather double down than accept it. Once you understand this it’s easy to see the hollowness in what Rand offers, if it wasn’t already patently obvious to you before.

kibwen 1y ago
> At the end of the day situations that involve humans always involve feelings. My more cynical take is that humans are emotional beings first and foremost, and reason is a distant second at best. And even our pretenses to reason can't be trusted, as they are often just emotion masquerading as reason, and the most insufferable of the reasonpilled are those that refuse to understand this. I'm not trying to say emotion/reason are good/bad. What I am trying to say is that any hopes for a human society that place reason above emotion are fundamentally unachievable.
- hinkley 1y ago
  I know some people are pushing back on Thinking, Fast and Slow’s assertions but whether everyone’s brains work that way or not, there’s at least a visible minority of people whose brains do, and I’m among them. We do many things based entirely on intuition, and then afterward gin up a reason for having done them that doesn’t make us sound insane, or like five year olds. It’s part explanation/excuse and part description, but presented as description. And if you’ve read anything on anger management, there’s a split second where the angry individual is experiencing some other emotion, like vulnerability or betrayal, before they sublimate it into anger. The problem is in how fast and to what degree they perform the substitution, and often even they miss the event, which takes away their own agency in the response. Recovery involves clawing back that agency.
  - 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

cle 1y ago

The irony isn't one of dependency. The philosophy celebrates interdependence and the achievements of groups of cooperating people who take care of each other. The irony and tragedy is broader and encompasses both the cult leaders and the cult detractors who are both unwilling separate the ideas from the people.

glenstein 1y ago

Could not have put it better myself! After finding myself very inspired by the novels, mostly as an introduction to the virtues of critical thinking and how those can be foundational to a worldview (which is good!), the cracks in the armor really started to show when looking at the community, and especially Rand's relationship with Nathaniel Branden. There's lots to say about how Objectivism oversimplifies and attacks caricatures, and doesn't address itself to sophisticated economic thinking. You can get good out of it (I read it during the Bush admin and felt like it was making the same warnings against the excesses of state power that 1984 was), and it's not terrible to expose a person to the virtues of philosophy, and critical thinking. In my case it opened my eyes to moral realism, at which point I traded in any interest in Objectivism for that instead. Even if you want to take the novel on its own terms that it has super-intellectual heroes, how humans work is every bit as much a part of reality as the physics of inventing a new metal. And the talent of administering human organizations is never present. It also never really models how mere mortals can reconcile their imperfections to the standards articulated, and is not self aware enough to speak to the population of mere mortals who would misdiagnose themselves as misunderstood heroes.

richardanaya 1y ago

Your understanding of objectivism is deeply flawed if you think the philosophy sees no possible value in the trade between two people. Radical independence in objectivism as a virtue is independence of judgment, not some caricature you present of being an irrational loner.

btilly 1y ago

The central problem of Objectivism is that they tie their logical conclusions into emotional knots. You can see this in their use of loaded language such as "theft". The problem is that this causes them to believe that their conclusions are purely logical, even when they are not. Therefore any disagreements are "proof" that the other is being illogical and should be rejected. This leads to an intolerance of disagreement, that in turn leads to the excommunication, loyalty tests, and so on. All of which will be expressed in the rhetoric of the philosophy, which is designed to appeal to reason while connecting to emotion. It is perfectly predictable emotional behavior. As is the inability to process inconvenient information that does not align with what the philosophy wishes to believe is true.

_wire_ 1y ago

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace - Adam Curtis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(TV_series) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines... See ep-1 "Love & Power," on contradictions of Ayn Rand's life versus her philosophy; can be found on yt / vimeo Series supplies interesting history for any nerd interested in systems analysis and provides a survey of California Ideology. His documentary on the legacy of Henritta Lacks' immortal cells and biology, "The Way of All Flesh" is also interesting food for thought on systems analysis.

trhway 1y ago

>What's most disturbing isn't the personal drama but what this reveals about how Objectivism operates in practice. For a philosophy obsessed with reason and independence, ideology. People pervert everything into ideology. > its institutional guardians seem remarkably focused on excommunication, loyalty tests, and controlling access to primary sources. The gap between preaching individualism while demanding conformity has always been the movement's central contradiction. that can be said about any ideology. Ideologies can be different yet those guardians and the gap between declaration and practice is always the same.