RoR: Forum

Here is a link to a YouTube video of Barbara Branden talking at the 50th year anniversary of Atlas Shrugged. (this is the link to part 2). It shows the respect and warmth that Barbara Branden has always felt towards Rand. I find that Ted's remarks (post #217) on The Passions of Ayn Rand match the reaction that I had to her book - although it has been a while since I've read it.

Post 221

Tuesday, December 30, 2008 - 6:33pm

Do you think these books add anything to Objectivism?

Post 222

Tuesday, December 30, 2008 - 6:54pm

"Do you think these books add anything to Objectivism?"

Yes, a little, but not very much - not to the philosophy as such. But it helps a reader - just a little to understand the thinker behind the ideas. I don't just want to learn someone's philosophy - I want to learn to take the quality of my own thinking up a notch - and reading about Rand (and others) - and reading things like her Journals and the book of her Marginalia help with that.

It is easy to pick up new ideas, it isn't so easy to improve ones ability to think.

Also, I don't read that much just for information, learning, or self-improvement - Life is short, so I rarely read something that I don't enjoy reading - which is a reason for reading some books of this kind (and for skipping others). Rand is an important figure for me and I enjoy reading about her - if its well done like Barbara Branden's book is.

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 12/30, 6:58pm)

Post 223

Wednesday, December 31, 2008 - 1:04am

Ugh. My main comment here is consider the source. Read the book, but try also watching video and listening to tapes of Rand to see if the person you encounter remotely resembles what's described in the book. Also try to get alternate accounts from people who knew Rand, like George Reisman and others without an axe to grind.

Jim

Post 224

Wednesday, December 31, 2008 - 9:18am

Jim,
Based on your wording in the previous post, I would suggest that you have an axe to grind. You recommended George Reisman as a possible source. Here's what he said in the Preface to his book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics. He describes his first two meetings with Ayn Rand:

Neither of the evenings was very pleasant. At one point--I don't know how we got to the subject, nor whether it occurred at our first or second meeting--I expressed the conviction that a void must exist. Otherwise, I did not see how the existence of motion was possible, since two objects could not occupy the same place at the same time. Ayn Rand's reply to my expression of my conviction was that "it was worse than anything a communist could have said." (In retrospect, recognizing that the starting point of her philosophy is that "existence exists," I realize she took my statement to mean that I upheld the existence of "nonexistence" and was thus maintaining the worst possible contradiction.)

Because of such unpleasantness, I did not desire to see her again until after I read Atlas Shrugged.

I would say that Reisman's encounter "remotely resembles what's described in [Barbara Branden's] book".

Although I agree with your advice to "try to get alternate accounts from people who knew Rand, like George Reisman and others without an axe to grind", I wish you luck. Everyone who knew Rand is described by someone else as either having an axe to grind or an ass to kiss.

Thanks,
Glenn

Post 225

Wednesday, December 31, 2008 - 12:21pm

Glenn,

I like you and I wish you luck also. Let me ask you, is the wording in post any more or less slanted than the laudatory description of the airing of Rand's dirty laundry in Steve's post, incidentally, who I also like.

Let me also ask you, in any of your personal interactions with me, have I given you grounds to think I am anything other than a forthright person? The era of Objectivist royalty is over and should be in the whole movement and never should have begun. It should not be taught to youngsters or newcomers in any form, whether it be Peikoff, Binswanger, Schwartz, Nathaniel or Barbara or whoever the current anointed are at ARI. People who claim a special status in the movement based on their associations are and have been the disease for a long, long time. And what for, honestly? Now you can go into any Barnes and Noble and find innovative, path-breaking work in brain sciences, evolutionary biology, physics, neuroeconomics and many other fields that blows the doors off anything currently being produced by Objectivists (with the exception of Wikipedia).

I don't think this is a coincidence and I don't think Objectivist methods are training people to be much more than followers or trendy iconoclasts. I plan to write something in the future about how I think people come into the Objectivist movement brimming with creativity and peter out after awhile after they learn to think "rationally" or "benevolently" or learn the proper etiquette of Objectivist salon social behavior, our heritage as Objectivists or how truly terrible the state of the culture is or how we should make every last terrorist glow in the dark.

Those are noble goals :-), but they are not primary. There is much more to thinking and much more important aspects to creativity involving synthetic thinking, visualization and pattern recognition than the analytical methods taught in the Objectivist philosophy. I am coming to believe that while powerful and very, very important and essential to a full philosophical education, Objectivist analytical methods are crowding out the most creative parts of bright people. I also don't think they account for the best insights of Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden.

The problem with Passion is not that it does not have anything important to say. The problem is that it focused more on personal grievance than substance and it is impossible to verify the personal grievance and the substance lacks focus. With the parry, counterparry of all of the PARC analysis and rebuttal, I think the air is probably cleared enough for me to write about what positive can be gleaned from Passion other than the bizarre caricature of a pitiable, mentally unstable and broken Ayn Rand. There are many people I greatly admire and respect, Robert Bidinotto, for one, who take an opposite view of the book so it is not and never has been an axe-grinding issue or a litmus test for me. I have forceful and sometimes not printable thoughts on this issue, but I think we can go forward civilly. Your move, Glenn.

Perhaps Steve could comment on what he found of value and the participants in the thread can go on from there.

Jim

Post 226

Wednesday, December 31, 2008 - 3:24pm

Hi Jim,

Let me start with that Youtube video of Barbara talking about Rand over the years. It was sad to hear the pain Rand felt, not for the criticisms, but for the near silence from the people who represented the best, the top, of their fields. There isn't much (or any) philosophical information conveyed in the talk, rather more like acquiring a sense of what life was like for Ayn. Even though some of it was unhappy - at least unhappy compared to earlier years, it gives me a richer understanding of someone I respect so much and who has been so important in my life. This is also the reason I enjoy hearing details of her life, even the very early years - which I enjoyed reading about in Barbara's book.

This isn't so much an intellectual issue we are discussing, as it is emotional perspective. Some people feel such a passionate attachment to Rand that they can't tolerate hearing anything negative about her. I can sympathize with that, and in my twenties, that was me, even though it isn't where I stand now. I have the same beliefs - that is I still agree with most of what she has written. And I still bridle at false attacks or snide remarks directed towards her. For me, there is a big difference between two people who both agree on an issue, but one does so out of a rigid, emotional place.

There are those who are on the extreme opposite side of the emotional spectrum who feel driven to attack Rand. They see it as a battle and she is the enemy and their minds are closed to hearing the possibility of anything good about her. To me, dirty laundry isn't as much about details, or alleged facts - they are true or not. It is about the motives of the person putting them forward. I despise those who heap mud on someone because they don't like them or want to discredit their better qualities. I don't see any of that in Barbra Branden at all.

Then there are those who are only in the intellectual arena as far as she is concerned - like disinterested scholars or bystanders (not too many of these, given Rand's power and the driving importance of the material).

The rest of us feel a degree of emotional kinship (or an emotional distance), but not such that it we can't hear that she was depressed, or that she had blind spots. Those who feel a degree of emotional distance, but not great, are simply attached to some other belief system, give it emotional alliegence, but are not antagonistic towards Rand.

This is all very obvious - and kind of silly to take the time to write about it, but it is what we see in this world - and too often is the elephant in the argument that isn't being identified.

I was really struck by a comment in Merrill's book where he said that on campus it would be safer to be a Nazii supporter or an advocate of abolishing tenure than to be an Objectivist - He said this after saying that the real animosity was because Objectivism is so strongly anti-relativism - it leaves no room for any intellectual hack to claim that their ideas are just as good and just as worthy of being taught as any other. And there is a powerful psychological statement there. And often the objections to Rand, and Objectivism, are really psychological and just dressed up in whatever tattered intellectual clothing the person could grab at the moment.

Jim, you'll have to tell me if this addresses the issue you are bringing up.

Post 227

Wednesday, December 31, 2008 - 4:40pm

Steve,

Thanks for your eloquent and heartfelt reply. I do feel a strong emotional attachment to Ayn Rand and I also understand people's need to see the real person, how she dealt with conflicts, disappointments, anguish and despair. My difficulty is that she trusted Nathaniel and Barbara all the way down and she was lied to in an awful charade for years.

I don't believe as some revisionists do that Nathaniel was putting one over on everybody. He's the real deal, but not in the way the ARI folks think. He's an original synthetic thinker, capable of brilliant insight. but less inclined to the linear, analytical style of thinking that accompanied Rand's later years. I think the gulf between Rand and Branden in the mid to late 60's was not only a personal one, but an intellectual one where Branden felt that the most important things in the Objectivist philosophy had already been said and was engaging his synthetic intellectual horsepower in psychology. You see an experimental phase in Branden in the 1970's and then a tightening up and polishing of his thoughts in the 80's and 90's.

I also think that Nathaniel and Barbara are dismissive of Peikoff because they didn't understand him, a brilliant linear analytical thinker who had difficulty in the beginning with the foundations of the philosophy, but became a master of the Objectivist philosophy as a system over a period of decades. Rand needed a Peikoff to help systematize the philosophy. In the Peikoff/Kelley split you see that same divergence of thinking styles as well as a host of issues around moral judgment,open system and sanction.

I find myself agreeing with Peikoff on moral judgment and with Kelley on open system and sanction.

My current thinking is focused toward trying to unify some of the current advances in cognitive neuroscience with Harrison and Bramson's thinking style typology in their terrific book: The Art of Thinking and also comparing and contrasting actual brain operations at the neocortical level with the requirements for measurement omission, hierarchy and concept formation.

I view some aspects on Passion as interesting because you see some aspects of the early stages of the development of Objectivism from the inside. It's strange, both Barbara and Leonard Peikoff view the early formation of Objectivism as almost like magic and you see Nathaniel missing out on the late stage precision and epistemology.

Anyway, that's enough for now and thanks again Steve for engaging in this discussion.

Jim

(Edited by James Heaps-Nelson on 12/31, 4:43pm)

Post 228

Thursday, January 1, 2009 - 10:25am

Jim,

=============
The era of Objectivist royalty is over and should be in the whole movement and never should have begun. It should not be taught to youngsters or newcomers in any form, whether it be Peikoff, Binswanger, Schwartz, Nathaniel or Barbara or whoever the current anointed are at ARI. People who claim a special status in the movement based on their associations are and have been the disease for a long, long time.
==============

There is a saying in Alcoholics Anonymous which captures, exactly, the common problem you are talking about: "Principles before personalities."

The reason I call it a "common (human) problem" -- instead of a problem specific to Objectivism -- is because it was around before the official Objectivist movement (e.g., the "AA Big Book" was written in 1939).

The idea that folks will continually connive for the temporary and unearned power of a second-hander is even talked about in Ancient Greece. It has been the disease of politics since the birth of politics. The idea: "Rule of law, not of men" captures this same common (human) problem.

The reason for this problem is because knowledge-is-power but wisdom and virtue do not automatically increase lock-step with our increases in power (as it would in a perfect world). Instead, folks'll gain a bunch of power, second-hand, without building much character and virtue.

One solution to this common problem is to properly moralize the folks with the most clout, pointing out their moral deficiencies while still respecting the great knowledge that they have. That takes courage (because it's dangerous). Folks around here seem to "step up to the plate" and to attempt to properly judge those at the very top of a hierarchy.

I like this brutal honesty -- which no other existing website even approaches -- where reason and truth are more important than popularity and clout. I feel a mitigated kinship with others here because of it.

Thanks, guys.

Ed

Post 229

Friday, January 2, 2009 - 10:52am

Ed, you�re exactly right.

My greatest fear is that the philosophy will become frozen in place, not taking into account the vast body of new insights from the brain sciences and complex adaptive systems. The open system movement is not immune from these very same problems. Nathaniel Branden could start by admitting his almost total ignorance of biological psychiatry and sending out statements of revision on much of what he�s written on anxiety problems and disorders. One of the heartrending aspects of Passion is Barbara admitting to having anxiety and panic attacks. Today these problems would be treated with some combination of cognitive behavioral therapy and benzodiazepines or serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

There is a whole blossoming science flowering around these topics. I specifically recommend Joseph Ledoux�s The Synaptic Self and The Emotional Brain.

Jim

Post 230

Friday, January 2, 2009 - 12:18pm

The problem with psychiatry is it puts the cart before the horse, and then has the gall of proscribing medication to alleviate the problem which began by the indiced medication to begin with... much of what they claim as 'diseases' is not, but consequences of the meds used to 'cure' the 'disease' - more along Soviet mindset than anything really biological...

worse, they have proscribed state powers to inflict this on others - to force the meds rather than to persuade...

Post 231

Friday, January 2, 2009 - 12:33pm

James,

It is some of the practitioners and advocates of biological psychiatry that should be apologizing to people for giving them the impression that chemistry is the only answer they need for all mental and emotional issues. I can't tell you how many people cover over a problem with meds from a family doctor, get a little improvement, and end up leaving in place defense structures and ways of using their consciousness that will fester later on and make things even worse. People can incorporate the idea of using prozac into a system of denial so as to avoid dealing with repressed material. People can latch onto a belief that talk therapy doesn't work and only bio psych has the answers, and cut themselves off from exactly the kind of help they need.

Some issues are organic in nature and will never be dealt with by talk therapy ( except for the talk therapy perhaps helping with an adjustment to the problem). For those issues, we hope for answers from biological psychiatry.

Some issues are better described as a pattern of making the wrong choices. Those people need talk therapy (and cognitive would be the best choice if you couldn't find a good practitioner working from Branden's self-esteem theories). It might or might not help, depending upon the issue, to have a medical consult as well.

Nathaniel has no need to apologize to anyone. I was a licensed therapist and had the opportunity to work with him for years. I know what are reasonable expectations and likely outcomes for given conditions. As someone with firsthand experience I can tell you that I've never seen a more effective therapist than Branden. (I wouldn't have said the same about his early work, when he was in New York) His contribution to the understanding of psychology is vastly underrated and the progress being made in understanding the brain's structure is not going to change the principles of self-esteem any more than it will change the principles of epistemology.

And, incidentally, I've heard him refer clients for medication as an adjunct to his talk therapy on many occasions. I don't know what prompts your being so upset with Branden, but I can tell the readers here that it isn't on target, not based on my understanding of psychology or Branden.

Post 232

Friday, January 2, 2009 - 12:53pm

I have to second my dismay at the tremendous dislike registered against Nathaniel Branden by some. I have no professional connection to psychology, but as a layman who has read almost all of his books, Branden's contributions to the science are clear to me.

As far as the business of their affair and concealing his falling in love with Patricia, I wouldn't make any excuses for the deception, but I certainly have no difficulty understanding what fears led him (and Barbara) to do so in an attempt to avoid Rand's very foreseeable rage. It was a very human error for which he paid a huge price. After the fact, I can think of no one else who had been as forthright about acknowledging their mistakes and accepting responsibility for them. If anyone has earned and is worthy of redemption, it is Nathaniel Branden. The fact that there are so many Objectivists who seem incapable of offering it is one of the greatest criticisms I have of the philosophy as it is practiced by many.

Regards,
--
Jeff

Post 233

Friday, January 2, 2009 - 1:58pm

Ed, your sentence, "It has been the disease of politics since the birth of politics." is a potent piece of rhetoric! Is that original? If so, take a bow. If not, glad you used it here.
(Edited by Mindy Newton on 1/02, 2:10pm)

Post 234

Friday, January 2, 2009 - 2:15pm

Jim,
I see, a couple of posts above, that you think strong habits of analysis, or logical thinking actually works against one's being creative? I would be of the opposite opinion, myself. Perhaps we can discuss this.

Post 235

Friday, January 2, 2009 - 3:10pm

I see, a couple of posts above, that you think strong habits of analysis, or logical thinking actually works against one's being creative? I would be of the opposite opinion, myself.
................

I certainly disagree - indeed, it is the acting of rational thought which has gendered much creativity, such that, in my case, many in the art fields comment on how it is am so creative in my compositions, even to naming astute titles to others' works...

Post 236

Friday, January 2, 2009 - 4:07pm

Thanks, Jim.

What's ironic is that you mentioned the possibility that N. Branden might miss important advances in biological psychiatry. I took a college course called in biological psychology and have great interest in the matter. However, I learned from posting on N. Branden's online forum that he's into TFT ("thought field therapy").

TFT is like alternative medicine in that it's innovative but not well accepted among professionals. One way to perform TFT is to tap on parts of your body. The only research I've witnessed showed in increased "heart-rate variability" -- which is a measure of the health of the heart.

Apparently, Branden is "into" something "alternative" rather than the "mainstream" advances of biological psychiatry.

:-/

Ed

Post 237

Friday, January 2, 2009 - 4:19pm

Mindy,

My "sentence" is original but, as to me taking a bow, it would run precisely against the spirit of my original post in the first place. My post was a rant about folks lining up to 'take their own bow' in front of the crowd -- and to exercise their unearned power and pull, and their second-hand clout.

However, it's true that I created the sentence and do deserve some measure of reverence from the high-minded, so I do smile in a whirlpool of silent pride at the fact that I created that shiny nugget of appreciated merit.

:-)

Ed

Post 238

Friday, January 2, 2009 - 4:31pm

"vanity, oh vanity - thy name is so vain..."

Post 239

Friday, January 2, 2009 - 5:12pm