RoR: Forum

Robert says: Folks, Barbara tells you it WASN'T. She was there; we weren't. She bears the scars; you don't. If you are willing to believe and even quote her book on many other historical matters as "fact," why is it so hard for you to believe her on this?

You already answered that yourself Robert, when you said:

Seems a lot of people are using this private matter to score points for their personal ideological agendas -- whether to make their cases against your credibility in order to prop up their image of Rand's infallibility (ARI), or to proclaim that "open marriages" and the like are consistent with Objectivism, because after all AYN RAND HERSELF engaged in them (Nameless).

Barbara,

Thank you for that honest and very clarifying post.

George

Post 101

Saturday, February 19, 2005 - 1:40pm

Barbara,

I second Robert's indignation. Throughout all the different discussions of all these people focusing on the pros and cons of this particular historical extramarital affair, I see very little concern with your own feelings. Personally, I feel funny talking about this to you because I know from experience how much something like this hurts. Let me just say that I admire you tremendously. I am sorry you were hurt so badly. And you are one hell of a woman to have come out of it the way you did.

There are a few lessons to be gleaned from this experience, though. After all, it became a public issue. So, with my deepest respect for what you endured, here goes my two cents worth.

One lesson that I saw alluded to above about Nathaniel being John Galt, etc., actually has more truth to it than humor. I have worked with creative artists most of my professional life. Only a few of them I have known managed to avoid the pitfall of keeping a healthy definition of who they were as people in real life.

All art is an illusion fabricated for consumption by human beings. You can call it a selective recreation of reality or anything else, but one fact remains true. These entities (art works) do not exist in non-human nature. Also, the nature of human beings itself is a given. It is not created by people from scratch like an art-work is.

Well, when most creative artists I have known became famous and received all the ensuing attention that comes with fame, they succumbed to the temptation of letting the edge blur between their creations and who they were as human beings.

From what I gather, Ayn Rand was no exception.

An amusing recent example of this was tough-guy actor Steven Seagal (whom I don't know, by the way). He went so far into his particular trip that he got involved with the real-life Mafia. He found out the hard way that all hardened criminals want is the money - forget about the public attention and trappings and human decency. Also, they play with real bullets. His recent decline in career has reflected this.

Sometimes I wonder what it must have been like to be Ayn Rand. She pursued glamor (physical glamor). She went to Hollywood where glamor is essential. Her heroes are always presented as glamorous. She even mentioned that Frank's type of face was an initial driving aspect of her attraction to him. Then she had to look in the mirror. She had to have been honest enough to know that she was not physically very attractive, at least according to the standards set by the society she lived in and that she herself adopted. This had to have preyed on her inner thoughts.

So she got Frank, who looked the part of what she wanted, but did not act it. From the account in your book, he was a warm gentle man and a very nice person. Not an earth-shaking powerhouse, though, like those in her fiction.

This is pure speculation, but what better way to overcome her own lack of beauty than to create what she wanted in life, just like she did in her books? Reverse Pygmalian. That was something she could control. Simply carve a statue out of an admirer and merely bring it to life. The only problem, however, was making it act right. Well, life is not art and, as we all know, it ended up not acting right.

Like all great artists, she was a master of persuasion. So, whoever got in the way of her creation (especially you and Frank) just had to be persuaded to go along. No problem there. You (and Nathaniel) were young enough and Frank was gentle enough.

But reality has no mercy. One hard-fast truth of human nature is that rejection hurts. You can't talk it down. And it hurts bad. How it must have been horrible for you, Barbara, to have been told basically that you were not enough as a wife. You were even OK, but just not enough. So you had to be completed with another woman. And that this was morally proper. Nataniel has written pretty clearly about the rejections he has felt. Then I think about Frank. My God. That man stood by a very complicated woman through some really bad times for years and then be told that he was not enough.

All I can do is look on in wonder at those who claim that this did not hurt his feelings, that Nathanial was not hurt because he was the bad guy for lying and he had another woman anyway, that you had no right to be hurt because you were aware of Ms. Rand's arrangement and agreed to it, etc., ad nauseam.

The acid test for such insensitive souls, the ones who think that things like jealousy, the hurt of betrayal and other similar human emotions (especially human species oriented impulses) not covered very thoroughly in the Objectivist literature simply do not matter, is to ask themselves honestly what they would have done in your place. I know that if I were a woman and I were you at that time, I am not sure that I would have borne up so gracefully. I would have probably spilled the beans and made a big jealous mess out of everything. Maybe not now, but back then, most definitely. I certainly had a lot of growing up to do.

Which leads me to the next point. What is all this business about being morally infallible? This sounds more like a whip to me, pure censorship. It almost looks like that Social Metaphysician thing raising its ugly head. All people, by their very nature, are immoral at times. That is why forgiveness exists. To be more clear, morality must be learned. It only comes forth whole and infallible like Athena from Zeus's head in art and mythology. In life it must be learned. And you cannot learn anything without making mistakes. If you don't make any mistakes, you are not trying and you are sure not learning anything. That is just the way we are made.

Is it possible to be immoral, make a horrible choice, and correct yourself? I will let each decide for himself/herself. I personally am no statue. I know that I have done so, frankly more often than I would like to admit. But I did it. I have corrected some real humdingers over the years, but I have managed to stay true to myself, regardless of what others have said about my failings. That was one of the hardest lessons I had to learn in life. It is OK to choose a path and stumble. But it is not OK to stay stuck after you learn what an awful thing you have chosen. Also, sometimes these awful things happen because of overpowering drives within us and around us. Morality (and yes, making immoral choices and correcting them) is one way to learn how to deal with these influences. Apparently, learning who we really are is not a very easy task. It takes gumption and it takes mistakes.

To me, morality is more like a compass than a straight-jacket. I no longer have a problem with someone (including myself) making a mistake, a moral one and correcting it - or atoning for it if necessary. So long as the damage is not too great and the correction is real. That is my foundation for forgiveness. Especially self-forgiveness, which is the most important type to me.

One thing is apparent about you, Barbara. One of the main reasons your book struck such a deep chord in my soul and you have become this wonderful inspiration to me is that you managed to forgive yourself for some terrible choices and corrected them. And you did that after being expelled from Mount Olympus, while being one of the caretakers of THE TRUTH. That you can now say,

"four decent people had to engage in self-deception and the deception of one another..."

without batting an eye is proof. I admire this very much.

There is just one last thing. A very difficult temptation for people to resist is to teach what they do not know. I have seen this urge in every person I have ever met and I fight against it in myself. Frankly, despite the undeniable magnificence of Ayn Rand's art and philosophical achievements (which I love dearly, by the way), from what I can see, there were many things she really did not understand about romantic relationships. But she sure tried to teach what she did not know to others. And people got hurt. And, mainly thanks to you, Barbara, in The Passion of Ayn Rand, the objective results are there for everyone to see.

Michael

(Edited by Michael Stuart Kelly on 2/19, 1:58pm)

(Edited by Michael Stuart Kelly on 2/19, 2:19pm)

Post 102

Saturday, February 19, 2005 - 3:08pm

I am delighted to say that I agree with George for once ;-) as well as Robert, Michael and others who've come to Barbara's defence here.

Barbara - sorry for not being more vocal on this thread myself, big bunch of exams next week so not had much time for SOLO these past few days...

MH

Post 103

Saturday, February 19, 2005 - 4:36pm

I'm wondering why posters who decline to engage in knee-jerk moralising about The Affair are seen to be attacking Barbara? I have been a huge defender of Barbara over the years & still am. Evidently she herself sees my comments on this thread as an attck on her. I thought I'd made it clear that I could easily see the merit in her own conclusion that "the affair was a mistake & it shouldn't have happened"; but I'm not willing to hurl a moral thunderbolt at Ayn Rand over it. It took four to tango, in this instance, & I'm not willing to hurl a thunderbolt at *any* of them. In hindsight their behaviour may well seem naive, foolish, self-deceptive & deceptive of others. But I am all too conscious of my own foolish behaviour when in thrall to love to start casting stones at someone else's, least of all on the grounds that they were acting unconventionally. Fact is, I *feel* for all of them, and don't see any of them as bad.

Mr Bidinotto talks of his homicidal anger at people like me. He can rant at me all he wishes, as can anyone else; fact is, his opening salvos on the matter *were* as intrinsicistically hysterical as his homicidal anger. And if he's getting at me when he talks of callously re-opening old wounds, etc., he might like to pause & consider the fact that *I* am not the author or editor of this new book, & *I* was more than delighted that Barbara chose SOLOHQ to post her one & only reaction to it, with my most enthusiastic backing.

Seems as if I'm to be damned whatever I do or say on this matter, so I'll just shut up about it henceforth.

Linz

Post 104

Saturday, February 19, 2005 - 7:09pm

What few seem to realize is that what happened with Ayn and Nathaniel and Barbara and Frank and all those others affected exists on two levels. One, the personal level. Two, the level of public comment and thought and frankly, eventually, legend. These are public people and the price of that is that this thing is constantly hashed and rehashed and used as fuel by those who witness the problems that come with circumstance, irrationality, even rationality, etc. Things aren't perfect and if they were we would run away yelling in protest. It is a mistake to reduce the public to the personal. The private lives of these people are common public property for they made it so. Ayn Rand didn't want to make it so, but the cat tends to get out of the bag. Barbara, every word of this discussion on some level must be painful and there is little to be done about it.

--Brant

Post 105

Saturday, February 19, 2005 - 10:43pm

Robert, George, Michael, I am more moved than I can say by your concern for me. But I truly am quite okay. This discussion does not upset me. For a number of years, I have felt personally distant enough from the years of the affair that essentially the pain is a memory, not a living reality. I thought that was so when I finished PASSION, but I realized some years later that I was mistaken and an event occurred that made it once again wash over and nearly swamp me; it did take a very long time until I could look back on those years completely calmly. I suppose that if I focused on the pain to the exclusion of all else, it would come back; but I neither avoid it nor focus on it. It�s simply a fact, a fact that now is years in the past.

Brant, you are quite correct that the private lives of Ayn, Frank, Nathaniel, and I are now public property. When I made them so, I was well aware that that was the price of writing Ayn�s biography and of warning Objectivists about the perils of idol-worship. So I have no right to complain, even if I wanted to � which I don�t.

Lindsay, I didn�t think for a moment that you were attacking me. But you seem to think that somehow I require you to �hurl a moral thunderbolt at Ayn Rand.� Clearly, I don�t require it, since I don�t do so myself. The issue, in my mind, is not who was moral or immoral, but that we all were badly mistaken.

To be continued. . .

Barbara

Post 106

Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 11:51am

I am far more interested in the wider issue of ALL OBJECTIVISTS than I am of details about Ayn Rand in situations where I was not there and was not a fly on the wall.

I find some of them difficult to understand even from conflicting biographers (and I doubt the soon to come out 'playing defense' book will help).

To return to the broader and very crucial issue of judging people as having moral flaws rather than lack of knowledge, honest error, etc., it's very clear that I have a strong disagreement with Robert and with many people posting to Solo.

> [Robert-post 96] when you are around people for a long time, and get to "know" them on a personal basis...when you then notice the same behavior patterns repeated, again and again, among a number of other people ... when ...many of them eventually reveal or openly admit certain motives and attitudes ... at some point, you start connecting the dots.... you see something that looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and paddles through the water like a duck...you're probably looking at a duck.

First you have to be old enough and knowledgeable enough about psychology to rule out alternative, more benevolent or more innocent explanations. You have to be sure the behavior is not also one characteristic of turtles. It looks like and acts like what could either be a duck or a turtle.

I listed several alternative explanations [post 95].

One needs to use the presumption of innocence. Evasion or immorality is the -last- conclusion one would draw, having ruled out the others.

> in my encounters during that era ...such motives and attitudes were rampant within the movement. The roots of such behavior were different from mere nerdiness and lack of social graces

But I listed other explanations besides these two - from emotional repression to lack of knowledge: blind spots, compartmentalization or slowness in integrating, psychological blocks that are not easy to see or dismantle, chronic errors in thinking methods, uncaught logic mistakes, bad premises absorbed from childhood or college or upbringing.

> behaviors and associated attitudes within the Objectivist subculture of that era, very widely described and discussed and even acknowledged. As you know, even people formerly in leadership capacities within the movement (the Brandens among them) have written at length about these issues, their manifestations and their causes.

While I'm sure that Barbara and Nathaniel are giving psychological interpretations which they honestly believe explain Miss Rand, Peikoff, the inner circle, and the wider movement, I don't always agree with them.

Or to be more precise, I find that sometimes there is more than one psychological explanation for a harmful, callous, stupid, angry, or overbearing action or pattern.

From leaders to rank and file, from original thinkers on down, there are people guilty of (i) evasion, (ii) stupidity or (iii) inattention in the Objectivist movement.

I tend to find the last two far more prevalent (top to bottom) than the first one, the one Robert is focused on.

NUSOI - Never Underestimate the Stupidity of an Objectivist Intellectual

[Clarification: I'm not talking about Robert here, but about the people being judged...the movement, etc.]

Post 107

Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 2:07pm

Linz said

Seems as if I'm to be damned whatever I do or say on this matter, so I'll just shut up about it henceforth.

I say:

Okay. Where's the real Linz and what have you done with him? :)

Pianoman

Post 108

Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 8:49pm

Brick wall. Head. Banging. No point.

Linz (Real)

Post 109

Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 10:04pm

Brick wall. Head. Banging. No point.

It works better if you caterwaul while banging your head, I understand.

It won't really improve your chances of changing anyone's minds, I guess—but at least you have the chance of making some good music in the process.

Post 110

Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 10:24pm

Linz,

In Post #73 in the present article discussions, Barbara wrote:

"That is why I am slow to throw moral stones at people, including Ayn Rand."

Did that include moral thunderbolts?

Joking aside, I read over your comments carefully to see what the fuss was all about. Just couldn't see it, because basically I agree with you on your main point: all four people did their best with what they had, things didn't work out and they got hurt. And I did not see anyone disagreeing with you either. Well... maybe a hardcore Randoid or two.

I saw a little fuss over context, however. There is a world of difference between people in their 50's who have paid some hard dues in life and starry-eyed admirers in their 20`s just starting out. This does not take away their responsibility as adults, but as I understand the story, Ayn pushed, Nathaniel fell (without hardly any resistance), then he joined her in pushing Frank and Barbara. They went along - reluctantly. Did I get that right?

So what's wrong with saying that Ayn Pushed? After all, she wrote Atlas Shrugged. (Sorry, I just couldn't resist that.)

My own concern has been that if people are going to talk about this to Barbara, they should at least be aware that she was terribly hurt by it and try to be considerate. After all, she spited her own pain and decided to make it a public issue to set the record straight. She also broke a "sacred" vow to do it. I personally admire this greatly. If others do not, that to me is still no excuse for callousness when addressing her, even indirectly. As to those who simply have not considered it, well, they should.

Getting back to you, Linz, I am more grateful than you can possibly imagine for putting this whole SOLO shebang together. I have not been comfortable with what I have seen in other places over the years. Too fanatical, too superficial, too weird or too something. SOLO has been the perfect spot for me to "come out of the closet" Objectivism-wise and stay true to my somewhat jaded bias.

I learned much from Objectivism. I learned much from life. I can talk about it here.

After seeking a platform like this for years, I finally found it. So please accept my deepest gratitude.

Michael

Post 111

Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 11:00pm

Barbara,

I believe that you reported your own memories, inferences and feelings completely and honestly. However, it is possible to be quite wrong in one's inferences about what goes on in the mind of another person - NB's inferences about you, in his first book about the Affair, should have taught you as much. It is also possible to have memories that are honest and vivid and at the same time distorted or incomplete or counterfactual. I recommend The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers, by Daniel L. Schacter, for the science. Your book is a valuable resource in trying to understand and reconstruct what happened. But it is the narrative of one of the participants, and it is not an impartial record.

As for Ayn Rand's probable relationship with Thaddeus Ashby around 1945, and the likelihood that Frank knew and approved, I think that the penultimate paragraph of Ayn Rand's letter to Isabel Paterson, dated August 4, 1945, could be difficult to explain otherwise. I understand, from people who lived in the Hollywood culture of that time, that "adoption" was a common and readily understood euphemism for intergenerational involvements. And, given the context of that culture, I just doubt that either Ayn or Frank ever expected their marriage to be permanently exclusive.

All that said, it is still possible that TPOARC will turn out to be a dishonest hatchet job. Or maybe not. Let's wait until after reading it.

Post 112

Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 11:42pm

Okay, Adam, fair enough. We shall see.

By the way, Thadeus Ashby doesn�t think he and Ayn had an affair, and I assume his memory is correct.

Barbara

Post 113

Monday, February 21, 2005 - 12:03am

Michael�thank you for that. I felt greatly reassured by it.

Just to be clear�I didn't think it was Barbara hurling thunderbolts or even casting stones, but a couple of her "defenders" who construed any demurring from their own Moses-like pronouncements as spelling the end of Objectivism & as being "attacks" on Barbara. These are not "Randroids"�the hilarious aspect of this discussion has been that it's the professed anti-Randroids who have sounded like Randroids, & the alleged Randroids (including the editor of the book) who have sounded reasonable. The book may be the pits, for all I know, but its editor has not sounded like a guttersnipe. (I have heard a preliminary assessment that the prose is abysmal. We shall see.)

What frustrated me was that I couldn't seem to make any headway with this point: that there may well be a strong case for saying The Affair was A Mistake, but the moral censuring that was going on here was just so much sanctimonious humbug. It's not moralising per se that I object to�au contraire�but the kind of gratuitous moralising that is the specialty of intrinsicists.

In any event, Michael, I'm thrilled that in SOLO you've found a home. I guess it is about the only place we can have this kind of discussion to begin with, let alone have it & find the protagonists still here at the end of it! Though I confess that since Mr. Bidinotto admitted to "homicidal" anger, I've hired a bodyguard. :-)
(Edited by Lindsay Perigo on 2/21, 12:07am)

Post 114

Monday, February 21, 2005 - 1:06am

Linz,

Thank you for such a nice reply.

There is an old Chinese saying that if you ask a stupid question, you will be stupid for a moment. If you do not ask it, you will be stupid for a lifetime.

So I have three:

1. You spell it "RANDROID" and not "RANDOID"?

2. I have trouble with "ists" and "isms". What is an intrinsicist? Or better, what does that mean here? I hope it is not contagious.

3. What is this new book that I have seen referenced a few times? Did I miss something?

About this Robert Bidinotto "homicidal" anger business, I would love to help you out. But he claimed that my first post in this series of article discussions was "beautifully written," so I'm afraid you're on your own. Sorry.

Michael

Post 115

Monday, February 21, 2005 - 1:42am

Michael�your questions:

1. You spell it "RANDROID" and not "RANDOID"?

Yup. As in "Android," though Androids are more intelligent and have much more personality than Randroids.

2. I have trouble with "ists" and "isms". What is an intrinsicist? Or better, what does that mean here? I hope it is not contagious.

I fear it is contagious, given the way it spread like wildfire on this thread.

Intrinsicism in ethics is the view that the good is inherent in particular actions regardless of context or consequence. An intrinsicist would obey the injunction "Thou shalt not kill" even when someone was about to kill him. Asked why, he'd usually tell you that God ordained it, & there's an end of the matter. Secular intrinsicism leaves God out explicitly but proceeds implicitly as though he, or at least some kind of a priori dictator of right & wrong, were there.

On this thread, intrinsicism took the form of: Married monogamy is inherently, exclusively virtuous, & any departure from it, such as "open marriage" or the kind of arrangement Ayn, Frank, Barbara & Nathaniel entered into, is inherently immoral. Inherently, period. End of story. You don't have to consider their context; what they did was wrong, even before they did it.

3. What is this new book that I have seen referenced a few times? Did I miss something?

Er, yes you did, rather. Pay attention! And read this whole thread from the beginning! :-)

About this Robert Bidinotto "homicidal" anger business, I would love to help you out. But he claimed that my first post in this series of article discussions was "beautifully written," so I'm afraid you're on your own. Sorry.

There's a whole article in this ... one little smidgeon of flattery & an Objectivist is anybody's. Two little smidgeons & he's everybody's! The article will be called: "Objectivists�Worst Second-Handers of All." Seriously, I hope you & Mr. Bidinotto are very happy together. But I should warn you�you're both passive, more interested in receiving flattery than giving it. Two bottoms don't usually work. :-)

(Edited by Lindsay Perigo on 2/21, 2:38am)

Post 116

Monday, February 21, 2005 - 6:03am

I wrote (post #99 above):

Were I in your shoes [Barbara], I wish I could be as objective and calm. I know myself too well, though, and fear I would have already been on a plane en route to commit several homicides by now.

Since, at last empirical check, I am not Barbara Branden (Law of Identity), it appears that everyone is safe from my hypothetical homicidal frenzies.

Incidentally, Linz, I wonder why you think I meant you, and not that apparently-departed ARI mole?

(Mygod, it just occurs to me that if that now-vanished character turns up dead somewhere, I'm in BIG trouble...)

Post 117

Monday, February 21, 2005 - 10:28am

Gotcha.

The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics - James Valliant - Durban House Publishing. I presume from the posts that Casey Fahy is an editor there and Shayne is that inestimable arimole that flew off into the sunset.

I should be embarrassed about this lack of knowledge, but I am not. I just got back from Brazil a few months ago. There is not very much Ayn Rand activity down there - both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were published in Portuguese, but they soon faded. Some of Nathaniel Branden's books had a little splash. There is only one Objectivist site there in Portuguese that I know of (a Unicamp college professor in Canpinas, S�o Paulo). There is good bit of Libertarian-type movement, though.

Now that I am back in the USA with a little time on my hands, I see that I have a LOT of reading to catch up on (especially Sciabarra). Well, I had my stupid moment.

But I see that I inadvertently walked right into a potential hornet's nest with a new ARIan publication. (I love that term, by the way.) Well good. I stand by everything I wrote, especially my respect and admiration for Barbara's work. In double, now.

I sure hope this new book venture tries to keep the "objective" in Objectivism. I understand "objective" to mean an unbiased examination of evidence. From what I gather, though, ARI people usually fight against uncritical examination by outsiders of unedited Ayn Rand material. So I don't know...

But, hey. Hats off to Durban House marketing. From what I have seen here and in other SOLO articles I just looked at, they have guaranteed a few hundred unit sales of their new book. And the more SOLO people discuss it, the more Durban will sell. Not bad.

Thank you, Linz, for your clear explanations. My "oid-roid" confusion comes from thinking in Portuguese too long (as in intelectualoide). Also, back in college, we used to call intrinsicism, as you define it, a constipation of imperatives.

I have another question. What is an Objecti-Christivist? Sounds cute and cuddly but lethal.

Robert Bidinotto, despite this "homicidal" thing (repressed Muscle Mystic maybe?), I will take your flattery any time, any place. Also, I especially like what I have read of your work so far - even when you cover matters that do not deal with me. I am sorry I missed you in Boston in the 70's, Ayn Rand's lectures at the Ford Hall Forum, etc.

Linz wrote about us: "Two bottoms don't usually work."

Is this the voice of personal objective experience and wisdom?

Michael

Post 118

Monday, February 21, 2005 - 12:04pm

> both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were published in Portuguese, but they soon faded.

Michael, I wonder if the lack of success of translated works of Ayn Rand worldwide could in part be poor translations? Have you looked over them in Portuguese?

Post 119

Monday, February 21, 2005 - 7:04pm