| | First of all, this is not my article. I am posting it for a friend who is no longer able to post here. For the record, he was not exactly, "banned," and his account was removed at his own request, as he explains.
I posted this to, "Dissent," not because it is in dissent of Objectivism, because it is, whether you argree with it or not, a defense of Objectivism, from the writers point of view; the dissent is with SOLO's version of "Objectivism."
It is also in dissent because this writer was subject to a special kind of review that possibly might have prevented this from being posted if he had posted it himself, although I doubt very much if it would have been repressed.
___________________________________
Hi, boys & girls.
I, the notorious Citizen Rat a.k.a. Bill Tingley, am here to share some final thoughts with you before I move onto greener pastures.
First, a disclaimer. (I've learned the hard way never to assume the obvious is obvious to Objectivists, so let me state the obvious. ;) SOLO is Linz's and Joe's ball. They have no obligation to let me play with it if they don't want me to. They can say no for whatever reason they want to. Indeed, they don't even have to give me a reason. In short, they owe me nothing.
Second, a little background. I stopped participating in the SOLO forum a few weeks ago when I found out that SOLO's executive director, Joe Rowlands, put me in a special group requiring his approval before I posted anything to the board. As this restriction does not even apply to brand-spanking new members of SOLO (in fact, as far as I could tell, I was the only beneficiary of this special attention), I thought I'd asked Joe what his reasons were for this decision.
Joe, quite promptly to his credit, graciously informed me that if I couldn't figure out SOLO's policy on this point that was my problem. He was right, of course. Fathoming Joe's reasons for wanting to control me would be my problem should I put myself in such a position. However, the idea of having to obtain Joe's sanction on anything I might want to say to my fellow SOLO members somehow lacked appeal to me, so I eliminated the problem by asking Joe to terminate my membership in SOLO. He kindly granted my request.
Third, does any of this matter? If you understand and agree with the points Regi Firehammer made in his "Shoot the Bastards" article, the answer is no. You already know that people like me who are informed by Objectivist philosophy without adopting it as a creed are friends, not foes, of liberty. You are not blinkered by the petty factionalism inherent to rationalism run amok (which Objectivism misunderstood frequently devolves into). So when it comes to a comrade in arms, you don't care how many angels he thinks dance upon the head of a pin. What you want to know is whether he'll pass the ammo when the battle comes.
For those of you who are less sanguine about the value of non-Objectivist advocates of liberty such as me and so do not look much beyond SOLO's walls, Joe's need to supervise what I say to you in this forum should give you some pause. What is it that he wants to control? Before I answer that, let's rule a couple of things out about Joe. Is Joe just being petty because I've out-argued him on occasion? No, I don't think so. Is Joe a bigot? While I do not doubt Joe has a low opinion of my Catholicism, I don't believe he censured me for that reason. Is Joe acting as a responsible administrator to rein in a trouble-maker? I think Joe understands the difference between challenging someone on his facts or his logic and gratuitous flaming.
What Joe wants to control is no small thing. Joe does not care about me the messenger. But he is concerned about the message I have brought to this forum, a message in the service of Objectivism that is antithetical to the very purpose of SOLO. Let me preface this. As an interested observer of Objectivism over the past twenty-five years, I have witnessed a sea-change in the movement behind the philosophy. This change is more profound than Kelley's challenge to the ARI establishment, for it has confounded both wings of Objectivism and spurred the formation of SOLO to embrace this change. This change is the Objectivist movement's loss of moral clarity after the fall of Communism and its subsequent surrender to post-modernism.
This surrender is not a special failing of Objectivists. The Communist threat was a deadly serious matter. It was responsible for the slaughter of 100 million people and the enslavement of a billion more. It was armed to the teeth with the ability to annihilate everything good and virtuous in Western Civilization, its nemesis. Victory over Communism with the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 lifted a pall from the world, and in our relief most of us, quite understandably, indulged in some silliness - a post-modern holiday from history that rewarded us with an AIDS epidemic, a stock market bubble, and 9/11.
However, Objectivists should have been among the first to recognize why these disasters befell us: Standards do matter. Sexual perversion and promiscuity, money-for-nothing speculation, and multi-cultural non-judgmentalism epitomize the post-modern contempt for objective standards in human affairs that delivered to us AIDS, the tech bust, and 9/11. Understanding these awful consequences of evading standards should be the special province of Objectivists. But today we find nothing like the moral clarity of Objectivists during the Cold War era. Quite the opposite, because the Objectivist movement has surrendered to post-modernism and its white flag is emblazoned with SOLO.
The SOLO surrender is most clearly evident in the realm of sexuality. Human sexuality has norms and from those norms we can objectively derive standards. This should hardly be controversial to Objectivists, yet it is anathema in SOLO to state that normality exists in human sexuality - unless the term is reduced to such subjective meaninglessness that, for example, homosexuality is normal because it feels normal to a homosexual. Such meaninglessness is repugnant to Objectivism, but it serves its purpose for Joe and his SOLO colleagues. It makes nothing but the most rudimentary of standards - i.e., consent - objectively discernable to guide one's sexual conduct.
Without normality in any meaningful sense, no human act can be judged superior to another. There is no such thing as the best. Virtue is a nullity and vice undefinable. Thus, the triumph of post-modernism. Why SOLO's abolition of normality, the opening of the gates to post-modern barbarism, should remain confined to human sexuality is not apparent. While Joe, Linz, and other prominent SOLOists are not slouches in the defense of beauty and excellence in human endeavor, all is trumped by the surrender of sexuality to post-modernism. Thus, the nihilistic virus of antinomianism spreads through the Objectivist movement.
Of course, Rand's philosophy is not the movement of her followers. The truths she integrated into a philosophy of objective reality remain true. SOLO's post-modern corruption of Objectivism does not change Objectivism; it creates something other than Objectivism. And so those who understand Firehammer's counsel to be aware of allies beyond the SOLO walls, need not slip into the maw of post-modernism along with SOLO. You will find the truth of Objectivism outside the movement, as handholds to climb out of the maw, because that truth will sprout elsewhere in human endeavor and thought. Why? Because it is true. And that truth will expose the folly of SOLO's lustful embrace of post-modernism.
That is the message Joe does not want delivered within the walls of SOLO. Let no one cry out that the emperor has no clothes.
One last time … regards,
Bill
|
|
