| | > Sorry to enter a Casandraish remark, but I don't think the problems being pointed out will ever change. I think they're endemic...I've seen the same sort of dynamics over and over. I think that Objectivism attracts a lot of people who are prone to self-righteousness, and that becoming involved with the Objectivst world tends to encourage the development of this characteristic [Lysandra]
A key fact is timing. Objectivism tends to be adopted by teenagers (or not much later). Later on is when they are far more likely to have absorbed the idea that it is impractical or unrealistic. Adolescence is when people, while they have the openness and idealism of youth, also are prone to less-desirable traits: tunnel-vision, arrogance, social insensitivity, solipsism, and to not seeing beyond someone's disagreement to anything else about the person. Why? Because the preceding are simple-minded ways of looking at the world and it takes time to grow past them. Young people do not yet have a lot of knowledge ... about history, about people, about psychology, about relationships, about living, about communication or persuasion or cooperation. Objectivism at that point is, say, 70%-90% of their knowledge in the humanities. The problem comes from adolescent arrogance which fails to change with time, knowledge, and experience.
The trick is to grow in knowledge without it shaking your acceptance of the philosophy. To get to the point where Objectivism is a solid 20% of what is in your head..solid, unquestioned, but well integrated in a mind that continues to grow in knowledge, subtlety and maturity.
It is an extremely difficult think to achieve and requires a lot of thought and study. What you get instead is two very large categories of people who had a youthful interest in Rand:
1. People who have abandoned Objectivism without having fully understood it.
2. People who have accepted Objectivism but have not learned much else in the humanities or in the skills of writing, persuasion, organization, or movement building.
That is why I have advocated to TOC that they start a *comprehensive* training program in the humanities, writing, rhetoric, movement skills, not just Objectivism to develop "non-flaky Objectivists". ARI has a program which seems to be becoming about a bit more than just Oism...I have no way of knowing how good it is. ARI also has been developing a hard core of those well-trained at least in Objectivism.
(The problem with doing this seems to be Kelley, whose bailiwick the academic aspects still seem to fall within even though he is no longer in charge of the entire organization, and who I'm told had exactly zero interest in my proposal. I think he would view my proposal as "indoctrination" and thinks that high-level academic seminars as opposed to a resource-consuming training in "back to basics" are what TOC should be doing instead with its limited resources. Unfortunately, this won't succeed and has not. This is the" gear-stripping mistake": the idea that you can skip developmental steps, build a building without a solid foundation, without it coming back to bite you in the butt ... or crash down onto your head.)
So in other words, Ellen, it IS changeable.
But it is ONLY changeable, by doing what I suggested: Training and Civilizing Objectivists (across a period of years). No shortcuts.
--Philip Coates
(Edited by Philip Coates
on 11/27, 5:09pm)
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