RoR: Forum

Given the topics discussed on several recent threads I thought it might be interesting to get a sense of whether most Objectivists were coming from one section of the general culture or from all over the various spectra.

It's very difficult to break people down into categories defined by non-essentials, so be aware that (A) by secular I meant nominally of some religion but never inculcated; that (B) I intended agnostic and atheist cover the same people in option #9; and that (C) by traditionalist I meant a practicing member of one of either (1) the pre-Reformation Christian sects, or (2) the Protestant "High Church" sects, (i.e., those that retain the general form of Catholicism - such as Lutheranism and Episcopalianism) or (3) the non-Hasidic Jewish sects. Hasidim, Mennonites and Mormons would be counted among Fundamentalists, as would any Charismatic, Evangelical, Born-Again or Literalist sect. No offense is meant to those raised in Eastern Religions or other groups that could not be accommodated in this limited forum.

I won't even pretend that one can define conservative and liberal meaningfully within the context of Objectivism. But I assume that most people will have self-identified themselves as one or the other before they came to Rand.

Ted Keer, 20 October, 2006

(Edited by Ted Keer
on 10/20, 2:18am)

Post 1

Friday, October 20, 2006 - 7:25am

BEFORE
In late high school, I was a Christian Left-Socialist.

IMMEDIATELY BEFORE
In early college, I was an Atheist Left-Socialist.

AFTER
Then was One and Two.
But then, why bother to connect here?

Post 2

Friday, October 20, 2006 - 7:45am

Hard-line leftist and straight-party Democrat. But I hated the commies and any hint of a budget deficit. This made perfect sense to me at the time. Oh yes, I also thought conservatives were space aliens. Come to think of it, I still do. ;-)

Post 3

Friday, October 20, 2006 - 9:21am

Some age data would be interesting here. My impression is that most people discover Rand as adolescents, before they've thought much about politics. I wonder if you'd see different results if you grouped respondents by their age at the time of discovery. Another question to ask is when that discovery was. I suspect that you'd find more people coming from leftist origins if they got into Rand in the 60s than in the last 10 years, when free-market positions have had more cachet than they did decades ago.

Peter

Post 4

Friday, October 20, 2006 - 9:56am

Interesting topic.

I was Agnostic Democrat Socialist for most of my upringing, then once I started studying science and skepticism (the James Randi, Michael Shermer kind) I became very libertarian capitalist. I didnt get into Rand until maybe mid 20's and then rapidly abandoned the anarcho part of my previous political leanings.

Post 5

Friday, October 20, 2006 - 4:05pm

I was a Lutheran until college, then meandered into a vacillation between agnostic and atheist for several years until I grew dissatisfied with that lack of certainty. I fell into a cult called "The Baptists" for several months and so labeled myself "Fundamentalist Conservative" until I discovered Ayn Rand and a fully objective basis for morality. At that point, the utility of religion lost its facade for me. I did finish the semester before graduation continuing to fellowship at the weekly Lutheran Student Movement suppers before gracefully exiting to move to another state to start anew.

Post 6

Friday, October 20, 2006 - 7:00pm

To Stephen B, Andre, & Peter R

Stephen, I particularly agree with your expressed sentiment that one finds by clicking on your link "connect." It seems a much more honest and Randian approach to Rand than simply trying to follow her 'religiously' or 'chapter and verse.'

Andre, I guess your comments here explain your deep-seated mistrust of our 'dear leader' GWB! But I'll start worrying about him when he tries to postpone the next presidential election, or tries to run for a third term. Until then, I just wish he would learn what the veto is.

Peter, I belive that you are essentially correct that once past a certain age, it becomes very unlikely for a person to become a Randian. I read her at 16, and given that I was already a free-trade minarchist believer in objective morality (Natural Law) I was thrilled on the first page of TVOS and was a confirmed "objectivist" within a week. I think that by the time most people have reached about thirty they have already become so entrenched in their value systems (or more likely - their fear and denial of value systems) that they find the self-re-evaluation that she requires to be too hard a task to undertake. They'd rather die of the cancer than undergo the chemo. I think she even addressed this in her Letters to a person who asked how he should treat his non-objectivist parents. Someone can correct my reference here if they know what I'm talking about. And I'd support your idea of a poll on age, but I bet 95% will fall between 15 & 25. I'll comment more on my questions later so as not to skew people's responses.

Ted
(Edited by Ted Keer
on 10/20, 7:12pm)

Post 7

Monday, October 23, 2006 - 7:05am

I was a conservative, Catholic, Southern Democrat...like everyone else and their mother where I�m from. But I hated commies then and I still hate them now.

Post 8

Sunday, October 29, 2006 - 9:10pm

My parents are moderate Republicans, fairly religious. I believed in God until about my teens, when seeds of doubt became planted. The doubt festered over time. Around the time I discovered Rand (The Fountainhead), I was agnostic and apolitical.

Post 9

Monday, October 30, 2006 - 7:58pm

I decided I didn't believe in God at ~12 or 13, read Fountainhead at ~14, loved it as a novel, but didn't "get" the philosophical aspects. In high school, I was independent minded, not very ideological and had a mild preference for Republicans as opposed to Democrats. Reading "Conscience of a Conservative" at some point (I don't know what year) solidified my libertarianish leanings. Read Atlas early in college at 18, and was blown away intellectually but still had lots of "Is it practical? Won't people eat each other alive?" type questions on her ideas. Didn't resolve them till I read CUI my senior year, age 20, which is when I became an Objectivist.

Post 10

Thursday, November 2, 2006 - 7:27pm

Okay then!

So, I have to know who is posting as raised Objectivist, and what they might have to tell us about the experience.

Ted

Post 11

Friday, November 3, 2006 - 7:59am

Indeed! Come forward, you lucky person, and tell us about it!

Post 12

Friday, November 3, 2006 - 9:15am

Sorry to burst your bubble, but it may have been accidental vote on my part. While perusing the site one day, I was suddenly transported to a page that said my vote had been registered, although it didn't tell me exactly what vote it was (sometimes my laptop will "click" on whatever my cursor happens to be hovering over at that moment even though I myself have not clicked anything). Sorry to disappoint you guys, but I was most definitely not raised objectivist (if in fact that vote was from me).

Post 13

Friday, November 3, 2006 - 11:26am

Waaaay back, during the early Paleozoic (when nautiloids were nautiloids, and the trilobites were nervous), I considered myself a conservative Catholic, although my upbringing was more centrist-Democrat Catholic. I eventually dropped the "Catholic" descriptor when I realized that I really didn't buy into what the church was sellin'. And then I realized that my "conservative" beliefs were really closer (though not identical) to what the Libertarians espouse, leaving me (I suppose) a conservative/Libertarian-hybrid atheist (w/leather interior, power windows and a CD changer).

It wasn't until I was in my late 30's (late Mesozoic) that I was first exposed to Rand, when a friend gave me a copy of AS. And I don't think I actually self-identified as Objectivist until about 4 years ago.

Note: This is both the 13th post on this thread, and the 333rd of my posts (333 being half of 666, of course). Had this happened on Friday 13th (or during a Simon & Garfunkle reunion concert), the world would have ended at 11:59:59 EST.

(Edited by Summer Serravillo on 11/03, 11:49am)

Post 14

Friday, November 3, 2006 - 3:58pm

Summer,

Oh yeah? Well my SS# has three sixes in a row and five sixes total. My mother thinks that's why I am a lapsed Catholic...

I see you speak palaeontologic. You don't happen to reside in the NYC area? I'd love to go cladifying some weekend.

Ted

Post 15

Monday, November 6, 2006 - 4:01am

Hi Ted,

I live on eastern Lawn Guyland, but I work downtown, just north of the courts (on Centre St.).

I see you speak palaeontologic...

Not really. It's an interest of mine, but little more. I remember finding a few fossils when I was little, while on vacation in New Hampshire. My dad told me they were "millions of years old". That fascinated me (once I realized he wasn't just pullin' my leg or high on bong water), and I've been interested ever since. But I know about as much about paleontology as the average Discovery Channel viewer.

Summer

Post Scriptum:

Well my SS# has three sixes in a row and five sixes total

An SSN is already the Mark of the Beast. The three consecutive sixes are redundant.

(Edited by Summer Serravillo on 11/06, 4:08am)

Post 16

Monday, November 6, 2006 - 5:04pm

As I have said before, I work just on the north side of the pit. I will send you a private email. To the general audience, I took a class in introductory linguistics at Cornell in Ithaca, usptate New York. When discussing phonetics, the professor elicited some test phrases from us, and, as in My Fair Lady, identified where we were from by our accents. He knew that I lived in the Phila. suburbs after hearing that I don't rhyme "bad" and "dad" that I call H2O "wooter" (same first vowel as book) and that I have no real long "o" vowel, but I use "eh-w" (the vowel in get, followed by a "w") instead. One of the students was from Long Island. Her accent was so strong, it wasn't so hard to guess. But he almost drove her to tears by having her repeat "Lawn Guyland" to demonstrate to the class that whereas most Anglophones do enunciate the "g" separately in "finger" (i.e., fing-ger) while not in singer, people from the suburbs east of Manhattan insert this enunciated "g" sound whenever they pronounce the "ng" phoneme. Another student, born in Puerto Rico, also became disturbed when he made her speak Spanish and show how her English was colored by her Spanish vowels. She had an epiphany when she finally understood why native English speakers laughed at her when she said that she was going to spend the weekend swimming at the "bitch."

It is amazing that most people think an accent is something that only other people have.

Ted
(Edited by Ted Keer
on 11/06, 5:06pm)

Post 17

Tuesday, November 7, 2006 - 3:15am

Ted,

It is amazing that most people think an accent is something that only other people have.

I became acutely aware of my own New York accent when I moved to northeast Connecticut. After living there for five years and losing my own accent somewhat, I could hear the difference between my own diluted version and the real thing. I moved back to NY about 2.5 years ago, and my accent is still not back to full-strength New Yorker.

Summer

Post 18

Thursday, November 16, 2006 - 7:18pm