Thoughts for the Neophyte Objectivist
by Ethan A. Dawe
One of the great things about learning Objectivism is the clarity it can give you when looking at life and the world around you. Each day we are bombarded by issues and concerns in all forms of media and in our interactions with others. Pundits, experts, friends, and co-workers alike talk on and on about what’s wrong with the world and how this thing or that thing needs to be outlawed, funded, or changed to save us all.
Before discovering Objectivism I often bent my mind into a pretzel considering all these issues, trying to decide what was right and what was wrong. I wanted to fix it all and make the world a better place. When I encountered Ayn Rand’s work I was first intrigued and then amazed. What followed, however, was a long period of thought and consideration. The ideas were so challenging to me because my mind had become the junk heap Rand spoke of in her essay “Philosophy: Who Needs It?” After ten years of picking up, putting down, considering, and re-considering Objectivism I finally came to accept it as my own personal Philosophy.
I’ve often heard of instant converts who read Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead and proclaim immediately that they are Objectivists. I’ve never been comfortable with the thought of instant conversion. Firstly, Objectivism is a broad subject with a lot of nuances to understand and integrate. Secondly, since it challenges most of the common belief’s of much of the world, it would seem rather foolish to expect someone to dump the entire conceptual content of their minds in so short a period. Yet, we see these supposed converts often enough to comment on it.
It seems that the instant converts mostly wind up falling into two camps. The first group are those who never get beyond the idea of judging others and go about proclaiming guilt wherever they see it. Often enough, they fail to remember that the first and most important judgment to be made is toward yourself and your own actions. When faced with the errors of there own actions and/or words, they often dump Objectivism, proclaiming it as nothing more than a cult of narcissistic vanity. They’ve failed to grasp the philosophy and failed to understand the difference between arrogance and self-esteem.
The second group are the one’s you hear proclaiming that they used to be Objectivists when they were young. Now they claim to be older, wiser, and to have outgrown that silly selfish stuff. I don’t think people like this ever really took the time to understand the philosophy and integrate it into their lives. When something comes along to challenge the ideas that they don’t really understand they abandon those ideas in favor of the next thing.
While both of these groups are conceptual simplifications, those of us who have been around groups of Objectivists (either online or face-to-face) or listened to any talk-shows where people call in to talk about Ayn Rand and/or Objectivism will recognize these archetypes. In the later case, I heard numerous examples during the 100th anniversary of Ayn Rand’s birthday, when the topic was briefly popular. It seems that there is nothing quite as tasty to an anti-Objectivist radio host as someone who claims to have once been an Objectivist.
So, if you're new to Objectivism, take your time with it. Don’t feel the need to achieve complete and instantaneous understanding of all the breadth and depth of the whole philosophy. Don’t go off crusading with half-understood ideas looking for converts and being surprised not persuade everyone you know. Your patience now will reward you later in a deeper understanding of both the world and yourself. You’ll also find that you haven’t needlessly driven away friends, family, and co-workers, leaving yourself isolated.
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