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Wednesday
December 8, 2004

When I First Became a Criminal by Adam Reed

A young woman whom I recognized from the NBI lecture was in the bookstore, leafing through W. Ross Ashby's "Introduction to Cybernetics," which I had read two years earlier. We started talking about the book, then about other things. By the time we came out of the bookstore, we were talking about the differences between Ayn Rand's and Aristotle's conceptions of rationality; and I was, for the first time in my life, in love. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (160 messages)

Saturday, December 11, 2004 - 1:29pm

Adam,

I appreciate your artistic references and your clarification of the confusing posts from Ring and Bisno. Your information makes much more sense. However, art is my "weakest link," which is one reason SOLO Florida shall spend 2005 studying The Romantic Manifesto in fine detail.

Please understand that my training in music appreciation comes largely from my parents arguing whether to watch The Lawrence Welk Show or Hee-Haw on Saturday night, my compulsory participation in the Youth Choir at my Lutheran Church, my mother's failed attempts to teach me piano despite my father's threats to spank me if I never learned, and my later avid collection of orchestral movie soundtracks once I had an income to justify them.

Perhaps you can refer me to a lucidly written nonfiction history text that explains in plain English the principles and practices you describe and traces their decline with the rise of Christianity. Especially important would be the role of force versus persuasion in this decline since, by your account, the "old high cultures" would rationally find nothing appealing about dutiful obedience to God.

Luke Setzer

(Edited by Luther Setzer on 12/11, 1:37pm)

Saturday, December 11, 2004 - 2:21pm

Luther,

In "Le Nozze," Mozart's music draws a contrast between, on the one hand, the obedience-based relationship of the servants to the count, and on the other hand, the free and joyful mutual relationships among the free members of the aristocracy. In the spirit of the former, the count tries to coerce Figaro's fiancee, one of the count's servants, into the counts bed. The latter is represented by the neglected Countess' happy relationship with the count's page, Cherubino, who is a boy young enough to be sung by a coloratura.

The topic of teaching discipline without also indoctrinating a child into obedience is discussed in the work of Haim Ginot, especially "Between Parent and Child." At some point, I may get around to writing about how my father taught me virtue when I was growing up.

Saturday, December 11, 2004 - 11:05pm

Byron, I'll go on record and agree with you: parents have no obligation to their child after he finishes/drops out of high school.

College students are independent adults. If their parents wish to provide them the gift of funds for their higher education, more power to 'em. But to say that parents are obligated to fund their kids' studies until they get a PhD or JD at age 27 is just ridiculous.

Sunday, December 12, 2004 - 3:40am

Andrew wrote:

College students are independent adults. If their parents wish to provide them the gift of funds for their higher education, more power to 'em. But to say that parents are obligated to fund their kids' studies until they get a PhD or JD at age 27 is just ridiculous.

Even more ridiculous is when the offspring gets a PhD in some program for which no job market exists, then wants to move back into his parents' house. The instructor for a personal finance seminar I attended said outright that he would finance his child's college education only if the degree in question did not end in the word "studies," e.g. "Women's Studies," etc. This same instructor said he got cold chills of ecstasy every time he read Ayn Rand. One of the particants at the end of the seminar complimented him on refusing to practice "political correctness."

Luke Setzer

Sunday, December 12, 2004 - 7:25am

College students are independent adults.

Yes and no. Because they are full time students, they are not expected to earn their living yet. Although some do. I would rather a student to study hard and learn as much as he can when in college. Study and learning is not a job. It is a life. It doesn't end when the class finishes or the day ends.

Now back to parents' obligation to children. Are parents only obliged to provide food, clothes, home and a high school education for their children? What if their children show particular talent in music, sports, science, or arts? Are parents obliged to provide extra time, energy, money to nurture and encourage their children's talent? Or should they be just satisfied to do the minimum? I think college education is the same thing here. Of course I assume that the parents are well off, like Adam's first lover's parents, and are financially able to do the extra if they are willing.

Maybe there are some parents who, instead of supporting their children's higher education, rather spend their money on a $40k or $70k sport car, a $5k jacket, or something else. Well, I guess everybody has their own priorities in life. Maybe because I am a Chinese with two thousands year old tradition, for me, children's education has always been of high priority. I consider it my obligation to help my child to achieve his full potential in life. Of course this is not limited to formal education. It also include other values that I tried to instill in him.

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 12/12, 7:26am)

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 12/12, 7:27am)

Monday, December 13, 2004 - 6:38am

Hong,

I think that those moral obligations are subjective as long as they respect the rights of others to the pursuit of happiness and that no specific answers to them can be binding on all people. I am also a believer in differences in individual ability, so I would definitely not support a "one shoe fits all sizes" approach.

Moreover, there are both good and bad aspects when a parent supports a child through college. Self-reliance, especially in social contexts, might be better fostered by a child having to fight his way through college on his own, for example. But of course, the child can be overwhelmed if he has to rely on himself for too much and doesn't organize his priorities.

But in other contexts, especially when the primary focus is academic excellence, maybe it does help to have a child free of some of the things that will take away from his study time. However, even in that situation, there is no guarantee that the extra time will be used appropriately.

So it is partly about the child and his choices.

Monday, December 13, 2004 - 7:43am

Hong wrote: Here is where our values really differ. That's OK. You've said that you have done well enough in life without a college education. Do you consider that you have lived and will live to the fullest potential of your ability? If the answer is yes. Then that's fine.

The answer is yes, and it is fine. I will qualify by saying I have lived my life the best I can at this point in time, but the best is yet to come.

Hong wrote: Maybe because I am a Chinese with two thousands year old tradition, for me, children's education has always been of high priority.

Now this disturbs me. I was born and raised in Asia too, where we both know that to say a formal education is strongly encourage is an understatement. I left Asia for America because I was sick and tired of the intrincism and collectivism Asian cultures cultivated, and that was before I ever learnt of Objectivism. In my family, I used to be the black sheep that decided not go to college. My parents wanted me to become a professional, like a doctor or a lawyer. They did not understand my desire to become an entrepreneur (which is ironic, because they were entrepreneurs without college degrees too). My parents were not uncommon among entrepreneurs, because they never saw what they did as noble, and they wanted a better life for their children. I thought differently, and reading "Atlas Shrugged" reinforced it with a philosophical system to boot.

Now, at the age of 24, when my high school classmates who went to college are either still in college (many majoring in "Asian American Studies") or struggling to find a job to pay off their student loans, I am sitting on substantial stock and real estate portfolio. My vacation this year was a trip to London and Paris (which, unlike my classmates, I do not have to beg my parents to pay for). I drive a BMW convertible to my side job (the military), which puzzles my comrades to no end. And I earned it all on my own.

Monday, December 13, 2004 - 8:30am

Ha, Byron, of course you are a "black sheep"! I think you understand perfectly my position, as disturbing as it may be to you. Let me just say this then: if my son turns out like you, I will be proud.

One thing now is clear to me: it is you yourself decided not to go to college. It is not your parents who refused to support you go to college. With Adam's lover and her parents, things were quite opposite.

Let me ask you one last question: what if a child of yours wants to go to university very much after graduation from high school. He is just as smart as his father, though not in money matters. And he has shown great promises in math/science/music/literature. What will you do?

Next is right, this is not only about parents, but also about the child and his choice.

Monday, December 13, 2004 - 9:56am

Hong,

I agree with Andrew and Next Level that it depends on context (as with all things Objectivist), particularly on how my children turn out. If they have the potential to be the next Mozart, Einstein, or Shakespeare, and they think a college education will help them realize that potential, then I will help them pay for college, after encouraging them to apply for grants, scholarships, internships, and/or cooperative education programs. If they turn out to be bums like the majority of teenagers these days, then they'll get the boot after graduating high school. Somewhere in between, I'll decide on a case-by-base basis.

(Edited by Byron Garcia on 12/13, 10:08am)

Monday, December 13, 2004 - 11:05am

Although I came from from a white, white, white-bread Euro-American background, I too had a family that placed a heavy stress on formal education for the purpose of finding social place, and pushed me towards respectable and renumerative professions. To abbreviate the narrative, it didn't exactly work out.

In truth, the good education I received is in itself something I prize; but most of the education I have kept as part of my soul has been fueled by my own curiosity and valuation. It was the 'worthless' subjects- philosophy, literature, history, sociology, politics, religion, and, yes, womens' studies (gasp!), which have proved relevant to my life.   In one sense because they enriched my life and gave me purpose, courage, and a wonderfully vivid pictoral imagination*; in another, they gave me the social sense and most of the formal training appropriate for my profession.

I value education highly, but primarily in a liberal sense- I think life is made immeasurably more clear and colorful by the eyes which intellect and wisdom can give us. I have no difficulties with technical training- I've been going through a great deal of that myself recently (training which I doubt many frowning-in-discipline Protestant Ethicists would last an hour through), and I think technical studies can be pursued with real passion if they are manifest one's creative spark- and qua Rand I here include invention, commerce, and industry.

But I am very suspicious of ethics that place a high value on practical training for the sake of making a living according to the rules of a particular society.  Making a living is of course a necessity, and I actually thing young persons should be expected to care for themselves from a very young age as a principle (I have seen some startlingly self-possessed 12 year olds; one is the son of a liberal gnostic-Christian thea/ologian who likes to hang out with sex workers) , but to the degree that the kinds of value involved in persistence in existence diverge from the kinds of value involved in liberal study enthused as such in its object, this necessity shouldn't be glorified. This is especially so to the degree that the conditions of making a life flow not from simple physical necessity but from the social conditions of survival in a particular society. Conditioning to the social rules and customs required (de facto) to making a living is a sheer maiming of the spirit, and this maiming is compounded when bigotries of class, ethnicity, and gender are built into a society's gatekeeping loci.

Which I stress does not mean I favor education with no regards for future practicality- I just think this practicality should be seen in a light abstracted from the social requirements a society expects for participation in economic life, and education should aim to create a self sufficiency to bypass institutions which require conformity or at least armor against and minimize the damages. It may surprise some here, but despite the current leftist gloss, modern Pagans are often strong advocates of individualistic education, home schooling, and early age self sufficiency- the essence of education is looked at as learning the outward means and forms that can embody inward expression, and practical, intellectual, social, aesthetic, and spiritual elements are seen as interelated parts of an organic unity of self-realization.

This is something Objectivists should greatly resonate with, and until yesterday Wiccans and Pagans were actually, politically, libertarian conservatives more than anything else, and strongly respected the practical arts. What I can't resonate with- and here my sense echoes the same experiences as most Pagans- is the bending of the spirit for the requirements of success within a particular culture if and when those cultural forms are divorced from any experience from the vital expression of human potential (Pagans do not generally oppose traditional cultural forms which allegedly do draw out original excitement and structure essential human experiences)

My problem with corporate culture is that it loses sight of the integrated nature of human experience and forgets the ends for the means, and has little discrimination between the rigors of practical commercial and physical necessity and the administrative stepping-on-heads regimentations typical of structures of control. and little differentiation is made between 'success' as the creation of productive value ad part of worldly happiness and 'success' as the achieving of social status and power within a heirarchy. These problems are not unique to corporate life- university administrations, public school systems, and government offices come to mind- but there is still an awful sterility to today's business world, best symbolized by its terribly ugly, faceless, box-like architecture built to make ugly, faceless, box-like souls.

regards,

Jeanine Ring    )(*)(

Monday, December 13, 2004 - 11:19am

Byron,
I am glad that we reached a middle ground that I am perfectly happy with.

Now what's left is the difficult task of how not to let our children turn out to be bums!

Monday, December 13, 2004 - 11:24am

Msr. Setzer-

Let me give my appreciations for taking the courage and effort to involved in your aesthetic studies. It is most refreshing to see someone with a technical and economistic background view an appreciation of the spirit as something needful in life, rather than an eneny of economic rationality to be feared.

By such individual curiosities pursued is the world made a better place in variety and vitality of life.

respects,

Jeanie Ring )(*)(

Monday, December 13, 2004 - 1:07pm

Msr. Reed-

Ah, Mozart. I'm not so heavily studied, but studied enough to understand why we see eye to eye here.

That said, this recalls to me a scene from the (I know, historically dubious) movie Amadeus), which sparks a different take. There's a part where Mozart is talking to some snooty Italian courtiers, who are holding for 'aristocratic'. 'Italian' standards of aesthetics and romance; Mozart rebuffs with more integrity that tact and instead defends a 'German' romantic folk tradition. Now, I have no idea how accurate this scene is, but it fits with the dangerously social radical tone of some of Mozart's pieces- say, the Magic Flute- as well as what I do know of the German folk traditions, which however rustic had strong strains of a life affirming ethos- with a heritage in the earlier versions of Germanic Paganism (the Vanir or older gods of the standard Norse tales) and a legacy in oral culture- the 'fairy stories' which form the basis of much 19th century Romanticism as well as modern fairy tales.

The reason I mention the above is because you present 'old high culture' standards, represented by classical Western and Eastern civilizations, as both liberal and unstratified, and I think this mixes together two different sociological strains. What I have been calling 'old high culture', typified by Periclean Athens, Republican Rome, Imperial Britian, or Feudal Japan, does deserve the name of high culture- with its worldliness, it's appreciation for the arts, and its pragmatic tolerance of other niches of life. Nevertheless, these cultures qualities attractive. There is a heavy emphasis of keeping, not fixed social race, but 'face', honour, dignitas, a deliberate training in a proud social callousness, and specifically a very sharp sexual double standard- such societies create conditions of virtual slavery for all females except prostitutes and the female aristocracy, who strongly resemble each other; being pragmatically married off in political marriage is the norm.

I'm far from saying that 'old high cultures' are irredeemably vicious- on the contrary, such cultures have been virtually the sole backgrounds for the flourishing of philosophy and the arts and sciences. But their shameless pride and good life does not translate into universalistic respect for happiness or persons, and easily promotes a sense of cultural demand for the heights which disparages and despises and all else; the paradigm case for this is the decline of Athens following its imperial ambitions, which simultaneously cultural war against a more feminist and egalitarian counterculture with little use for glory-seeking, as recalled by Medea and Lysistrata.

Mozart touches this because Mozart's work- particularly his popular strain represented by works such as the Magic Flute- show every last characteristic, from aesthos to flow to symbols to morality- of a worldview that in some respects concords and some respects dissents from "old high culture" values- I'm tempted to call it 'old low culture'. Examples of this formation include ancient Sumer, Minoan Greece, the Hellenistic near East and the popular culture of Plebian Rome, as well as the popular culture of modern America. None of these examples are perfect (nor are those for 'old high culture'), but all emphasize the 'Dionysian' (Nietzsche's misleading term) themes of enthusiasm and immediacy that high cultures distrust as connected to a loss of control; their social life is more egalitarian, more empathic than standards-focused, and more 'democratic' in Plato's sense of democratic culture. On the other hand, 'old low cultures' concur with high cultures in an emphasis on worldly happiness, aestheticism, and sexuality; both are resolutely opposed to Christianity and a morality contrary to nature.

I have in mind something like the following:

                     heirarchical                        egalitarian

moralist      Protestant Ethic               Christian love
             duty, chastity, propriety    sacrifice, faith, agape
                   authoritarian right           authoritarian left
               converted high culture    converted low culture
                  'father knows best'         'what about the poor?'
                       Robert Bork                    Jesse Jackson

naturalist      Apollonian                        Dyonisian
                 pride, virtu, philia      inspiration, empathy, eros
                  Libertarian Right               Libertarian Left
                   old high culture                old low culture
              'we are the champions'    'well, we all shine on...'
                     Gary Johnson                    John Lennon

Note this model allows for blends of adjacent categories: Victorian capitalism was an Apollonian/Protestant cross, the Medieval Church a Protestant/Christian cross; contemporary leftism and feminism is generally a Christian/Dyonisian cross, while Rush or Camille Paglia show a Dyonisian/Apollonian cross. Mozart, by his schema, is also a cross between Apollonian and Dyonisian virtues. (apologies for the many anachronisms ineviable in any crosscultural typology:

Ayn Rand, by this model, emphasizes an Apollonian/Dyonisian mix at the beginning of her creative period, becoming steadily more purely Apollonian as her life progressed.

Well, my thoughts.

Jeanine Ring    )(*)(

Monday, December 13, 2004 - 11:19pm

Byron,

Just because your personality was not suited to your parents' culturally conventional ambitions, does not mean that everyone would be better off without their parent's support, or that parental support should be conditioned on following the wishes of one's parents. And education does not preclude entrepreneurship: in the field I'm familiar with, the big companies (Intel, Sun, Oracle, Yahoo, Google and so on) were all founded by intellectuals, most of them with PhDs.

Parental obligations are contextual. In the case under discussion, it was the wealth of the parents that barred their daughter from receiving a full stipend to attend the top university of her choice. In 1966, a National Merit Scholarship meant the top student out of 5,000. That her parents saw their wealth as a god-given mandate to prevent their child's self-development, was something very different from reasonable parents conditioning their support on evidence of a child's own comitment to her self-actualization. In their case, reneging on their obligations to their daughter was nothing more than bigoted, abusive anti-intellectualism.

Jeanine,

The Romantic Revolution (from Mozart through Hugo) was based on the notion that self-actualization, previously the exclusive prerogative of the aristocracy, was good for every man qua man. It universalized previously aristocratic values. In the subsequent Naturalist counter-revolution, the upper classes took on the previously declasse values of the old lower classes: falsehood, second-hand values, superficiality. This eventually resulted, by the second half of the twentieth century, in a 180-degree cultural inversion: self-actualization (and the values of integrity and honor) as the praxis of a self-created romantic elite of self-made people from lower-class and immigrant origins; fashion, falsehood and nihilism as the praxis of the decadent descendants of the upper class. The world, as the song has it, turned upside down.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - 1:01am

Reed,

This is my first post here and probably won't make me any friends. But I must be honest. I not sympathetic to your problem. For the life of me I do not know how Objectivism requires parents to take care of their adult children. If you and the girl really thought you were ready for love and sex, then you must have regarded yourselves as adults. What adult has a claim upon another for food and shelter, let alone education?

By the way, parental income does not bar a National Merit Scholar from receiving scholarship funds. I know this from personal experience. I was a National Merit Scholar and was restricted to a $500 a semester stipend, because my father earned too much at about $35,000 a year as an autoworker. However, I was informed that I could receive the full scholarship if I proved that I was independent of my parents and maintaining myself. The easiest way to do that was to not be a dependent on my parents' income tax return for two or three years. (Having by then imbibed my first dose of Rand, I chose to earn my own keep for a few years, which put me a path that didn't require a college education.)

It looks to me you two could have had what you wanted had you chosen independence from the girl's family. Just telling what I think.

R. Pukszta

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - 6:56am

Adam,

I admit that the path I took may not be appropriate for everyone, and is probably not appropriate for most people at this point in time. It was a specific answer to a specific question (Hong asking me if I have achieved my fullest potential without a college education). My general argument was, one, parents should not legally or morally have to financially support a child past high school (again, most people live independently with only a high school diploma) and, two, that how much support a parent should choose to give after high school is based on context, both the parents and the "child" (for lack of a better term).

Rooster,

I agree with you for the most part, as have others in this thread to one extent or another. My sympathy with Adam was that the abortion laws at the time forced this problem in the first place. If abortion were legal, and the parent's religious views were different (there are pro-abortion Christians), then much of that mess could have been avoided. By the way, interesting name.

Hong,

Yes. I am not a parent, but I have seen enough families to know that is a very difficult task these days. The one thing I have observed is that children tend to learn by the example of their parents, so there's a start.

(Edited by Byron Garcia on 12/14, 7:00am)

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - 1:13pm

Garcia,

I understand your point. I differ with it to the extent that the true origin of the problem might have been two people who were not prepared to deal with the consequences of their actions. I'll leave it at that because I don't know Reed. I'm speaking from a general principle that is central to Objectivist morality, which is that each of us is responsible for himself.

R. Pukszta

P.S. As for the moniker I got that in the service in less than flattering circumstances. But it's grown on me ever since.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - 4:13pm

Rooster wrote:

I differ with it to the extent that the true origin of the problem might have been two people who were not prepared to deal with the consequences of their actions.

This was my point also. I support the principle of delayed gratification for greater long-range well-being. Not all persons here agree with me, however.

Luke Setzer

Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - 6:03am

Setzer,

You said a mouthful there. If we did not delay gratification, what would any human being have ever accomplished? There nothing intrinsincally wrong with indulging our appetites, but not at the expense of productivity and independence.

Pukszta

Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - 7:34am

Rooster wrote: As for the moniker I got that in the service in less than flattering circumstances. But it's grown on me ever since.

Ha! Not surprised. The service is not for the thin-skinned. Anyway, your point about "delayed gratification" (not the term I'd use but it gets the job done) was my point too. The only exception is that I did say it is unfair to judge Adam's relationship given that we only know what little he told us in his article, which is not much.