RoR: Forum

Nice article, Luke. I have two related comments about BB&T.

CEO John Allison spoke at the Ayn Rand Institute's 2003 summmer conference per the following:

I saw John Allison speak at last summer’s Objectivist Conference, and I think its wonderful (and rare) to see a successful CEO defend capitalism. You can see how he applies Objectivism to the corporate philosophy of BB&T at their philosophy page. http://www.objectivismonline.net/blog/archives/2004_03.html

I tried the link to ARI's website to view the conference schedule for 2003, but that schedule is no longer available.

BB&T stock is publicly-traded. Info about it can be found using this link: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=bbt
Its past performance over various periods can be viewed using the chart facility. BBT is a fairly conservative stock, so don't expect a windfall. But it has outperformed the major indexes over the years, which can also be seen using the chart facility. One caveat -- how much it has exceeded the indexes is somewhat overstated. The numbers used for BBT includes dividends, whereas dividends are not included in the indexes. One could also compare BBT's performance versus competitors like Bank of America (BAC), Sun Trust (STI) and Wachovia (WB). BBT has been pretty much in line with them, but it has varied depending on the particular period chosen.

Post 1

Friday, December 23, 2005 - 10:13am

Luke,

This article is one of the most surreal things I have ever read; straight from a Dali painting. Your "treatise" on emotions was frightening.

Michael

(Edited by Newberry on 12/23, 10:13am)

Post 2

Friday, December 23, 2005 - 11:08am

One thing I've noticed at every Objectivist club I've created or been a member at, is the varying degrees of commitment or interest or understanding of the members. Some of them are not yet Objectivists but perhaps high schoolers or college students who maybe have just read The Fountainhead and desperately want to find people they can talk about it with or just have friends who are not leftists or born again Christians. Others have twenty years of exposure or are philosophy graduate students and want to discuss how Objectivist epistemology applies to particle physics and not elementary stuff. The biggest mistake which kills clubs is that the latter, more hard-core group tends to take over and orient the club to their interests. Far too often, they tend to sacrifice the social and interactive for the more hard core activities. Not being people persons or having any real leadership or committee or group dynamics experience and tending to be highly intellectual, often they look down on activities which are just fun (a hike, a day in the park, a game) but don't have any direct connection with Objectivism. They tend to have an unshakable preconceived view of what a club should be prior to having led one. They tend to be very sure of themselves, masters of every skill. And they tend to lecture others all the time. Since they are far fewer in number (millions of AR fans, a few thousand hard core Objectivists), when the women and the young or novices get bored or put down or insulted and drift away the clubs often dwindle to about five people. The club never grows. Usually in fact, over time the announcements of monthly meetings simply stop.

The near-universal failure of Objectivist clubs to expand and grow (or even survive) is a matter of record. It is often attributed to leader "burn out...I've got a lot to do at work", people getting on with their careers or schooling, but usually the causes lie deeper.

This is sad because there are ways to avoid these problems. They are not easy or simple. Nor do they usually work in the one-man club where one person does everything, rather than a leadership committee, since they are very time consuming.

If I had seen this once, I might view it as an anomaly. But I've seen it more than a dozen times in every part of the country and in every age group. The clubs that tend to last tend to be the ones run by women or by older, more mellow, and engaging "family people". Not the ones run by the brightest or most intellectual guy, or the person most knowledgeable in Objectivist philosophy. They tend not to connect with the newbies or the people who want to party. Which is sad, because people who join a club for the fun or the social or the companionship over time learn more and more about the philosophy...if you don't chase 'em away.

Phil

Please post if you've seen any of the above in a campus or community group or club. Actually, a lot of this applies to clubs which are not Objectivist. Also, what about -successful- non-Objectivist clubs? What have people seen? ... Luke, I hope you don't mind if I'm broadening the discussion to clubs in general as opposed to just lessons from BB&T?
(Edited by Philip Coates
on 12/23, 11:17am)

Post 3

Friday, December 23, 2005 - 11:35am

Luke,

I like this article as well as your last one. Sanction from me.

The point about some individuals and businesses making decisions based on what "they wish was so" is right on. I've experienced this with managers in my past. I call it the "make a wish" mentality. It seems to go with the "I win, you lose" mentality. I've moved on when I've realized this was the mindset.

I like the Aristotle quote so much I placed in in large red letters on my Windows desktop so I can be reminded of it every morning when I turn on my computer. I forwarded the "values" page to my manager, we spoke about it for a few minutes. He likes it too.

Thanks again.
-Mike E.

Post 4

Friday, December 23, 2005 - 11:35am

Michael,

From this site: http://www.aristos.org/aynrand.htm

"While Rand stressed the role of reason, she rejected the belief that there was an inherent antagonism between reason and emotion. . . . [She acknowledged] the importance of emotion to a fully integrated existence. She viewed emotions as responses emanating from a subconscious estimate "of that which furthers man's values or threatens them, that which is for him or against him." . . . Central to Rand's understanding of emotion was her conviction that the subconscious mind [is] a mechanism for the spontaneous integration of experience and the automatization of knowledge. This developed conception was most clearly expressed in her essays on the nature and function of art."

Luke is emphasizing the point that the use of reason is a requirement for the integration of new experience. Some people have not integrated new experience and information into their subconscious by the use of reason. They don't try to UNDERSTAND what makes them feel the way they feel so their emotional responses can never change or grow. Their emotions are set in childhood and are not the emotions of a mature reasoning person. By "train up" our emotions as Luke puts it, I believe he means to be in the habit of thinking rationally. It doesn't mean "I want that emotion, so I'm going to make myself feel that". I admit Luke could have worded that part a little differently.

Post 5

Friday, December 23, 2005 - 1:45pm

Mike,
You are very generous. And I double checked Luke’s post and followed the links to the companies site.
Let me put it another way, I would never attend a club meeting demanding that its participants follow its ethical codes. If I was getting paid to work for a company that could be a possibility, but then I wouldn’t really concern myself with its moral system but simply make sure I did the work and was pleasant on the job. One thing I wanted to get over to Luke was that he was not appealing to me or someone like me.
Reason has its limitations; it’s a tool to help you get where you wish to go. Imagination, vision, joy are not things you deduct from rules but are spawned by a whole network of thoughts and feelings/emotions. Show me anyone who deducts their purpose in life solely by intellectual means and I will show you an unhappy human.
Michael

Post 6

Friday, December 23, 2005 - 7:21pm

Luke, Phil,

Are you familiar with The Fellowship of Reason? While they don't currently list themselves as Objectivist, their links page includes both AynRand.org and TOC. They have been in existence for at least five years and sponsor a variety of activities from family picnics to philosophical discussion groups. My only knowledge of them comes from their web page.

Post 7

Friday, December 23, 2005 - 7:43pm

There are an extremely tiny handful of successful community-based clubs around the country. For all I know this may be one of them.

Post 8

Friday, December 23, 2005 - 8:17pm

Folks, thanks for all the comments.

Phil, I need to chew on your words of accumulated wisdom and will discuss them at length with you privately when the time comes.

Rick Pasotto, I had considered opening a chapter of Fellowship of Reason (FOR) briefly before having a clash of vision with their leadership. Suffice it to say that I found several members of their Executive Board openly hostile to Objectivism. Perhaps I will write an article about it some day. So I pursued SOLO and now RoR instead.

Michael Newberry and Mike Erickson, I lifted the verbiage about "The Role of Emotions" directly from the BB&T page. I will eventually massage the entire values and emotions section after chewing on them some more.

Michael Newberry, I have my own ideas about this relationship between joy and reason that actually fall more into line with your argument than with the BB&T statement. I have a forthcoming article on this brewing that I will eventually publish. Suffice it to say that I see the three ruling values as enablers to realizing dreams, not as bushels for snuffing them.

Post 9

Friday, December 23, 2005 - 8:35pm

Michael,

"Show me anyone who deducts their purpose in life solely by intellectual means and I will show you an unhappy human."

Mostly I agree with you. But you have to take into account a persons starting point. For instance, if the emotional heritage of a person's childhood is abject fear and self loathing, then reprogramming their emotions by intellectual means may be their only chance for happiness in life. By intellectual means I mean something like Nathaniel Brandens "The Psychology of Self Esteem", or anything by Nathanial Branden. I don't know about having to "deduce" a purpose in life, but perhaps by achieving the capability to be happy [by "reprogramming" your emotions] one's purpose becomes clear.

"I would never attend a club meeting demanding that its participants follow its ethical codes."

I can't think of any club that if you joined voluntarily wouldn't have some kind of ethical code that you would also be voluntarily agreeing to follow. This is especially true in the workplace where you are being paid to follow the company rules. This seems very reasonable to me, but it may be the reason that some people find it impossible to "join" a club or work for a company and remain independent their whole lives.

Post 10

Friday, December 23, 2005 - 9:19pm

Luke,

What evidence do you have that these values are practiced across the BB&T enterprise, other than their growth and financial success? I'm not saying these values aren't a factor - they may very well be - but my own corporate experience has shown that there is often a disconnect between the rhetoric of mission statements and the reality of the actual corporate culture.

That said, it is good that these Objectivist principles come from the very top of the organization. Assuming that the CEO observably conducts himself according to these principles, it will (or at least should) rub off on the senior executives, and so on down the ranks of the organization. To the contrary, if this same statement of values was written by the VP of Human Resources merely for the sake of having good-sounding mission statemet, it would mean very little if the CEO and other top brass didn't abide by these principles. In fact, it could be disastrous for the company if the mid level on down begins to sense rank hypocrisy amongst the top dogs of the firm.

It would be interesting to talk to various employees of the company to see just how they incorporate these principles into their work.

Post 11

Friday, December 23, 2005 - 10:37pm

Mike wrote: "For instance, if the emotional heritage of a person's childhood is abject fear and self loathing, then reprogramming their emotions by intellectual means may be their only chance for happiness in life."

Mike, I am no expert, not even well-read in psychology–I have a great friend who is a psychologist and I will ask her, she has got one hell of a beautiful, healthy, alive look to her!, but I don’t think you come to mental health attempting to intellectually program your emotions, the thought of that scares the living be jesus outta me! My experience with emotions personally and professionally (hahahaah, art is multi-functional!) is that they are responding all the time to new input–art, events, new episodes with people affect them constantly. (I don’t know much about neurosis but perhaps that is what your referring to when you talk of emotions?) The trick seems to identify what the emotions are communicating but I would think you would never want them to obey, rather just to exist. I know all my emotions would sabotage the shit out of me if I told them what to do, attempt to disquise it as a reprogramming, man they are not stupid!!!

In any case how does this all fit into a club mission statement?

"I can't think of any club that if you joined voluntarily wouldn't have some kind of ethical code that you would also be voluntarily agreeing to follow. This is especially true in the workplace where you are being paid to follow the company rules. This seems very reasonable to me, but it may be the reason that some people find it impossible to "join" a club or work for a company and remain independent their whole lives."

Perhaps you have hit on something here. What would be the common denominators joining a bunch of reason-orientated, emotionally healthy (hopefully) individualists? Man, I have got to stop here...I can’t go thinking too much about this...takes me off into all kinds of weird stuff...hahaahah,
Michael

Post 12

Saturday, December 24, 2005 - 6:05am

FOR (Fellowship of Reason) is an interesting group. It's president and a handful of other members are Objectivist, but it is explicitly 'big tent' and has many decidedly non-Oist members such as humanists.

The goals of the group appear to be a general social outlet and fostering the community feeling of religion. Potlucks, walks or pub nights lack any philisophical or other focus and are pure social gatherings. The book clubs and movie nights are sometimes appealing, but even then less focused than you might think. The group also seems to be 'actively anti-activist' - soon after meeting several members they reiterated that the group was about improving yourself and your relations to those around you, and that political activism or other wide 'spreading the word' wasn't worth trying.

The most defining FOR meeting type is FORum. This is held in a Unitarian Universalist church, has a bulletin, a 'message', etc. Eg. the message is a life-affirming individualist tale of being a hero to your family, nothing supernatural. FORum has segments such as 'celebration of literature' with a presentation of a good book, a 'celebration of music' with a musical performance, 'celebration of heroism' with a biographical story of a great individual (one I heard was William Garrison). There's then a feel-good part where people share aloud good or bad happenings in their life to congratulate or commiserate. I can't really criticize the FORum for its content, and I think there are some good concepts in there - however, the whole event seems geared towards people that miss that ritualistic church feel.

Given how long it's been around and how many members are active (miscellaneous meetings may have 10-20 people, FORum >30) I'd say FOR is successful at what it does. I don't doubt that in other areas similar in size to Atlanta it could achieve similar success. However, the needs it addresses - general social outlet and ritual/religious feel - aren't ones I find compelling and it certainly wouldn't qualify as an Objectivist group success story. I think Objectivist groups could still benefit from some of its ideas such as emphasis on personal achievements and 'celebration of' type discussion, as long as it could be done without feeling like church.

Post 13

Saturday, December 24, 2005 - 7:03am

Phil,

The most successful club I've been a part of was Lin Zinser's FROG group in Colorado. She really had a way of nurturing young Objectivists that was rare. The most important thing to me was that she really cared. Encountering the FROG group as well as IOS for high level work from 1994-1996 really cemented my interest in Objectivism.

I actually shut down an Objectivist Club at my college. Partly for lack of time and partly because we had a few jokers that would scare off honest students who still retained some belief in the welfare state etc. I could reach those students much more effectively on my own and most of the club members knew each other anyway and we got together on a reasonably regular basis informally.

Jim

Post 14

Saturday, December 24, 2005 - 8:05am

The most successful club I've been a part of was Lin Zinser's FROG group in Colorado. She really had a way of nurturing young Objectivists that was rare. The most important thing to me was that she really cared.

The one and only club I belonged to was like that, also run by a women (Karen [Reedstrom] Minto). The Objectivist Club of Easter Michigan, c. 1987-2000 (I think)

She had a way of finding something of interest for everyone, whether it was going to movies, special lectures and video presentations, picnics, theater productions, or simply to her home for dinner, we all had a great time. Everyone made life long friends in her group. There were probably a few dozen members at it's peak and we even produced our own local cable television show (I still have all of the old tapes in my basement!). We had family people, singles, young'uns, and seniors. Professionals, laborers, managers, students, etc. and we all got along just fine. Those with more technical interests gravitated to one another, but were still interested in whatever the plan was for the evening.

Karen just had a wonderful organizational ability, and was so friendly, smart, and funny with everyone. We all loved her.

During regular club meetings, Karen would sometimes throw out interesting questions or scenarios and we'd all argue over the merits, viability, ethical foundation, etc. of the subject. It was great fun. The meeting room in the back of a local restaurant sometimes got a little loud with all of the laughing, arguing, and talking, but that was part of the fun for me personally.

Karen was an accomplished writer and published a fantastic, long lived Objectivist newsletter called "Full Context," famous for it's interviews with interesting Objectivist personalities. I probably miss that newsletter more than the club! It was amazing how much variety could be crammed into less than a dozen pages.

Something for everyone, that was key to her success. Karen was interested in almost anything, so it was easy for her to offer so much variety. :)

Teresa

Post 15

Saturday, December 24, 2005 - 8:00pm

Pete, a trustworthy high school classmate works for BB&T and assures me that the company practices those professed values from top to bottom. It is also my understanding that the CEO strongly encourages all his managers to read Atlas Shrugged.

Michael Newberry, I think the common denominators that would draw together these people would include a desire for friendship with like-minded people, acquiring knowledge via Socratic inquiry, and even romantic opportunities. Similar appreciations for romantic realism would also drive calendar events for concerts, etc. As for what BB&T has to do with a club mission statement, my main points are that

BB&T shows that an organization can successfully build itself around Objectivist values
BB&T saw fit to add Teamwork to that list of values to cement the organization into a working unit

Mike Erickson, you are correct that any organization worth its salt will have a code of conduct by which all members will be expected to conduct themselves.

Aaron, I agree that FOR has some desireable traits that an Objectivist club network could emulate. Their hostility to activism is not one of them, however. Part of the reason Christianity has continued to prosper is because of its emphasis on evangelism. I have not seen anyone called "reason's evangelist" other than the late Robert Ingersoll. We need an army of such "evangelists" if we hope to change the culture. While I agree with FOR that one needs to focus on one's own improvement, to ignore the cultural conditions that make such improvement possible is foolish and even suicidal.

James Heaps-Nelson, I agree that a sense of caring benevolence to newcomers greatly increases the chances of success of an Objectivist club.

Teresa, what became of Karen? It sounds like she had some wonderful ideas that she could easily have franchised globally had she such an inclination. I have noticed that these clubs rise and fall due to the efforts of one person with no "brain trust" established. That definitely needs to change.

Post 16

Sunday, December 25, 2005 - 7:23am

Teresa, what became of Karen? It sounds like she had some wonderful ideas that she could easily have franchised globally had she such an inclination. I have noticed that these clubs rise and fall due to the efforts of one person with no "brain trust" established. That definitely needs to change.

Karen's happy and healthy, living a great life with her husband Rick and their adorable dogs. She's into martial arts now, and developing her flash media company (she makes training films, stuff like that.)

The decline of the club came after Karen's marriage. She wanted to spend much more time with Rick, and I certainly don't blame her. He's a great guy.

Karen never complained about the work involved with keeping the club and newsletter together. In fact, I think she really dug doing it all. She had a whole lot of help with the newsletter from another active club member, David Oyerly, who was an extremely talented writer in his own right. They're still very close friends to this day.

I have no doubt Karen would have handed the reins over to whomever wanted to take the club or newsletter over, and I'm not sure why David didn't do it himself. He probably couldn't see himself handling the load alone.

At any rate, the Karen/Dave partnership would have been a very tough act to follow. I'm not sure anyone would have been able to pull it off like they did.

Teresa

Post 17

Friday, December 30, 2005 - 2:58pm

Luke,

I finally got around to this article. It looks like a pretty good start of club bylaws that could be drawn up.

As far as maintaining and expanding clubs, though, I think you have to include more advertising principles. You always sell better when you sell the sizzle and not the bacon. That's the reality of how people are. You sell better by selling to who they are, not to what you would like them to be.

And, that "emotions are mental habits" approach needs some serious work.

But all-in-all, a good article.

Michael

Post 18

Saturday, August 20, 2011 - 10:57am