| | I submit this essay in the highest spirit of optimism, but with the lowest sense of pessimism. Should it see print, I will be compelled to re-evaluate all my conclusions about Objectivism. But somehow, I don't think that will become an eventuality.
You know, there's a little something called "lying". It involves doing one thing and saying another. The philosophy that dares to call itself "Objectivism" is such a phenomenon. It has hijacked the good name of "objectivity" in order to construct an intimidating aura of seeming infallibility, when many of its "unassailable certainties" are nothing more than arbitrary whims.
Objectivism's premise that an individual is of "inferior" value if he is not constantly original and innovative is false. This neurotic obsession with never-ending innovation puts undue psychological pressure on insecure individuals, instills in them an inadequacy complex, and makes them unjust and sadistic with regards to constantly "proving" their excellence. This indiscriminate obsession with overachievement is overrated and very often unnecessary in a world filled with systems that work just fine already. If a wheel works, there's no need to reinvent it.
Much of Objectivism, in this regard, amounts to nothing more than mean-spirited, narcissistic vanity.
A common character flaw in Objectivists arises from this instilled terror of not being outstanding, and it consists of pretending to not notice, acknowledge, and/or boisterously ridicule the outstanding achievements of those outside their clique, and then later turning around and claiming and restating that same individual's ideas as their own. This has become a very common Objectivist tactic, this dishonest denial of reality in order to enhance one's own self-image. But it's parasitism, pure and simple.
Much of Objectivism also amounts to feudalism, where lip-service is given to the practice of meritocracy. This is caused by another false premise of Objectivism, which states that only "thinkers" really matter. First of all, much of what is being called "thinking" here has less to do with balanced, logical thought, and more to do with narcissistic and terroristic infliction of preschoolishly myopic whims and tantrums.
The typical Objectivist argument is that only the CEO of a corporation matters, and that only he is really entitled to any real show of respect, in the form of outlandish and exponential payment. The employee who performs "non-thinking" work is irrelevant.
This might be true when an entrepreneur starts a small business and can perform all job functions himself, but it no longer holds true once he wishes to go large-scale, because he can't be everywhere at once. True, he might actually be able to perform any given job function at his company, but the point is that he can't perform them all at once. The moment he thinks he can, his employees should walk out on him.
However, the truth also is that many CEO's could NOT perform many of the highly peculiar and specialized job functions within their own companies, and so the rationale that the CEO could easily do without any of the "inferior, burdensome serfs" whose non-neurotic, "unmotivated" presences he must suffer through and actually have to "reward" with payment... payment which he consistently arrogates deserves to be as low as legally possible, damn those meddlesome laws which fail to share his logically-flawed, neurotic fear and loathing of anything less than the most narcissistic displays of overachievement.
And so, "Objectivism" is objectivity in name only... It's true name is Neuroticism. And this is the real philosophy that its thralls wish to inescapably metastasize to all furthest regions of the planet Earth.
Woe be unto all of us if they succeed.
(Edited by Daniel Diogenes on 10/12, 5:02pm)
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