TOC watch

Adam -

Who generally wins the Presidential election? Is it the guy who's message is: "American is the home of the helpless, hopeless masses ruled by the rich, while it is pursuing an evil foreign policy."? Or is it the guy who says: "America is the home of a vigorous and dynamic people of great productivity who can continually live better and who wish to do good things in the rest of the world."? Now the 2nd guy may want to make and may actually make even more changes than the first, but he is also the guy who is saying to Americans: "You are a pretty decent people and together we can do even greater things." He is usually the guy who is elected. The guy who says, "You have been damned scoundrels.", is too foreign to them for them to bother to listen to him.

I would like to see the same people who elect a President elect a society generally organized upon Objectivist lines. We will not get there by simply saying: 'You are irrational and most of your major values are really screwed up." As I have said, we need to start the long process of getting people to extend the scope of those of their values that are worthy of them. Few people are able to overnight toss out a whole ethical and philosophical viewpoint and replace it with something as different as Objectivism is. On the other hand, America is a very productive country and the main reason is that many people hold substantially Objectivist values in the context of the workplace. They have some significant commitment to reason, to self-responsibility, and to pride in the context of their work. Sometimes in their play they also show a substantial commitment to the joys of living life on earth. We Objectivists should use these better value areas of theirs to interest them in a broader Objectivist viewpoint. This is what Ed Hudgins is trying to do. Of course you can call it watering down the philosophy, but the point is certainly not to prevent anyone from knowing more about Objectivism. It is simply to induce anyone interested in learning more about it to attend to the writings available at TOC, ARI, and other web sites or come here to learn more.

Post 41

Thursday, August 4, 2005 - 10:18pm

Dennis - Post 36

I agree that Stephen Hicks is a good man. I have consistently enjoyed his talks at TOC Summer Seminars and I am presently enjoying his book Explaining Postmodernism. I have heard the talk in which he made the shoe salesman analogy. I do not believe that he thought that he was making a statement that TOC was on the wrong track in its approach to selling Objectivism. Of course, I would be very interested in hearing more about what he does think is the best way to sell Objectivism. He does have the advantage of having an audience of young minds in a college setting where the malleability of their minds is unusually great and a rational professor is in a far better position to market Objectivism at a broad and fundamental level than one generally gets a chance to do in casual conversations with people or in op-eds. Indeed, Stephen is in that position where it makes great sense for him to concentrate on finding the 1% of the population most amenable to Objectivisim. In the college environment, that subset may well number 5 - 10%, but that window in time closes quickly for many people. Of course, there are very few Stephen Hickses among college professors today. Mostly there are postmodernists and socialists who are bending the malleable minds of college students their way, rather than toward Objectivism. They are then harder to reach after they graduate and are sure they carry the wisdom of the great scholars with them into life. Commonly, they do start to fall off from that assurance a bit by the time they are in their 30s, but that baggage still makes the marketing of Objectivism much harder. Indeed, many thirty-somethings are quite resistant to radical changes in their lives. Ed Hudgins is mostly addressing these people. It is a different audience and this is important.

The purpose of the op-ed is to get the reader�s attention and to motivate him or her to look for the full explanation elsewhere in the Objectivist literature.

We agree on this.

Of course there is room for a diversity of approaches, but toning down the philosophy to make it appear less radical will not work. It might give the appearance of gaining some marginal agreement on superficial issues, but, in the long run, this is worthless. I do not believe we should waste our energy on those who will turn away at the first hint of our radicalism.

The philosophy is what it is. It is radical in some respects and it is what most people implicitly act upon in many others, even though they do not explicitly expound it as their philosophy. Most people are in a state of conflict and if you can show them that they need not be in such a state on a number of particular issues, they will be more inclined to want to look into the philosophy and study it. After all, they generally have had a low opinion of philosophy before due to the fact that philosophy always put them into this state of conflict between living life and pursuing the ideal that denied them life. Ed Hudgins keeps trying to show people that in issue after issue, Objectivism is consistent with a will to live and enjoy life. This is not watering down the philosophy. This is a great way to differentiate it from the useless and anti-life philosophies that have given philosophy such a bad name in the minds of many pragmatic Americans. It is the bad philosophies that have driven many Americans to become pragmatists always on the lookout to identify and reject radicalism. These are people who have identified radical Christianity as foolish. They have done the same with radical socialism. If at first, they mistakenly apply this principle that radicalism is always false to Objectivism before they have really learned much at all about it, are we really justified in condemning them to the greatest depths of hell? Marketing our ideas to them is not easy, but if we forsake them, we will surely not soon have an Objectivist society.

That �well-educated customer base� must come to see that the Objectivist ethics offers something totally unique�a kind of personalized idealism thoroughly grounded in reason and reality. The alternatives must be defined as clearly as possible. We cannot muddy the water by making it look as though we are not all that different. We must spell out the full nature of that difference--and people will then be in a position to make their choice. Camouflaging the choice by making it seem less controversial strikes me as pointless and self-defeating.

Before we have an Objectivist society, this will be true. You put it very nicely. The question is simply how do we get people's attention so that they will understand this. If the matter were as simple as you present it, then why are not 10% of Americans Objectivists already. Ayn Rand, NBI, and ARI have been marketing Objectivism to them for a long while. Instead, we have maybe 0.01% of the population being Objectivists. The wishful thinking is inspiring and you are talking to a natural optimist (an entrepreneur), but as Objectivists we are required to be reality-oriented. Reality demands an explanation for this shortfall of a thousand-fold in the numbers of Objectivists. We cannot allow ourselves the indulgence of ignoring this huge shortfall. We must be falling short on our marketing when we follow only the ARI model. I can see no other explanation, except that we might alternatively be greatly over-estimating the number of people who presently have the mental power and the psychological health to become Objectivists.

I will repeat again that Ed Hudgins is not really working on "camouflaging the choice by making it seem less controversial". What he is attempting is giving people a reason to spend enough time to look into Objectivism. He wants to show them that it supports a value they do recognize and does so better than other philosophies do. He simply opens with that, rather than with a hammer blow to their heads. He is not attempting fraud. He is simply giving them an invitation to drop in to learn about and enjoy the practical philosophy of life. This is something very new to most Americans.

Post 42

Thursday, August 4, 2005 - 10:25pm

Philip -

Thanks once again for your insight and wisdom. You are good company.

Post 43

Thursday, August 11, 2005 - 2:39am

Charles,

Ed Hudgins keeps trying to show people that in issue after issue, Objectivism is consistent with a will to live and enjoy life. This is not watering down the philosophy. This is a great way to differentiate it from the useless and anti-life philosophies that have given philosophy such a bad name in the minds of many pragmatic Americans.

If Ed Hudgins was in fact doing this, I would be in sympathy with his approach. In most instances, however, I do not think he injects enough Objectivism into his articles. He needs to show the connections between his general points and basic Objectivist principles. Instead, he leaves the reader with the impression that there are no important differences between his basic premises and more conventional viewpoints. The reader is given no motivation to look more closely at the alternative Objectivism offers.

Before we have an Objectivist society, this will be true [that people must come to see that the Objectivist ethics offers something totally unique]. You put it very nicely. The question is simply how do we get people's attention so that they will understand this. If the matter were as simple as you present it, then why are not 10% of Americans Objectivists already. Ayn Rand, NBI, and ARI have been marketing Objectivism to them for a long while.

Objectivism's slow growth can largely be attributed to the stupidity of the people at the helm of the movement. My thread on "How to Kill a Philosophy", using the Valliant book as a recent and highly repugnant symptom, addressed this issue. ARI's incessant moralizing and sterile pedantry make Objectivists look like a quasi-religious lunatic fringe ready to pounce on anyone who questions the holiness or omniscience of St. Ayn. What is needed is an intellectual atmosphere in which students of the philosophy feel free to openly question its tenets as well as the perfection of its founder.

As long as its leaders insist on inculcating a sense of guilt in those who bring an independent mind to critical issues--attacking their honesty and insulting their natural inclinations for autonomy--Objectivism's influence will remain minimal. In this respect, TOC is light years ahead of ARI. Unfortunately, TOC seems to confuse tolerance of disagreement with a lack of attention to clarity on fundamentals.

Scholars are embarrassed to take Objectivism seriously. Outside the academic community, the problem is one of either misrepresenting the product, or scarcely representing it at all.

It is as though TOC had decided that the problem with ARI was its emphasis on ethics, rather than its puritanical, almost stoical approach to ethics. And concluded that the solution was to de-emphasize the whole subject of ethics. The fact is, neither ARI nor TOC is appealing to the average person's need to see his life and happiness in morally idealistic terms. If they did, I think we would succeed in capturing the public's attention much faster than we are. I strongly believe there are a lot of latent Objectiviists out there. The fault is ours for not telling them what we have to offer.

(Edited by Dennis Hardin on 8/11, 9:44pm)

Post 44

Thursday, August 11, 2005 - 2:35pm