RoR: Forum

Post 0

Sunday, May 25 - 4:43pm

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[Note: this sort of thing doesn't seem to happen so much on RoR at present, but it is widespread over the years in the Objectivist movement, and not just on unmoderated websites. Better examples are NoodleFood on a number of occasions and currently SoloP -- and on OL which sometimes imitates it in personalities and persona attacks, with accusations being hurled back and forth between the two websites. Better historical examples are the 'personal issues' fights within the movement over decades.]

There are people who are fascinated with reality programming and 'exposes' and sex and crime in the yellow press and the mass media. They'd rather read about what Britney did than about something less sensational. And there are their Objectivist equivalents.

If activity and posting levels seem to be flagging at a website, resurrecting a topic of the "Objectivist Personalities, Gossip, and Food Fights" type (in this latest case PARC, but one can multiply examples) can always be relied upon to generate the most activity. Whichever side you are on and whichever of several websites you are posting on, there are a number of things wrong with spending as much time as people do on these endless repeated sorts of topic -- the inordinate focus on individual people or personalities...and what they did when or who was unfair to whom or who is honest or who is a hero:

1. The wrong subject matter to focus inordinately on: Past flaws and errors -- people making mistakes or treating others unfairly, stupidly, or without grasping something germane -- whether drinking too much, getting angry, bullying and lacking empathy, not reading a previous post carefully, choosing poor associates, being insulting is of a "no shit, dick tracy" nature: People do this. Both your heroes and your enemies; both people you deeply admire and those you despise . Get over it. Get on with your life.

2. Indirect and very distant or secondhand knowledge -- this sort of topic, in any of its mutations, tends to lean on psychological inferences or assumptions about the exact tenor of events which is not always directly accessible and it therefore has a large component of guesswork or speculation on your part.

3. Because of this (for example, all the tea leaf reading about an out of context action, statement, paragraph, or position taken decades ago...or even in a post made by your sworn enemy two hours ago), the discussion tends to be Epistemologically Corrupt: Even when it is not -blatant- psychologizing, you are, too often, expressing great precision and absolute certainty about complex matters which you do not really know, weren't a party to. Or where context -- context you don't have -- plays a very important role.

4. It always turns acrimonious and involves character attacks and name-calling, and most of the people involved in this - on whatever side - do not possess the maturity to avoid this sort of topic degenerating into name-calling and nit-picking about who-said-what-when.

5. Ideas over People: Philosophy, figuring out in principle how one should live and how to apply it to one's own life is of much greater importance ... and is not yet resolved or fully grasped by most of the people posting on these intellectually undemanding and low level 'gossip' or 'personalities' topics.

6. Degenerating Discussions: what starts with a discussion of the actions or personalities of major figures quickly degenerates into the same discussion of the actions of personalities of the debaters, the personalities who take a position on the prior topic.

7. It's a colossal, unproductive, endless waste of time: no one is ever convinced, every alleged 'fact' is challenged. And worst of all, instead of writing for an audience of seven hundred or seven hundred thousand, one is writing for an audience of seven: Almost no one is reading this. There is a hardcore of about six or seven people on each website who do all the posting and hurl disagreements at each other. So while it may momentarily make you feel good - "I'll show him! I won't let -that- go unanswered" - what you are doing is UTTERLY INEFFECTUAL.

8. The endless "muck-raking" topics (and the feces-hurling which seems to quickly accompany them) are actually destructive - they don't build anything positive but instead breed malevolence, contempt, back-biting among the participants and among bystanders who wonder what happened to the high-minded discussions of positive issues about how to live, how to build a better society, how to treat people well and intelligently.

9. Life and intellectual energy are finite - the time and emotion invested on these endless threads shoulders aside more productive use of your mind.

Conclusion: Don't be an obsessive-compulsive trying to answer every silly point.

Move on.

Get Over it.

Get on with your life.

Post 1

Sunday, May 25 - 5:54pm

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Are you talking to me, Phil?

(Edited by Ted Keer on 5/26, 11:17am)

Post 2

Monday, May 26 - 11:07am

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Phil,

I don't think this is a garden variety spat and for the first time there is some hope of figuring it out. If it were true that personalities weren't important in the movement currently, Barbara wouldn't have given her opinion of Ayn Rand at Atlas and the World.

In general I agree that for most people there can and should be other topics that occupy people's attention in preference to movement issues. By what you've written, you've taken a stand that has certain implications about your place in the Objectivist movement.

However, sometimes it's very hard to see what you see and not do something about it.

I don't plan on spending much more time on these topics, but I don't regret the time I have spent.

There are many venues where libertarians and Objectivists hang out where these topics rarely come up. ROR is one of them. Livejournal is another. Being above the fray is actually pretty doable, simply frequent places that are above the fray.

I know it pains you to see the bitter, protracted struggle you're seeing, but people are trying to protect their values and for some price is no object.

Best,

Jim

(Edited by James Heaps-Nelson on 5/26, 12:04pm)

Post 3

Monday, May 26 - 11:21am

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Who Doesn't Want to Wear the Ribbon?

I generally disapprove of commenting about one website on another. Given that you have apparently done so, Phil, could you at least provide a direct reference, a URL or a link? Thanks.

Post 4

Monday, May 26 - 7:01pm

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> If it were true that personalities weren't important in the movement currently, Barbara wouldn't have given her opinion of Ayn Rand at Atlas and the World. [JHN]

Jim, I think a case can be made that in discussing someone who has achieved and is a person of major accomplishment, time is not unlimited and there is usually (and certainly in this case) more value in discussing and plumbing the positives related to that as opposed to any negatives or shortcomings (or, worse, debating whether those exist in minute detail decades later when the evidence is disputed by partisans).

Since you can see romantic disillusionment, people currying favor with an authority, psychological blind spots, inappropriate anger or drinking too much or breaks between friends all around you, it is far more worthwhile to study what makes a person excellent than what makes them mundane.

I already have great admiration for AR for her genius, her determination, her sense of life, her insights. Whether or not she made any or ALL of a list of very human mistakes often charged, or was "perfect" by some definition of perfection is so much less important to me (and I submit to a person gives first priority to what is actually most important about human beings and understanding and judging them) as not to merit a great deal of my time.

I have a copy of PAR on my shelf. I don't know when or if actually reading it will jump ahead of many very important books I have to read (and things to write). Especially if it's going to require me to read PARC and the forthcoming bio by Ann? somebody or other to hear every side.

The fact that these books are major preoccupations and topics of discussion across the Objectivist movement and have been read by most people I know therein has exactly zero weight with me. It's not like I have great respect for the opinions, reading lists, and intellectual level of Objectivists to start with (with the exception of yourself and very few others-since you virtually always give reasons and arguments.)

I don't have time to read everything or attempt to find the answer to every question someone might raise about important people, even if they have been very important in my life:

I -would- read a long book on how Aristotle thought or why Edison was so inventive or how Michael Jordan, who couldn't even make his public school junior varsity became the greatest basketball player of all time. But only if I had read Amazon comments or browsed the book in the store beforehand. (So I know -- just for starters -- that the writer is wise, objective, in focus, clear, has done research, and is not long-winded or repetitious.)

I would -not- read a book half that length on why an American President (doesn't matter who the president is or if he's one of my heroes) or Winston Churchill or Isaac Newton had certain flaws of vision or character.

I have thirty books I'd rather read and can't get to them all.

As that great self-help guru Clint Eastwood once said, as he blew the smoke away from the muzzle of his semi-automatic:

"A Man has GOT to Know his Priorities".

Post 5

Monday, May 26 - 7:04pm

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A the start of the post just made, I should have said:

"plumbing the positives related to that as opposed to **primarily on** negatives or shortcomings" -- substituting the two asterisked words for **any**

Post 6

Monday, May 26 - 7:43pm

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Okay, James, if Phil can't help me, maybe you can. What is the concrete referent in reality which you two are discussing? Is there some blog/forum/thread somewhere that you are referring to? Do I have to attend some conference to know what you are talking about?

I have just started, finally, reading PARC, and let me just say that I am doing it with a yellow highlighter - something I never ever do. Take from that what you will. I am so sick and disgusted about the "who won't talk to who and why BS." Would to God Ayn would have a second coming, or at least intercede with Him to force all so-called Objectivists to post in one place. That miracle not forthcoming, can either of you two please explain to the rest of us what you are talking about?

Bewildered in NYC

Post 7

Monday, May 26 - 9:17pm

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Ted, it's no one thread or topic. You can easily find multiple -current- threads on OL and SP (and NoodleFood) hostilely discussing PARC and PAR.

I don't have the patience to figure out how to link to -- especially when no one except Jim is taking the time to respond much to what I already posted.

As my thread title indicates, it's the decades long preoccupation with personalities, negatives, enemies (Ayn Rand's romances and breaking with people and anger, NB and NBI bullying, who said what to whom, Peikoff vs. Kelley in personal character denunciation terms, George and Edith as not good Oists.....)

If I were to put it in one word: it all goes back to the basic **malevolence** so many Oists have toward the world and toward each other.

I could go on ....and on....

Post 8

Monday, May 26 - 9:49pm

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Phil,

For me it was not the internet forums, but some of the recent offerings at Summer Seminars that got me to this point. I was annoyed at having movement issues shoved in my face, but I figured if they're going to do that, I'd better own the issue. How can current audiences possibly critically digest the historical reminisences being presented?

I've never had a problem listening to someone on a topic they 're expert in. What I do have a problem with is listening to presenters on a topic where they have a credibility issue

Jim

(Edited by James Heaps-Nelson on 5/27, 4:40am)

Post 9

Tuesday, May 27 - 12:22am

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King Log?

"If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it meet that we should also be an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb?"

- Shakespeare, Henry V

Phil, I assumed it was a straw and camel issue, not the timeworn Chinese water torture. Your posting habits here on RoR seem somewhat migratory, so I thought that there might have been one acute issue that made you pull up camp elsewhere and come here for a while. I was looking for the raison de guerre.

As I've said before, I used to post a lot back in the nineties when you could find Bidinotto, Hsieh, Sciabarra, the Brandens, and basically all but Peikoff's troop all on one discussion group. When I started postin again in '06 it was apparently shortly after a breakup which led to an eventual three-way split, the details of which I am still largely and blissfully ignorant.

I had posted mostly here and somewhat on SOLOP, was accused there of being W Scherk in drag (NPI) and after much pestering simply told Perigo, et al. that I would refrain from posting on SOLOP until I read Valliant's magnum opus. Having found that almost impossible, I have stayed here at RoR where the fighting is mostly within the bounds of the Geneva Convention or the Friars Club Roast.

If this thread is simply a general sigh, then I sigh with you. Having recently started my own blog (finally!) http://radicalsforhappiness.blogspot.com/ I intend to focus, so far as I can, on what the name of Radicals for Happiness implies.

I often think of Graves' Emperor Claudius after his betrayal by Messalina. Claudius decided to step back and play King Log, letting "all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out." Grave's fictional Claudius appoints not the best, but the worst - Nero - as his heir. I wonder did Rand do the same thing?

I try to pride myself on the Christian virtues of forgiveness and loving one's enemies - to a point. I can say that I am friends with all my exes, and have buried the hatchet with all my schoolday foes. Reading PARC I see Rand talk of "Breaking" sometimes in terms that remind me of a surgeon considering amputation. But the ugly truth is that such a need to ostracize and even airbrush that lingers to this day reminds me more of schoolgirl cliques, Soviet show trials, the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre and the Night of the Long Knives than the behavior of happy adults secure in their selves.

Post 10

Tuesday, May 27 - 3:30am

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I wonder did Rand do the same thing?

In a word - yes......

Post 11

Tuesday, May 27 - 9:30am

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1. Minor caveat:

I said: "I have a copy of PAR on my shelf...I would -not- read a book...on why an American President...or Winston Churchill or Isaac Newton had certain flaws of vision or character."

The above was not intended to suggest that PAR, Judgment Day, PARC, and other memoirs, bios, and reminiscences are exclusively negative or 'about' personalities as opposed to ideas in the way that I excoriate. Or that memoirs and bios are of no value. Even though too much of the web commentary about these books has been petty. I would have to have considered them in considerable detail to be absolutely sure to what extent that might or might not be true.

........

2. For the record:

Several people on other websites (OL, SP) within the last twenty-four hours have oversimplified or mischaracterized my current posts on this issue: One of them has equated my condemnation of focusing primarily on personalities, negatives and enemies to being against -all- judgment of people or all moral judgement. One of my points on this thread is that it's -futile- to dignify something on that level with an extended response.

(Besides you don't have to defend yourself in that way. Reasonable people already get the misstatement at a glance.)

Post 12

Tuesday, May 27 - 5:25pm

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How can current audiences possibly critically digest the historical reminisences being presented?

Especially when there were others there besides the vocal ones, still living, but who do not care to get involved in the broil because so much context is not being given, and too much 'true believer' mentality still abounds.... one has one's own live to live and enjoy, and it is enough to say these lack context, and for the nonce let it go....

Post 13

Wednesday, May 28 - 12:13pm

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Due to their inherently social nature, it is natural and normal that people take an interest in each other.  This makes it difficult to have an strong interest in someone's ideas or their accomplishments and not also have an interest in them personally.  If direct contact with such person is not possible, then this interest can be satisfied only with second hand knowledge.  For this knowledge to have any validity, it must be generally known to a large number of people so its truth can not be denied, and can be only of a purely factual nature so the prejudices, both positive and negative, of others can not distort it. This greatly diminishes the amount of information available and in turn severely limits a complete and thus accurate conceptualization of them.  For this reason, it may be thought that it is not worthwhile to spend a large amount of time trying to learn things about them, but instead to concentrate on deriving benefit from the knowledge they found.
It is true that there are many "personality conflicts", as they might be roughly termed, within the Objectivist movement. Due to the destructive effects that most of them have had, it might be thought best not to allow one's self to be caught up in them, and instead sweep them aside to concentrate on the advance of the cause since this supercedes all other things in importance.
However, there is a consideration present in both of these matters which can not be swept aside: moral judgment.  As a human being, one must know the good from the evil, and this means as fully and as completely as is possible, and to form a judgement that accurately represents this knowledge.  This principle applies to all situations, at all times and all places. It applies to all people, both living and dead, and this must be true since all people are moral agents, purveying either good or evil or combinations thereof and effect the world accordingly.
Now it is easy to see why this must apply to a living person, since a living person is yet propagating his influence. More difficult is to see why it must apply to a dead person, since in this case he is not. The reason why this is still of importance is that this judgement still represents the facts of reality and exists in the minds of those who are still living and it thus still is of relevance to them. If this does make clear the point, then a simple illustration will. Suppose someone were to say "Adolf Hitler was a morally good man." If this notion were to be propagated, and attained a significant measure of acceptance enormous moral corruption would result. Thus, no one may be exempted from moral judgement, even if he is dead.
The personality conflicts which exist within the Objectivist movement can be ignored, if and only if, they result from honest differences of opinion, but never if they result from breaches of morality. Which of these is the case can be determined only by a close examination of the facts of the matter. But here again, the matter can not be ignored, since if someone is engaging in a breach of morality and it is not correctly identified and corrected, it will be left to propagate unhindered.  Thus, no personal conflict can be exempted from the test of moral relevancy and not judged accordingly.
Now just how many people and personality conflicts must be considered for moral judgment is a question, since there are clearly many more than are humanly possible to judge. The answer to this is all that are relevant to your own life.
Now it is clear from your Post #1 Mr. Coates that your willingness to exclude people from moral judgment goes far beyond the point of those which are irrelevant to your life, and thus you are failing to rise to a proper level of moral judgmentalness. If you want to live in a moral world, then you had better get the knowing this and start acting it, too.

(Edited by Robert E. Milenberg on 5/28, 12:16pm)

Movement Issues - Preoccupation with Personalities, Negatives, Enemies