Is is altruistic to endure disrespect, even from those you admire most? What is the proper response?

[caroljane]

Wonderful explication of Kelly's Roadhouse.

As one of the socialists referenced, thanks bro, but other foot shoe. You put up with me. I was not born a great person but now have had greatness thrust upon me. You are a great person too, Michael Stuart Kelly.

[Serapis Bey]

Kacy --

Something else that occurred to me: Your portrayal of what went down with Rand and her fans focuses solely on the fan and the rebuke he or she recieved from Rand. But you drop the context of Rand's motivations. In the case of Machan, she was put off by Machan's expectation of cooperation without renumeration. Machan might have given some thought to the fact that Rand was not an altruist and didn't simply devote her time and energy free of charge.

Then there was the questionner who insulted her by not realizing Rand was involved in the screenplay for The Fountainhead, which he characterized as "horrible". The same goes for the sundry students who asked, what were to Rand, stupid or insulting questions, particularly from someone who claimed to be a student of Objectivism.

Now, we could spend the day splitting hairs over whether Rand's assessment of her interlocuters was reasonable or not, but the fact is, she was (from her perspective) practicing the principle of guarding her self-regard -- her personal boundaries -- a principle which your posts seem to advocate for. How do you reconcile this?

[KacyRay]

This issue seems to resemble a little the discussion on coercion on another thread. If you are coerced into an activity, do you hate the activity as well as the coercers? If you are disrespected by a person representing an activity, do you hate or disrespect the activity, or just the person?

I'd never confuse a value-judgment of a person with a value-judgment of their achievments. In fact, there are plenty of examples of people whose achievements I very much admire while recognizing that I'd likely have told them go go eff themselves if I had ever had ever spent any time around them.

Rand is a tame example.A more extreme examples might be Jaco Pastorius. And the ultimate example is Bobby Fischer, may he rot in hell.

If I had incurred (what I considered) undue disrespect from Rand, I very well may have cut off all material and social support to the Objectivist movement. But that doesn't mean I would abandon all principles I had learned from it. I wouldn't sabatoge my own happiness to spite anyone. I would simply go about my business (much the way I do these days).

[Brant Gaede]

I'll be damned. I didn't know I could leave!

--Brant

this will take time to soak in

[KacyRay]

Kacy --

Something else that occurred to me: Your portrayal of what went down with Rand and her fans focuses solely on the fan and the rebuke he or she recieved from Rand. But you drop the context of Rand's motivations. In the case of Machan, she was put off by Machan's expectation of cooperation without renumeration. Machan might have given some thought to the fact that Rand was not an altruist and didn't simply devote her time and energy free of charge.

Then there was the questionner who insulted her by not realizing Rand was involved in the screenplay for The Fountainhead, which he characterized as "horrible". The same goes for the sundry students who asked, what were to Rand, stupid or insulting questions, particularly from someone who claimed to be a student of Objectivism.

Now, we could spend the day splitting hairs over whether Rand's assessment of her interlocuters was reasonable or not, but the fact is, she was (from her perspective) practicing the principle of guarding her self-regard -- her personal boundaries -- a principle which your posts seem to advocate for. How do you reconcile this?

In Manchan’s case (and really, in his defense), he appears to have miscalculated how much she would value his effort to spread her ideas. She clearly thought he was requesting her professional services free of charge, whereas he felt the promulgation of her ideas was worth her efforts. Taking his story at face value, he apparently communicated this to her, and IMHO it was quite freaking rude of her to ignore him outright. Her response paraphrased) was “Look, I’ve already declined this rude proposition, so for you to demand an explanation is not only rude but offensive”.

But in reality, she hadn’t declined it, she had ignored it. And in an age of snail-mail, there’s no way to determine whether the lack of response is due to being deliberately ignored or to mail being lost along the way. Both are reasonable possibilities.

(Rand’s assumption that Machan’s intent was anything other than naïve and well-intentioned [particularly in light of the kind things she had already said to-about him] stands in stark contrast to her claims of a benevolent worldview, but I digress. )

Now as far as your question of reconciliation – Guarding your self-regard and assaulting that of others are two different things. The former does not always require the latter. A judicious (and dare I say ‘rational) individual realizes this, and can distinguish between situations where it does and situations where it doesn’t.

This is one case in which the Orthodox Objectivist approach closely resembles that of fanatical organizations such as the Westboro Baptist Church – no one can just be wrong, they can only be wrong and evil. There are no honest mistakes. There is only the willingness to see (that someone is 100% correct) or complete evasion.

(Note: I’m taking it for granted that all of the accounts I’ve heard regarding these encounters with Rand are, for the most part, accurate and honest. I always leave room for the possibility that there are embellishments. In those cases where any fabrications or embellishments exist, obviously that would change my synopsis.)

Therefore it is not the guarding of ones self-regard that I could criticize in her case – it is the apparent intellectual laziness one would be demonstrating when one lumps all comers into one of two categories - honest interlocutor or subversive, offense, evasive, irrational scoundrel.

In short – one does not always need to attack in order to defend. There’s your reconciliation. And to go on the offense when one isn’t even being attacked to begin with is not only itself offensive, but indicative of a damaged psychology.

But even that isn’t my point – it’s only an answer to your question. My point is that, when confronted with such a person – even when such a person has a tremendous amount of social or intellectual value – to willing continue to subject yourself to that behavior demonstrates a disgraceful lack of self-respect. And my question in the OP was intended to solicit resonses on what the proper response should be when confronted with such an individual.

[Brant Gaede]

The screenplay for "The Fountainhead," far from "horrible," was brilliant in that it had to compress a quite long, highly structured novel into 90 minutes of screentime. Rand told Branden(N) she would have liked to have expanded the middle for the sake of character development, but couldn't for that reason. Branden once suggested that just slowing down the pace of the movie would have markedly improved it, but I have my doubts. Regardless, why not redo the screenplay if you have another 30 minutes of projection time?

A better example of her screenplay writing ability is what she did with "Love Letters." Consequently, the movie was better than what I've read was a ho-hum novel. The best better than the novels movies I can think of are the first two Godfathers and "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre."

--Brant

[Serapis Bey]

Kacy:

I started out replying to your latest post but soon realized the convo was starting to go off the rails, so I took the liberty of going back to your earlier posts to focus on your main point.

It seems to me part of the confusion lies in your repeated insistence (whether talking about Rand in particular or self-respect in general) that the hypothetical individual is putting up with crap for the sake of APPROVAL. This is how you have repeatedly framed the discussion. Since this is an objectivism forum, it should come as no surprise that your condemnation of doing _ANYTHING_ for the sake of "approval" would be met by the commentariat with the same response as if you had said "water is wet." The problem is that you invoked Rand and her circle as examples. As I noted in a previous post, the individuals in question were not seeking Rand's approval -- they were seeking their *own values*, and looked to Rand for assistance. Does this fact completely alter the thrust of your contention? It seems to me it does, but other comments of yours seem to indicate otherwise:

"Respect is such a valuable thing... that to relinquish it for the off-chance that someone may sprinkle you bits of social pittance, or not to respond in kind when such social injuries are incurred, seems like a psychological self-martyrdom worse than any I can imagine."

"And what I'm asserting is that there is no one alive who *gaining favor with* is objectively a higher value than *ones own self respect*. This is my contention."

I think this is where the confusion lies. It's obvious you place a high value on self-respect. Yet at the same time you give the impression that the actions of others have near complete control over your self-respect. As Kyle and I have stated, self-respect is not something that can be given or taken away by anyone else. It's an estimation of your own worth based on your actions, not the actions of others. You give the impression that self-respect is this delicate, fragile thing which can be shattered in an instant by an offhand remark or throwaway comment. That doesn't strike me as a true representation of authentic self-respect.

Since we are talking about Rand's colleagues and the slings and arrows they put up with, let me ask you: If these individuals were pursuing the goal of happiness through adherence to Objectivism, or were wanting to spread the influence of Objectivism to the culture at large, do you really think Rand's abrasive behavior diminished their self-respect? Enough to where they ought to abandon their goals? Seems to me that would be sacrificing a higher value for the sake of pettiness. Remember, they weren't seeking Rand's approval.

What if my goal is to become a great painter, and I apprentice myself to an established artist in order to learn the trade? Let's assume the artist is a genius, but who is bipolar and an alcoholic. His behavior is erratic and he often has emotional outbursts which he takes out on me, in between genuinely valuable moments of tutelage. After several years I move on and become a successful painter. I have achieved my life's goal. Are you proposing that I have sacrificed my self-respect? I look at it as merely the cost of doing business. Hell, now that I think about it, what would you say about Howard Roark and his association with the alcoholic Henry Cameron? Should Roark have proudly walked away, even though Cameron had much to teach?

The problem with placing too much emphasis on a (misguided) self-respect is that it can lead to an inflated self-regard and a sense of entitlement. I'm thinking here of those kids in the ghetto with no money who would rather deal drugs than deal with the shame of getting an honest job at McDonald's in order to start saving money. When asked why they don't do so, the answer invariably boils down to "the job is beneath me", "I don't want to be someone's bitch", "I don't want someone telling me what to do." Fair enough. But that thug attitude severly constrains one's opportunities.

What it boils down to, I think, is that self-respect is ultimately a RESULT, an EFFECT, of achieving one's goals. You accomplish your goals, you feel proud, you feel worthy. I do not see self-respect as an end in itself. Do you? If self-respect was more important than pride or happiness, I could simply go to work, pay my taxes and sit in my house luxuriating over how respectable I am for not having put up with any crap and "doing my own thing." Not much different than navel-gazing if you ask me.

"but I am also proposing that self-respect is a value objectively greater than any value gained by the approval of anyone else...."

Could you expand on this? Perhaps establish this proposition logically?

"...And I'm using Rand as an example of someone who exemplified that."

Rand was more likely than not autistic. I would not hold her up as an example of healthy interpersonal dynamics in any way.

"Objectivists believe (and I agree) that physical force in justified in retalion to and in order to protect onesself from physical force (or injury). I hold that the same applies to the forceful breach of what ought to be among the most cherished values - one's self respect."

This proposition has some superficial plausibility, but is ultimately dangerous, IMO. One could say that Progressives/Leftists have taken the non-initiation of force principle and run with it to its logical conclusions: if force or harm against another is wrong, then the same should be said of *emotional* "force" or harm. The flaw though is that physical force prevents a person from excercising his freedom. Emotional "assault" does not. The problem as I see it is that there is no objective standard to determine what *legitimate* "emotional assault" consists of. You can't go by how a person feels, because for one, feelings are subjective, but more importantly, people vary in their tolerance for frustration. This dynamic plays out in the Politically Correct madness of this country right now, where language is policed ruthlessly, institutions bend over backwards and walk on eggshells to avoid hurting anyone's feelings (lawsuits), and ever more victim groups rally around the cry of "insensitivity" to the point where the country resembles a maternity ward of mewling babies. The racket is so effective that people are now using their vulnerability as a *weapon* to control the behavior of others. The oppressed become the oppressors, in other words. Shades of Nietzsche.

"For example, when Machan was hung up on by Rand, would he have been justified in proclaiming "I'll never lift another finger to further the Objectivist cause, I'll never advocate for Rand again, I'll never spend a dime on her materials, and I'll never say another good thing about Objectivism in spite of the fact that he may recognize the value of Objectivism and still intend to live his life by those principles for his own sake?)"

He would be justified because ultimately the only authority determining what is and is not tolerable is the person himself. But I think such behavior would be viewed as "butthurtness", as the kids these days say:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=butt%20hurt

p.s. what's your beef with Jaco?

[syrakusos]

A few years ago, I accepted the fact that most of my posts never draw comment. I write for the future.

[anthony]

A few years ago, I accepted the fact that most of my posts never draw comment. I write for the future.

I know MEM, I know. For the future isn't bad.

I write for my own edification as in a private journal that maybe someone will pick up one day.

But see? you drew comment.

[Brant Gaede]

 

A few years ago, I accepted the fact that most of my posts never draw comment. I write for the future.

Ah, Back to the Future?

--Brant

you, Rand and Hugo: "I would break my pens and throw them away"