BB on Atlantis

[Peter]

I was looking at my saved letters to the old Atlantis and found the following. Wow, was BB ever ticked off! Peter

BBfromM Wed 8/23/2000, 2:48 AM to Atlantis. Here we go again! Ellen Moore wrote, The simple fact is that I do not believe that Barbara wanted to 'humanize' Ayn Rand. I do not believe that love and admiration was, or is, her purpose. I had a meaningful but brief association with Alan and Joan Blumenthal, with Barbara's sister-in-law, with MaryAnn Sures, with Leonard Peikoff, with Edith Packer and George Reisman, as well as with many other friends of Rand over the years. None of them treat Ayn Rand's personal characteristics with the maliciousness of the Brandens. There are still many left who can "tell the tale," and they knew the Brandens too. I know how to judge the difference between objectivity and subjectivity when the facts are retold by those from all sides of a conflict. Most of the people on Atlantis naively believe only the Brandens, so I judge them as being willing dupes of malicious intent."

How nice of Moore to judge most of the Atlantis members as being "willing dupes." Is it just possible that such "dupes" recognize the truth when they see it, and are no one's "willing dupes?" No, love and admiration for Ayn Rand, although I feel them, were not my purpose in writing PASSION. My purpose was to tell the truth. Ellen's "meaningful but brief association" with the people she names need to be more meaningful and less brief. She will find that, particularly but not only in the case of the Blumenthals, their understanding of Ayn Rand is perfectly consistent with mine and in fact their judgments are more harsh than mine. Why don't you find out, Ellen Moore? That's a rhetorical question; I know perfectly well why you don't find out.

Moore also wrote, "Remember that Rand withdrew from him {Nathaniel Branden} personally when he wrote her a repugnant letter in July '68. . . "

Do you care to say what were the contents of that "repugnant letter," Ellen? Apparently not.

The letter was a tortured effort to explain, as you well know, that the age-difference of twenty-five years, now that Ayn Rand was in her 60's and he still in his 30's, had become an insuperable barrier to a sexual relationship, despite his love and admiration for her. She had wondered if that were the reason for his emotional withdrawal, and he confirmed it. Surely most women would have accepted and understood the inevitable change in their relationship. Ayn Rand did not. Ellen Moore states that Ayn Rand "repudiated" me when she learned of my past lies and deceptions. Not so. She did not repudiate me when she learned that I had been covering for Nathaniel; she accepted that and made excuses for me that I would not have made for myself. It was only when I refused to attend a kangaroo court of her choosing that she repudiated me. It's a good idea to have your facts straight, Ellen, before you hurl accusations. But then, you might not be able to hurl them, and what would be the purpose of your life if that were taken away?

Ellen wrote, "And even if Rand had been hurt by the truth that he loved Patrecia, that fact could have been resolved between them by some private agreement."

You must be joking! It was precisely when Ayn Rand learned of Nathaniel's love for Patrecia that she turned on him and informed him that if he had an ounce of morality left he would be impotent for the next twenty years!

Ellen wrote, "I have never understood, and I disagree with those who condemn the 'Affair.' I understand their agreement about having an affair, and I do not think that the affair destroyed their relationships."

Oh, Ellen, there go the facts again! Of course the affair destroyed our relationships. How do you think Frank O'Connor felt, as only one example, when Nathaniel twice-weekly walked into the apartment Frank shared with his wife and he had to go out in order to allow them to experience love and sex? Despite Nathaniel's repeated suggestions, his pleas, Ayn Rand had refused to allow him to take an apartment--in the same building if she wished, since she was terrified of the affair being known--where they could have time together without putting Frank O'Connor through the hell Ayn Rand insisted on putting him through. Who, I wonder, has the greater allegiance to Ayn Rand and Objectivism--you, who insist on ignoring the facts and/or twist them out of all recognition, or I, who am concerned only with the facts? Although this letter is addressed to Ellen Moore, I know better than to think she is open to reason. It is intended, rather, for "the willing dupes" of Atlantis whom I respect and many of whom I admire, and who wish to separate facts from Moore's fantasies.

Barbara

[Brant Gaede]

Ellen Moore never made the transition from the old Atlantis to the new one on Yahoo (2003).

She had no idea how dumb she was.

--Brant

no longer with us

[Peter]

She wasn't dumb, just doctrinaire, which was a trait she had enhanced by teaching Objectivism. Do they still have study groups and Objectivist clubs?

[Brant Gaede]

Nope. She wasn't smart enough to be doctrinaire, not in respect to Objectivism and Objectivists late 1960s.

--Brant

[Peter]

Ellen Moore wrote and quoted: *matching* refers to the concept "similarity, as differences yet of the same kind".  We perceive the first one, identify it, and that identification is integrated and stored in the subconscious. Second time, we perceive another uniquely different object and/or characteristic. Then we are still perceiving all the differences and we can identify these as similar, different yet alike in kind, as the first time perception, and that is integrated and stored. Consciousness is instantaneously aware and able to identify all differences stored in the subconscious - the differences "matching" is in the similarity in range and kind. In that sense, identification is similarity matched and is given in perception.

As Rand wrote in ITOE, p. 150-2, "No, you do something else volitionally . . . . Do you know what you will?  You will to observe. You use your senses, you look around, and your will is to grasp, to understand. And you observe similarities.  Now, you don't know yet that this is the process of abstraction . . . But you are engaged in it once you begin to observe similarities."  On the next page, she said, "As he discovers certain things, he begins to direct his sensory apparatus, and that is volitional."

Rand defined "integration" as, "a blending of the units [which she defined in ITOE] into a *single*, new *mental* entity which is used thereafter as a single unit of thought (but which can be broken down into its components units whenever required."

end quote

Brant, those thoughts are typical of Ellen.

Peter   

[Peter]

Some old, saved letters. I may have posted them before. Peter

From Barbara Branden. 3/10/01 atlantis@wetheliving.com Re: ATL: RE Godlike‏: My own difficulty with John Galt is not that one COULD NOT be like him, in essence -- that is, a person of great accomplishment who embodies the Objectivist virtues, the apotheosis of the human potential -- but that in certain respects one SHOULD NOT be like him. Galt, like Howard Roark and like Rearden, (Francisco is the exception to this) is a man who deals with people, even people whom he loves, in an almost totally cerebral way; one knows by other means that he is a man of great emotional passion, but one sees it only in his sexual encounter with Dagny. One understands deductively the passionate commitment that has driven him all the years of his strike, but one rarely hears it in his words.

I believe that the emotional repression of Ayn Rand's heroic male characters is one of the reasons that so many of her admirers came to see repression almost as a virtue and not to fight it in themselves.

Ayn Rand further buttressed this error in her male characters by having her people make remarks to the effect that they would never allow a woman they love to see them in pain. This was Rand's own philosophy; she told me that when she first had met Frank O'Connor, she did not tell him of all the miserable and mindless jobs she had to work at -- because she never wanted to face him in pain. It seemed she felt that to show her suffering to the man she loved would be the equivalent of demanding his help, even his pity. Why she believed that, I do not know. And perhaps it was all the hidden and repressed pain in her life that caused her, in later years, to talk about little except her suffering. Barbara
 

On the movie, “Atlas Shrugged.” I saw the movie for the second time on Friday. It probably is against the law -- and certainly a sin -- to have as good a time as I had. It was playing in Westwood Village, a college town, and the audience was predominantly young people -- with a mix that was fascinating to me of onetime NBI students. What a strange feeling it was to see so many familiar faces from so very long ago! The house was completely sold out for the 7PM performance that I attended and for the 9:40 performance that followed. It was a joy to see a long line of people waiting to get in for both performances. Clearly, the audience I saw it with loved the movie -- and at the end, the manager came out grinning from ear to ear to announce that it would run for two weeks.

After the performance, I stood outside the theater with some friends and with some of the NBI students, and we simply gloated happily and talked about our favorite scenes. None of us wanted to leave. I don't intend to argue with anyone about the movie or to defend it or to think about what may be its deficiencies. What I care about is that I watched the first run of the John Galt Line, and it was not 2011, it was 1950 and I was sitting in Ayn's living room reading the incredible scene in manuscript with tears running down my face -- and the world was a place of limitless possibilities. And that's what it was again on Friday night. And it remains so. Barbara

Thank you, Steve. You'll be glad to know that Nathaniel -- who was with me Friday night -- reacted to the movie just as I did. It means a great deal to both of us. And almost the first thing I said to my friends when the movie ended was: "How I wish Ayn could have seen it!" Barbara

A response to Peter Reidy.

BBfromM  Thu 5/4/2000, 1:56 AM atlantis

Peter wrote: <<An evil thought would be one which, by virtue of your having experienced it, makes you culpable, as an evil action is one whose doing makes you culpable. An evil idea, by contrast, would be the sort of thing Dwyer is talking about -- one that has bad effects if we believe it and act on it.>>

How in the world can a thought make you culpable? And any idea that is mistaken can have bad effects if we believe and act on it. What is added by calling the idea "evil?"

Peter also wrote: <<there's plenty of evidence that AR and her circle believed, despite pro-forma denials, that people can be good or evil  in virtue of the thoughts and emotions they experience. . . >>

There is indeed plenty of evidence for this. I can't speak for others, but please omit me from those who believed it.

Peter wrote: <<In "Atlas Shrugged," Rand repeatedly goes into her characters' consciousness and judges them for what she finds there.  Dagny is incapable of a fundamental feeling of guilt.  Galt's face is without pain or fear or guilt.  Much of what we know and dislike about James Taggart is his unsavory mental life. >>

I believe that Ayn Rand meant--and I've said that she was inconsistent in this area--that Dagny was unable to experience guilt because she had lived a life in which she did not take actions that would inspire guilt. And that Galt's face was without pain, fear, or guilt for the same reasons.

Peter notes that we do not find in Ayn Rand's other novels the writer going into her character's minds or feelings to show that they are good or evil. Her judgments, before ATLAS, were based predominantly on their actions. I believe that what happened in the writing of ATLAS, and that resulted in an inconsistency about moral judgments, was that her view of people was souring, and so she began to turn, in fiction and in her life, in the direction of denouncing people for the contents of their minds.

I wrote in an earlier post that when I was thirteen, someone I respected told me that under communism no one would be hungry. That sounded great to me, and I decided I must be a communist. Did that idea make me evil? Was it an evil
thought? Barbara

[Peter]

Some background for my question. Barbara Branden wrote around 2001: The question has often been raised on Atlantis: What is wrong with Objectivism that it attracts so many true believers -- people with a psychological need to accept every word Ayn Rand said on any issue as gospel, and who wield Objectivism like a club over the heads of those who do not. end quote

George H. Smith responded: Objectivism transcends True Believers. As with Science, Objectivism is demonstrably and repeatedly true. The only faith we require is good faith. (And this is precisely why we should retain the traditional view that knowledge is justified *and* true belief. Justification is relative, whereas truth is absolute. Ghs)

And then I had my say. Without faith a philosophy needs truth at its core, and to discover truth we need inquiring and open minds, which is why we argue so much. Gradually a consensus is reached in areas of contention, because one answer is usually best, with the current exception of human psychology. Psychology is the most complex issue Objectivism addresses, yet even human psychology should eventually yield to Contextual Certainty. (Note the advances in “Profiling” criminals and targeted advertising.) The study of Consciousness is in its infancy but it is growing :O) 

My 2018 question is: Has Objectivism or small o objectivism continued to be contextually true and scientific? Peter

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

4 hours ago, Peter said:

My 2018 question is: Has Objectivism or small o objectivism continued to be contextually true and scientific?

Peter,

That depends on whether you seek knowledge and an instruction manual for how your mind works, so to speak, both alone and in conjunction with others, or a religious-like code of rules to live by and not question--not just for you but for everybody.

I think an answer in the collective would be a mistake. This is an individual issue based on what each person, as an individual, seeks.

Rand put enough core elements in her writing to meet both objectives well.

btw - A discussion of Rand's core elements that encourage the religious view (the true believer part of people) bears teasing out one day. I think Barbara's question still remains unanswered in fundamentals. But that's partially because the focus of the question is too narrow.

(I don't believe I am disagreeing with Barbara!  Barbara, Barbara... Wherever you are, you gotta give me a pass on this one.  )

It's like seeing there are bullies and live-and-let live people everywhere, but only asking why there are so many bullies on the left as if trying to attribute the urge to bully to leftwing ideology. A correct approach to find the answer is to zoom out from the ideology and first ask why there are so many bullies in the world period. I mean you find bullies in all ideologies, religions, and groups based on all sorts of criteria. What's the human nature involved? And do we all have the urge to bully at times? (The answer is that we do, some more than others.) Then, to continue, the correct approach is to zoom back in and look at where the leftwing ideology creates opportunities for the bullying side of human nature to flourish. 

Ditto for true believing and Objectivism.

Michael

[Peter]

Rand and drinking and Rand on depression. Thanks BB.

From: BBfromM To: atlantis Subject: ATL: Ayn Rand and drinking Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 20:33:51 EDT Ayn Rand did not drink, simply because she disliked the taste of liquor, but she had no objection to other people drinking -- assuming they did not reach the stage of drunkenness. She very much liked the concept of some drinking and much gaiety and good will at parties -- it was what she had thought would be true of parties in America. She had gathered this while still in Russia, from the American movies she saw. But was deeply disappointed to discover that parties generally held little gaiety and that people too often drank in order to become soddenly drunk and to make that an excuse for the sort of out-of-control behavior that they assumed would not be judged since they were "drunk."

She was convinced that no one HAD to be out-of-control, no matter how much they had to drink, that it was a "luxury" they allowed themselves as an escape from rationality.  To demonstrate this, she once downed a large glass of straight vodka -- sufficient to make almost anyone hopelessly drunk and, since she did not drink, sufficient presumably to make her helplessly drunk.  She felt the effects of the vodka strongly, she felt physically wobbly and mentally fuzzy -- but by an act of will she was able to remain herself and to continue speaking with the clarity and precision that was her trademark. There's a moral to the story. Barbara

BarbaraBranden.com In answer to my question, Jeff R wrote: <Basically what Szasz says about depression is what he says about all "mental illness" -- that there is, strictly speaking, no such thing; that what we are really talking about here is problems in living and the different ways different people deal with them. Calling "depression" a "mental illness" or a "medical condition" is to “medicalize" unjustifiably an emotional reaction to the problems in one's life and one's estimate of one's ability to deal with them. In Heresies (1976), he defines "depression" as "self-accusation and self-pity." >>

If Szasz is correct, and since you agree with him, how would you explain the fact that antidepressant medication has saved the lives of many people who were so depressed that they were considering suicide? And that in less extreme cases, the medication alone -- without therapy and without intensive self-analysis -- has lifted the depression and restored people to their normal state. One could say that such people recovered because they believed they would recover, but there is no real evidence of this. Depressed people who thought that nothing could alleviate their misery, found that the medication, to their surprise, did just that.

You quote Szasz, as follows: <<Consider the millionaire who finds himself financially ruined because of business reverses.  How shall we explain his "depression" (if we so want to label his feeling of dejection)?  By regarding it as the result of the events mentioned, and perhaps of others in his childhood?  Or as the expression of his view of himself and of his powers in the world, present and future?  To choose the former is to redefine ethical conduct as psychiatric malady.>>

But very often prolonged depression occurs in the absence of any unusual negative events in one's life, and in the absence of any discernible cause. Life was pretty much going along as usual -- until depression hit. There may very well have been a number of difficulties in one's life before the depression hit, but not ones the equivalent of which had not occurred before without causing significant depression.

A great many people commonly experience self-pity, even wallow in it – but that does not necessarily result in severe depression. And people who do rarely experience significant self-pity have experienced serious depression. I am not suggesting that prolonged and deep depression is a psychological malady. Quite the opposite. I wonder -- because the above issues I raised seem to point to it -- if it is not almost totally the result of an aberrant brain chemistry. Depression, not necessarily severe, almost always is a problem that begins in youth and continues on and off throughout ones life if one does not take antidepressant medication.

I have read, although I don't know if it's true -- and this might contradict the idea that ONLY brain chemistry is involved -- that depression is quite common among writers. For instance, William Styron, who was almost physically, emotionally, and intellectually paralyzed by it. And many other great writers, throughout the centuries, have also experienced severe and prolonged depression. For instance, Ayn Rand. Her disappointment in the reception to ATLAS SHRUGGED and her break with and disappointment with Nathaniel (and with me, to a lesser degree) could be taken as the causes; but she had experienced much worse in her life -- such as the constant fear of imminent arrest and death in Russia, years of semi-starvation, and the loss of Leo, the young man who was her first and passionate love – without sinking into depression. She was unhappy over these events, terribly unhappy, but that is not the same thing as depression.

Another possibility is that the chemistry of the brain -- or, at least, of some brains -- can handle a great deal of pain and unhappiness, but then it breaks down at some point when even a more minor unhappiness, that one would otherwise take in one's stride, has a cumulative effect that the physical brain cannot handle. As is obvious, I am thinking on paper as I write. But Jeff -- and George – I am very interested in your reactions. Barbara

From: BBfromM To: atlantis Subject: Re: ATL: Question for BB, NB or others... Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 11:34:45 EST Tom Devine asked: <<In what ways did Ayn Rand's fiction reflect her own suffering?  Are Roark and Galt's painful isolation from their loved ones a reflection of Rand's own melancholy?  Is there particular significance to be found in the fact that her work glorified happiness to such an extreme while she experienced so little happiness in her own life? Is there special meaning to her romanticizing of smoking in her fiction in regards to her own bad habit?>>

These are very interesting questions, to which I'm happy to respond. 1. <<In what ways did Ayn Rand's fiction reflect her own suffering?>>

I think that, especially in ATLAS SHRUGGED, it did reflect her own growing bitterness and near despair with the state of the culture. Fiction is autobiography, whether the writer intends it or not. And as she grew more bitter, so did her work. Yet, in all of her fiction, including ATLAS, one sees her unconquerable worship of joy that I believe was more basic to her than any suffering or bitterness. The external world created the suffering; Ayn Rand created the love of joy.

2. <<Are Roark and Galt's painful isolation from their loved ones a reflection of Rand's own melancholy?>>

I don't think so. They are, instead, a reflection of her love of drama and conflict in fiction. If there is also an autobiographical element, I believe it was a reflection of her own isolation in different ways from the men she loved in her lifetime.

3.  <<Is there particular significance to be found in the fact that her work glorified happiness to such an extreme while she experienced so little happiness in her own life? >>

No, I don't believe the two are retial part of her view of life, both philosophically and personally. Let me add that I would not say she experienced <<so little happiness in her own life.>> But her happiness came mostly from her work, much less so from her personal relationships. Although her early years with Frank O'Connor and her early months with Nathaniel Branden brought her much joy. As did her friendship with Nathaniel and with me, and later with the collective.

4. <<Is there special meaning to her romanticizing of smoking in her fiction in regards to her own bad habit?>>

Not directly. She truly saw smoking as <<fire tamed at man's fingertips>> which is probably why she began smoking when she did. And she did not see her habit as a bad one; in the years in which she glorified smoking, much less was known about it than is known today, and it was not unreasonable for her to say that there was no scientific proof that smoking was dangerous to one's health. Barbara

[gio]

Sorry for the naive question, but what was “Atlantis” in this context? An old website that no longer exists?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Gio,

In the early days of the Internet, there were no forums like OL or social media companies. That is, what few discussion places existed online about Objectivism were in the form of group lists or Usanet lists, etc.

I was going to research and write this up just to get the details correct, however ChatGPT did me a solid.

So let ChatGPT answer your question:

CHATGPT TEXT

Atlantis was an online discussion list hosted on Yahoo Groups that focused on the philosophy of Objectivism, which is the philosophical system developed by Ayn Rand. The list was active primarily in the late 1990s and early 2000s and served as a platform for people interested in Objectivism to discuss and debate various aspects of the philosophy.

Members of the Atlantis list would discuss topics such as ethics, politics, aesthetics, and epistemology, all from the perspective of Objectivism. The discussions often included deep philosophical analysis and sometimes contentious debates, reflecting the strong opinions that are typical among Objectivists.

Atlantis attracted a wide range of participants, from those who were well-versed in Ayn Rand's works to newcomers seeking to learn more about her philosophy. It was one of several online forums where Objectivists and those interested in the philosophy could engage with each other in the pre-social media era. However, like many Yahoo Groups, it eventually declined in activity as other platforms and forms of online communication became more popular.

END CHATGPT TEXT

 

Atlantis got a large number of O-Land luminaries as members at the time.

A list that came before was called We The Living. And the one after was Atlantis 2.

Atlantis fell apart because Jimmy Wales, one of the founders of Wikipedia, became moderator and started haranguing and finger-wagging at people who engaged in flame wars or other heated discussions on Atlantis. I think he tried to enforce civility rules and things like that. Lots of the members got pissed, left, and founded Atlantis 2.

Wales went off into the sunset, then did Wikipedia. Now he's one of the woke authoritarians fucking up the world and trying to make a New World Order.  

 

Peter copy/pasted the individual threads of Atlantis and Atlantis 2 when he perceived they was tanking.

And, he copy/pastes parts here on OL that he finds relevant. In this way, he allows voices from the past to speak here on OL about topics that we are discussing.

He's not technical, so his form of presenting this material appears a bit disorganized. But I find it charming. It reflects well the Wild West feel of the early days of the Internet.

And Peter is such a gentleman, he asked me for permission to do this when he started.

I told him the more the merrier. As he will. And he has done so ever since.

Here on OL, this is one way we keep O-Land voices from the past alive.

Michael

[tmj]

Man I'm getting less young,lol.

I remember logging onto the server with the least lag and then joining live chat rooms on the 'alts', I think I remember a Jeopardy night Tuesdays perhaps? , it was a hoot !

[Peter]

This is just a sample of a thread on Atlantis. Peter

From: "Gayle Dean" To: "Atlantis" Subject: ATL: Emergencies Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 15:11:25 -0500 George Smith wrote:  >I contend that the man is acting morally, but that he is also violating the rights of another person, or which he should make restitution. And this is *clearly* what Rand was arguing as well.

What is clear is this is a contradiction.  Bill carefully, walked through his argument step-by-step, logically.  I don't think his argument can simply be dismissed by contradictory assertions. Gayle

From: "George H. Smith" Reply-To: "George H. Smith" To: "Atlantis" Subject: ATL: Re: Emergencies Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 14:46:32 -0600 I wrote: "I contend that the man is acting morally, but that he is also violating the rights of another person, for which he should make restitution. And this is *clearly* what Rand was arguing as well."

And Gayle Dean replied: "What is clear is this is a contradiction.  Bill carefully, walked through his argument step-by-step, logically.  I don't think his argument can simply be dismissed by contradictory assertions."

(1) Gayle, like Bill, apparently believes that Rand was really an altruist who believed that my needs can negate your rights. I am still waiting for one passage from Rand where she argues that my needs, however legitimate, can nullify your rights. I am still waiting for textual evidence that Rand was really a closet altruist.

(2) Does Gayle think that Rand denied the possibility of legitimate moral conflicts? Has she ever read Rand's novels? They are full of them.

(3) It is interesting to note that determinists, such as Bill and Gayle, also apply their mechanistic, push-pull notions of human motivation to the field of ethics -- as if a moral code were like a cookie cutter that need only be stamped on human dough to come out with a uniform product.

But Rand never adopted this "Ten Commandments" approach to ethics. She never denied or underestimated the role of personal judgment in moral decision-making. Moral principles are a guide to judgment, not a substitute for them. Life isn't always simple, and decisions are not always easy. There is far more involved in moral judgment than consulting a rule book.

(4) Since rights, according to Rand, exist as moral barriers against the aggressive actions of others, it makes no sense to say that it is impossible to violate these barriers if only your needs are sufficiently desperate -- for it is against those who are most desperate that we most need the protection of rights. Bill may have "walked through his argument step-by-step," but he also danced over three of Rand's key essays on the subject of rights and self-interest, dismissing them as irrelevant. Does anyone seriously believe that Rand would have similarly dismissed her foundational essays as irrelevant to the subject at hand? Give me a break. Ghs

From: "Will Wilkinson" To: "George H. Smith" atlantis@wetheliving.com> Subject: ATL: Re: Re: Emergencies Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 16:29:23 -0500

----- Original Message -----

From: "George H. Smith" To: "Atlantis" Sent: Monday, January 22, 2001 3:46 PM

Subject: ATL: Re: Emergencies

 > I wrote: "I contend that the man is acting morally, but that he is also violating  the rights of another person, for which he should make restitution. And this is *clearly* what Rand was arguing as well."

 > And Gayle Dean replied:  > "What is clear is this is a contradiction.  Bill carefully, walked  through his argument step-by-step, logically.  I don't think his argument can simply be dismissed by contradictory assertions."

 > (1) Gayle, like Bill, apparently believes that Rand was really an altruist who believed that my needs can negate your rights. I am still waiting for one passage from Rand where she argues that my needs,  however legitimate, can nullify your rights. I am still waiting for textual evidence that Rand was really a closet altruist.

Rand did argue that there is no path from one person's needs to another's obligations. So think of it this way... According to Rand, rights are necessary for liberty, liberty for the exercise of reason, the exercise of reason for life and happiness. Having your rights respected means not being aggressed upon. So, by the transitivity of necessity, we all need to not be agressed upon for life and happiness. Now, if I happen to need to aggress upon you to survive, it remains that you need to not be aggressed upon. We have conflicting needs. Now, since there is no way to get from a need to an obligation, your need not to be agressed upon doesn't morally oblige me not to do so, and my need to agress upon you doesn't morally oblige you to allow me. The altruist position would either say that your need not to be aggressed upon obliges me not to (George's position, it seems, in which the need not to be agressed upon is more special than other needs) or that my need to agress upon you obliges you to let me (nobody's position). In situations like this, one can choose how to phrase it. Either rights disappear, or they don't disappear, but one is under no obligation to heed them. Will

From: Victor Levis  To: "Atlantis" Subject: Re: ATL: Emergencies Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 17:18:12 -0500

At 03:11 PM 1/22/2001 -0500, Gayle Dean wrote:  >George Smith wrote:  >>I contend that the man is acting morally, but that he is also violating the rights of another person, for which he should make restitution. And this is *clearly* what Rand was arguing as well. What is clear is this is a contradiction.  Bill carefully, walked through his argument step-by-step, logically.  I don't think his argument can simply be dismissed by contradictory assertions.

Sorry, Gayle, I don't agree.  I see no reason why violating someone's rights can NEVER be the moral thing to, given the context. The same can be said for something like keeping one's word. Suppose I commit to take my son to the baseball game on Friday after school if he gets an A on his test.   My son, perhaps because of the extra motivation, puts in extra study hours and pulls an A.  However, Friday morning, my mother-in-law has a heart attack, and I choose to accompany my wife to the hospital.  Have I done something immoral with respect to my son?

Not necessarily.  Should I think in terms of compensating him in some way. Yes.  Indeed, were I NOT to think of compensation, I could arguably be acting immorally. Victor Levis

From: Ellen Stuttle To: atlantis Subject: ATL: Moral Complexities: (was Emergencies) Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 11:13:13 -0500

[Sorry if this post appears twice; it duplicates a post which hasn't yet shown up.] I'll interject a personal comment here -- this isn't to be taken as a statement on how Rand would have analyzed things.

If I were the person in the shipwreck scenario, I'd think of my helping myself to food from a convenient deserted house as borrowing on the presumed benevolence of the lender and with every intention of repaying the loan.

If it were a case of forcibly taking the food of some other shipwreck survivor, I wouldn't take the ood.  I wouldn't be emotionally capable of doing this unless the someone else were someone I considered despicable (and there are few persons whom I consider despicable). Ellen S.

From: "Morganis Chamlo" To: atlantis  Subject: Re: Benevolence (was Re: ATL: Existence Exists reply to BB) Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 09:34:04 -0000 >From: "James Koontz" >To: atlantis >Subject: Benevolence (was Re: ATL: Existence Exists reply to BB) Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 15:20:10

>Morganis Chamlo: Benevolence'...a 'virtue'? ... if we are going by Rand's/O-ism's meaning of 'virtue' (ie: "...recognition of the fact...X" where 'X' must "...pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness:...", I find it a bit hard to see where 'benevolence' stands beside 'rationality', 'pride', etc. anymore than 'mentoring'. In O-ist parlance, the virtues are characterized as recognition of  one fact or other within the definitional framework of 'virtue'. Could you define the *virtue* of 'benevolence'...?

For the definitional framework: to quote Rand, "'Value' is that which one acts to gain and keep, virtue' is the action by which one gains and keeps it." Objectivist virtues are behaviors by which one seeks to  ctualize Objectivist values.

>"Benevolence" is a set of actions by which one expresses our values outside of ourselves.

May I suggest that it is not a 'set of actions', per se, so much as, possibly, an Emotionally mental propensity-tendency-orientation towards such?

To behave benevolently towards your fellow man is an >expression of our views of Man (not just you individually) as a heroic being.

>A general disposition towards (non-self-sacrificial) kindness,  civility, and respect is how we recognize the fact that Man's nature is rational, effective, and worthy of celebration. In the absence of any other  evidence, Objectivists (accepting the Benevolent Universe Premise rather than  the >Malevolent Universe Premise) treat others as if they are as equally heroic as ourselves.

>To NOT behave benevolently demonstrates a view of Man as "bad"  unless they choose otherwise- that Man's nature is something evil that must be overcome. Benevolence is belief put into action that Man has value until an individual acts to destroy their own value.

>(I'm not totally up on David Kelley either- I'm sure he's stated  this with much more intellectual rigor than I have in "Unrugged  Individualism." For a taste, you can read the introduction at >http://ios.org/pubs/Excerpt1.asp) James

Not bad. Problem is: I see 'virtue' as something to effortfully strive for. 'Benevolence' seems to be something that AUTOMATICALLY follows from the standard O-ist 'virtues', ergo, is not, per se, a *virtue* itself.

From: "George H. Smith" To: "*Atlantis" Subject: ATL: Re: Emergencies Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 16:45:28 -0600

Will Wilkinson wrote: "Rand did argue that there is no path from one person's needs to another's obligations. So think of it this way... According to Rand, rights are necessary for liberty, liberty for the exercise of reason, the exercise of reason for life and happiness. Having your rights respected means not being aggressed upon. So, by the transitivity of necessity, we all need to not be agressed upon for life and happiness. Now, if I happen to need to agress upon you to survive, it remains that you need to not be aggressed upon. We have conflicting needs. Now, since there is no way to get from a need to an obligation, your need not to be agressed upon doesn't morally oblige me not to do so, and my need to aggress upon you doesn't morally oblige you to allow me. The altruist position would either say that your need not to be agressed upon obliges me not to (George's position, it seems, in which the need not to  be agressed upon is more special than other needs) or that my need to agress upon you obliges you to let me (nobody's position). In situations like this, one can choose how to phrase it. Either rights disappear, or they don't disappear, but one is under no obligation to heed them."

Let us recall how Rand addressed the emergency situation:

"But to state the issue in brief, I would say that you would have the right to break in and eat the food that you need, and then when you reach the nearest policeman, admit what you have done, and undertake to repay the man when you are able to work. In other words, you may, in an emergency situation, save your life, but not as "of right." You would regard it as an emergency, and then, still recognizing the property right of the owner, you would restitute whatever you have taken, and that would be moral on both parts."

There is a possible confusion here, inasmuch as Rand says (1) "that you would have the right to break in and eat the food that you need," and (2)  "you may, in an emergency situation, save your life, but not as 'of right.'"

Now what does it mean to say that you "have the right to do x," but cannot do x "as of right"? What kind of distinction was Rand making between these two usages of "right"?

Here is my take on this problem: Rand was speaking off the cuff, not writing an essay, so she was using "right" in the first sense in the same loose, informal way that many people use it, i.e., to mean "morally justified." Thus a wife who discovers her husband's infidelity might say, "You had no right to cheat on me." Or we might say to a deceitful friend, "You had no right to lie to me." Or we might say, "I had a right to expect more from you."

Such usages of "a right" refer to unenforceable moral claims against other people, i.e., moral claims that, since they do not involve the violation of rights, do not fall within the purview of *justice* and so cannot be coercively enforced. In modern political theory (such as we find in Pufendorf, Locke, and Hutcheson) these were often called "imperfect rights"; they were unenforceable moral claims, such as the "right" to be treated with due consideration by one's friends and with respect by one's children.

"Perfect rights," in contrast, were regarded as juridical rights (i.e., those pertaining to matters of justice) which may be coercively enforced. When Rand says that you may save your life in an emergency situation, "but not as 'of right,'" she is obviously making an important point (and one which Bill, Gayle, and others have not considered). What she is here saying, in my opinion, is that you have no juridical (or "perfect") right to another person's property, even in an emergency --

i.e., that you cannot expropriate his property as a matter of *justice.*

In other words, you have in fact violated the other person's right to his property, so you must provide restitution.

This is the point of Rand's conclusion that, by providing restitution, you do what would be "moral on both parts." The two "parts" referred to here are the two different meanings of "right" -- one imperfect, the other perfect (as previously defined). In other words, it is restitution that ultimately reconciles what would otherwise be a conflict between your morally justified action, on the one hand, and the rights of others, on the other hand.

Given this, I cannot agree that Rand viewed juridical rights are irrelevant to emergencies. I cannot agree with Will that, according to Rand, "one is under no obligation to heed them." There is clearly an obligation, as indicated by Rand's stress on the need for restitution. What Rand is saying is that a juridical right may not be the *paramount* obligation during an emergency. But to say this is manifestly *not* to say that this obligation ceases to exist altogether. The starving man has stolen another man's property, to which he had no juridical right (i.e., his action was not "of right"). He has violated the owner's rights and so must pay restitution, even though he did so out of extreme need and may have been morally justified.

This simply means that other considerations may sometimes outweigh our obligation to respect the rights of other persons. It does not mean that their rights cease to exist altogether, and with them our obligations.  For if I am obligated to restitute the owner, as Rand insisted, then I must clearly have violated his rights in some fashion. I owe him restitution as a matter of *justice,* not merely because I happen to be a nice guy. I owe him restitution as a matter "of right."

Look at it this way: If, when confronted with an emergency, I injure an innocent person or deprive him of his property, would that person have the juridical right -- and I am speaking here of justice, not merely law -- to demand restitution from me, and to extract that restitution by force, if need be? Yes, of course he would. But he could have no such restitutive claims against me UNLESS I HAD FIRST VIOLATED HIS RIGHTS. Does Bill, Will or anyone else wish to argue that an innocent victim has no right to demand restitution from me, if my actions were taken under the duress of an emergency for which the victim was in no way responsible? On what possible moral grounds can we lay the burden of *my* misfortune on him in this manner?

I am not saying that I personally agree with every aspect of this analysis. I am presenting it as the most reasonable interpretation of Rand's approach, taking into account her explicit statements in the emergency example and her manner of treating rights in various essays. As I have said repeatedly, to maintain that my needs can nullify the rights of others goes against everything that Rand ever wrote against altruism.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I received an email from Ellen Stuttle, who is a long-time member of OL for those who don't know. And a friend.  

She has a degenerative health issue with her eyesight that makes it hard for her to post on OL. But we do communicate by email. And she does read OL when she can.

She wanted to complement the information I gave about Atlantis, etc. And she gave permission to quote her email.

The clunky format is so her text will get indexed in search engines (including the one for OL).

 

ELLEN'S EMAIL

We the Living was an omnibus name for a group of lists, of which Atlantis was one.

The whole group was started by Kirez Korgan, deriving from his earlier Cornell list.

Atlantis, originally, was unmoderated and had no post-per-day limit.  The volume could get to be enough, one would need all day to read the day's posts.

OWL, the other major WTL list, was moderated and had a posts-per-day limit.  Some people only posted on OWL.

Eventually - I forget in which year - Kirez turned over proprietorship of the whole WTL group to Jimbo Wales, who by then was hosting the lists on his Boomis server.

As you describe, Jimbo decided to institute a moderation policy on Atlantis.  Christian Ross promptly set up a Yahoo! Groups list called Atlantis II, to which many of the mainstays of the original list fled.

There were several other WTL lists besides OWL and ATL- a parenting list, a food list (I think), and others I've forgotten.

You could probably find more by searching my posts for "Kirez." I got 6 search results, but my eyes are starting to go swimmy, and I don't want to check out the linked posts myself.

[ADDITION]

OWL was an acronym for Objectivists at We the Living

END ELLEN'S EMAIL

 

 

For the record, I, myself, never posted to any of those lists. I only came back to the US from Brazil in 2004 and was very green at the Internet at the time.

Many thanks to Ellen.

 

Michael

[Peter]

Here are a couple of letters that mention Kirez Korgan. Peter

From: "George H. Smith" To: "*Atlantis" <atlantis@wetheliving.com> Subject: Re: LOGIC:  The Straw Man Fallacy (Was: Re: ATL: Re: Shooting and Looting: It's what warriors do. Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 22:39:31 -0600

Sandra wrote: "What I learned from Barbara's principles of efficient thinking was not to deal in floating abstractions -- a lesson not always learned by members of this group -- and to *think outside the square* which panics the orthodox in this group because sometimes they can't find what Ayn Rand thought on an issue and that seems to make them feel anxious. Once they find something in the Ayn Rand literature they can connect my principle to, they relax and then attack me for daring to disagree with Rand.  It does get boring."

Who has attacked you for "daring to disagree with Rand"?

I think you are being unfair to the vast majority of Atlantis list members, who do not adhere to the Eastern Orthodox Church of Objectivism, but to the Western Reformed branch of heretics.

I, for one, have never even called myself an "Objectivist," primarily because I think my anarchism puts me too fundamentally at odds with Rand's perspective. Moreover, my disagreements with certain features of Rand's philosophy, such as the criticism of her contextual theory of knowledge that appeared in my last book (*Why Atheism?*), are a matter of public record.

Over the years I have subscribed to a number of philosophy e-groups, and I regard Atlantis as the best by far. There have been very detailed, thoughtful, and sometimes heated debates over philosophical issues like free will, rights, and egoism. A number of the more prominent posters, such as Bill Dwyer, are "soft determinists" who have no trouble expressing serious disagreements with Rand. Such cases are the rule rather than the exception.

Atlantis is not a haven for Randroids, as you seem to think. Believe me, no one around here (with a few possible exceptions) cares in the least whether you disagree with Rand. What unites Atlanteans is not an orthodox credo, but the conviction that Ayn Rand was a serious thinker whose ideas are worthy of serious consideration. Even Kirez Korgan, the founder and owner of Atlantis, has recently said that he does not regard himself as an "Objectivist," however sympathetic he is to many of Rand's ideas.

In fairness, I think you should give your critics the benefit of the doubt and not assume that their disagreements with you have anything intrinsically to do with your disagreements with Rand. It is not a matter of thinking "outside the square." Around here we construct our own squares. Meanwhile, our high regard for Ayn Rand, whether we agree with her or not, gives us a common basis for discussion -- a shared community of ideas, so to speak, that serves as a foundation for dialogue and debate. Ghs

From: Kirez Korgan <kirez@wetheliving.com> To: aynrand@wetheliving.com Subject: Re: AYN: Selfish ethics and moderatorship Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 18:19:52 -0600 (MDT)

please excuse the terseness of this message...

What I love most in life is being with people who are good, intelligent people that I can respect. For me this is the best qualifier for any work I do: I want to work with good people. I seem to be motivated most by participating in projects that I believe in, which reflect my view of what's most valuable in life, and which are joined by other people who feel a similar passion.

When I got involved in Objectivism, the knowledge and insights of the philosophy eclipsed all other concerns in my life. But soon enough, my concern for social values bore more weight in my mind. I wanted to spend my life interacting with the best people out there.

What if there were a pursuit that offered me both? Both the pursuit of knowledge and the development of philosophy... AND interacting with the best people out there, particularly minds who were bent on the same pursuit that I was?

I'd rather make this argument elsewhere, but my conclusion will have to suffice: I think 'communication' is essential to science and the development of human knowledge and civilization. One of the distinctive characteristics of the Enlightenment was the development of communication between scholars in different regions, and the innovations and discoveries that resulted of these men who 'stood upon the shoulders of giants...' i.e., who achieved what they did because they had available to them the work of other great thinkers.

The axis period of Greece -- the birth of western philosophy -- was such because of the Lyceum. We would know nothing of Aristotle's thoughts, except that he had an audience to whom he communicated them, and for this purpose, he wrote notes.

The Enlightenment scholars emerged as bright lights spotting the continent of Europe. But civilization had progressed -- movable type, patterns of trade and thus of communication -- so that they could now share their thoughts with each other and be aware of the work of other like-minded scholars. Like-minded pioneers, visionaries, rebels.

This new development -- a burgeoning community for the trade of ideas – was like it's own aristocracy; a new culture that arose as a superstratum of western civilization upon the wealth of the industrial revolution. Across national boundaries, across language barriers, eventually across the seas --- it has been called "The Republic of Letters."

I think I know the excitement that Enlightenment intellectuals must have felt, to have the opportunity and privilege to interact with other intellectuals in spite of disperse geographic origins. I grew up in rural Arizona, and spent most of my youth longing for intellectual rapport, longing to find *someone*, *anyone* who could share their thoughts and knowledge with me. (This eventually led me to pack up and go out searching as soon as I was barely old enough... 15, in my case.)

And communication has come a long way. Television, radio, the telephone, the economics of publication... each successive development has enabled less expensive means to express oneself to others and to sample, search or consume what others had to express.

You know where this is building to, right? Is it clear that 7 years after the availability of Mosaic, the first web browser, that the internet has even begun to be taken for granted? Much of the excitement that surrounded its origin seems to have faded.

Sadly. I remember the initial excitement, though. WHAT, we screamed, could be possible with this amazing new infrastructure for communication?

I think in the years that I've been involved with wetheliving I've seen plenty of people feel this excitement, and they're 100% right. Amazing things are possible -- for the development of knowledge, for the expression of ideas and the cross-pollination of philosophies -- because of the internet.

At any rate, my grandiosity about the place of the internet in the history of science and civilization -- is sincere. I think the internet is powerful stuff. I feel amazingly grateful, not simply to have experienced this new means for self-education and communication --- but to experience it as an Objectivist. In the space of a few years, I acquired two powers, two technologies perhaps, that seem to me to dwarf every other power previously developed by mankind: the philosophic tools of Objectivism, and the internet.

I suppose I should come down from the clouds, and back to the matter of whether it could be selfish to be a moderator.

"Those who fight for the future, live in it today." --- this is approximately a popular quote among us, right?

Wetheliving started because I wanted a list to attract the best minds in Objectivism and gather them into a single channel to communicate with each other. That was Objectivism-L@cornell.edu.

Because of wetheliving, I have lived in a community unlike any other that has ever existed in the history of the world... for years. It has been a wonderful blessing to get to watch people come around, sharing the excitement I had felt to find the philosophy of Objectivism and to be able to talk with tons of other people about it, including people smarter than I could find anywhere around me in school.

I've had the benefit of a special position, as a moderator. I've gotten to help a lot of people, and that has always been fun. I've gotten to see the conflicts from behind the scenes, and that has been educational and... well, fun. I've also gotten to have a positive impact on many of those conflicts. I've received a lot of respect and gratitude, and yes, I've loved it.

The position of moderator forces you to see things differently – more broadly. This has been a powerful educational tool for me. Frequently it acted as a pressure to be more objective.

In all cases... did I ever get an education in Objectivism! And... the Objectivist movement. When I was a moderator, I was immersed in wealth on a daily basis. I swam in it. Glory! Up close and personal, I tasted the fine texture of the development of an ideological community. I *watched* people transform themselves and their understanding of the world.

I've met my best friends through wetheliving. They've changed my life for the better. I've created a community in Boston, because of wetheliving. That community rocks!

Because of being a moderator, I've had a great social circle at any Objectivist event. I already know most of the people. When I travel, I always have people I can stop and visit.

Because I care about valuable discussions, I've been very concerned to see how I could improve them -- and as a moderator I've had that power and the means to exercise it. (I learned a lot and changed my ideas about social organizations, and discussions, as a result of my experience.) I've been in the position of seeing that I had improved other people's lives.

I feel like I'm leaving several things out, but this was supposed to be brief.

I've never had to think twice about whether it was a 'sacrifice' to be a moderator for wetheliving. Sure it's been rough, time-consuming, demanding. And I certainly got burned out, several times, although I think this has less to do with being a moderator, or wetheliving, or Objectivism, and it's almost entirely due to my own personality and personal development.

For my involvement as a whole... it's been a wonderful time. It has been among the most worthwhile things I have done with my life. In retrospect... if I had to choose between going to college, and getting involved with Objectivism on the internet -- I would choose being a moderator every time. Kirez

[tmj]

I really appreciate the chance to enjoy thoughtfully crafted and thought inducing missives from those who tread the more fruitful plains of "O-land" , so thx Peter for these and other contributions in this vain. And since this comes from 'your ' lane I couldn't help but to add what came to mind in the first sentences of GHS in the above, a bad 'dad' joke, but one I think you may appreciate;

"I went to my boss' funeral yesterday, I leaned into his casket and whispered ,Who is thinking outside the box now, Greg? "

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, tmj said:

... other contributions in this vain.

T,

You are so vein.

 

Michael