Leonard Peikoff, conservatorship

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, anthony said:

How and why LP went against Rand's wishes, being one person who should know of the above and one who'd honor them, I find strange.

Was it ever a controversial argument? In fact, how many here knew of what she wrote? (Which I found quite by accident). The issue hasn't raised much interest here.

Tony,

We discussed it to death back when Barbara was alive.

I'd have to look it up, but why?  

Like Brant said, "A Statement of Policy" was more a reaction to Rand falling out with the Brandens than it was a decree from on high about what others can and cannot do with their lives. It was a form of Rand taking her toys, going home, and saying nobody else can play with them unless she says so. 

Which is her right if we are talking about actual property. But are philosophical ideas and what people do with those ideas her property? Nah. The human species has never operated like that throughout its entire history except in sorcery and witchcraft, where an actual word can cast a spell and the like (supposedly).

A simple look at property clarifies this. Rand (and her heirs) own the copyrights to her works. That's property and recognized as such in law according to a legal procedure. In fact, this kind of ownership is quite recent in human history (thank you Ben Franklin).

Rand did not own your mind and life, or my mind and life, or the mind and life of any other human being than her own. So she cannot demand obedience to her decrees of what people can do with their minds and lives and call that rational, even if it concerns ideas she thought through and discussed. That demand is a play for power, not for reason. Rand's stance on this issue was emotional. She was hurt and pissed.

I get it she did not want people trying to speak in her name, but resolving that is easy. Just say nobody speaks for me. If in doubt, consult my works as I wrote them. Done. And if they want money for their efforts, that's what copyright law is for. Sue them.

As we see every day in our culture, fake news is disgusting, but it is not illegal except where libel, slander and copyrights are concerned.

Even before copyright law, just think. Nobody speaks in Aristotle's name, yet he did not make demands on what people can do with his ideas. He could have, too. He taught Alexander the Great. How's that for clout?  He did not try to prohibit people from making a movement out of his ideas or prohibit the word Aristotelian. That's the thing about having a body of work in written form. People can consult it and see who is bullshitting and who is being correct on meanings.

This has gone around and around and around here in O-Land.

All that is here on OL if you want to dig.

 

btw - I own the bound copies of The Objectivist Forum. I have not read all of it, though. In this publication, Rand, years later, repeated a variation of what she said in The Objectivist. Except she went further. She demanded sole proprietorship to the word Objectivism and demanded people use a different word when referring to their own "flights of fancy" (if I remember the term she used correctly). 

Reality check. You can't own a word. You can try to own a word, but that does not mean you do own it. In music, that would be the equivalent of someone saying he or she owned the C major scale.

 

Michael

[Economic]

>>>a nurse who cares for him, and from her demeanor, I did not sense falseness.

You didn't "sense" falseness based on her demeanor. In other words, falseness appears as a special kind of demeanor that one can "sense." OK

>>> I know people are calling her a gold-digger and worse, but I didn't get those vibes.

"Vibes" as a means of cognition?

>>>She also turned down the marriage proposal 2 or 3 times before accepting it going from what Peikoff said.

Maybe it was the offer of a quitclaim-deed to a $3.7M house that made proposal #3 the charm (quid pro quo: "You're 30-something and I'm 91. I've proposed to you twice before, so I'm gonna try it one more time: Marry me and I'll gift you a big house!" "Gee, I don't know . . . you said, a big house? . . . Oh, OK!"). That seems to be Kira's vibe.

Kira's statement above is interesting but not sure how it will stand up in court next March. She claims dad's statements about her (on Facebook, I assume) are "libelous," comprising many "mistruths." One problem is libel laws acknowledge that statements intended as opinions, and not intended as facts, are not legally actionable. She'll have to prove he intended his statements as fact, which he could deny. Another problem is that it's a bit unclear the defamatory statements constituted actual "libel"; that is, they resulted in loss of income or loss of "consortium" (i.e., loss of friends, professional associates, etc.) to the plaintiff. Finally, libelous statements are not actionable if the defendant (Lenny) can prove his statements are factual; maybe dad can prove his daughter, in fact, is just greedy by wanting more of his estate than he has already bequeathed to her. Who knows?

This IS ugly. But somehow fun to watch, too.

 

[Economic]

>>> You can't own a word. 

No, but depending on legal context, you can control how others use the word in print. Several famous legal cases involving that issue: DuPont invented a synthetic fiber it called "Nylon," which was supposed to be used in print by others as a proper noun, initial-capped, with a "Registered" or "Trade Mark" symbol after it ("R" or "TM" in a small, superscripted circle). Unfortunately for DuPont, everyone had been printing the word as a common noun — "nylon" — for decades, as well as using the word as a generic synonym for stockings ("I bought a pair of sheer nylons"). When DuPont tried to correct the situation, the judge threw the case out: "The public has been using the word 'nylon' as a generic, common noun for decades! Where were you 25 years ago to protect the proprietary name of your invention? Nowhere! Get out!" Lesson learned. Apparently, something similar occurred with "Kleenex" (now used as a generic "kleenex", often as a synonym for "tissue") and "Band-Aid" (often just seen as "band-aid", often used as a synonym for a disposable plastic bandage).

[Economic]

9 hours ago, anthony said:

a totally different character of movement would have emerged/evolved, not one of a central intellectual authority and hierarchy, but 'decentralized' across the ~many~ unaffiliated, thinking individuals who found its worth. Privately published journals, hundreds of small debate groups etc.etc., and eventually being Internet propagated on many independent sites. In short, *informally* made known and spread, the stress on individuals, not institutions. Let alone, the ONE holding dominance. 

It's called "Open Objectivism."

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

E,

You are boring me again all of a sudden.

Gotcha is not cognition. Gotcha is not idea.

Gotcha is a power and status game to give pleasure to the gotchaer.

He gets to feel superior because he corrects others, especially when he has no idea what he is talking about, but pegs a word to a word rule with no concept of context in sight, then gets to say, "You are wrong."

I've wearied of these games in O-Land.

The world burns and someone who has no notion of what cognition actually is or means, much less what fire is, feels superior to others because he plays word games with reality and crows about it.

You've lost me again.

As the Buddhists say, enjoy the sound of one hand clapping. Gotcha is good for little else.

Try Scrabble or something...

 

Heh.

I just had a thought. Before written language, back when humans had to travel long distances with the environment and animal habits just to eat, those humans had to retain an enormous amount of knowledge in their brains that they could not get wrong on pain of death. And they did. How did they do that? I know for sure you don't know.

Also, there would have been a phrase for people who used your gotcha epistemology.

Dinner for predators.

Added to that, I bet you don't have a clue as to what I am talking about. Nor curiosity.

But you itch to teach people who already know that trademarks exist. The craving is like an addiction.

What a waste of a brain.

Michael

[Marc]

On 9/13/2024 at 4:02 PM, Brant Gaede said:

LP made one huge intellectual and moral professional mistake and it wasn't taking Rand's side during the break of 1968. It was appointing himself conservator of Objectivism after her death .

For me the irony is overwhelming 

It's unreal the irony!!!

 

Funny but when I was spending time with Barbara she told me lots of stories about her younger cousin from Winnipeg, LP.

She also told me multiple times that Rand herself said she was the only Objectivst and everyone else was a student of Objectivism.

Beating Peikoff in Court in LA was such a beautiful moment so that I could fulfill Barbara's wishes with her collection.

[anthony]

18 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tony,

We discussed it to death back when Barbara was alive.

I'd have to look it up, but why?  

Like Brant said, "A Statement of Policy" was more a reaction to Rand falling out with the Brandens than it was a decree from on high about what others can and cannot do with their lives. It was a form of Rand taking her toys, going home, and saying nobody else can play with them unless she says so. 

Which is her right if we are talking about actual property. But are philosophical ideas and what people do with those ideas her property? Nah. The human species has never operated like that throughout its entire history except in sorcery and witchcraft, where an actual word can cast a spell and the like (supposedly).

A simple look at property clarifies this. Rand (and her heirs) own the copyrights to her works. That's property and recognized as such in law according to a legal procedure. In fact, this kind of ownership is quite recent in human history (thank you Ben Franklin).

Rand did not own your mind and life, or my mind and life, or the mind and life of any other human being than her own. So she cannot demand obedience to her decrees of what people can do with their minds and lives and call that rational, even if it concerns ideas she thought through and discussed. That demand is a play for power, not for reason. Rand's stance on this issue was emotional. She was hurt and pissed.

I get it she did not want people trying to speak in her name, but resolving that is easy. Just say nobody speaks for me. If in doubt, consult my works as I wrote them. Done. And if they want money for their efforts, that's what copyright law is for. Sue them.

As we see every day in our culture, fake news is disgusting, but it is not illegal except where libel, slander and copyrights are concerned.

Even before copyright law, just think. Nobody speaks in Aristotle's name, yet he did not make demands on what people can do with his ideas. He could have, too. He taught Alexander the Great. How's that for clout?  He did not try to prohibit people from making a movement out of his ideas or prohibit the word Aristotelian. That's the thing about having a body of work in written form. People can consult it and see who is bullshitting and who is being correct on meanings.

This has gone around and around and around here in O-Land.

All that is here on OL if you want to dig.

 

btw - I own the bound copies of The Objectivist Forum. I have not read all of it, though. In this publication, Rand, years later, repeated a variation of what she said in The Objectivist. Except she went further. She demanded sole proprietorship to the word Objectivism and demanded people use a different word when referring to their own "flights of fancy" (if I remember the term she used correctly). 

Reality check. You can't own a word. You can try to own a word, but that does not mean you do own it. In music, that would be the equivalent of someone saying he or she owned the C major scale.

 

Michael

MSK, My reaction to her statement and her many sources was that it was ~Rand~ who fully understood that nobody can have ownership - moral and intellectual - of an idea, The Word, once it has got 'out there'.

(I heed only the moral-intellectual question, over the legal-intellectual).

And it was ~Peikoff~ who conversely tried to control or to take ownership of HOW the idea, her philosophy, was to be accepted by all and sundry. 

Rand would predict that after her life, and from other philosophies, that the original thoughts could be spread, misinterpreted/misrepresented, creating schisms, and sometimes abused by a thinkers' followers. Knowing human nature as she did well, all manner of intellectual fraudsters and financial exploiters might also follow.

 One cannot prevent those. It was counter-productive to even try. The independent, volitional mind needs freedom and should be trusted to find its own way at its own pace.

The "market place of ideas" has to be uncensored and unrestricted and competitive. Thinking and open debate, and usually impermanent differences of opinion and understanding among sincere thinkers - who have the original works by Rand as reference, and read of other scholars also, remain essential. 

Laying down "the Law", according to what he learned from AR without deviation, was not a good move by LP. ("We don't need you"). Unintentionally in his enthusiasm to convey it as he grasped it, he opened Objectivism to charges of dogmatism, even cultism. More intellectually, his intrinsicist premises (you must instantly KNOW and believe Rand's work - on sight) - that David Kelley rightly leveled at him. 

Peikoff did good work on his lectures and books, he transmitted Rand accurately I think. His tightly-guarded, proprietorial methods, being 'the ultimate authority on Ayn Rand', was damaging.

It looks to me, in the future after her, in her expressed, above sense of uninstitutionalized, individual free will  -- that it was Rand who wanted her philosophy "open". 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, anthony said:

Knowing human nature as she did well, all manner of intellectual fraudsters and financial exploiters might also follow.

 One cannot prevent those. It was counter-productive to even try.

Tony,

This is 100% correct according to my thinking. You do not persuade others by demanding they think this way or that.

You can persuade many covertly by certain mechanisms (the behavioral sciences show the way).

But the strongest persuasion is, was, and always will be when people come to a conclusion on their own.

Leading a person to look and see what they do not detect on the surface is the only real way to get people to think about something so they can come to their own conclusions about it. What there is to see has to be real, though, for the best result and persuasion.

 

You were surprised Rand made this mistake. There is an even darker truth in Rand's heart that I detected through her actions. I don't find it bad since Rand was a human being and we all have a dark side to deal with. But those who put Rand on a pedestal get bent out of shape when I talk about this.

In The Passion of Ayn Rand, Barbara Branden detailed what went on in Rand's gatherings in her apartment with The Collective (and later with insiders). When I first read this, I was taking it in, but automatically in my mind excusing Rand for the tears, the excommunications, the people who lost their way like the ballerina who lost all joy and talked about it, and so on. And I felt it was right and good Rand was constantly spoken of in glowing terms by her followers. I was even on board when they defended slights against her with extreme hostility. (See the debacle with Albert Ellis and Nathaniel Branden debate for a good example. There are records of that one, so it is not he-said-she-said.)

As I was reading along Barbara's book way back when and feeling the siren's call of us against them, she wrote, "Nobody achieves that kind of power without seeking it." I'm going on memory, so the exact quote might be different, but the meaning is the same. That statement stopped me in my tracks. I remember the feeling as if it were yesterday.

Ayn Rand sought power over others. At least to an extent.

Dayaamm!

Well, I had to look, then I had to see. That is if reality was to be my standard. Reality is reality no matter what story I tell myself or what hero-worship I want to keep alive in my heart. 

Then I went one further. I began to admire Rand more for what she actually did achieve rather than for the story I liked to tell myself about her back then. My admiration altered a bit, too. I admired her in reality, no longer in legend. She fought the world, and she fought her own dark side. In my view, she won.

I don't mean she eliminated her own nature, her dark side. I mean she produced classics despite an inner call to not do it. Today, her works maintain their popularity and influence on the culture, especially her fiction. That is proof that she made a contribution to the human race in a positive and permanent form.

That's no mean achievement. Those who do not recognize the reality of Rand as she was, the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, demean her achievements by demanding they and she must exist outside of reality.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

On 9/20/2024 at 7:31 PM, Brant Gaede said:

And it didn't out of the box  it was a repudiation of Nathaniel and Barbara Branden after her falling out with them or, stay away from them. Thus began the cultural decline of Objectivism. I mean college students were bringing Rand right into the classroom in the 1960s thanks to the NBI. They profs had a hard time dealing with it. I directly experienced this back from Vietnam in 1967. I was in NYC in 1968 and saw the blowup first hand 

--Brant

PS: I said cultural, not intellectual. NBI was not an intellectual force. That was a facade. So was Galt's speech which took Rand two years to write. Rand was engaged in cultural warfare primarily with literary means. It's not morality it's moralizing mostly contra Christianity but no better for longevity as such than Shakerism. Rand said if you consciously make one wrong moral choice you are doomed  Period. It's only a matter of time. Christianity is about salvation and redemption. Rand's huge brain thought rationality would beat that insofar as she ever thought that. 

I just dusted of my copy of Peikoff's OPAR after some period of time back to the previous century. I now clearly understand the progression of Rand's ideas from AS to this dead end.

Nathaniel Branden's 20 lectures Basic Principles of Objectivism was succeeded by Peikoff's 12 lectures in turn succeeded by OPAR. Even when I took the original course live in NYC in 1968 I knew there was something essentially wrong. I didn't realize it and I were trapped in the Ayn Rand matrix. It took me several years to busy out of that. All OPAR is is a celebration of that matrix. It's anti-intellectual at its core written for AS believers.

Rand's philosophy no longer exists because she died. Anyone can use the word "Objectivism" in any way anyone can. If it's nonesense it should be obvious enough on its face. If only partial nonesense it might have some value.

Peikoff couldn't write about his own philosophy because he never bothered to create one. He wrote about his adopted matrix.

--Brant

[anthony]

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tony,

This is 100% correct according to my thinking. You do not persuade others by demanding they think this way or that.

You can persuade many covertly by certain mechanisms (the behavioral sciences show the way).

But the strongest persuasion is, was, and always will be when people come to a conclusion on their own.

Leading a person to look and see what they do not detect on the surface is the only real way to get people to think about something so they can come to their own conclusions about it. What there is to see has to be real, though, for the best result and persuasion.

 

 

In my rear-view mirror, I see clearer how heavy I was on intellectual theory, ideals and so on and light on worldly experience. That is common to young men and women and been restated too many times. When eventually your concepts catch up to reality, look out world!

[Economic]

Goodbye, moron!

 

 

Edited just now by Michael Stuart Kelly
Reason: Anonymous trolling. Nasty bullshit, basically.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Economic said:

Goodbye, moron!

 

E,

Moderated.

And your last post, which I only skimmed, is mostly deleted.

You can still post, but I will have to review your content first. And if that gets wearisome, I will delete your account.

I don't want your kind of hostility and personal attacks on OL. Since I am the one you keep posting to and attacking, your intentions are clear. 

I don't want anonymous trolls in general on OL, especially not from New York.

Been there. Done that. And it never gets better.

Have a good life, hopefully a long ways away from here.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Once again, sorry for the bad vibes, folks.

The gist of the post I deleted was a lot of kindergarten nyah nyah nyah and vulgarity about my previous troubles with alcohol and drugs. (Incidentally, I have been free of those addictions since into last century. My how time passes.  )

We don't need another troll on OL who nonstop posts and pollutes everything just to get off.

Remember the trolls we have already had? Some were nasty in the extreme, yet I tolerated them. And what happened? My tolerance didn't work. They did nothing productive while other members got tired of them real fast.

I kinda miss The Crazy Lady, though. At least she was entertaining.

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Just for the record, here are 3 few previous OL trolls (but there were several more).

On 10/18/2019 at 2:06 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I've seen the same pattern as this guy many times. So I didn't put a lot of thought into how I reacted. Think The Crazy Lady, or the dude who worked in the government for Cass Sunstein who called himself a character from The Game of Thrones, or the SJW who used a doll as an avatar, etc. Here are their avatars in order just in case you don't remember who I am talking about. 

 seymourblogger, and   

 Robert Baratheon, and

 SoAMadDeathWish

The mess these people caused and the sheer amount of attention they required from me to keep readers from exiting en masse is what I was trying to avoid. They aren't the only ones, either.

TEXT

I've seen the same pattern as this guy many times. So I didn't put a lot of thought into how I reacted. Think The Crazy Lady, or the dude who worked in the government for Cass Sunstein who called himself a character from The Game of Thrones, or the SJW who used a doll as an avatar, etc. Here are their avatars in order just in case you don't remember who I am talking about. 

 seymourblogger, and 

 Robert Baratheon, and

 SoAMadDeathWish

The mess these people caused and the sheer amount of attention they required from me to keep readers from exiting en masse is what I was trying to avoid. They aren't the only ones, either.

END TEXT

Notice they are all anonymous, hiding behind pseudonyms.

The Crazy Lady is seymourblogger. She's the only one I did not grow to despise and get bored with. However, she was batshit crazy. Still, at times, I felt an odd kinship.

I've always loved quirky and that shows just how batshit crazy I am.

 

btw - If anyone is interested in Janet, I did some digging, starting with her page here on OL. There she said her real name is Janet Abbey and she studied with Barbara Branden in the early 60s. Was Objectivist, but later changed. 

We know for a fact here on OL that she turned post modern. 

I did some digging on the internet and found a bunch of posts of hers on a Glenn Greenwald Substack thread from 2021. Also, I found her Facebook page where, in February 2023 and February 2024, a lot of people wished her a happy birthday. She's about 90 or so now if she is still alive.

In 2021, she was listed on a Springfield, Missouri site as a missing person, then in 2022, she was listed there as found. See here.

On that page there are three photos of her. Finally I get to see what she looks like in real life instead of that hideous eyeball. LOL...  

   

To be honest, she looks kinda fun.

Stop it, Michael! Stop it! Stop it! 

 

Hopefully, Janet is still alive somewhere bugging the shit out of someone else.  

I wish her well.

[Brant Gaede]

On 9/22/2024 at 5:01 PM, Economic said:

Goodbye, moron!

 

 

Edited just now by Michael Stuart Kelly
Reason: Anonymous trolling. Nasty bullshit, basically.

Where r u going to?

Do u like what life is showing u?

Do u, do u, do u?

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's a thought on what I mean by gotcha creatures.

Imagine I was with people I care about, sharing a memory of an event at a restaurant. Imagine I had met the love of my life there (I'm going to make up a name to keep peace at home.  ) GOTCHAMAN was in the group listening.

ME: This was a a night of nights, a turning point. Sarah and I went to Caesar's for a date and we walked through an alluring portal. The light floated on air, sparkling out promise of happiness from every surface and corner. We fell in love right then.

I remember the moment. The waiter served our wine, an aged Cabernet with a French name. The taste melted on my tongue as Sarah's eyes looked into my soul like a beam from a lighthouse on a dark wet night. The rest was ethereal. Soft music. Trance. Enchantment.

We had London Broil, which was magnificent, but I didn't register it as food. It was singing to me. As were the lettuce and onions and tomatoes. Bursting with love. Yes, even the vegetables were magic as we paused and said...

GOTCHAMAN: A tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable.

The crowd looks at him, pauses, and emits a collective, "Ugh."

 

Some people are just that way as they celebrate their superiority over others no matter what.

 

But in their souls, they never convince themselves, and that makes them try harder.

 

sigh...

Human beings...

Whatcha gonna do with 'em?

 

Michael

[Peter]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Whatcha gonna do with 'em?

Avoid the nuisance.  

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Scott, William and a guy named Ed Mazlish discuss the Peikoff conservatorship issue on Ayn Rand Fan Club.

I haven't seen this yet, but once I do, I will comment.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I went ahead and saw it.

Frankly, I was hoping for a more gossipy kind of discussion, but instead, I got the impression several times that they themselves were litigating the case. That part irritated me in a form that surprised me.

I mean there were too many elephants in the room they ignored and a lot of focus on smaller things and assumptions.

Also, the angry tone of voice Ed presented while he was defending how wonderful and just the courts are re conservatorship grated on my soul like the sound of a car running into a moving train. Especially in today's context. However, to be fair, from the middle to the end, Ed became more reasonable and he toned down the anger.

One other beef. I got tired of listening to the pattern of one or the other present a clear judgment about Peikoff or Kira while qualifying that he didn't know and couldn't know. They all did this through their tone, framing and slant. 

I prefer to say, I speculate, but I believe xxxx about so-and-so. However, I am open to looking deeper and changing my mind if warranted.

But that's me and my way of being. btw - I choose to be that way. It did not come natural at first. 

 

This not knowing point also grated on my soul like the people screaming after the train-wreck. I submit it's easy to know--actually know--much about the Peikoff conservatorship affair just from observing things.

As an example, I mentioned in an earlier post that Peikoff said he no longer loved Kira. I feel comfortable judging that. It was an awful thing so say and do. I can say that because it was something he did in public. I can observe it and judge it.

But they kept talking about the nature of conservatorship in the context of Peikoff as if there were no Peikoff to look at and evaluate.

They mentioned that the video with Valliant was edited and implied that this made it not reliable evidence that Peikoff was mentally competent.

Bulllllllllllllllllshit. Gimme a break. Unless in the outtakes, Peikoff became a drooling retard, it does not matter that the video was edited. We got to see plenty of LONG NONSTOP footage of Peikoff talking and analyzing and recounting anecdotes in an understandable manner (beginning, middle and end with appropriate emotions along the way) to know he was in possession of all his normal marbles. 

And it did not matter if he was given questions beforehand. I can't imagine what it feels like to think this is something Valliant would do in order to fool everyone. I see it as a memory jog and nothing more. A way for the interviewed party to get warmed up into what is going to be discussed. Maybe get a fact or two checked.

In Internet Marketing, whenever one person interviews another, they always give the questions upfront. For that matter, they do this on most interviews in all areas out in the culture.

But the galling part to me. I can't get past them discussing--as a reasonable possibility--that a court decision is needed to determine whether Peikoff is mentally competent or incompetent. They did this while watching him speak right in front of them. That is one big-ass elephant to ignore. 

 

Another elephant is that Peikoff had another person present, a lawyer, who not only interviewed him as a competent person, Valliant displayed all due cordiality and respect while being completely at ease. They joked and got along like pals. I don't like Valliant for what he did to Barbara and Nathaniel (and... well... another time  ), but I cannot look at that video and see him as one more conman taking advantage of Peikoff's mental incompetence.

Yet to believe that Peikoff is mentally incompetent is to imply that a lawyer was staging a hoax. 

Shouldn't that be a factor for outsiders to evaluate instead of looking at things nobody can see yet? Yup. James Valliant the attorney. He worked in the US court system all his professional life. People know this and they know his history. Helloooo.

It's not like the US court system is a total blank to us out here in reality-land, a blank that nobody can mention except to defer to it. The US court system was also represented informally right in front of us in a video. It was interviewing Peikoff.

And Peikoff and Valliant looked just fine. Even honest, meaning not manipulative, as they went about like two normal adult men talking. The way Valliant treated Grace when she came on camera showed he respected her a great deal. What court is needed to judge that? Can't you do it? Or I? Or Scott or William or Ed?

What's more, Valliant is in Ed's club. They are lawyers. Where was the professional respect to at least acknowledge a lawyer was present with Peikoff and doing this of his own volition?  

As Rand would say, blank-out. 

(I can't believe I am defending James Valliant. Arrrrrrhg...  )

One last thing on Valliant. I know this about him with absolute certainty. He's Peikoff's attack dog. If Grace had pilfered a $3 million plus mansion from Peikoff and was a gold-digger, I don't see--in any universe--Valliant taking this lying down.

That makes me think Peikoff might have put the mansion in Grace's name to protect her in a nasty fight with Kira. After all, it took 4 years for Peikoff and Grace to marry. That's plenty of time for hard feelings between father and daughter to brew and ferment. That speculation never even came up in the video. But some other anti-Peikoff insinuations sure did.

(On a fair note to Ed, at times he was focused on the father-daughter relationship to the exclusion of money concerns. I like that. I actually appreciate it.) 

 

Here's another elephant they did not discuss. Peikoff has structured a lot of his life around imitating patterns from Ayn Rand. When she broke with the Brandens, she did not give any facts, just accusations. And she demanded people choose who to follow based on her standing and nothing else. In the video, they bashed Peikoff for doing just that in his public letter on Facebook. Er... Once again, hellooooo... Haven't they ever seen Peikoff do this, like, say, throughout his entire friggin' life? Does anyone need examples?  

 

The elephant taking a dump in the corner of the room is that Grace is black and that is shaking the hell out of the O-Land box to see what comes out. I find that elephant the most entertaining of all.   

 

I could go on and on, but I think I've made my ideas clear. Judge what you can observe. Do not ignore what you can observe. Speculate about what you can't know for sure, don't declare that as fact. Be clear about your opinions. And look at the lifelong nature of people when judging them in a specific incident, at least for the first impression.

That, to me, is how to exercise reason.

 

I like Scott and William. In fact I like them a lot and try to promote them when an opportunity crosses my path. I don't know Ed.

But this particular video did not make me feel good. Too many essentials got missed.

Gossip would have been a lot more fun and... dare I say it?

Yes.

Rational.

 

Michael

[Mark]

Here is a transcription excerpt of “Catching up With Leonard Peikoff” starting 50:30.  (What appear to be false starts are retained but crossed out.)  Jay is James Valliant.

Quote

...we’ve just found I hope you don’t misinterpret this, uh,  we enjoy going to a casino, and they have them in California.  We found one down near San Diego that we’ve gone to with Jay and a couple other people at the party and played blackjack with live dealers and really enjoyed it.  Last time I only lost $25, a big achievement.  Uh, anyway that restaurant and that place has a fabulous, fabulous restaurant, even though it’s just an ordinary casino, the greatest food ever, uh and uh we went the other night and they said, order four dinners from the restaurant from the menu and we’ll serve you all four.  And they said [apparently in reply to a question – me], no, you have to order four cuz they want to make it so spectacular that anybody will come there and they’ll want to stay there and start gambling.  So, uh, we enjoy that.  We haven’t done it very, twice I think, [inaudible] long time but it’s something we do to have fun.

Don’t strain your pocketbook responding to Valliant’s pathetic pleas on Peikoff’s behalf.

Peikoff may be a fool  but he's not pathologically incompetent.  It looks like what happened is as follows.  Peikoff suffered some sort of  crippling collapse.  The doctors told him he would never walk again.  Grace, his caretaker, apparently was an excellent physical therapist and got him walking after a few months rehabilitation.  He felt grateful and went overboard with it.  Though Kira may well be wrong about Grace manipulating Peikoff, still Grace never should have accepted a substantial gift from her nonagenarian client much less a marriage proposal and half his wealth – a point made by William Swig.

More at Who's Who but nothing that isn't known to people here already.

 

 

 

 

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 9/30/2024 at 7:44 AM, Mark said:

Peikoff may be a fool  but he's not pathologically incompetent.  It looks like what happened is as follows.  Peikoff suffered some sort of  crippling collapse.  The doctors told him he would never walk again.  Grace, his caretaker, apparently was an excellent physical therapist and got him walking after a few months rehabilitation.  He felt grateful and went overboard with it.  Though Kira may well be wrong about Grace manipulating Peikoff, still Grace never should have accepted a substantial gift from her nonagenarian client much less a marriage proposal and half his wealth – a point made by William Swig.

This is an interesting observation. It got me to thinking about Objectivism in general.

But first a beef. I almost did not write about it because of the comment that Grace never should have done this or that.

Man, do people in O-Land want to boss others around with "shoulds."

Barbara Branden liked to tell me about a sign in a therapist's office that always cracked her up. It said DON'T SHOULD ON ME. The therapist was Albert Ellis.

 

 

Anywho... I got to thinking and looking through the eyes of Leonard Peikoff.

(Don't try this without taking a few precautions, though. It can be dangerous and lead to permanent damage. You never know... er... OK, enough of that...  )

Imagine that you have spent your entire life preaching a philosophy for living on earth. Then you lose your ability to walk. Nothing in your philosophy brings you what you need at that moment. You have relied on it ever since you can remember and here, right when you are most vulnerable, there is nothing there to help you. Not even anything to console you. The best advice you get is don't whine.

But this is your life, your only life. What does that mean, don't whine? Just suffer in silence and die?

Hell, if you want to live, that doesn't cut it. Not in any sense that makes sense to you from your reasoning brain all the way down to your limbic system.

Then along comes an angel who restores your gate. Woah... You mean you can walk again? You're no longer helpless and waiting to die just to get it over with? You can live a normal life as a man again? And this angel came from "out there," from a land that has nothing to do with the philosophy you have taught all your life?

How on earth are you not going to be swept off your feet? 

(OK, OK... pun intended...  )

I fully understand how Peikoff fell for her. If I were him, I probably would have been worse. 

 

Now about Grace, I don't know her context, so I am going on my own musings. I certainly don't want to condemn her or praise her knowing only what I do. But these are my thoughts and I want to think about this. So I'll go with my imagination as an aspiring novelist and look through her eyes.

What does she see? Well, she gets to watch the equivalent of a religious conversion happen right in front of her, day after day, as she restores a desperate man's ability to walk again. Not only is the oxytocin from empathy blasting in her brain on overdrive, all this veneration is leveled at her, only her and nothing but her. Day after day after day. Over several years. How can she not be affected by that? I can see her falling in love right back. I see nothing implausible about it.

Except...

If I only look through the lens of Objectivism where most everything is transactional and "emotions are not tools of cognition." If I only look through that lens, all I see is a gold-digger or a person who knows right and wrong, but does not have the scruples to do the right thing.

I can't go there. Not after what I have lived.

 

When I criticize Objectivism for not taking human nature into account enough, this is what I mean. Humans are humans. A is A.

Peikoff is a human. So is Grace. So is Kira (and I haven't even looked through her eyes, but I see love and pain and confusion from thinking about it).

If Objectivism is to be a philosophy for living on earth, I submit it must be a philosophy by humans and for humans. That is if it is to work for humans.

And right here--thinking about this situation--is where I find it incomplete. There is lots of stuff that is right and insightful in Objectivism. And lots of stuff I live by.

But it needs more.

At least it is incomplete for how I understand human nature. For the record, I understand human nature from observing it in others, in myself, in history and other information about the past, from the new information coming from neuroscience, and so on.

I no longer understand human nature from principles pronounced by others. I can use those as prompts to think, but not to replace my own thinking. Not anymore. And when I think about this, I see holes that I need to fill from many sources, not just one.

 

So I see this issue about Peikoff and his family as a great situation to use for some heavy thinking about my own values.

I highly recommend the process.

Michael

[anthony]

Me speaking as "human". I find LP's public appeal to Objectivists et al, cringe-worthy. Beyond conjecture on a lovely young woman's possible motives and a lonely old man's infatuation, all very human.

Can one enjoy privacy, pride and dignity near the end of one's life as one always did? 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 10/4/2024 at 1:02 PM, anthony said:

Can one enjoy privacy, pride and dignity near the end of one's life as one always did? 

Tony,

No.

 

Michael

 

(NOTE: Man, are you good at setting them up. The responses write themselves...  )

[Brant Gaede]

"Objectivism" is an intellectualization. To be such an Objectivist will leave you weak. Try to live a life of integrity and be an Objectivist out of or off of that 

--Brant

[anthony]

On 10/6/2024 at 6:00 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tony,

No.

 

Michael

 

(NOTE: Man, are you good at setting them up. The responses write themselves...  )

Mine was a rhetorical question - I mean it's affirmative. Observed in others and experienced, while admitting the inevitable indignities and human frailty that comes with aging, many can hold to pride and mind independence (and related privacy) with dignified courage toward the end. 

LP is not the starving artist in a garret, nor renowned philosopher who can't afford essential medical treatment, which one could sympathize with and lend help, these are private, intra-family matters - about who gets his wealthy estate - for which I can't raise much sympathy.

He apparently earned well out of Objectivism, from his works and Rand's books-- well deserved: good for him!

If he was spendthrift and wasted some on expensive homes, is not my business.

The "victim card" against the big bad government - like a dog whistle to O'ists - he and his supporters employ is sophistry imo and doesn't sit very well.