RoR: Forum

Wait a minute. There's...no...Santa Claus?
(Edited by Alec Mouhibian on 10/14, 10:06pm)

Post 1

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 1:51am

It is "Santa Claus" you idiot!!! Get it right or the old man will take away all your presents this year!!!

Thanks George,

Very well-delivered article.

I do not have a God complex, but I must advise you that I will not approve of all your articles, OK? I have approved this one for the time being. I can be merciful, but do not challenge my authority :-)

Post 2

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 2:33am

Sorry Alec, no Santa Claus. But we still have Tony Danza!

Re: the article. There's something profoundly touching in accepting what it is to be a human being. If these books helped you accept that: good!

No matter what knowledge we have, much of life is speculative. To expect a person, even someone of Rand's stature, to live error free is just bad thinkin'.

It essentially comes down to whether you see the glass as half-full or half-empty. If you're a half-full guy you take the messy bits with the good and make the best out of it regardless. If you're a half-empty guy you roll around in the misery of it all. It's about your life afterall. Not Rand's, not the Branden's and not Sciabarra's. Take what works for you and go with it.

Post 3

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 4:19am

George, I'd like to offer my congratulations on the most provocative title I've seen on here yet. Of course I had to read the article immediately. :)

Your description of the phases of integration really struck a chord with me. When I first learned of Rand's fallibility (at age 25 or so) I was blinded by anger. However, I have long since accepted that neither of us are supreme deities.

Goddesses, perhaps. ;)

J

Post 4

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 5:38am

George Cordero wrote:

The last phase (for those able to break out of the second) is the value-seeking period. Here we slim down from a fat, satiated Buddha and re-discover the hunger for the exhilaration of the first phase. Except now we have the added benefit of being able take our intellectual development out of the purely theoretical and apply it into our everyday lives. Here our primary concern is how to apply Objectivism to ourselves as individuals, and not how to apply it to others. This is the period where Objectivism becomes a means to an end, a tool in the process that we call our lives. The value-seeking period begins the moment that we cease to cast pearls from mountaintops as gods, but begin to climb mountains as men.

This paragraph sums my "mature" phase of experiencing Objectivism. It captures the essence of my series of articles detailing how to experience Objectivism using standard personal organization tools from Franklin Covey and Microsoft. I appreciate your article deeply. Thank you for posting it.

Luke Setzer

Post 5

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 8:14am

George: Thank you for a very perceptive article. I'm sure that many, if not most, of the people populating this board have gone through this process, and you were able to articulate it in a way that we can all associate with.

Sam

Post 6

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 10:47am

One of the best articles I've read on SOLO ever! Thanks.
Ever since I started reading about Objectivism, I felt that I discovered something great I've been looking for it all my life.
But I really hated the ARI vs TOC differences, not because they are unimportant, but because I felt that they are eclipsing the importance of the Objectivism philosophy.
This article on SOLO, along with many others, by Linz, Joe and many others on SOLO which makes SOLO the real heir of the Objectivism philosophy.
Thanks George
PS: you should add the two books on the SOLO store ASAP, this article will bring important revenues from selling the the two books.

Post 7

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 12:46pm

I would like to thank everyone for their kind responses.

George

PS: Mr. Setzer (and fellow Floridian) - Perhaps I should take a closer look at your articles.

Post 8

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 1:19pm

Good stuff George, I really enjoyed this piece.

There were two distinctions that struck me as particularly perceptive: Firstly, the "academic" vs the "dilettante". This follows in the line of an earlier discussion that talked of the need for a place in objectivism for "amateurs". I consider myself to be a proud "dilettante". The nuances (eg, as you suggest, epistemology) are beyond my interest. I am in agreement with the basics and want to get on with applying objectivism to LIVING- hence my love of SOLO :-).

The second distinction, with respect to intellectual phases in the adoption of objectivism, fits closely to my own personal experience. I find it illuminating, surprising and somewhat of a relief to read above that others share this path!

Well done.

Post 9

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 3:19pm

I take interest in other things for a few days, like the Yankees-Red Sox bout for the American League pennant, or editing JARS, and today, I just spy upon SOLO HQ, and lo and behold, I see a title, "Why I Hate Chris Sciabarra & Barbara Branden." Oy. "It's Doubting Thomas again," I say. ("Doubting Thomas" is my pet name for George Cordero.) "There you go again," I say.

Then I read it. Call me a masochist.

What can I say now? Except: Thank you.

You don't think I can keep it at two words, do you? By August 2005, Russian Radical will celebrate its 10th anniversary. I've gotten a lot of heat for that book over the past decade, but little essays like this one make it all worth it. So, again: Thank you.

Of course, thoroughly steeped in the "academic" camp that I am, I can't resist asking you to take a look at Total Freedom too, so you can see that that dialectical tradition is Aristotelian far more than it is Hegelian. In the end, I'm not that controversial after all! :)

Post 10

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 3:33pm

George,

I consider both Chris and Barbara to be my friends, so I nearly hit the roof when I first read the title of this article. Good job I read the thing before posting anything :-D

Wonderful article!!

MH

Post 11

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 7:30pm

For the first half of the article, I thought you were applying for a job at the Ayn Rand Institute. Needless to say, I agree wholeheartedly with Jennifer's comment about getting one's attention. You have picked two people who, although not divine, have more divine moments than most other mortals. I will say two things about Mr. Sciabarra:
1) I am in the third part of his tryptic on dialectical thought('Marx, Hayek and Utopia". Ayn Rand, the Russian Radical" and "Total Freedom; Toward a Libertarian Dialetic") This is orginal thinking on the level of Ayn Rand and gives me the sense of exhiliration that I have only felt reading Ayn herself , "The passion of Ayn Rand", and through music.
2) I have never met Chris, but have been emailing back and forth with him this year and love him as if I had known him all my life. However one comes down on his conclusions, have you ever known anyone to present their views with more humanity and, for that matter, just plain elegance?

Since Barbara and I think that we were searching for each other our whole lives, it seems impossible for me to believe that 2005 will only mark 10 years that we have known each other. We can't get away with ANYTHING together, because we think so much alike in essential ways that we always can tell when the other one is not facing something. I feel very much that Solo is a new home for me, so I may indeed write an article that will introduce you to her in a more complete manner in the near future. Let me just say one thing about her here. Can you imagine the the character of someone who could have been through the things that she went through and come out with an objective view of Ayn and with a continuing love for her? I know Ayn wouldn't have been that big.
So George, now that I have read the whole article, you may continue to live.

Post 12

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 9:52pm

Gee, George, can't a person do anything right? Since you hated "The Passion of Ayn Rand," I won't burden you with information about the new book I'm writing, and you don't have to read it. But I should tell you that there's something I neglected to mention in "Passion": *I* am Santa Claus!

Oh, yes, and . . . thank you, George.

And you, dear James, thank you so very much.

Barbara

P. S. Chris, now you and I have both gotten our book plugs in.

Post 13

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 10:29pm

Lance,

All I have to say is: every quarter I get, laaawwwwwwwwwwwwwd blackjack takes it away from me!

Alec

Post 14

Friday, October 15, 2004 - 12:14am

Miss Branden & Mr. Sciabarra,

Here I am pouring my guts out about my personal development, and you 2 use it as an excuse to shamelessly *plug* your books! In all my life I have never seen such shameless display of self-promotion.

The only thing that could ever come close to this in shamelessness, would be for someone to plaster your names on the title of an essay in order to raise their total reader count. Thankfully, I am above such a thing.

All joking aside, I would like to thank the both of you for your kind responses. More importantly, I would like you to know that I am earnestly indebted to you both in having produced works that were highly influential in my intellectual growth.

George

(Edited by George W. Cordero on 10/15, 12:31am)

Post 15

Friday, October 15, 2004 - 4:22am

Thanks to all for the kind comments (Jim! MY GOODNESS! I'm going to have to give you a cut of my commissions at this rate!), and, yes, Barbara, I can't think of a more appropriate way to get these book plugs in. But I am shameless about self-promotion. In this respect, I suppose, I take lessons from the woman whom Leonard Peikoff once called "the greatest salesman philosophy has ever had."

And George, in all seriousness: One of the things that is really important about your essay is that it shows that it is possible to read books critically about subjects you hold dear, books that may even challenge some of your most precious assumptions, and that it is possible to emerge from such readings without having thrown the baby out with the bathwater. That is: It is still (only?) possible to admire Ayn Rand's achievements by contextualizing them: by taking into account her intellectual development and place in intellectual history (as presented in Russian Radical) and the elements of her biography (as presented in The Passion of Ayn Rand). Are these books perfect? Will they be the last words on the subject? No, to both questions. But they sure are among the first words on these subjects. The good news is that it is because of books like these (and others, written and edited by such people as Doug Den Uyl & Doug Rasmussen, Tibor Machan, Torres & Kamhi, and so forth) that we are finally entering the childhood of Rand studies.

I'll get back to you in a hundred years or so to check on how well these studies have matured. But I'm confident that we are only seeing the beginning of a virtual industry around Ayn Rand: her life, her work, and her legacy. Lots more to come ...

Post 16

Friday, October 15, 2004 - 9:05am

The great Objectivist divide is, thanks to the work of these two people, about to be a thing of the past. Chris is so right that true objectivity requires thinking within a context. The complete philosophical framework for this contect is explained in "Total Freedom". Dialectical libertarianism turns Objectivism into objectivism, and leaves Leonard Peikoff trailing behind, coughing in his fumes.
And since Ms. Branden's new book is "by Barbara Branden, with James Kilbourne", we get two plugs each time. I expect that we will be able to tell you more shortly and give you some hints of our progress over the next several months.

Post 17

Friday, October 15, 2004 - 9:13am

P.S. Being in my 60's and having "something of a belly", I am not anxious to have too many discussions about Santa Claus. However, it is my goal by the next Solo conference to be signing autographs as Tom Cruise.
Speaking of appearance, Barbara, in her normal subtle way, has informed me that the picture I am using here is "terrible". I think I look kinda curmudgeonly and cute, but I guess I will bow to Majesty and submit another one sometime...

Post 18

Friday, October 15, 2004 - 4:11pm

Should Ayn Rand be the end or the begining of the discussion?

Post 19

Friday, October 15, 2004 - 8:32pm