On Objectivism and Living Well
Will Wilkinson makes some interesting observations about Objectivism’s failure to fully address the importance of human sociality.
His observations correspond with some of my own observations recently about problems within Objectivism.
For example, during the recent TOC graduate seminar, I made a point of asking each participant: “What do you actually do differently, now that you’re an Objectivist?” Sure, Objectivism has changed how we think. But if there’s no theory/practice dichotomy, then our behavior should be changing, too, right?
For a “philosophy for living on earth,” the answers I received were not particularly encouraging. Most people were hard-pressed to think of something that they do differently now.
To be fair, this picture is complicated by several factors. First, many people discovered Ayn Rand as a teenager, when their sense of self was still being developed, and so it may be hard to assess just how much they have changed. They may have turned out very differently than they would have otherwise.
Second, it’s also the case that the people who attend Objectivist conferences, or graduate seminars, are only one particularly skewed sub-set of people who’ve been influenced by Ayn Rand’s philosophy. In particular, they’re the ones who tend to be more intellectual and to enjoy lengthy philosophical discussions.
So the sample that Will and I are discussing is not a true sample of people who’ve been influenced by Ayn Rand’s writings; rather, it’s a sample of people who will devote a week of their summer to attending a conference instead of, for example, devoting that time to starting a business, or visiting relatives, or traveling abroad. Perhaps the people who skip conferences place more emphasis on practice than on theory.
Third, it is often the case that people respond to Ayn Rand’s novels because her ideas already have some significant resonance in their life. So perhaps their behavior hasn’t changed much because, well, their values haven’t changed much. Perhaps they were already very rational, independent, and productive, for example.
Still, it is interesting to me to compare the answers I receive at an Objectivist event with the answers I might receive at a Buddhist retreat: “I meditate daily. I’m generally happier, and less irritable. I argue less with my wife and family. I fret less about the future and spend more time appreciating the present.”
Nobody at the seminar told me they are happier than they were before they encountered Objectivism.
Nobody told me they have more harmonious relationships. Nobody told me they were more successful in their career. Or that they enjoy life more.
When I pointed this out, they were quick to counter that it’s not a fair comparison. And they may be right. Perhaps they’d be more mired in sacrificial relationships if they’d not discovered Ayn Rand’s works. Or perhaps they’d be socialists, and envying people who are more successful than they.
But all this does add up as support for something Nathaniel Branden said during a lecture he gave at TOC in 1996: Knowing that someone calls themselves “an Objectivist” often doesn’t tell you anything about the person.
It doesn’t tell you if they’re happier, live with more integrity, or treat other people with greater respect. It doesn’t tell you they’re more successful in their business, that they have higher self-esteem, or that their face has less pain or fear or guilt.
To me, this certainly suggests that there is something missing from Objectivism. And I think Will is right, that a big part of what is missing is our understanding of the power and importance of social behavior in human life.
Another part of what is missing is the technology for leading a more happy life. I’ve come to think that Objectivism’s need for therapeutic practices is just as great as Buddhism’s need for a reasoned philosophy. If Buddhism is a set of practices in search of a philosophy, Objectivism is a philosophy in search of a set of practices.
Unfortunately, many of the regular practices Objectivism has spawned so far involve inappropriate anger, moralism, and denunciations. As a psychologist, I’ve never seen that make anyone happy.
This is a topic that deserves attention from serious Objectivist scholars. I have a few ideas for how to proceed, and I hope to write about them one day (assuming that other Rand admirers are interested in hearing them).
I also welcome suggestions from others who recognize the significance of what’s missing in Objectivism.
Joshua,
Great post re the lack of practices in Objectivism. You should definitely continue to publicly explore this topic. I’d suggest that you examine the notion of “what is a practice?” and how does that relate to Rand’s notion of man possessing a self-created soul, which implies a sense of process.
The O counterpoint, I imagine, would be that if you consistently think for yourself and act rationally that is the process to creating your soul. However, the pheneomena of the untrained mind’s discursive thought (did someone say psycho-epistemology?) leading to semi-effective thinking patterns is a rich topic where Westerners can benefit from the East’s thousands of years of R&D in this area. What I mean by discursive thought is the mind’s tendency to free associate the past, future and fantasy during lulls in conscious thought.
An interesting analogy would be sailing a boat: guidance is a function of ongoing fine tuning of the rudder and sail positioning. Take your hand off the rudder or neglect the sails and you’re going nowhere fast. A meditation practice helps one develop greater self-tuning capabilities, to dial back into “now” from the inevitable distractions and mental indulgences that people experience. In disrupting an indulged pattern embodied in recycling story lines that form the basis of emotional biases, long-term behavioral changes can emerge over time. Some people call it growth.
Apart from Branden’s sentence stem completion exercises, are there other activities on O’s approved list where people can explore and transform biases towards anger, self-righteousness, arrogance or name your preferred defense mechanism/habitual, pre-cognitive pattern?
gregg
I agree with your post and with Will’s. But I think there is something even more fundamental wrong with Objectivism.
Will suggests that Objectivism has an inadequate understanding of human nature. And I agree. It’s account of one’s sexual responses being a direct result of one’s philosophical premises is “bizarre”. Yes, it is a friggin’ joke. Not to say they don’t play any role but alot of what humans find sexually attractive is hard wired into our genes i.e. a woman’s hip/waist ratio, a man’s status, etc... Along the same lines, Objectivism has no place for family and children. But, if we accept evolutionary theory, the natural telos of all living things is reproductive sucess. People, especially women, have a strong desire to have children and, like Will says, almost everyone does.
Interestingly, though, this seems to be the result of a philosophical error (it is also likely a rationalization of Rand’s intellectual strength versus her social ineffectiveness). I know that many people disagree, but a close reading of the “Objectivists Ethics” shows that Rand equivocates on life (survival) and life proper to man (flourishing). Further, depending on how you construe her argument you either only get life as mere survival or you get reproductive sucess. If you construe her to be saying that only living things face the fundamental alternative of existence vs. non-existence and it is that which gives rise to a need for ethics, the ethics is one of mere survival since that would keep one existing. If you construe her to be saying life is the standard because that is what we are built for i.e. her stuff about the circulation of the blood, etc... then you get reproductive sucess. Because what we are built for is not the maintenance of life but reproductive sucess. See Michael Huemer’s online essay for more detail on this.
Now, for what I think is the more fundamental problem with Objectivism. One way to approach this is to answer the question of what someone’s being an Objectivist tells you about them. Besides being less likely to go to church, in general Objectivsts are more intellectual. They read more, they have intellectual friends, jobs, etc... Consider the activities at ARI and TOC conferences. They consist almost completely of lectures! Or think about the topics of articles from ARI or TOC or the of the discussions at SoloHQ. They center around current events, politics and philosophy.
So what? Well, the Objectivist conception of the good life, in my opinion, is highly over-intellectualized. I think that having a sound philosophy and theoretical understanding of certain subjects is valuable but there is so much more to a fulfilled human life.
The novelist Michael Prescott writes in his “Shrugging Off Ayn Rand“: “The best one-line critique of Objectivism I ever heard was leveled by a friend of mine, who said, ‘Ayn Rand was the ultimate spokesman for the left hemisphere of the brain.’ The left hemisphere is conventionally associated with methodical reasoning skills, which are obviously a crucial part of what it means to be human. But there is also......”
Objectivists make a big deal of man being the rational animal. Sure, reason is what differentiates us from other animals. But we are also animals and the animal part of our nature is extremely important to what we are and what a good human life is. Sex, family, social life, the body, the emotions, the unfathomable unconscious, intuition - all of those need to be given proper attention for a satisfying life. But Objectivism short shifts them and over focuses on the life of reason.
Think about the leaders of the Objectivist movement: Peikoff, Kelley, Branden, Thomas, Binswanger, Reisman, Machan, etc... Many of these people are tremendous human beings who I admire but they are primarily intellectuals, perhaps with the exception of Branden who is much more of a “whole” human being. And it is this very wholeness, this fuller humanity, that is necessary for happiness, and not just rational philosophy and the theoretical life.
Its taken me a while to understand this. And I wish it weren’t so since I am so much better at philosophy than other parts of life! But it goes along way, I think, to explaining why Objectivism didn’t make me, and so many others, all that much happier.
Greg Feirman
Joshua,
Excellent post–and I hope you will keep posting on this subject.
Robert
Josh-
Both you and Will raise important points, but why dwell on the negative? I guess I’ve never thought Objectivism had all the answers for an individual person to lead a happy life. The answers would be different in any case for each person. However, I remember the experience of reading Atlas at sixteen and that provided emotional fuel for an awful long time. Other authors have written books on “control of consciousness” issues and evolutionary psychology and self-acceptance. Why not simply find out what they have to say and apply what makes sense to you and leave it at that?
On the topic of what I’ve done differently, I’ve found that a relatively few decisions have an irrevocable effect on the rest of my life. I concentrate on making sure those don’t have a sacrificial element to them and are what I want and I do the best I can with everything else without self-regulating or censoring. I know many happy people who are Christians, Buddhists, etc., but I wouldn’t adopt their “answers” for all the tea in China.
Hi Jim,
I don’t think that I am dwelling on the negative. However, Objectivism does have some problems with its view of human nature, and these problems affect a lot of people.
One good way to fix such problems is to talk about them. My goal is a constructive one: I want to see people achieve more of what they’re after when they sign on for a philosophy of reason and personal happiness.
I hope you are doing well.
Joshua
This isn’t a problem with Objectivism, but rather with (some) Objectivists.
If you read Ayn Rand’s fiction and honestly pay attention to everything (not just skipping between speeches), then it’s hard to miss the social ethos of Objectivism that drips from each page. Friends are vitally important. The vast majority of Dagny’s struggle in AS is the search for an equal. Even Galt’s speech, the pinnacle and core of rationalistic objectivist dogma, has a thorough discussion of the application of selfishness to proper relationships. In Galt’s Gulch, we see families, children, and friendships. It’s ludicrous to think of a Roark spending 90% of his waking hours angry and bitter at the workings of a Keating, yet this is the life of many so-called Objectivists.
Anyone who’s studied Aristotle will most likely have encountered the “Three friendships” discussion, which also gives an egoist account of friendship. (Friends of utility, friends of pleasure, and friends of virtue - friends of virtue being the best, as they are the most profitable.)
I have found that, if someone calls themselves an Objectivist, he’s most likely one of two things:
1. An intensely boring angry chap who bitterly quotes Ayn Rand but has no individuality. If you’ve read her books, then you quite possibly have nothing further to discuss with him - you’ve heard everything that he has to say. (AKA VVS for Very Very Serious.)
2. A driven intelligent individual with some of the same sorts of goals that I have.
[2] is about the best that I could hope for in a person - [1] is worse than a backstreet boys concert. My favorite Objectivists are the ones who don’t know there’s a word for it.
For my part, I’ve never been to a convention, but am not opposed to the idea. It’s just always a lot more attractive to work or play instead. Every VVS that I’ve met goes to every one that he can manage. So, maybe the sampling error has something to do with these results.
LP’s “Understanding Objectivism” lecture covers this topic quite well. You might want to check that out for more insights.
In “The Art of Thinking,” he covers how this sort of behavior is a classic result of Rationalism. I’d be willing to bet that most objectivists at a conferrence come from a personal history of highly charged rationalistic thinking.
Unfortunately, the loud and crazed core always sets the public image for a group. Just as the wack-job M-16-waving NRA members pollute the image of the entire organization, so too do VVS o’ists present the “human face” of the movement - and it’s a >:(
They perpetuate the stereotype of selfishness as shortsighted childish rudeness.
This topic needs to be discussed in every Objectivist forum. Some excellent observations are made here.
I discovered Ayn Rand in my teeen years, too, but across most of my life I have benefitted more from the work of Branden. There is so much to find in his work that demonstrates through his “cases” the direct application, mis-application, or absence of Objectivist principles in the everyday events of life.
At the most fundamental level, Rand failed to identify man’s nature in its entirety. We know that the scope of the actions that an entity can take is set by its nature, or properties; yet she focused on a subset of human “properties”.
This is why so many behaviors that poorly serve an individual wind up condemned by Rand as “evil”. The scope of human nature includes many unprofitable possibilities - such as procrastination, delusion, etc - but the fact that they are unprofitable does not make each of them evil. There are of course many human choices which are moral violations, but they exist at one end of an entire scale. Accepting Rand’s harsh condemnations has led many Objectivists to lives of continual self-reproach. In addition, friendships become difficult to keep when the same moral perfection is expected of others.
The ability to act against one’s self interest, most frequently by placing a short-term goal above long-term goals, is part of human nature. O teaches us that doing so is not the best choice for getting the most from our life. The great value of Branden is that he accepts that the nature of being human most fundamentally includes the ability to make wrong choices. His work implies that making better choices is more frequently a matter of better thinking and self-management practices, and not always a matter of moral condemnation.
Wisdom, insight, foresight, balance, understanding– is what I’m currently looking for in Objectivist material.