On Tuesday, March 19, I’ll be hosting a webinar for Ayn Rand fans on “5 Mistakes Even Long-time Objectivists Make.” I hope you’ll register and join me. But rather than try to sell you on the webinar, I wanted to bring you back behind the curtain and tell you the story of why I decided to create this event.
I have seen the same mistake, “the deadly, soul-killing mistake of surrendering your idealism”, in similar ways as you describe in others, and at times have felt the pressure to do so myself. It does seem to be the most fundamental mistake. As I anticipate what the other four will be, here are four that occur to me:
- Giving up the values you held before discovering Objectivism, or that are still operative in the present, when now well-read in Objectivism, too easily. (Music, literature, movies, books, friends, activities, such as sports, etc.)
- Not learning how to introspect or not taking enough time to introspect.
- Reading too much Ayn Rand or Leonard Peikoff (et al.), (without a clear and viable purpose), but also not reading with enough structure and not on a schedule.
- Sorrow about the state of the culture and the people around you, fear, anger or hostility, leading to an avoidance of most social relationships, too much solitude turning to loneliness, partly due to social-psychological factors, partly due to ineffective powers of persuasion.
Don, I recently stumbled upon a similar phenomenon similar to Ringer’s experience with Ayn Rand, and maybe even like your uncle’s.
I recently borrowed a fascinating book that I hoped would help me better avoid long longwindedness, because I value brevity, essentialization, unit-economy, and the art of the aphorism. It is a 2005 book by James Geary called The World in a Phrase, where he discusses the nature of the aphorism and those who have used it well. Very early in Chapter One, soon after he relates a sweet and charming story of how he first wooed his wife with an aphorism, I encountered the following:
“In the beginning, it wasn't immediately clear to me how to collect aphorisms. You either have to have a very good memory or make some note of the sayings as you read them. I opted for the latter method. I took down the poster of George Harrison on my wall- … flipped it around, hung it back up, and started writing the aphorisms on the back… The George Harrison poster, for example, has lots of extracts from books by Ayn Rand, J. D.
Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, and Henry David Thoreau. This was my alien-hermit phase … Some of these aphorisms seem a little shallow now. Ayn Rand's exhortations about the virtues of selfishness, for example, no longer move me.”
I had to return the book but it will also return to me. This quotation snubbing Ayn Rand has not dissuaded me from having faith that there will be intellectual and literary value in the subsequent parts of the book.
I have seen the same mistake, “the deadly, soul-killing mistake of surrendering your idealism”, in similar ways as you describe in others, and at times have felt the pressure to do so myself. It does seem to be the most fundamental mistake. As I anticipate what the other four will be, here are four that occur to me:
- Giving up the values you held before discovering Objectivism, or that are still operative in the present, when now well-read in Objectivism, too easily. (Music, literature, movies, books, friends, activities, such as sports, etc.)
- Not learning how to introspect or not taking enough time to introspect.
- Reading too much Ayn Rand or Leonard Peikoff (et al.), (without a clear and viable purpose), but also not reading with enough structure and not on a schedule.
- Sorrow about the state of the culture and the people around you, fear, anger or hostility, leading to an avoidance of most social relationships, too much solitude turning to loneliness, partly due to social-psychological factors, partly due to ineffective powers of persuasion.
Don, I recently stumbled upon a similar phenomenon similar to Ringer’s experience with Ayn Rand, and maybe even like your uncle’s.
I recently borrowed a fascinating book that I hoped would help me better avoid long longwindedness, because I value brevity, essentialization, unit-economy, and the art of the aphorism. It is a 2005 book by James Geary called The World in a Phrase, where he discusses the nature of the aphorism and those who have used it well. Very early in Chapter One, soon after he relates a sweet and charming story of how he first wooed his wife with an aphorism, I encountered the following:
“In the beginning, it wasn't immediately clear to me how to collect aphorisms. You either have to have a very good memory or make some note of the sayings as you read them. I opted for the latter method. I took down the poster of George Harrison on my wall- … flipped it around, hung it back up, and started writing the aphorisms on the back… The George Harrison poster, for example, has lots of extracts from books by Ayn Rand, J. D.
Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, and Henry David Thoreau. This was my alien-hermit phase … Some of these aphorisms seem a little shallow now. Ayn Rand's exhortations about the virtues of selfishness, for example, no longer move me.”
I had to return the book but it will also return to me. This quotation snubbing Ayn Rand has not dissuaded me from having faith that there will be intellectual and literary value in the subsequent parts of the book.