Exhibit A
It's all too obvious from this example (and it's only one among many) that the malicious, cowardly Rand-hating thugs who infest this otherwise-important social-media outlet for widely-viewed intellectual discourse don't care to have an argument on a level field of play. (Cowards! Weaklings! BUMS!) The downvoting patterns are specifically directed at burying Yours Truly's eminently sensible, factually-supported responses to the well-upvoted anti-Rand idiocy that is rampant there. That's not philosophy, that's a playground mentality intended to deceive the readership about the true nature of the discussion taking place there. This is the kind of crowd grown and bred by the university philosophy departments these days? That shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, given the disgusting, pathological, politically-motivated pattern of behavior by a number of "eminent figures" in that profession.
I really don't know how this problem could be solved; it's a failing of the format that would not happen on a genuine Usenet-style format of old. It's a problem that reddit itself is going to have to fix by some useful and workable change of the format.
(There's also some other software problem that has been resulting in a whole lot of my posted comments being filtered by a spambot for reasons not yet ascertained by the mods there. Oh, well. It's discouraging enough to see what I spend much time posting there get buried by anonymous cowards when my comments do show up. (This is aside from the general feel someone such as myself gets from discussing Rand on /r/"philosophy": that I'm wading through a crowd of irrational bigots, probably much like trying to defend theism on /r/atheism. [Oh, if you think religious people can be irrational bigots, just watch the way so many of those in the "new atheist" movement react like poo-flinging monkeys toward anyone religious. "Liberals" can be much lower than the "conservatives" they so often stereotype.]) Discouragement is the malicious cowards' motivation, of course. I shall have to adjust my own course of action accordingly. One thing I'm sure of, however, is this: this epistemic aggression will not stand, man. Not in the long run. BUP.)
Perhaps the most discouraging thing of all - as a general proposition, not just in terms of concrete instances of injustice or against whom such malicious behavior is directed - is how the stifling of pro-Rand voices has implications beyond merely that for the nature and quality of philosophic discourse. As Peikoff explained at great length in Chapter 8 of OPAR, on the virtues, the effects of a little dishonesty, by the nature of reality and how all rational cognition is integrated, cannot but spread like a cancer to more and more facets of the dishonest person's existence. (The case of Nathaniel Branden's progressively worse and increasingly all-encompassing deceptions of Ayn Rand until it blew all up in the end - as it had to - serves as a striking illustration of the principle.) As anyone who reads this blogs regularly knows, this culture desperately needs an infusion of Aristotelianism in order to address its problems and challenges (much less move above and beyond toward a positive: big-time cultural flourishing). I don't know how many times it has to happen, for people to get the point that where Aristotelianism (or something like it - e.g., Jeffersonianism) is alive and well, cultures and societies have flourished in ways they didn't before.
As it happens, the single most influential intellectual figure on the American public scene for the last half century up until the present (who else would it be besides Rand?) is - as some of the nation's leading scholars of Aristotle will tell you - also a neo-Aristotelian. This makes it quite inescapable that in any serious discussion about how to move America forward into a period of enlightenment and flourishing - about what ideas to preach, what behaviors to encourage, what strategies to pursue - the name "Ayn Rand" cannot just somehow be pushed off to the side as irrelevant. This is simply the nature of things, an unalterable reality, an undeniable absolute. I think that if there were some way around that, I would have thought of it by now. But the (perfectivist) principle involved precludes it. It has to. Rand shares too fundamental a similarity to Aristotle and Jefferson for it not to be so. One doesn't have to like this reality to acknowledge it. Me, I've simply become accustomed to it; it matters not what my feelings about Rand are. I'm a perfectivist, and she's a forerunner of the idea, and that's all there is to it.
So, given all this, assuming that it's an infusion of Aristotelianism that we need, why couldn't we just say "let's go with Aristotle and/or Jefferson, they provide the best examples to follow." Okay, but how then do you manage to evade the logical consequence that Rand must enter the discussion? I can't think of a single fucking way it can happen. It's either-or. Either you accept Aristotelianism and Jeffersonianism - and therefore accept Rand in some fundamentally important sense - or you reject Rand and thereby in effect reject Aristotelianism and Jeffersonianism. The reddit /r/"philosophy" thugs, and all too many people in the academy, have chosen the latter course. What are the American People going to think about that when they come to find all this out? "mouse, meet Cat."
If these entities paid attention to Rand like they're supposed to - as Aristotle and Jefferson themselves would if they were around today, since their policy is not one of evasion but integration, particularly with respect to culturally-significant author-figures (this is no-brainer shit, is it not?) - then of course Aristotle would become their center of attention as well. One need only look at how the really smart people very much influenced by Rand end up being big-time Aristotle fans as well.
As things stand at the moment, most of the non-Randian crowd are completely oblivious to what Leonard Peikoff's lecture courses are all about. These courses used to be in the hundreds of dollars each, making them prohibitively expensive to the very people - college undergrads - for whom they would make the most difference. Now, they're marked down to around 10 bucks apiece. The completely-oblivious crowd does not know what this portends, but I do, and so do those who've listened to and absorbed the material contained therein. It spells doom for the oblivious ones (if they don't clean up their act). There's just no getting around the fact that when college undergrads by the thousands upon thousands get their digital hands on these courses, coupled with a growing academic literature on Rand, the older generation of intellectuals is going to be replaced over time by a bunch of Randian-Aristotelians - all for the better, of course. If I knew of a way around this eventuality, short of Apocalypse stepping the way, I think I would have figured it out by now. But, well, you know, A is A. ;-) And /r/"philosophy" is a fucking joke.
But seriously, what do the Rand-haters do in the event that a shit-ton of undergrads have Understanding Objectivism coursing through their veins? Now that's an ultimate hypothetical right there, a cultural-singularity type of event beyond which we can hardly predict. Perhaps the question to be asked first, is: will a shit-ton of undergrads have Understanding Objectivism coursing through their veins in the reasonably near future? If so, why? If not, why not? To listen to the Rand-haters, one might think they don't take such an eventuality seriously because, well, of course (for them) Objectivism is obviously shit and always will be. But they haven't listened to Understanding Objectivism, though, now have they. So what you then have to ask is whether someone could listen to Understanding Objectivism and come out of it not taking Objectivism seriously. But all the evidence I've inductively observed tells me that the chances of that happening are slim to none, but then again what if the available sample size is already biased and too small? (Huh. What a question to ask. I wonder what cognitive methodology would boldly facilitate one's asking such questions aimed at establishing the full context. Gee, lemme think....) But what if it isn't? Then what?
Well, then it comes down to an issue of how many of those intellectually-eager undergrads are going to buy up these $10 courses and proceed to go hog wild with their classmates and professors, a scenario where understanding Objectivism becomes the cool new hip fad in a way it just wasn't before. That might depend in good part on the use of existing media for advertising this material to the right demographic. That's a fairly capitalistic concept, ones that the people at the Ayn Rand Institute might be more well-attuned to more than just about any of the ideas-merchants out there. First off, they have Rand books selling like hotcakes, year in and year out. In the middle of those books are those postcards telling you where you can get more information on things like newsletters, campus clubs, recorded lecture courses, and so forth. You have a large number of existing Objectivists who've taken these courses telling the newer students of Objectivism on Facebook or wherever that "you've got to hear this course, it will really amplify your comprehension of the philosophy." It'll be all in (near-)unison directed toward the "newbies." And guess what, they won't cost an arm and a leg, either! You could get a couple dozen courses for what used to be the price for only one! And it's all Leonard Peikoff in his brilliantly engaging and entertaining lecturing style, too! Wow! What a fucking bargain, huh? A steal. Like, could this be for real? Did the ARI really do that? Why listen to music online for free when you could listen to Peikoff for 25 hours for $10? And maybe instead of getting drunk at the frat party the undies will spend that time doing the more cool thing by listening to a Peikoff lecture. Just maybe.
What was that about BUP again? You know, I'm feeling so much better now than when I began this posting. Took a negative and turned it into a positive. Lesson: don't let the filthy, scummy, slimy fucks get you down. Thanks for guiding me in this direction, /r/"philosophy," keep up the bad work! :-D
You can't refute perfectivism. :-)
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| "Checkmate, asshole." |
