Objectivist Rehab Program?
Posted by davidmcnab 8 years, 11 months ago to Education
The fact that so many people (even people of genius-level intelligence) spend their lives stuck in looter thinking is evidence of just how insidious, powerful and persistent that mind-set is.
Ayn Rand's novels tend to take a black-and-white view of humanity: you're either a producer or a looter and nothing's going to change. But there are some exceptions. For instance, the young man on the pushbike who meets Howard Roark, sees his new housing development, and is transformed for life.
I'm not interested in people who persist in a life-long choice to remain looters. To me, they're like meth addicts who persistently refuse all help, or babies with their insatiable mouths firmly clamped on the tit of State. But I am interested in those who feel, deep down, that something is wrong, that there must be a better way.
For such borderline cases, there is value to be gained from a program to help them migrate to a whole new perspective. Such people need and deserve support - not in the alms-given sense, but in the sense that we all profit when someone new comes into the Gulch for real.
As someone who was raised an brainwashed in a left-leaning family, community, school and university, I can testify that the looter brainwashing effort is nothing short of spectacular. It's about the only thing the looters are brilliantly capable of. So it needs tremendous ingenuity and persistence on our part to support willing people out of that mind-set. This also implies a view of looters not as moral degenerates (unless they persistently refuse all help), but as victims of endemic organised fraud, victims of philosophical injury who often need help to recover. Just as with a lifelong drug addiction, the barriers to escaping looter consciousness are harrowing.
So I wanted to start discussion here on what a "looter rehab" program would need in order to have the greatest possible chance of success with willing people. A healing program, for willing people to evolve out of looter consciousness into free, empowered, ecstatic producers.
Ayn Rand's novels tend to take a black-and-white view of humanity: you're either a producer or a looter and nothing's going to change. But there are some exceptions. For instance, the young man on the pushbike who meets Howard Roark, sees his new housing development, and is transformed for life.
I'm not interested in people who persist in a life-long choice to remain looters. To me, they're like meth addicts who persistently refuse all help, or babies with their insatiable mouths firmly clamped on the tit of State. But I am interested in those who feel, deep down, that something is wrong, that there must be a better way.
For such borderline cases, there is value to be gained from a program to help them migrate to a whole new perspective. Such people need and deserve support - not in the alms-given sense, but in the sense that we all profit when someone new comes into the Gulch for real.
As someone who was raised an brainwashed in a left-leaning family, community, school and university, I can testify that the looter brainwashing effort is nothing short of spectacular. It's about the only thing the looters are brilliantly capable of. So it needs tremendous ingenuity and persistence on our part to support willing people out of that mind-set. This also implies a view of looters not as moral degenerates (unless they persistently refuse all help), but as victims of endemic organised fraud, victims of philosophical injury who often need help to recover. Just as with a lifelong drug addiction, the barriers to escaping looter consciousness are harrowing.
So I wanted to start discussion here on what a "looter rehab" program would need in order to have the greatest possible chance of success with willing people. A healing program, for willing people to evolve out of looter consciousness into free, empowered, ecstatic producers.
Previous comments...
1. Willingness to own and claim responsibility for at least some errors and shortcomings.
2. Ambition of character, some desire and motivation to aspire and grow as a person.
If both of these are present in even a small degree, much is possible.
At this point, as has been pointed out, I have to meet them where they are already (which means to accept, acknowledge and respect their thinking - even as I disagree with it) in order to invite them to walk along with me down a different path.
If I can thus engage the person in open dialogue and inquiry, I can help them see the unarticulated beliefs or premises that underlie their faulty conclusions. Typically an honestly mis-guided person will be shocked to hear those statements when clearly articulated and not want to claim them as their own. So we then can construct alternative beliefs that they would feel prouder to stand for, we can build from there up to the higher level conclusions will displace the ones they have currently held as unsubstantiated mental stowaways for most of their lives.
Questions like "How has that been working for you so far?" can often jostle their thinking. And as always, when the pain of staying in the same psychological, power-draining trap, becomes greater than the fear of stepping into the unknown of an alternative paradigm and way of showing up to life, people's minds begin to crack open a bit, and a bit is all we need.