Klaus Nordby Discussions With Young Friend Discovering Atlas Shrugged and Asking Questions
I think you will enjoy the conversation between them. Any questions for Klaus? Check out his website: Klausnordby.com
SOURCE URL: http://www.klausnordby.com/discussion/2.html
A friend of mine -- now a long-term Objectivist -- started out in Libertarian circles. He told me he had observed an interesting thing. As he put it, "Both they and I were all in favor of decriminalizing drugs. But THEY -- the Libertarians -- wanted this because they just wanted to USE drugs. Whereas I had no interest in that -- I just wanted principled freedom."
It's saying there are two reasons people might want gov't out of their lives: 1) they want the gov't to stop bothering them when they do something they like and 2) principled freedom. These two seem similar. Couldn't you want both? I want the freedom to refuse to work with gay people, even though I have no use for it. I just think it's immoral to force me to work with or pretend to respect someone if I don't want to. I also want the right to Taco Bell and to be slightly overweight. I don't feel any more principled in supporting the right to be a homophobic idiot than I do supporting rights I personally exercise. It's not a selfless desire to be righteous. I just want to live in a free world.
I have had to accept that most of the people with whom I surround myself are capable of rationalizing a connection between any two points in the known Universe. Therefore, if I want to discuss philosophy with them I have to be careful not to put them 'on the defensive' or all I will get is a frustrating series of quasi-exchanges full of hair-splitting and factoids.
This is not an attribute of Libertarians, Liberals, Randists or any other group; this is Human Being 301. Bright people know how to do this. I find that if I verbally acknowledge some aspect of the outcome I can often get a genuine discussion of the rational.
Jan
freedom itself -- can lead to very interesting exchanges ...
as a youngster, I stopped more than one fight by responding,
"I don't like my tone of voice, either!" . while they
scratched their head, I walked away unharmed. -- j
.
Jan
me feel like I am going out of control. . I have enough
trouble focusing anyway, and heavy adrenaline just
makes it worse -- or better, if violence is needed.
I try to take it easy when I get near that zone. -- j
.
Jan
away from the focal zone where I belong! -- j
.
Are you saying we should admit human foibles, work around them, and not condemn people for exhibiting them? This makes sense to me.
Jan
Yes. :) My thought is to manage that foible. That's why we double-blind tests. It's why we learn the pitfalls our minds fall into.
Jan
This is an example of people using a 'double blind' method to compensate for their own biases and result in a better outcome. Another example would be by making tests 'anonymous' when they are being graded. People are fallible, but we are clever and we can find some ways of compensating for our weaknesses: processes, checklists, double blind studies.
Insofar as entitlement is concerned, we live in a society that is far too entitled. At the very least, the entitlements should be symmetrical.
Jan
In this case, if the women were better players, the orchestra that hired them would be a better orchestra. So let it play out by itself.
But I am talking about voluntarily employing methods to make myself more efficient. Perhaps I am prejudice against hiring older people for entry level jobs, even when they would be the best choice. I do not consciously have anything against doing this, so I eliminate 'age' as much as possible from my basis of consideration. This allows me to do a better job.
Another example: I am occasionally asked to judge various art/poetry entries. I really really do NOT want to know who wrote the verses or did the art. I do not want to feel myself having to deal with 'shall I give the point to a stranger or to my friend' situation: Having the entries be anonymous makes this a lot cleaner and lets me make a better decision, based on skill alone.
The orchestras that started using the 'tryout behind a curtain' technique have been pleased by the results, and more orchestras are voluntarily opting for this method of selection. The orchestra leaders did not realize that they had been crippling their own choices and selecting poorer players just because they fit comfortably in the conventional profiles.
I am all in favor of judgement and discrimination, but I am also aware that I can choose to engage tools that make me more effective than I would otherwise be. The 'double blind' test is one of these. I would like to diminish my fallibilities as much as possible.
Jan
A lot of discrimination is the result of people making generalizations to get faster selections in a world where there are so many choices and so little time to make them. Therefore, one might NOT hire blacks because a large majority of people growing up in the black culture are entitled and troublemakers- and one doesnt have the time or the risk-taking to go against the general belief.
When, in response to a fellow Airman literally throwing a copy of AS at me, I was awakened from my cynical stupor to the world that is portrayed in AS, my life changed.
Subsequently, stirred from my moral/intellectual stupor, I excitedly picked up a copy of TF. At some point in the book, I cannot remember precisely "where," I began to experience a feeling of dis-ease. The unbridled and intense curiosity/enthusiasm that I had felt as the story and characters of AS unfolded, while they emerged initially in TF, they waned and were "augmented" with a sobering apprehension.
Upon finishing TF I was left in significant emotional conflict. It took a while to identify, eventually resulting in the realization that significant value-judgments I had made - consciously and not, needed intellectual dismemberment. It was this specific realization::
While I consciously admired the characters of virtue, objectively defined, in both novels, I had to face the fact that emotionally that in The Fountainhead, I identified more with Keating than with Roark! (To this day I cannot answer why the same awareness did not manifest while reading AS!)
It represented a "low" point in my life..........
Untangling what I had "absorbed" from my parents and the culture, and had failed to recognize on my own, upon realization I needed to undertake, was initially a profoundly debilitating experience. While never experiencing a desire to kill myself, to this day I still occasionally find myself unnecessarily "condemning" myself for my initial abdications in life.
Rand awakened me to the world that I had cynically ignored. Following her awakening, Branden subsequently awakened me to "Me."
Advice to all parents: Take the responsibility for having a child with the utmost of importance. Failure to do so potentially produces a child that at best, recognizes life and personal responsibility at some point before it becomes virtually impossible to do so.
At worst it produces a society similar to most of the "adults" portrayed in Atlas Shrugged - from which people such as Klaus's young friend, must unfairly wrest their freedom.
But either people are rotten or the Universe is rotten -- which thwarts their Good Ideals in actual practice.
conversation ... with one "highlight" which I have had
trouble putting into words....... "changing older
people's automatized epistemology is almost
always near-impossible." . well said! -- j
.