sam c b

Hey there Dragon Lady thank you. This whole thing isn't that big a deal to me so answering questions and getting into a debate was not something I was inclined to do. What i was looking for was an opinion from someone like yourself with 2161 posts! Gadzooks, that's a lot of posts but it gives you the credibility that I was seeking. I thought that he was being a hypocrite and I'll take your opinion as confirmation. And that's pretty well the end of it, the tenants of objectivism as I understand them remain, and my ex brother in law doesn't quite fit into the role model he parades around in. Thanks for your help.

I have other priorities in my life other than an objectivist forum. I remember from my university days reading and thinking thru the ideas of objectivism so I always thought that I understood the strong positions this fellow took. But he always saw the world as black or white and never could understand that some of us could also see grey. So basically we lived our lives apart. But this guy was married to my wife's sister so there never was getting too far away from him but that also meant that when the marriage broke up I got to hear all the details about the settlement. So it just seemed strange to me that someone who believed so strongly in self determination and individualism and stuff like that would stoop to taking money from his ex-wife. This guy spent most of his life not working, his university era jobs were all government funded, none of his self employment jobs ever got off the extensive drawing boards he constructed, his only real job was a few year stint as a teacher in a private school where he got to promote objectivism and enamor a girl some 25 years his junior. Now she supports him while he goes to the gym and works out. I guess it just seems to me that he ends up dominating the relationship and takes a free ride by having his partner work while he doesn't. I just thought the support payments took it a bit too far for someone who was a believer in objectivism. So I did a search for a forum like yours and posed the question. Now I see various answers to it but still no hard interpretation of objectivism and its position on support. Perhaps this will get it. I hope so. Thanks for your help.

I know a guy who is a raging objectivist. He was married to a girl who was much smarter and professionally successful than him. For a brief period in his life he worked as a teacher and ended up in bed with one of his students. He is now divorced. As part of the divorce settlement he was given support payments for a year or two, plus he receives child care payments also from his ex-wife. This all seems strange to me that someone who is such an avowed objectivist would accept support payments such as these. Am I missing something here or is he taking the best of both sides?