Introduction

[Time Tourist]

Hello everyone.

 

I'm a 41 year old British Londoner. I grew up in a 'centre-left' leaning household, was taught that selfishness means being bad while 'altruism' means being kind, considerate and generally nice. I voted Labour, I argued in favour of higher taxes and thought government regulation could solve everything.

 

I told people I was 'spiritual not religious', I flirted with eastern mysticism and thought I was somehow smarter than the other guy because I was onto something different from the mainstream. I liked obscure, foreign language black and white movies and again thought it was a sign of my intelligence that I was anti mainstream hollywood movies with their larger than life heroes and 'overcome obstacles, succeed in the end' stories. I had a generally snobbish attitude towards America and thought Europe/Europeans were somehow superior while Americans were somehow dumb.

 

In short, I was your basic nightmare.

 

Then at the age of 30, a girlfriend gave me The Fountainhead. I fought against it at first but was intrigued by the characters and the ideas. Then I read Atlas Shrugged, Capitalism the Unknown Ideal, Virtue of Selfishness, Romantic Manifesto and all the rest. I took Leonard Peikoff’s courses on the history of philosophy and I think it was then that it all clicked for me and I realised Rand was the defining genius pretty much of all time. She changed my mind on almost everything including the course of all history.

 

This has been an 11 year process (so far) of learning. I continue to (re) read Ayn Rand and am completely convinced that philosophy is the most important topic that any human being can study. It has been an amazing and wonderful journey but… there are downsides. I wonder if anyone can relate?

 

Throughout this 11 year journey I have found it increasingly difficult to relate to most people around me. I love and am very close to my parents but they cannot understand or relate to my new opinions. I’ve had the same friends for 20+ years (basically uni friends) but they are all still pretty much like I ‘was’. I tried introducing them to Rand and having discussions with them on certain topics but essentially they are not interested; too happy to cling to the familiar certainty of their old views. All the shared memories, trips, stories; all our history is seeping away because we can’t seem to connect anymore. In many ways, the friendships are dying.

 

Now that I see the philosophical basis to things, I find 95% of mainstream media news and general political discussion so tedious and shallow. TV shows that are held up to be ‘the greatest ever’ (i.e. Breaking Bad: story of a pathetic man making bad moral choices) I find totally boring and uninspiring.

 

I know I could get new friends and be happy about meeting people with better values but at 41 with a young family and having just started my own business I have no time. I also don’t like the idea of losing touch with old friends with whom I shared so much. Also, in stark honesty, I'm no Howard Roark, I do need other people; for validation, recognition and support. I also like/need to have a beer, laugh and forget my woes/worries from time to time. I think some of this is perhaps psychological weakness and I need to be tougher. I'm working on it.

 

In the meantime, I’m trying a kind of compromise where I focus on work and family, still seeing old friends from time to time to keep the flame alive (maybe they’ll have the Ayn Rand catharsis/epiphany too at a later date?) and then leading this second life where I go to Ayn Rand Meetup group events and join blogs like this to find like minds online.

I’m wonder if other people have been through the same?

[Repairman]

Time Tourist:

Welcome! If you feel you need validation, I think you'll find it here, but I'm afraid it is geographically impractical for me to act on the desire to buy you a pint of your favorite. You wouldn't be the first to have the experience of discovering Ayn Rand amid the union-dominated working classes, (not intending to make assumptions of your social background, but my upbringing was very working-class.) As of late, I noticed more people from Great Britain joining the forum. This is good news. I look forward to reading your commentary.

[epistemologue]

Welcome to OO, that's quite a story. Drop in the chatroom sometime!

Other people are a huge value in one's life, but that's an interesting topic.

[William O]

Welcome to the forum.

Just so you know, Ayn Rand was opposed to the practice of trying to convert your parents and explicitly warned Objectivists away from trying to do so in one of the Q&A sessions in Ayn Rand Answers. If you have the book, it's page 133-135. I will quote the first paragraph.

Quote

I did say that you should not try to convert your parents. This doesn't mean that you should never discuss ideas with them; but don't try to convert them. Your parents may be neutral about your ideas, or even sympathetic; but if they are antagonistic, so long as they don't force their ideas on you, you should not try to persuade them. No matter how right you are, they will always see you, their child, as a little boy or girl. It is practically impossible, psychologically, for a parent to regard his child as a full adult. To a parent, there will always be the impression of that little one who first began to acquire a personality. No matter how adult you are and how properly your parents treat you, that image of the child always remains. Suppose that little one suddenly undertakes to teach the parent something. The parent, if he's decent, will be profoundly affected by the thought that he must guide the child, and suddenly the child reverses the tables and wants to guide the parent. That is more than a rational person could absorb. If it upsets your parents, you would be at fault.

 

[Eiuol]

Welcome!

On 1/4/2016 at 10:13 AM, Time Tourist said:

Now that I see the philosophical basis to things, I find 95% of mainstream media news and general political discussion so tedious and shallow. TV shows that are held up to be ‘the greatest ever’ (i.e. Breaking Bad: story of a pathetic man making bad moral choices) I find totally boring and uninspiring.

I wanted to say, Breaking Bad really is a phenomenal piece of art. It tells in essentials the story of a man's moral decay, and all the implications of it. Just because one character in particular is morally ugly and uninspiring doesn't mean it's bad art. There's value in acknowledging what it means to be bad besides a typical knee-jerk emotional reaction. There's a lot more to art than a first glance.

[softwareNerd]

On 1/4/2016 at 10:13 AM, Time Tourist said:

I also don’t like the idea of losing touch with old friends with whom I shared so much.

It's tough, but it is also pretty typical. I think this is not so much about Objectivism as such, but about the issues that are important to you. Sometimes, a friendship that seemed just fine may start to feel less than fulfilling and thus shallow: with boredom leading to alienation. You have changed and you simply cannot expect others to change with you: not most of your friends, at any rate. I hope you're able to adjust your expectations and continue some of the friendships at a level that is still satisfying, even if you look elsewhere for "more". I believe it would be a mistake to let all such relationships wither on the vine; rather, accepting the relationships are going to change and are robust to change, figure out what you want to keep and how you will do so. 

[Time Tourist]

8 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Welcome!

I wanted to say, Breaking Bad really is a phenomenal piece of art. It tells in essentials the story of a man's moral decay, and all the implications of it. Just because one character in particular is morally ugly and uninspiring doesn't mean it's bad art. There's value in acknowledging what it means to be bad besides a typical knee-jerk emotional reaction. There's a lot more to art than a first glance.

I know I'm in the tiny tiny minority on this one but I really found it boring and spectacularly over long -I think you could cut at least 1.5 seasons out of it without making much difference. As to whether it's good or bad art, we would need a standard against which to measure it. The objectivist standard, as I understand it, is that art is supposed to be a fuel for our sense of life, depicting man as he ought to be and could be. In Walter White we have a rather pathetic, bumbling, flabby middle-aged man presented with a life changing problem (cancer). At each stage of his decay, he seems to say, 'it wasn't my fault, you can't blame me, there's nothing else I could have done!'. This is precisely the anti-hero of the day.

Anyway, this probably should be a topic for discussion in the aesthetics section of the site. 

Thanks for your welcome though, I look forward to bumping into you across the discussions. 

[Time Tourist]

On 1/4/2016 at 6:37 PM, Repairman said:

Time Tourist:

Welcome! If you feel you need validation, I think you'll find it here, but I'm afraid it is geographically impractical for me to act on the desire to buy you a pint of your favorite. You wouldn't be the first to have the experience of discovering Ayn Rand amid the union-dominated working classes, (not intending to make assumptions of your social background, but my upbringing was very working-class.) As of late, I noticed more people from Great Britain joining the forum. This is good news. I look forward to reading your commentary.

Thank you chief. It's funny, I often hear in American discussion the sentence, "I liked Ayn Rand when I was in High School but one soon grows out of that". Whereas in the UK, at least in my experience, almost no one hears about Ayn Rand at all until they are at least 25; or in my case, 30.  I think the internet is changing all that and indeed, more and more people are picking her up over here. Like you say, good news... and not a moment too soon when two of the major candidates to be leaders of our countries at the next elections (Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn) openly identify themselves as socialists.

[Time Tourist]

17 hours ago, William O said:

Welcome to the forum.

Just so you know, Ayn Rand was opposed to the practice of trying to convert your parents and explicitly warned Objectivists away from trying to do so in one of the Q&A sessions in Ayn Rand Answers. If you have the book, it's page 133-135. I will quote the first paragraph.

 

Cheers William O, 

Thanks for reminding me of that. I have read that book but forgot about that particular section. To be clear, I haven't really tried to convert anyone and certainly not my parents. But discussions came up and then people would say, 'what do you think' and all of a sudden they were hearing views come out of me they couldn't believe. A few friends stuck their head in the sand and their fingers in their ears. Others were curious and asked about it. I even gifted copies of the Fountainhead to 2 friends who expressed interest. But mostly, I keep it to myself and hence need to seek an outlet in places like this! I'm also starting my own blog, which I might even publicise one day.

 

[Time Tourist]

7 hours ago, softwareNerd said:

It's tough, but it is also pretty typical. I think this is not so much about Objectivism as such, but about the issues that are important to you. Sometimes, a friendship that seemed just fine may start to feel less than fulfilling and thus shallow: with boredom leading to alienation. You have changed and you simply cannot expect others to change with you: not most of your friends, at any rate. I hope you're able to adjust your expectations and continue some of the friendships at a level that is still satisfying, even if you look elsewhere for "more". I believe it would be a mistake to let all such relationships wither on the vine; rather, accepting the relationships are going to change and are robust to change, figure out what you want to keep and how you will do so. 

Cheers. You have perfectly summarised my approach. Try to keep some of the friendships going and accept them for what they are. And trying to look for 'more' in the limited time that I have. Look forward to seeing you around the site.