In my 18 years I have gone through a number of ideological transformations. The first creed I felt strongly about was communism, but after my 11th birthday I came to the realisation that my devotion to this twisted doctrine was derived from an inherent need to rebel against the systems and peoples that governed me. Since then I have examined grass-roots conservatism, neo-conservatism, progressive liberalism and libertarianism…until finally I discovered the wonderful world of Ayn Rand.
My adherence to Objectivism has its roots in my personality traits.
From a very young age I have hated being told what to do, primarily because I felt those doing all the telling where my intellectual inferiors (and in most cases I was correct). The only person who knows what’s best for Invictus is Invictus. (Capitalism)
I have often been the victim of vicious jealously on the part of my peers. Rand taught me that they were merely attempting to cut me down to their own contemptibly small size. (Egoism)
I was by far the first among my age group to discard notions of God, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. To me, A has always been A. (Reason)
Helping others has never been a hobby of mine. I could not stand it when I was asked as a child to waste my time assisting the brainless idiot who would sit at the back of the class and talk when he should have been working. (Egoism)
I have always had an unshakable faith in my own abilities. This has led me to believe that I can know and achieve practically anything that I desire. (Reason, egoism)
Working on my own, without the assistance of others, was how I achieved the best results I could. Whenever I was thrown into a “group” I would always struggle, I felt that the other group members were holding me back. (Individualism)
While reading this post I was much reminded of myself. Not necessarily the parts about the transformations of ideologies but more of your recounts of your personal traits and your past. Also they were very nicely put, I enjoyed reading it, and it was inspiring. Welcome.
While reading this post I was much reminded of myself. Not necessarily the parts about the transformations of ideologies but more of your recounts of your personal traits and your past. Also they were very nicely put, I enjoyed reading it, and it was inspiring. Welcome.
It is a pleasure to be here.
I think a lot of children growing up share the experiences and feelings expressed in my post. Unfortunately, any notions of self-worth that a child might develop are decried as evil and quickly purged by teachers, churches and society at large.
I was raised in a Catholic, Conservative Republican family and inherited my faith and politics. In college I was exposed but managed to remain immune to the liberalism that oozed from my professors.
While serving in the military I became more of a libertarian after reading several books and articles about the proper role of government that seemed to make perfect sense to me. (I also began to cultivate a healthy distaste and resentment of authority in general).
A “civilian” now, I recall several years ago encountering a reference to a novel and author I’d never heard of (Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead) while researching the origins of “Libertarianism” on the library computer. The novel had a profound effect on me. I have since read the rest of her fiction and some of her non-fiction. I find the person of Rand fascinating and have read the biographies by both Barbara and Nathaniel Branden. I’ve also read Branden’s books on psychology and self-esteem.
I’ve been reading about Objectivism for a few years and have recently branched out to other “-isms” in hope of gaining a broader perspective and better understanding of philosophy in general (I sense I’ve gotten in way over my head). My goal is to develop what has been a subconscious sense of life into a conscious philosophy of life chosen by myself.
LOL! The exact same thing happened to me when I was still at a junior college doing my generals. Same topic, used Rand as a source (probably from the same article as you, if it was the one on intellectual property from CUI), and got an identical comment about that from the professor. That’s too funny. Still got a decent grade on the paper, though. How about you?
That’s very funny. I did well on the paper, though I only quoted Rand once or twice and mainly used other sources. (And yes, the quote was from “Patents and Copyrights” in CUI).
This year I’ve been working on my senior oral thesis on private property theory and my advisor (a different poli sci prof) asked which sources I saw lining up with my own views the most. I tentatively mentioned Rand, saying that I realized she was not very popular at Swat, and surprisingly, he responded by saying that it didn’t matter, if I wanted to use Rand it wasn’t a problem! But he’s probably the only prof in the department who has ever taken her seriously–he’s a socialist, but he’s done a lot of work on Nozick, so I guess he was a little more open to “entertaining” such ideas.
While serving in the military I became more of a libertarian after reading several books and articles about the proper role of government that seemed to make perfect sense to me. (I also began to cultivate a healthy distaste and resentment of authority in general).
Ooh, Socionomer, hop on over to my thread in this Misc. forum called “Objectivists in the military”–I’d love to have you weigh in on the topic.
Before bumping into Rand, I was extremely desperate for a new philosophy. I despised religion, hated faith, was disgusted by altruism, and wanted complete freedom. All this I was criticized for because everyone I new gave lip service or more to religion. Everyone I knew found it funny when someone suggested living life by reason. Everyone scowled someone who even suggested living a life of individualism and even more disgusting was that most of the people I’ve met in life have told me without my asking that man shouldn’t and cannot ever be truly free.
In school, I was highly known for my ability of English and Social Studies and people were so extremely immoral that they would gasp and worship the man or woman who read a book larger then they would allow their ability to stretch. I decided to pick the largest book I could find and read it in a short time to show my supremacy over my classmates. I picked up Atlas Shrugged. I had to read The Fountainhead after that. I was convinced this was the philosophy for the living, happy man and that if I didn’t drive off that present course I’d just turn into another Dominique/ Gail.
I was raised Episcopalian in an upper middle class black family. Black people are weird, especially in the south. I can only speak for my family though, and I can definately say that they all harbor some kind of deep hatred for white people. My mother and father’s situation is so … man I dont even want to go into all of that. I think my mother has figured out I’m an athiest now, she keeps sending me biblical propoganda…
Anyway, I had always lived by some code, my standards, which everyone told me were unrealistically high. Church was a complete bore. I slept through the sermon and woke up for the food. I was always a loner, loved building, or more specifically, creating, and my mother fueled that ambition in me. I was the complete tomboy, loved reading and school… all that jazz. I remember always making A’s in everything, and when my peers would ask me how I did it or why.. I didnt know how to answer them. It wasnt really the grade I was seeking, it was more like the fact that I knew I could do it.
A friend recommended The Fountainhead, and I dont really remember getting too much out of it, I really liked it, but the one pervading thought throughout the entire book was, “Well, duh…” (For me, there was no suspense. I knew Roark would ‘win out’ in the end, there was only the question of when.)
Then I picked up Atlas Shrugged, and my world was anew with pure definition. Such clarity like I had never seen. And yeah, life just became easier. It was like someone earlier had said in this thread, “Like being introduced to yourself.”
While I was growing up, two of my central values were rationality and integrity, although I didn’t think of it in those terms at the time. But I knew thinking and intelligence were important, and I knew I didn’t like people or movements that said one thing and then did another. I wanted things to be consistent and to “make sense”. I also had a strong streak of anti-authoritarianism, derived from a dislike of people telling me to do things instead of presenting reasons why I should do things. By the time I was in high school the above ingredients were pushing me towards a pragmatic conservatism in politics. I didn’t like the liberals but lacked a principled and coherent alternative, thus leading to a simple opposition to what I saw as grandiose, unworkable and dishonest schemes. Psychologically I was curdling into cynicism.
Then my junior year in high school a girl I knew spent 6 months pestering me to read The Fountainhead on the grounds that it was the “most rational” thing I’d ever read. Finally I gave in. Three weeks later I’d read it, Anthem and Atlas Shrugged and was digging into the non-fiction. It probably took another decade before I started to really understand it properly, but that was definitely the turning point.
How I got here… very circuitiously. Brought up religious, but with a very “pro-reason in everything non-religious” bent (no rituals, no superstitions). My earliest memories are that I was not too sure about God. Around my early teens I dismissed the idea of God, and began to move to a mix of communist, “I am God”, and nihilist ideas.
Read Rand and was converted. Gave up Rand for a year and immersed myself in some of my previous books, to see if I would “re-convert”. Didn’t. So, read Rand again, and again, and again.
…what exactly in Sikh philosophy is pro-reason.
I thought it promoted self-sacrifice,…
If there is interest in Sikhism/Sikhi, it would be better to start a separate thread on the topic. (If I read BigBangSingh’s reference, I might start one myself.)
I started out in a Methodist Christian family in the south. Ultimately, the home was governed by two forces, faith (mother) and reason (father). I was forced to attend church until I was old enough to work a job on Sundays. Throughout high school I had played around with a few ideas, but found that I thought within the range of collectivist ideas. I then joined the debate team and realized what a powerful force reason was. I, like a few others on the board, was struck by a need to have everything be consistent and right, especially if I wanted to win a debate round. So I kept researching philosophy, ran into Nietzsche, who I agreed with at the time, and stalled there until college.
In college, I met a girl, a professed Objectivist, who after a few dates spurned me. Now, I’m not entirely certain why, but I attributed this to her philosophy. Interestingly enough, my dad used to keep a copy of Atlas Shrugged on his bookshelf for almost all of my boyhood, until he re-converted to Christianity. So I borrowed the book, and read it in a week. I wasn’t entirely certain about the ideas, but I knew it was the greatest book I had ever read. Ultimately the ideas integrated, and about six months later I started to read the rest of the fiction, and moved onto the non-fiction, of which the only title I haven’t read is the epistemology.
I realized recently that I believed a lot of the things Objectivism teaches early on in my life though I didn’t have a name for it. Unfortunately, in sixth grade, my mother started taking me to a fundamentalist Christian church for the first time and I converted, which started a chain reaction of hellish proportions until I was 19. When I was 19, I accidentally stumbled across the web site of an agnostic and became intrigued, so I read Russell’s Why I Am Not A Christian.
So, over the past five years, I have experiemented with many philosophies, but not until I read Atlas Shrugged did I find a stable and rational one and was able to put a name to the things I’ve believed all along.
