It is a daunting thing to try to speak for O’ism, many are probably less than certain if the way they are expressing their points gets not only the point across but is in line with Objectivist teaching and principlals.
Just to be clear, you should not be “speaking for Objectivism” in activism. You should be expressing your own views, as best you can. If you make mistakes, those errors will be yours alone – as it should be.
Just to be clear, you should not be “speaking for Objectivism” in activism. You should be expressing your own views, as best you can. If you make mistakes, those errors will be yours alone – as it should be.
Alright maybe I didn’t phrase that well, but… six of one, half a dozen of the other. Many people still have a hard time enunciating the things that seem so clear inside their brain-housing group.
Your question misunderstands what they’ve claimed. It’s a rough estimate based on an analysis of the forces at work in the culture, not some kind of hard and fast number. Based on what I’ve seen from the religious right of late, I think the number might be too optimistic.
In general, I strongly recommend that you refrain from comment on these lectures until you’ve listened to them. It’s not fair to ask other people to spend their valuable time summarizing them for you, and any such summary would probably only result in pointless arguments based on your partial understanding.
Here’s what I recommend – if you’re going to make an argument, make it yourself. If you’re going to cite someone else’s argument, then you should properly summarize it. It’s not fair to ask other people to research a post you make by reference of lectures hours long. Is it really that hard to explain what their “rough analysis” consisted of, in a few sentences?
Alright maybe I didn’t phrase that well, but… six of one, half a dozen of the other. Many people still have a hard time enunciating the things that seem so clear inside their brain-housing group.
That kind of clarity does not come automatically, but one of the best ways of achieving it is through presenting your ideas to a non-Objectivist audience. You will have to focus on the fundamentals, concretize well, etc. It’s a skill, so you can only learn by doing. Anyone can start small – such as with short web comments on news articles. And then you can work your way up to LTEs and op-eds. You’ll surely make mistakes – but so what? Just don’t make the same ones again.
And, if you engage in activism as a kind of project with other Objectivists – preferably from your area, on a single issue – you will have the benefit of their advice and feedback, as well as the potential for enduring friendships.
If you’d like to fight for your values in the culture – but are uncertain of how to do it – join my OActivists mailing list. The archives alone have tons of fantastic advice on activism, and new opportunities for activism are posted routinely.
Here’s what I recommend – if you’re going to make an argument, make it yourself. If you’re going to cite someone else’s argument, then you should properly summarize it. It’s not fair to ask other people to research a post you make by reference of lectures hours long. Is it really that hard to explain what their “rough analysis” consisted of, in a few sentences?
It’s a set of three seminal lectures by two prominent Objectivist intellectuals, available on the web for free. If you’re not interested enough to listen to them – to hear what they have to say for themselves, to understand the full context of their conclusion about that 20 year window – then any discussion of the matter with you would be pointless. I would summarize, you would misunderstand then raise some invalid objection, I would attempt to correct your misunderstanding and answer your objection, you would misunderstand and object more, and blah blah blah. In the meantime, I could have written a slew of letters to the editor – something that is, undoubtedly, far far more important to me. And you could have listened to the lectures for yourself. I’ve seen that happen time and again, and it’s a stupid, pointless waste of time.
That’s all I’m going to say on this matter. I’ve got real work to do, and I’ve already wasted enough time.
It is a daunting thing to try to speak for O’ism, many are probably less than certain if the way they are expressing their points gets not only the point across but is in line with Objectivist teaching and principlals.
To offer my own 2 cents and to expand on Thales idea…
I belong to this place. It’s focus is the Canadian Forces but it’s strength lies in the collaborative method of publishing. The members who are all members of another message board take on a topic as a group, providing not only ideas but proofreading and polishing the final product.
This method could work here I think, as many hands make light work and it should help to ensure that the exposure, and the message are what O’ism needs and what we as a community want to put out there.
For my part although I try to advocate Objectivist ideals on my blog but I am rarely blatant about it. Part of the reason for this is that I share the blog with another writer and he is more conservative than I and the other reason is as noted above.
I am assuming reasonable acquaintance with the philosophy of Objectivism. So, if you don’t feel confident about your knowledge, then maybe writing isn’t such a good idea at this point. In that case, it’s probably better to spend your time learning the philosophy well enough so that you can write.
When writing a letter to the editor or to a Congressman, as a rule, the shorter the better. You only want to get an idea or two out at a time, something that is easily digestible by the reader. So, I think most people can manage a short letter with an idea or two.
What I think this forum could do is provide issues to write letters on and provide the addresses to send to. There could be discussions over what issue will give us the most bang for the buck. A list of issues could be provided and that list updated every so often.
Just pushing this forward. 
Those who want a brief summary of the OCON 2008 Brook/Ghate lectures on cultural change can look at the notes I posted here a few months ago.
My notes are exactly that – a highly condensed capsule summary of my understanding of their content. They should only be regarded as a starting point to whet your appetite.
Those who want more information about the speakers’ methodology and conclusions should really listen to those lectures themselves. Brook and Ghate make an inductive argument about cultural trends from a range of examples in recent American history. In order to convey the full force and power of their arguments, I would have to recapitulate those lectures in far more detail than my posted notes and basically replicate their content – in which case you may as well just listen to the original.
Plus those lectures are intellectually stimulating, eye-opening, alarming, inspiring, and above all free.
If others who were also there at OCON 2008 wish to chime in, they are welcome to do so. But I don’t believe I can do justice to the arguments made by Drs. Brook and Ghate in a brief post (at least not beyond what I’ve already sketched out in my notes), and hence in fairness to them I won’t attempt it.
One thing I like to do daily is type Ayn Rand into Google news and see what is in the news. If there is an article that paints Objectivism in a negitive light, I leave a post defending Objectivism and clear up misconceptions. I think is an easy and good way to get ideas out there.
It’s a set of three seminal lectures by two prominent Objectivist intellectuals, available on the web for free. If you’re not interested enough to listen to them – to hear what they have to say for themselves, to understand the full context of their conclusion about that 20 year window – then any discussion of the matter with you would be pointless. I would summarize, you would misunderstand then raise some invalid objection, I would attempt to correct your misunderstanding and answer your objection, you would misunderstand and object more, and blah blah blah. In the meantime, I could have written a slew of letters to the editor – something that is, undoubtedly, far far more important to me. And you could have listened to the lectures for yourself. I’ve seen that happen time and again, and it’s a stupid, pointless waste of time.
That’s all I’m going to say on this matter. I’ve got real work to do, and I’ve already wasted enough time.
Looks like someone is making a run at this year’s most condescending post award.
Looks like someone is making a run at this year’s most condescending post award.
That’s not at all. Diana is succinctly stating what she values more than someone who doesn’t value ideas enough to work to understand the ones that are perfectly well available. She is making concrete Paul’s objection to endless discussion here. She’s exactly right about how this would play out. The condescention is asking her to sacrifice her time and giving no reason why the person is worth spending time on.
One thing I like to do daily is type Ayn Rand into Google news and see what is in the news. If there is an article that paints Objectivism in a negitive light, I leave a post defending Objectivism and clear up misconceptions. I think is an easy and good way to get ideas out there.
There is a blog called Randex, that already does this search and publishes any mentions of Ayn Rand in the media.
You can throw the RSS feed into your newsreader or subscribe to the Obloggers combined feed, which contains that as well as all the main Objectivist blogs.
Is there a written transcript of the lectures anywhere? I watched them, at least most of them (due to some loading errors), but I had trouble hearing some of the things they were saying because of some static and mispronunciations, and difficulty in following along in general because my learning style is more suited to reading rather than listening (due to my hearing impairment). At the very least, will a subtitled version be available at any time?
One thing I like to do daily is type Ayn Rand into Google news and see what is in the news. If there is an article that paints Objectivism in a negitive light, I leave a post defending Objectivism and clear up misconceptions. I think is an easy and good way to get ideas out there.
I as well - except I do it via Google Alerts, which sends me a daily email round up of all the mentions of ‘Ayn Rand’ and ‘Objectivism’. You can tailor it to ‘Free markets’ and ‘Universal Healthcare’, but the articles end up being so numerous and so disastrous it’s hard to write a critical response, due to how unintelligible the thing you are responing to is.
Kendall, defending Diana: Yes, exactly. The fact is, you have to listen to the lecture in its entirety to understand the threat. A quick summary won’t do, because it won’t be enough evidence, and then you’ll have to go back and listen to the lecture for the wealth of evidence they provide. In that time, one could have just listened to the lecture, or gone off and done some activism.
Paul: it’s funny you should start this thread. It was a member of this forum actually that gave me a little kick up the pants a couple of weeks ago. I wrote a response explaining why it wasn’t worth writing to defend something or other, to which he responded that, in the time it took me to write that, I could have emailed off something in defense of this issue, rather than talking about why it wasn’t worth the time.
Last night I wrote a pro-free market response to a popular CBS news blog on the financial problems on Wall Street. I made the point that government intervention was the problem and I further said that free markets work supremely well so long as they are free, which means unregulated. So, I’ll keep doing this.
