The cultists are not just evil -- they're on the wrong side of history. Their power slowly fades, year-by-year. The real Objectivists will eventually defeat them. That's good.

Unfortunately the religious folk still have a lot of status and influence. People read Rand, relish her, and then find their way to ARI and the like. But genuine reasonists and individualists don't like Randroidism or them. Good and strong people refuse to be intellectually herded and spiritually brutalized by Scientology-style "Objectivists". That's good too. But the noble ideals of reason and individualism, and the ascent of man, get considerably hurt by the ARIans anyway.

The dogmatic arm of Objectivism populates itself with people who have slid from egoism to narcissism, or from pride to hubris.

Sad!

Side question:

Can anyone comment about the "day jobs" the ARI core group had before the ARI gravy train came to be?

Would these people be employable any longer outside the cabal?

I have read that Peikoff actually had glowing student reviews when he taught university philosophy. I think Fred Seddon said that years ago in this forum. I cannot comment on the others, especially Peter Schwartz.

Like Harry Potter, the orthodox Objectivist has a magic wand—his magic wand is configured from the frozen quotes of the Gods and demigods. Harry Potter has a spell for dealing with every occasion—likewise the Orthodox Objectivist has a quote for every occasion.

The idea in the quote is often ignored—who said it matters more than what she/he said. Of course, not everyone is like this, but most of those who get identified as the Orthodox type are very dogmatic. A rather unfortunate and depressing situation this is.

So good to see you here too. I laughed aloud at several spots: "myriad demigods," "find out what any authority figure has to say,""the school of magic." Haha.

And thank you for the unintentional and tragic entertainment on F*c*book. One of the best moments was when Klaus Nordby demanded you return his gifted logo. He is one of the myriad demigods you describe.

Objectivists blindly following the views articulated by some supreme authority figure in Objectivism

The interesting part here is that Yaron Brook does acknowledge he departs from Leonard Peikoff on several immigration issues, in the present context of the Hijrah--a moslem cold war that the west seems shy to declare. Yaron's demonising, waving of his wand to curse traditional Christians, especially Republican candidates, whilst making excuses for further immigration of moslems is black magic.

Anoop is right-on and dead-on in his analysis of the Randroids.

Unfortunately, Peikoff, Binswanger, Schwartz, Brook, etc. didn't embrace the practice and attitude of religiosity and cultism out of thin air. They got it from Ayn Rand, in my view. A small but important part of the time she failed to live up to her values of reason and individualism. Thus the modern Scholastics learned this vice from what Rand said, the way she said it, how she conducted her personal life, and her stated reasons for it.

Philosophy has suffered from the poison of cultism at least since Pythagoras. The antidote, in my opinion, is a relentless and unending war on the fundamental religious evils of abuse, censorship, and excommunication of intellectual dissidents. The main way to defeat a false and evil philosophical view -- even one by Kant, Hegel, Marx, Hitler, Mohammad, etc. -- is thru intellectual refutation. Personal abuse, censorship, and excommunication need to be employed very sparingly.

(Here's how I treated aspects of this issue 11 months ago: http://www.solopassion.com/nod...)

Ed,

I haven't read anyone of Harry Potter books--because I don't normally read children's books or wizard stories.

But you have explained very well, your "logical reasons" for why HP books are good. Therefore you have made your "own" good point.

Objectivism, Inc. has indeed degenerated into an authority cult that reminds me of the Scholastics and their dogmatization of Aristotle. They are hopeless.

On the other hand, Harry Potter spends seven books breaking all the school rules so he can act according to his own best judgement, so Harry Potter is way ahead of the feeble thinkers of Objectivism, Inc. The HP books are one of the most obvious examples of an artist creating a work of art explicitly at variance with her own stated philosophy. She is a collectivist. Potter is an individualist. She falls into all the obvious traps of mysticism/irrationalism in her analysis of the real world. Potter uses reason to uncover his enemies' plots. She obviously believes in state education. Potter goes to a private school. She advocates complete disarmament of the British public. Potter teaches armed self-defense to 16-year-olds. She advocates self-sacrifice. Potter acts selfishly, in the Objectivist sense of the word "selfish", even when he "sacrifices" his life to save his friends. Never in my entire life have I read a set of books whose themes are diametrically opposed to the author's expressed philosophy, except for Harry Potter. Oh, and the first few books are funny, too. Books 6 and 7 kinda suck--she ran out of clever ideas--but the fist five are worth reading (or listening to, Jim Dale is fantastic).