Holy shit, but I was wrong...

Whether wrong or just incomplete, Objectivism is not my philosophy

I argue for honesty as a virtue, and so I should practice what I preach. With that in mind, I must therefore make an admission. For quite some time, I was often uninformed about the facts of reality, and yet I still applied the principles of the philosophy I thought I agreed with. In other words, I engaged in pure rationalism, engaging in floating abstractions disconnected from reality, which I consider to be a serious vice.

I started coming to this realization about a year ago. As I’ve expressed in some other Substack articles, I was emerging early in 2024 from a decade of personal and health issues that had sucked away my time and energy. I wasn’t very involved with the outside world, and things were the worst between 2019 and 2024. Certainly, the Covid pandemic didn’t help.

Around April 2024, I resolved some of those issues and so I jumped back into the fray. Having been so out of touch, I engaged in an arduous drinking-from-the-firehose approach, immersing myself in as much information as I could because I knew I was so disconnected. I had been only vaguely aware of some pretty important events and people, including the January 6 insurrection and the part that Trump played in fomenting it. In fact, it’s almost embarrassing to voice out loud just how unaware I really was.

The more I dug into things, the more I realized how little I knew. And importantly, that wasn’t all that I discovered. It became eminently clear that in many cases throughout my life, I had never known enough. In fact, way too often, I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. But even so, I applied those philosophical principles to concretes about which I was egregiously ignorant.

I’m speaking specifically about Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, which is meant to be reality-based. Being ignorant of the facts of reality makes it a little difficult to apply such a philosophy — any philosophy, really — in any rational or consistent fashion. Simply put, I was more apt to be wrong in my applications than I was to be right, except sometimes coincidentally.

This is perhaps particularly true of Objectivism, a philosophy that is all about absolutes. According to Objectivism, reality is objective with identity and causality (metaphysics), and so an absolute truth exists. Human beings are conscious animals that use reason as our tool of cognition, and we are capable of directly perceiving that objective reality through the use of our senses (epistemology). The philosophy’s ethics, politics, and aesthetics all flow from that metaphysics and epistemology, with the result being that one can — and in fact, absolutely must — derive ethical and political absolutes through the application of reason.

Of course, that’s insanely simplified, but I think it’s accurate enough for my purpose here. Which is: within the Objectivist framework, which is by nature meant to be reality-based, one must know the relevant facts in order to arrive at those absolutes. And unfortunately, through my 20s, 30s, and even 40s, I was too often guilty of failing in that regard — and that’s setting aside the truth of Objectivism itself.

In computer programming, that’s known as garbage-in, garbage-out (GIGO), meaning that even perfect code will produce bad results if it’s fed bad inputs. In this respect, Objectivism could be the perfectly correct philosophy, but anyone who applies its principles without knowing the facts is likely to be wildly incorrect. And when you consider that Objectivism — at least as Ayn Rand presented it — so strongly demands that one derives absolutes, both in terms of describing reality and making ethical and political judgements, maybe you can see the potential problem.

For people who call themselves “Objectivists,” ignorance isn’t innocuous, because by its nature the philosophy drives people to decide. If you ever interact with Objectivists, you’ll quickly discover that they very often speak as if they’re utterly certain that they’re right. Sometimes, you might find that infuriating, because in many cases — and I’m fully admitting that this has been me in the past, on occasion — they demonstrate that they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

I think part of the reason for that is how strongly Rand stressed (or at least strongly implied) that it was fully moral to exist in a state of knowing, that is, a state of certainty, or at least to be constantly striving toward it. A corollary could therefore be derived that it’s immoral at some level to exist in any other state. And in addition to everything else, Objectivism is a very moralistic philosophy.

If one only focuses one’s mind, Rand said, then one can know reality and through the application of reason derive some very strong, absolute moral and political positions. And she said that her philosophy was the (only) pathway to such a state of existence, one where it’s possible to be certain and to live a life that’s happy and successful by virtue of being fully in accordance with reality.

If you’re not really careful, that’s a recipe for some profound smugness (“Look at how right I am!”), for elitism (“My philosophy makes me smarter and better than you!”), for harshness (“You are absolutely immoral!”), and other unsavory traits. When combined with ignorance, I think it helps explain the philosophy’s apparent lack of empathy. Consider that the word “empathy” isn’t used once in Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (OPAR, essentially the Objectivist Bible, if there is such a thing). In fact, “kindness” is used only three times, and two of them were to contrast it with altruism in saying what altruism isn’t. “Compassion” is also used three times, in each case as an example of how not to be, per justice.

Now, one might argue that outlining a philosophy doesn’t require discussing those particular emotions or behaviors. But OPAR was 493 pages of text in its first printing, probably close to 150,000 words. So it seems reasonable to think that concepts like empathy, kindness, and compassion might have shown up at least a couple of times in the positive, as if they were at least worth discussing. Because they’re not, maybe nobody should get so bent out of shape if someone describes the philosophy as cold and heartless.

But I digress.

The point is that even if Objectivism was completely right, even if it was indeed the truth or the only means of ascertaining the truth, then as a very particular reality-based philosophy it would be wholly dependent on the simple but vital act of learning the facts. That’s doubly important as compared to, say, a philosophy based on the rejection of reason. Everyone who subscribes to Objectivism should be that much more careful about knowing the facts before pronouncing absolutes.

Without doing so, one could suffer an immensely damaging GIGO effect resulting in some very bad conclusions with very bad consequences. Imagine, for example, pronouncing absolute moral judgment on another person without being fully aware of who they are, what their circumstances look like, what their experiences have been. But that happens all the time with Objectivists, and quite often, they’re entirely wrong.

And for far too long, that was me more often than it should have been.

This post isn’t just about me, though. It’s not merely a mea culpa, although it certainly is that. Because I discovered something else in the last year of being better at learning the facts. So many people who call themselves “Objectivists” are even more guilty of that “shallow epistemology” that I’ve described and of pure rationalism — again, applying principles as floating abstractions disconnected from reality — than I’ve ever been. And that includes some of the most influential Objectivist intellectuals and people who have been reasonably prominent for decades in the Objectivist community (such that it exists).

Many of them actively supported Trump during the campaign, not just as a “lesser evil” than Biden and then Harris (with regard to the latter, I never agreed with even that premise), but in some cases as actively good. Peikoff, Rand’s aging “intellectual heir,” posted a Trump endorsement that was purported to be that kind of “lesser evil” argument a la Rand’s endorsement of Nixon but, in fact, sounded to me a lot more like wholehearted approval. And many of these same people still support Trump or parrot his falsehoods, even today, even after everything.

There are a relative handful of people I interact with on Facebook — admittedly, my friends list isn’t very large — who I generally agree with. This small group always saw Trump and his minions as the villains they are. But they’re in the minority among all of the “Objectivists” I interact with there and elsewhere. And even among those few, I see some as guilty of rationalism, only they somehow manage to intellectually compartmentalize such that they can perceive the evils of the Trump administration even as they commit egregious mistakes in other areas.

This isn’t a sudden realization. It’s been building over the last year, and I wrote about it in a few other Substack articles. I began to distance myself by outlining why I no longer call myself an “Objectivist.” I wrote about what I perceive as a widespread misunderstanding and improper rejection of quantum physics among Objectivists. I stated my reasons for why Elon Musk is a villain, contrary to the claims by some that he is an Ayn Rand hero.

Things reached a head for me, though, with Objectivist philosopher Andrew Bernstein’s vile statement about throwing people out of airplanes as the embodiment of “justice.” In my essay, “There’s something rotten in the state of Objectivism,” I suggested that Ayn Rand’s philosophy could not be my own if it could produce statements such as that. Seeing Bernstein’s more recent statement agreeing with a Florida sheriff about summarily executing protesters who throw rocks, I became a lot more certain. And he’s just one example out of many for me.

Some people have said that I’m wrong to impugn the philosophy because of a few bad apples. They can just be wrong, or as I’ve been saying here merely ignorant or rationalistic, or not even really Objectivists but just hangers-on who only feigned understanding and support in the past. That’s not terribly convincing to me, though, given the number of people who have studied, advocated for, and written about the philosophy of Objectivism for many decades and who I consider to be egregiously bad people.

If anyone should get the philosophy and be able to apply it — and certainly, to know the importance of reality to a reality-base philosophy — then it’s people like that, right? Because if they get it so wrong that the result in such downright evil sentiments, then imagine the impact on people who don’t quite get it. At least I can say that I can’t remember making any statements quite so bad myself, although I know I’ve made some doozies.

However, in identifying my own weaknesses, I’ve also thought more about the philosophy itself. I’ve always had questions, areas where I just wasn’t quite sure if I agreed with Ayn Rand. I’m not a philosopher, by either profession or avocation. I didn’t study philosophy in college and I don’t teach it. I haven’t spent years reading the great philosophers and comparing and contrasting their arguments. Probably, I’ve spent more time reading about quantum physics than I have philosophy outside of Rand’s works. Certainly, I’ve spent more time reading speculative fiction.

Simply put, I’ve never been interested in philosophy beyond what’s necessary for me to live my life and to understand the world around me. Meanwhile, I consider myself a reasonably logical person. I can follow arguments, I think, and make them cogently enough. So, I thought that I knew enough.

Boy, was I wrong, and not only in my too-common state of ignorance. I was wrong about the importance of those questions. So, how did I arrive at this state? For me, at least (you might disagree and stop reading right here), it’s instructive and worth considering.

Back when I was 20 years old (which crazily enough was 39 years ago), I was hanging out with a friend in between being discharged from active duty service in the Army and matriculating at Indiana University. We were listening to music and eventually made our way to Rush’s album “2112,” eating Doritos and drinking Mountain Dew as we usually did. Tom (my friend) was reading the album’s liner notes and came across lyricist and percussionist Neil Peart’s lyrics credit, “With acknowledgement to the genius of Ayn Rand.”

Peart was influenced in writing “2112” by Rand’s novella, Anthem, which like the album (or, one side of it, at least) depicts individualism versus collectivism in a dystopian future. The two stories were similar enough that such a credit was deemed necessary. Neither Tom nor I knew this when we read it, as we knew nothing about Ayn Rand. As Tom said at the moment, “Huh, I wonder who this Ayn Rand guy is.” This was long before the Internet and the discovery took place in a small town without a library, and so our curiosity had to wait a couple of months to be sated.

We both hit the IU library when we first arrived on campus, and after a quick search located the Ayn Rand section. He grabbed a book, I can’t remember which one, and I (randomly) grabbed Rand’s first novel, We the Living. It wasn’t long before we had devoured the available material, and we both were hooked. This Ayn Rand guy — actually a Russian immigrant woman, of course — was intriguing to those two young people.

For myself, I was struck first and most strongly by Rand’s individualism. During the first decade or so of my life, I was raised by a series of racists, capped at age 11 by having spent a year spent with an uncle Fort Wayne city cop who was openly a white supremacist and covertly a neo-Nazi. As a teenager, I faced a sort of softer, quieter racism in rural Indiana and then endured outright racial strife during a couple of years in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I rebelled from the very beginning against what I considered a deep wrong, and my burning sense of moral outrage made Rand’s rejection of collectivism powerfully attractive.

I found a lot to like in her philosophy of Objectivism. Her metaphysics made sense to me, at some level, along with the commitment to reason in her epistemology. Once again, my childhood had already guided me in a similar direction, in this case with a thorough rejection of religion and mysticism that sparked as soon as my religious indoctrination began — which was as early as I can remember. As with individualism, Rand’s ideas clarified and put the right words to some things.

Even so, as I moved up through her philosophy, from metaphysics to epistemology, then to ethics and politics, I started to accumulate questions. To deal with those questions as well as all the ideas my own mind generated, I created three intellectual buckets, which I always intended to empty from one bucket to another.

The first bucket held those ideas (Rand’s or otherwise) I was certain were true, the third bucket held those ideas I was certain were false (some of Rand’s applications but not quite yet any of her principles), and in the second, middle bucket were things I was uncertain about. I thought that as I developed my own philosophy — as being first and foremost an individualist, my philosophy can’t be someone’s else’s — I would move things from bucket to bucket and, in the end, identify that which I knew to be true and false. I hoped that second bucket might one day be empty.

That’s not a very systematic philosophical method, I’m sure. And my life has never been simple or easy. To my chagrin, I never found or made the time to methodically approach that second bucket and answer all of my questions, including those about Objectivism and Ayn Rand’s ideas. The result was that my mind was held in a kind of stasis, comfortable enough with the idea that Objectivism made enough sense that I could keep pushing those questions off. And in the meantime, as I’ve outlined here, I spent too little time even learning the facts of reality that would help me answer them.

Flash forward to today. What I’ve now discovered, very late in life, is that all those questions I’ve always had about Ayn Rand’s ideas — both her applications of her principles and, in some cases, the principles themselves — were more important than I’d ever imagined. My own admittedly shallow understanding of her philosophy, likely the result of being less critical than I should have been as I read almost every word she wrote and uttered, was unforgivably inadequate. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know, and now that I know more of it…

Again, boy, was I wrong.

Now, I’m in the unenvious but self-inflicted position of needing to cram decades worth of more critical thinking into whatever time I have left. Because today, I have become fairly certain of one very important fact. Objectivism is not my philosophy.

Mine might be similar. It might share some basic premises and some fundamental principles. I’m just as sure as I’ve always been about objective reality, for example, and about the power and importance of reason. I remain and always will be an individualist above all. But I suspect my ethics aren’t the same, or my politics, at least not precisely. Again, they might be similar, but I’m sure that I would butt heads with Objectivists in some areas. In some cases, we might even be intellectual enemies. I never did particularly agree with Rand’s aesthetics, so that won’t be an issue for me.

Once I publish this, I’m sure I’ll lose some of my few subscribers. I started spreading the word about this Substack on Facebook, and I’m guessing that many of my subscribers would call themselves “Objectivists.” I like some of them quite a bit, at least as far as I know them on Facebook, and I consider them intelligent and decent people with whom I mostly agree. The thing is, I’m not so sure that our agreement derives directly from Ayn Rand’s philosophy, but rather perhaps from a few of her ideas that correlate directly with some of the political issues of the day.

This post is mainly meant as a sort of catharsis. Obviously, it’s entirely personal and I can’t imagine why it would matter much to anyone else. Except, perhaps, as I write more on this Substack, at least you’ll know that I’m trying to be fully conscious of why I think what I do and why I make my arguments.

I don’t know if I’ll ever fully elucidate my disagreements with Objectivism. Maybe I’ll point out some of the errors I see where it makes sense in discussing some other topic. I have a few ideas that I’d like to explore, and maybe I’ll communicate where my philosophy differs.

And that’s because while I don’t agree with Ayn Rand on everything, and I think her philosophy is likely overly simplistic and incomplete, I still believe that she was a genius — with only one lifetime to spend — who made significant philosophical contributions. And frankly, I just don’t hold her responsible for the state of “Objectivism” since she passed away in 1982. That fault lies with those who picked up her mantle.

But, I’m not an Objectivist. And somehow, spelling that out feels liberating.