August 26, 2021
The conference was held at the AT&T Hotel and Conference Center. This is on the UT-Austin campus. I arrived in the afternoon on August 26. Since I live in the Dallas Fort Worth area, I could drive to the conference. I was planning to go to the swing dance at the Federation of Women’s Clubs Mansion, but it got canceled, due to the high COVID-19 infection rates in Austin. That left me without much to do that evening. After I ate, I went to a small bar/grill in the Hotel and had a beer. Listening to the two people behind my table talk about Objectivism, and “the movement”, really took me out of my sense of what “reality” is. I don’t really mean “reality” in the metaphysical sense -just in the sense of what my day-to-day social experience is, when interacting with my fellow men. The other 51 weeks out of the year, when I’m not on vacation at an Objectivism conference, I can go for months without discussing Ayn Rand or Objectivism with anyone. When I do discuss Objectivism out in “the rest of the world”, its usually going to turn into me having to explain/teach/debate with someone. That gets to be very “draining”, psychologically. These conferences are a chance for others to teach me something about Objectivism, and to have others discuss Objectivism with me -rather than having to defend against some polemic regarding Miss Rand’s philosophy. (Don’t get me wrong, engaging with “the non-Objectivist” majority in society is important, but you cannot do that all the time without it wearing on you.)
August 27, 2021
The morning of August 27, I ate breakfast at the hotel restaurant. It was outrageously expensive, but I ate there and in the adjoining bar/grill for social reasons, throughout the conference. Although I find that I do get tremendous benefit from the lectures, the major reason I go to these conferences is for the social aspect. I’ve been interested in Objectivism since I was 15. I’ll be 47 this October. My hope at the OCON’s is to make a connection with people who are at least in the same “philosophical orbit” as me. I find that I encounter people of varying degrees of knowledge and intellectual honesty at these Objectivism conferences. I don’t just assume I’m going to get along with everyone there. I’ve definitely been, shall we say, less than impressed with specific individuals I’ve met at previous OCON’s. But, I look at my “odds” of meeting people I can possibly form friendships with, as higher than the population of people around me in my day-to-day life.
At the very least, I get a chance to see how I react when I’m around large numbers of people that, ostensively, at least, believe what I believe. Am I capable of “playing nice with others”, or am I too misanthropic? Because I hold such a radical philosophy, and am an atheist in the South, an easy “criticism” for people to make of me is that I’m “too anti-social”, “lacking in tact”, or that I just “don’t like people”. I suspect this has more to do with the fact that many of the people in my day-to-day life don’t like the philosophy I am not afraid to espouse, or it at least causes some level of “cognitive dissonance” in them. Rather than dealing with the substance of Objectivism, it’s easy for non-intellectual people to just say: “Oh, you’re anti-social, Dean.” The Objectivism conference gives me a sort of “sanity check”. At the conference, I’m around large numbers of people who are closer to what I believe. I have the opportunity to make a connection with others there, where I don’t have to worry about that awkward moment when they find out I’m an atheist. Can I do it? The conferences give me an opportunity to “put my money where my mouth is”, in a certain sense.
Parenthetically, that “moment of awkwardness”, when I tell someone I’m atheist, has happened many times in my life. I get to be friendly with someone. They find out I’m atheist, and, at least for a while, they become emotionally distant from me. Often, if I continue to spend time with these people, they “come around”, but the issue always remains a gulf between us. Sometimes, I sense a certain degree of resentment, from them, due to the cognitive dissonance it probably creates within their mind. When it comes to romantic relationships with very religious women, I’ve discovered, quite painfully, that the chasm is probably unbridgeable. What about atheist meetups in my local area? Can’t I meet like-minded people there? Someone might ask. These are worse than the people I’d meet going to the local non-denominational church. Most atheists will be left-wing, with Marxist thinking patterns, and open hostility toward Rand. They will probably dislike me, and I know I won’t like them.
Getting back to the conference, there were no lectures on August 27. Check-in to get your conference badge started at 2pm and ran until 6pm.
To give myself something to do during the day, I went down to the Colorado River near Congress Avenue to rent a Kayak. Unfortunately, it started raining when I got there. I hung around a bit to see if the weather would clear, but it didn’t. I headed back to the hotel. Once there, I believe I walked around the UT-Austin campus to see how much it had changed since I went to school there in the 1990’s. (But, my notes on that are incomplete, so it may have been another day.)
There was an opening reception and dinner in the Hotel at 7pm. I apparently didn’t see the “dinner” part on the itinerary, because I wound up eating at the hotel grill, thinking the 7pm thing was just going to be drinks. The food looked good, although I did not partake. I saw an older gentleman, who I had met back at the California conference in 2018, and spoke with him some. I tried to keep notes on my phone of the people I met, their names, and a brief description of them. (I also do this in my day-to-day life, because I’m bad about remembering people’s names.) According to those notes, I met a younger fellow from South America who now lives in Miami. He wasn’t from Chile, but the moment felt very “surreal” for me, given the character from Atlas Shrugged. (In a good way.) Based on my experience at this conference, and the past two I attended, I’ve noticed what seems like a fairly large number of Latin-American attendees. More than I would have expected. I also met a nice husband and wife who were maybe five to ten years older than me. They were local to the Austin area, and had only “discovered” Ayn Rand in the last few years. They talked about trying to get their teenage children to go with them to the conference, which sounded very “man bites dog” to my ear. These kid’s parents are encouraging an interest in Ayn Rand and Objectivism? I had to laugh at this, and explained why this was so amusing to me, based on my own, very different, experience as a teenage Ayn Rand fan.
Another pair of younger men I met appeared to be a gay couple to me, but I wasn’t 100% sure. One was in his mid-twenties and the other was in his mid-thirties. They were from California, according to my notes. I haven’t seen any scientifically done surveys on the topic of gay interest in Ayn Rand’s philosophy. Just based on what I see anecdotally, at the few conferences I’ve been to, I’d say the number of gay attendees is a higher percentage than the population in general. I know at least one of the regular speakers at these conferences is gay. I’d guess the idea of the individual versus the collective/tribe themes that you find in Miss Rand’s philosophy might resonate well with a gay person.
Another notable pair of people I encountered at the opening reception were a pair of women, who were somewhere in my age range, give or take four years. They were from California, in the Bay Area, or Silicon Valley area. At some point, we were talking about the Biden Administration bungling the Afghanistan matter. I started to say: “Biden fucked up,” but I stopped myself. (Keep in mind, by this time, I was on my second mixed drink.) Then, one of the two women called it a “cluster fuck”, and I said something to the effect of: “I was about to say he ‘fucked up’, but I didn’t want to say that to you.” They looked at each-other and giggled. One of them said: “Aww, how cute! He’s from Texas and he doesn’t want to say ‘fuck’ in front of ladies.” This made me chuckle, since I hadn’t even fully realized I had a hesitancy to “cuss in front of a woman”, or that it might stem from where I mostly grew up. It also turned out these two were both writers, working on a script for an “Atlas Shrugged” mini-series. I asked if they had acquired the legal rights, which they confirmed they had. I also, only half-joking, asked, “Will it be better than the movies?” They assured me it would be. I was very impressed by them, and I may have mentioned I write fiction, but I’m not 100% certain if I did. I encountered them a couple more times at the conference, and I was more interested in hearing what they had to say, than in talking about myself. (Seeing as how, I already know what I know.)
Overall, I found this reception/dinner quite enjoyable. It was in an out-door patio area in the middle of the hotel, surrounded by guest rooms. It was shut down by hotel staff at around 9pm, to let people sleep. I believe some people moved to the hotel bar, or some other place to continue the festivities. But, the first lecture in the morning was at 8:40am, so I decided to get some sleep.
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