September 1, 2021
The first lecture I attended was about the writing of Dostoevsky. I’ve never read any Dostoevsky, and the lecture seemed to depend on having a working knowledge of the author. As a result, my notes were not very good.
I gather from it that Ayn Rand liked Dostoevsky, which is somewhat incongruous, given her own philosophy and viewpoint on fiction writing. Rand is regarded in most Objectivist circles as focusing on heroes, rather than villains. The hero doesn’t necessarily always win in Ayn Rand’s writing. Kira Argounova in We The Living can’t be said to “win”. She is the sort of hero who is “destroyed but not defeated”. But, the focus for Rand is on the hero.
Ayn Rand explicitly said that she didn’t care to write fiction focused on the “bad guys”. Whether she thought all fiction that focused on the bad guys was “inherently bad”, I’m less sure on. The way I’ve interpreted her writing on this subject, she simply didn’t personally care to focus on villains.
I have written a couple of novelettes and short stories focused on a “bad guy”, by which I mean someone I would not care to emulate, and that I consider to have made wrong choices. ( http://comeandreadit.com/index.php/2018/05/21/resentment/ http://dwcookfiction.com/index.php/2018/11/13/impunity/ ) For me, writing these characters is an attempt to understand the nature of evil. I am, in that process, “focusing on evil”, but it’s with an eye towards understanding.
The lecturer said that Rand liked the writing of Dostoevsky that focused on demons, devils, or the possessed. The lecturer said that the actual demons of Dostoevsky are the ideas the lurk in the shadows of their spirt. Other writers portray a Garden of Eden, while Dostoevsky portrays a “Garden of Evil”.
The lecturer warned that while reading Dostoevsky, you should keep several things in mind: (1) He’s an artist, and the characters do not necessarily represent him, unlike Ayn Rand, whose primary characters are people she considers to be like herself in important respects. Dostoevsky is “creating, not confessing”. (2) Some of his ideas are, in fact, dangerous and wrong. The lecturer said Ayn Rand said it was like entering a chamber of horrors with a powerful guide. (3) Dostoevsky aspired to be the poet of the good, but the good for him wasn’t efficacious. (The lecturer had additional things to say on this last point, but I missed it.)
The lecturer then went over the Brothers Karamazov, with one brother described as wanting justice in this world, now, and the other brother wanting religious justice. (I assume that means justice for bad people when they die.) I haven’t read the novel, so I didn’t get that much from her description. She also spoke of a short story called “Dream of a Ridiculous Man”, and discussed something about the character of Gail Wynand from “The Fountainhead”, but I haven’t read the former short story either, so I didn’t get much from it.
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The next lecture I attended that day concerned the environmentalist movement. I try to be very careful about what I say regarding this issue. I do not understand the science involved, and don’t have enough time to study it in great detail. I am skeptical that the news media presents what the scientific establishment is saying in its full context. I think that the news media is more likely to report on a scientific study that shows average global temperatures going up than they are a study that does not.
I also think that there is so much government funding of science at this point, that it has become captured by ideology. What I mean by “ideology” here is this: There is an “issue of fact” as to whether, for instance, average global temperatures are going up, and that it is an inadvertent result of human activity. This is purely a matter of developing measurements and scientific experiments that are accurate enough to make this determination. This is the science side of things. However, assuming this fact was established, it would say nothing about the value judgment we should draw from it. Maybe it’s not bad enough to do anything about? Maybe some people benefit, and other people don’t? How do we weigh these benefits and losses? Why do we assume that some given average global temperature is better, just because it is “natural” (not a result of human activity)? These questions are a question of values, and therefore ideology comes into play. I think that government-funded scientists who promote the notion that the “ideal state” is zero effect on the ecology by human beings tend to get the funding, while those who do not, tend not to get jobs.
The lecturer was attempting to show how philosophy shapes he we look at policy on energy. His analysis consisted of showing how the “dominant narrative” on energy policy sort of “filters down” to the masses in our society.
He moved fairly quickly, so my notes get pretty sketchy at points, but I think he presented a system in which energy policy starts out with the Researchers, who do the original work on energy policy. Next come the “Synthesizers” who put together the best works of the Researchers. Next are the “Disseminators”, who communicate the ideas to the media. From there the ideas go to the “Evaluators”, who are the people who say “What do we do about what’s true?” For instance, this would be the editors at the New York Times.
The lecturer said that the dominant narrative is that we should eliminate fossil fuels as quickly as possible. I wonder if it isn’t the case that the media is simply “cherry picking” the research that supports this narrative, and that there is an enormous amount of research that would oppose it or present other alternative approaches to the problem. (This is mere suspicion/supposition on my part. I do not know for sure.)
The lecturer also said there are “designated experts” who are basically “hybrid disseminators/evaluators”. They are people regarded as speaking for the best experts on what is true, and to do about it. This includes: spokespersons for the UN, Al Gore, Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, Amory Lovins, and Bill McKibben. I was only familiar with some of these names.
With this context in mind, of how the dominant ideas on energy policy are filtering down to the masses, which is our society’s “knowledge system”, the lecturer made some observations. First, our “knowledge system” supports the elimination of fossil fuels and other forms of cost-effective energy, while ignoring the costs. The relevant facts are these: (1) Fossil fuels can provide cost effective energy. (2) We need cost-effective energy to flourish as individuals and as a race. (3) Billions of people around the world lack cost-effective energy, and suffer because of it. He noted a woman in Gambia who had no access to an incubator for her newborn, which died as a result.
Second, our knowledge system supports the elimination of nuclear energy. Most of the anti-fossil fuel movement is also anti-nuclear. Nuclear power is typically excluded from renewable mandates from governments.
Third, our knowledge system opposes “big hydro-power”. The Sierra Club fights hydro-power and pays no price for this in terms of support or contributions:
“Sierra Club Opposes Large Scale Hydro”
https://www.sierraclub.org/maine/hydropower
Fourth, our knowledge system is unconcerned about mass opposition to solar and wind power. I think what he means here is that there is a lot of opposition to the need to mine the resources to build large scale solar and wind power generation. There is opposition to the construction of the transmission facilities it would take to move the power from the wind farms and solar farms to the cities. There is opposition to building large-scale wind farms and solar farms because it will damage animal habitat:
“These large projects are increasingly drawing opposition from environmental activists and local residents who say they are ardent supporters of clean energy. Their objections range from a desire to keep the land unspoiled to protection for endangered species to concerns that their views would no longer be as beautiful.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/solar-powers-land-grab-hits-a-snag-environmentalists-11622816381
Despite this opposition, there is no outcry by our experts over the irrationality of saying that we cannot have any fossil fuels, nuclear, hydro, or even large-scale solar/wind farms, which basically means we cannot have electrical power.
There were other issues touched on in the lecture, but it felt a little like I was trying to drink from a firehose. The amount of information the lecturer was attempting to convey in an hour and a half was too much for me to take good notes. I think the lecture would have been better if it were broken down into about three one-hour lectures.
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The last lecture I have concerned the nature of evil. I don’t have much to say on this lecture for two reasons. First, I ran out of pages in my composition notebook about this time, so my notes are incomplete. Second, I thought the lecture contained some good points, but didn’t seem sufficiently concrete for me to really grasp what the lecturer was trying to convey. It seemed like he was just sharing his thoughts on the topic somewhat extemporaneously.
I’ll share some of my own thoughts on the nature of evil, as I think it relates to Ayn Rand’s philosophy here.
Ayn Rand defined the good as that which is pro-life. In other words, that which promotes or enhances man’s life. On a concrete level, penicillin is good because it cures disease. Clothing is good because it keeps you warm and protects you from the elements. Food is good because it nourishes and sustains your body. Shelter is good because it protects you from the elements. Sex is good because it is a source of pleasure and of having children. Reading fiction is good because it lets you imagine other people and other ways of living. Friendship is good because it lets you learn about things you enjoy from other people, and to have companionship concerning what is important to you in your life. Knowledge is good because it allows you to create the things that you need in order to live. Happiness is good because it provides you with the emotional incentive to live. Self-knowledge and introspection is good because it lets you correct character defects to better live your life. A long-range perspective of what you need will help you to live beyond the range of the moment. From these concrete things that are good, you can generalize to that which all people must act to gain and or keep, because they are fundamentally important to their lives. Reason is important because an ordered mind connected to reality enhances your life with knowledge and understanding. Self-esteem is important because it provides the individual with the confidence that he is worthy of living and of happiness. Purpose is important because it provides you with a long-range perspective on your life, and acts as a measuring stick in gauging your choices over a lifetime.
“Evil” for Rand’s philosophy is that which is the anti-life. That which negates, opposes or destroys that which is necessary for living is the evil. Fundamentally, evil is the refusal to think:
“Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment—on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict ‘It is.’” (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/evil.html )
For me, it has always been difficult to believe that someone would deliberately unfocus their mind. Since I cannot get inside other people’s heads to see what is going on first-hand, I can only look into my own mind, and also observe what other people say and do, in order to try to infer what is going on inside their heads. I have never been fully convinced that Ayn Rand’s description of evil is actually happening in some other people’s minds.
I try to be on the lookout for it in my own mind, which is the only one I can ultimately perceive directly, and the only one that I can control.
Rationalization certainly seems like something real that matches Ayn Rand’s definition of evil. I try to be on the lookout for this, in myself and in others. I define rationalization as giving a fake explanation for an action or behavior that really has nothing to do with your explanation. Examples might include the following: You might tell yourself that you are in love with a girl one night, even though you really just want to have sex. An alcoholic might say they normally wouldn’t drink anymore, but it’s their friend’s bachelor party, so they’ll drink just this one time. A smoker might say they are too stressed to stop smoking this week.
A more vicious example of rationalization might be the rapist who tells himself his victim was dressed too provocatively, or she shouldn’t have been out walking alone late at night, so she got what she deserved.
There was a story back in 2020 about someone in Portland Oregon who murdered another man in cold blood, because he was on the political right. The murderer, Michael Reinoehl, was a Black Lives Matter and Antifa supporter. He claimed he was protecting his black friend, although the video footage of the murder showed him lying in wait for his victim, stalking him, and then shooting him:
“Reinoehl is seen hiding in an alcove of the garage and reaching into a pouch or waistband as Danielson and a friend, Chandler Pappas, walk south on Third Avenue.
Homicide Detective Rico Beniga wrote that Reinoehl ‘conceals himself, waits and watches’ as Danielson and Pappas pass him.
After the two men go by, Reinoehl followed them, walking west across the street moments before the gunshots were fired, police said.” https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/09/arrest-warrant-against-michael-reinoehl-for-2nd-degree-murder-unlawful-use-of-a-firearm-unsealed.html
In an interview, Reinoehl’s sister described him as:
“…an ‘impulsive’ person who let his ‘worst emotions guide his actions’ — and then tried to rationalize them afterward.” https://nypost.com/2020/09/04/michael-reinoehls-sister-relieved-feds-killed-him/
An essential feature of rationalization is the evasion of your true motives or reasons for taking some action. In the case of Michael Reinoehl, it sounds like he simply let his emotions guide him, and then justified his reasons with left-wing rhetoric after the fact.
