Never Forget The Man On The Rock

 

ESTERHAZY: (Sitting down on the arms of a chair, speaking softly) You know, when I was a boy-- A very young boy-- I thought my life would be a thing immense and shining. I wanted to kneel to my own future... [shrugs] One gets over that.

KAY GONDA: Does one?

ESTERHAZY: Always, but never completely.

KAY GONDA: [breaking down, suddenly eager and trusting]  I saw a man once, when I was very young. He stood on a rock, high in the mountains. His arms were spread out and his body bent backward, and I could see him as an arc against the sky. He stood still and tense, like a string trembling to a note of ecstasy no man had ever heard... I have never known he was. I knew only that this was what life should be... [her voice trails off]

ESTERHAZY: [eagerly] And?

KAY GONDA: [in a changed voice] And I came home and my mother was serving supper, and she was happy because the roast had a thick gravy. And she gave a prayer of thanks to God for it... [jumps up, whirls to him suddenly, angrily] Don't listen to me! Don't look at me like that! I've tried to renounce it. I thought I must close my eyes and bear anything and learn to live like the others. To make me as they were. To make me forget. I bore it. All of it. But I can't forget the man on the rock. I can't!

-From Ideal, Ayn Rand: Three Plays

The Immigrant: American At Heart, Endangered By Law

 

Nowadays, one needs only to to listen to the political buzz in order to ascertain what buzzwords are to play a key function how each party plans to yank the attention of their constituents. While  “marriage” still stands in the spotlight, for the moment the country seems to have waned slightly in its apprehension concerning certain parts of the population being able to enjoy conjugal unions in order to look closely at the newcomer to the political straw man circle: the buzzword “immigration”.

Readers will not be surprised to notice that every time a social or political topic  is pounced upon by politicians, said issue is often distorted beyond rational measure, with the principles behind the issue never making an appearance before the public eye.

 

Nowadays one hears casual conversation concerning the status of illegal immigration, reactions vary from the calm and collected to the loud and zealous (the more common of the two),  on one side some advocate amnesty for immigrants who have been in the country illegally for some time,  while others hold that the panacea politicians are reluctant to adopt is a completely hermetic border  and the stop of all immigration.

And yet, with all the heated discussion about immigration there are two vital points that hardly anyone dares to discuss: One is the status of the immigration system itself, and the other is the precarious positions in which  immigrants invariably find themselves trying to follow the aforementioned system to the best of their ability.

The average person is as familiar with the intricacies of the US immigration and naturalization process as he is with the concepts behind the process of thermonuclear fusion.  Both are highly specialized subjects that require a great deal of knowledge to navigate safely, both must follow a sequence of events and conditions in order to reach a desired conclusion , but unlike the immigration process, nuclear fusion is bound to reality.  An individual who wishes to immigrate into the United States will find himself in a position not unlike a tourist in a casino, where the odds are stacked against him by the house and his success is not so much dependant on his skill as it is on pure chance.

 

 

According to Immigration Attorney Shaun Shahmardian, the body of laws that make up the current system of immigration is a complicated and cumbersome mangrove thicket that owes its gordian proportions to constant partisan squabbling. A hypothetical example has the members of Party A perceiving a lull in the workforce in certain areas of industry. Party A wishes to increase the number of worker visas in order to fill the perceived lack of talent. However, Party B, acting on partisan politics, wishes to block the iniative and imposes the following condition: In order for said bill to be passed in full, Party A must include a provision in which only foreign nationals are allowed to be hired if no possible American citizen is available for that job (in order to satisfy the Unions, who wish to have an almost forceful control over who is allowed to be hired).

It is immaterial to Party B’s concerns whether the lull in the workforce is caused not by absence of people but absence of talent (i.e: there may be people who can do the job, but not people who can do the job well or on an outstanding level), their priorities are given to partisan squabbling and blocking, and their other political allegiances (without questioning whether or not said allegiances have the right to exert authority over the issue).

Faced with this scenario, Party A can capitulate and include the required amendment, or scrap their plan altogether.  Then, in the future, when Party B comes up with an immigration reform or bill, Party A will move into the antagonist square and the dance will begin anew. This constant push and pull of political interests has resulted in new laws being passed that many times contradict or are in direct conflict with previous regulations, requiring deft consolidation and juggling in order to solve the conflict. The unfortunate result of this process of stacking legislation is a system so complex and cumbersome that it is a miracle that it does not entirely suffocate under its own weight.

The standard wait period of a U.S. citizen petitioning citizenship for their foreign child can now last up to eight years. A green card for a foreign national may take up to six years in processing. After obtaining a green card, the immigrant may be lucky to acquire his citizenship by the ninth cumulative year.

Because of all the different hoops and scrutiny immigrants are faced with, it is no wonder that many who arrive here on a student visa (which in itself is an expensive thing to acquire), tourist visa, or some other method, end up becoming illegal immigrants after their visa period has expired and they have not been able to secure a way by which they could gain permanent residence. It is not because they are unwilling to work difficult labors, quite the contrary, many immigrants are willing to do arduous labor, but unfortunately it is the aforementioned partisan chess games that make it difficult for migrant workers to do certain jobs legally:  Regulations  place a limit on the areas in which the foreigner can work, limiting the immigrant to work only in the fields in which he has a certifiable degree, placing no relevance on talent, skill or experience that is extrinsic from his area of academic specialization.  While an American citizen is not beholden to stay within these narrow confines and may work equally as an agricultural worker or a vice-president (provided someone wants to hire him for either job), immigrants cannot stray from a narrowly-defined limit, no matter how much an American employer may wish to hire them.

In his April 2, 2006 article, Harry Binswanger of Capitalism Magazine wrote: “To forcibly exclude those who seek peacefully to trade value for value with us is a violation of the rights of both parties to such a trade: the rights of the American seller or employer and the rights of the foreign buyer or employee. Thus, immigration quotas treat both Americans and foreigners as if they were criminals, as if the peaceful exchange of values to mutual benefit were an act of destruction.”

Binswanger is referring to the government regulations that dictate who an American employer is allowed to hire. Shahmardian spoke of several cases in which desperate employers had called him, seeking advice. Very often employers will have foreign workers that they value highly and who they consider to be real assets in their business.

The scene varies from construction work to retail or privately owned stores, but the story is always the same: Due to government immigration regulations, the business owner or employer is incapable of granting legal status to their workers in order to keep them in the country and under their employment. It is hard to believe that in a capitalist society an employer is not empowered to hire whomever he wishes to hire, but rather finds himself facing immigration quotas and union quotas -the unions claim that immigrant workers  steal their jobs, while refusing to acknowledge the fact that in order to have something stolen from you, you must first possess it!

Shahmardian observed that the general belief that many employers resort to illegal immigrants for work in order to save money proves to be false in the majority of cases. He knows of an exhaustive list of employers who have illegal immigrants in their work forces and who spend copious amounts of money on their welfare- in one case, the worker’s wife fell ill with cancer and since neither she nor her husband could  qualify for work medical insurance, the employer himself footed the bill for chemotherapy sessions and hospitalization. 

There are many cases like these, in which the employers will spend more than they’d normally have to because they value their employees and do not wish to see them go.

Binswanger  points out the core of the issue in his article: “If the fear is of non-working immigrants, why is the pending legislation aimed at employers of immigrants?”

One thing to keep in mind, adds Shahmardian, is that just like any population anywhere, there are corrupt and criminal immigrants, and there are good, honest and hardworking immigrants, no different from what one might find within the native composition of the country itself. Nevertheless, the current political climate is creating an ever-growing sense of xenophobia, to the point that some Americans would rather do away with immigration altogether.

It may seem shocking to hear anti-immigration rhetoric in a country that, more than any other country in the history of the modern world, has reaped great benefits from those who have sought a new life on its shores. Nevertheless the anti-immigration sentiment is strong and it is rooted in the conception that being an American and staying in America is not a right, but a privilege.  But to be accurate, it is neither…  as it currently stands, the status of citizenship is granted in accordance to two congenital factors: geographic location and the citizenship status of one’s parents. Later it can be acquired through heterosexual marriage (gays and lesbians are denied the rights to be sponsored by their partners, as their unions are not approved by the federal government) or through the daunting process of work visas and other similar processes.

Those who would claim that American citizenship should be birth-bound are, in fact, the ones who understand America the least. The ideology of this country was founded upon the rejection of monarchy, tyranny and oppression, discarding all notions that some mystical, authoritarian element was carried over through bloodlines and down family lineage. It sought, instead, to uphold the ideal of achievement, that those who were willing to work, diligent, honest and with integrity, would someday reap the fruits of their labor, and be free of all oppression, to seek ultimate contentment and fulfillment within the goals they have established. This is known as the pursuit of happiness.

It is under this principle that immigrants such as Alexander Hamilton, Alexander Graham Bell, Andrew Carnegie, Albert Einstein, Ayn Rand , Igor Sikorsky, Arthur Rubinstein, Bob Hope, An Wang, and many others, forged their paths and enriched America as a country for having had them. Isn’t citizenship, then, best given to those who strive to live by the principles and ideology of this land, entering into an ideological commitment that is reflected in a lifestyle of achievement and freedom, rather than just reserve this status for a new breed of genetic aristocracy, who will not necessarily work towards preserving these ideals?

“Because our government is reactionary,” says Shahmardian, “we usually wait until the issue becomes a problem to do something about it.” Instead of creating a comprehensive and fair immigration system in lieu of the current Rube Goldberg-esque machine, the government merely tacks on new reforms, adding a new floor to the Tower of Babel.

As of December 15th 2009, The White House announced for the second time that the highly anticipated meeting to launch the Congressional effort for comprehensive immigration reform had been postponed with an assurance by an unnamed White house official that the meeting will happen soon. On December 16th representative Gutierrez introduced a bill that proposes immigration reform.

What will happen next is yet to be seen: If Washington simply contents itself to continue adding floors to the INS madhouse instead of striving to scrap the system and put a principled system in its place, a lot of deserving Americans will never get to call this country theirs, and that is perhaps one of the saddest tragedies, and one that the majority of the soundbite-tossing world of politics will not even notice.

 

Avatar, Racist? Try Anti-Life.

Every time Hollywood tries to depict an ‘original’ tribal species, we usually end up with several sensibilities being offended (as it is common in an age where people seem to think that opinions are tantamount to rights.) We all remember the ridiculous fiasco of Jar-Jar Binx, of course, a character who was not really as much of a racial stereotype as people claimed he was- but I suspect that that was merely an excuse used by people who were as annoyed as I was to let Lucas know that this whole New Trilogy idea wasn’t working out. It failed miserably, but at least the twerp kept his beak shut for the next two cinematic torture sessions.

Now that AVATAR has hit the movie theaters, we have the likes of Robinne Lee crying foul over racial stereotyping and ‘white savior fantasies’ in the movie, and James Cameron denying it has anything to do with race at all.

For once (and only once) in his cinematic life, Cameron is right:

What’s wrong with this movie isn’t that it is racist, but that it is philosophically bankrupt: The Na'Vi are poor (but expensively rendered) rip-offs of the Noble Savage stereotype, a throwback to the more embarrassing era of literature in which any underdeveloped civilization was seen as 'more pure' and 'innocent' and therefore superior to evil industrialized West with its ghastly materialistic values such as health, progress, comfort...

Such portrayals often gloss over inevitable realities as, for example, medical and scientific technology (how many Na'Vi children and mothers die at birth, obviously having no obstetricians? What is old for a Na'Vi, the ripe old age of forty?) in favor of painting this idyllic, bucolic and rather ridiculous "One with the earth" image of the Noble Savage.

The inevitable point of contention here is that in reality -the plane we all inhabit- the bucolic term "one with nature" usually means the abandonment of all 'evil' technology (because technology and industry are evil things to both the Noble Savage proponents and its historical descendants, the Environmentalists), which usually results in really being 'one with nature', such as being inside the stomach of a predator, or being part of a compost heap by the twilight age of thirty-five.

The other half of the equation lies in a portrayal of the Westerners that makes them out to be absolute brutish villains. Why are they evil and brutish, the Noble Savagist/Ecologist asks in false rhetoric? Why, it's because of his corrupt ways and technology!

Industrialization, according to the Virgin Earth proponents, is evil (evil enough that it has given us the longest lifespan in our history, and freed up our time so we don't have to spend nineteen hours a day toiling the soil, dying from gangrene, etc) and only after the Westerner abandons Western culture does he become Truly Noble -- such is the case with Avatar's protagonist who, when he abandons western culture and becomes like the Na'Vi,  is even more superlative at being Na'Vi than the Na'Vi are! 

This ideological befuddlement is not a plot flaw of “Avatar”, but rather it is the very essence of its Noble Savage root: The Noble Savage exists only to point Western Man in the direction of an ideal which they themselves cannot accomplish - only the Un-westernized westerner can. Are you still with me?

It’s not about race, race is the red herring that confuses the argument here: the whole  core of The Noble Savage is to say that Man is only Man when he stops being Man (that is, he is only man when he becomes mystical, superstitious, abandons technology and the scientific method, and is reduced to the life style and expectancy of a Neanderthal.) Forget the aspect of race, the Na’Vi – and in the past the Hollywood Native Americans, the Literary Natives Of Fictitious Islands and so on and so forth- are only cardboard cutout poster children for an ideology (from  Primitivism to the current Environmentalism) that wants nothing more than to see humanity reduced to its poorest state: huddled by a campfire and paralyzed by fear.

We’re In The Papers!

 

Our number of visitors has increased manifold at the institute, and we came to find out that The Institute is now featured in the Second Life Showcase as well as the website’s Destination Guide!

We have been asked several times whether we are officially affiliated with either the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) or The Objectivist Center (TOC) – our official answer is that we are not officially affiliated with either institution as far as being sponsored by them goes- the Institute is a labor of love (a love for values), but ideologically we align ourselves with The Ayn Rand Institute, Dr. Leonard Peikoff and Dr. Yaron Brook.

We consider ARI to be the institution that is the most faithful representation of Rand’s philosophy, and we could dedicate many pages to pointing out the reasons for which we find David Kelley’s position to be inconsistent, but both Kadar and I consider that one of the best sources for this material would be Dr. Diana Hsieh’s blog on “False Friends of Objectivism.” Once a member and supporter of TOC, Dr. Hsieh and her husband Paul have written some solid articles on the subject as well as provide a generous number of documents – including some personal anecdotes with Nathaniel and Barbara Branden. The site is a good place to start if you are curious.

 

Here we have an image from the event we held tonight: An open-topic get-together. We had a good number of individuals coming and leaving, so that our original 8 to 10pm time slot was extended to midnight. All in all, a good night!

 

Reader mail: Emphryio

 

emphryio wrote:

 

“I used to love Rand. And there absolutely was misanthropy involved. The misanthropy in the fiction (a few great men pulled down by the lazy masses) is as clear as could be.

It's also a bizarre pipe dream.

In reality the few most powerful people get their power exactly because they'll do whatever it takes, without the constraint of any kind of ethics. Some thing to hold such people back like democracy, no matter that it's heavily flawed (especially in a world where people see no problem for those exact same men to control the news), is essential.”

 

First I must thank you for writing your comment on this blog, but I am afraid I have to tell you that your focus is rather narrow and very selective. You see misanthropy because a struggle between the individual and the collective is depicted, and you focus solely on the fact that Rand’s fiction seeks to show what happens to the individual when subdued to a collectivist society – this, to you, is misanthropy not because the individual is squashed, but because collectivism is painted in a negative light.  It is akin to saying that individual rights activists are misanthropists because they depict the Iranian government in a negative light by focusing on the death of Neda Aghani Soltan.

Rand's novels deal with a world in which the individual rights of men are not respected and instead are run over 'for the greater good.' They are meant to display  the consequences that arise from considering the individual as less important than the collective of which it is allegedly a part. More importantly, the fiction in itself is not a series of edicts of commandments, but rather all of the actions by heroes and villains stem from two sets of principles based either on individualism and collectivism respectively.

I am afraid you have made a misrepresentation, one not uncommon if all you have ever read is the fiction and never cared to examine the principles behind it (which are laid to bare in the non-fiction). Fiction is only the demonstration of a principle in action, and most people seem to take concretes for the principles themselves and not as a specific manifestation stemming from a foundation based on principle. For a crash course on the basics, I would recommend Bernstein's "Objectivism in one lesson" to see if you are indeed correct in your original assertion, which I suspect is flawed. I began my study of Rand’s philosophy through her non-fiction first and then finally tackling her fiction, and the philosophical landscape was much clearer to me than if I had started with the fiction- and gone no further. I make the assumption that you have only read the fiction since that is the only thing which you have mentioned. If you wish to address perceptions of misanthropy in the non-fiction, please feel free to do so.

I also would like to point out that you misunderstood the ethics proposed by objectivism. No objectivist actually celebrates corrupt CEOs and leeches of industry,  It is precisely the system that allows these kinds of men to exist- a mixed economy where they can pull and push for government favors and impunity- that objectivists denounce. It is not the Alan Greenspans that are admired. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact.

It is perfectly possible to become 'powerful' through ethical means, but you have misplaced your concept of 'power' here: The current 'powerful' CEOs are powerful because they have a heaping help of government scruff in their hands and they extend their influence throughout the market and government the same way cancer propagates through an organism. This kind of individual will have no qualms in performing whatever unscrupulous actions he can in his rise to power, but it is precisely the renunciation of principles and of individual responsibility that allows for this kind of creature to ascend to power.

Collectivism (after all, he did it ‘for the good of the company/business’) and moral relativism/pragmatism (‘whatever works’/’the means justify the ends’) make it perfectly possible, and these collectors of power are precisely the kind of people that know how to make government control and intervention work for them: they’ve been doing it for decades already, so all government control ever does is expand their field of play and influence.

You call for collectivism as being necessary to ‘hold these people back,’ when the only thing that is truly necessary to hold them back is, more than ever, a push for individual rights and the understanding of rational self-interest as the moral core of the existence of man. Ayn Rand did not write idly when she wrote, during John Galt’s speech:

“Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that's through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality -- you who have never known any -- but to discover it.”

The 'powerful' men of industry in the objectivist concept are not men who command industry through fear and favor, but are men who have achieved their goals of production and have some modicum of influence not through their use of unprincipled force but through the virtue of their creativity. Unlike the Rat CEOs they are not immune from competition (they have no government 'buddies' watching out for them through anti-competition laws and the like) and are always aware of the possibility of superior competition.

These men and women understand that engaging in harmful practices will only end up harming the market and themselves in the lung run, and therefore it is in their best self-interest to respond with an attempt at offering a superior effort. If you want to ask next “Where are these men and women of which you speak?” I will have to answer “Look at the system you are proposing, a system of government control, and what it has made possible. Then you will know where they have gone.” You cannot expect a flower to survive if it is watered with poison.

So, we have two views of man present here: your letter  and my reply. In your letter you imply that man is an irrational beast who needs to be held back by laws, whereas I have said that all man needs to do is to rediscover his nature as a rational beast and the understanding that rational self-interest is a morality that allows him to exist on earth as a productive individual without despoiling or exploiting his fellow individuals.

To label Rand as a misanthropist because she wanted to see man free to enjoy his life, free to pursue his happiness rationally, free  without being shackled by collectivist laws and sacrifice - it is puzzling, to say the least.

In each hero of hers, from Dagny Taggart to Eddie Willers, you can see that it is within the grasp of every individual to become honest and rational, even if the capacity of becoming super industrialists, chiefs of industry, or world-shattering inventors is not in them (after all, there were many other people in Galt’s Gulch representing different professions, from composers of great note to merely famous actors, and simply unknown but honest and hardworking principled people)- all that matters is that an individual be honest, rational, principled and uncompromising in matters of fundamentals.

Rand used the villains and collectives of her novels to demonstrate the effects of holding contrary philosophies, but in no moment did she ever state that her heroes were a special breed of people and that the principled life was beyond the rabble – that  would have been misanthropic. Instead, throughout the novels there are isolated examples of people responding to greatness or achievement in a positive way (the reaction to the John Galt Line, for example), even if it is people who lack a completely structured philosophical approach, it is clear in the novels that they want to see great things done and admire them.

These anonymous good people become disillusioned and listless (as it is implied in the state of the world in Atlas Shrugged when North America is near its collapse) because they have no structured philosophical approach that would help them understand why  are these things happening and who is responsible for them- they’re good people (like Cheryl Taggart), but by having only an osmosis approach to  philosophy that they are at the mercy of the current and  many drown in it (a point of interest to you on this would be to read some of the essays in Philosophy: Who Needs It? that touch upon this very point)-  they are at the mercy of the tides precisely because they live in a society that has discarded the value of individualism- they lack a sense of self and self-worth that would otherwise save them.

You might want to rethink your original approach, because although you implied that Rand’s view (and therefore your own when you “used to love” her) is an inherently misanthropic one from which you have moved beyond, your words suggest that you have moved into a position rooted in misanthropy: now you are arguing that the only means by which man may be ‘held back’ (controlled) is not by his own mind or rational argument, but by the brute force (translated into legislation) of a collective movement (this is most likely why you see Rand as misanthropic, as she attacks the very means by which you think the individual must be reined back.)

This indicates to me a far dimmer view of the human condition than Rand ever expressed -after all, there are heroes in her works and her philosophy is explicitly geared towards the attainment of a rational state in which men trade value for value, whereas the existence of rational and honest men is qualified by you as ‘a bizarre pipe dream.’

 

To Professor Jennifer Burns

 

Sent to Professor Jennifer Burns, author of a rather philosophically inaccurate and heavily biased book on Rand:

 

To Jennifer Burns, Professor

Although you have done a very competent job in your book, from a historical perspective, I continuously found your attitude towards the philosophy in itself to be that of someone who either strived to misrepresent it or who simply did not understand it and did not put much effort to understand it at all. I am aware that your focus is a historical one, but it seems to be a very obvious oversight to attempt a book about a philosopher without actually studying the philosophy itself.

At best you have offered an incomplete portrait, at worst you have presented a disingenuous reduction of the personage by not attempting to understand the concepts of the philosophy and instead relegating your explanation of Rand to a point of view which is aimed as a platform for your criticisms of the person in question and not as an honest evaluation of the person *and* the philosophy.

A philosophy by itself can be the subject of a book, but the biography of a philosopher without integrating an honest study of the philosophy itself is inconceivable. I kept finding several philosophical mistakes concerning your conception of Objectivism at large (such as Rand's conception of selfishness, which you seem to have taken to be some sort of conception of cynical exploitation and misanthropy), and I must hope that these were honest mistakes - for the alternative must be that you sought to misrepresent the philosophy intentionally, which is a level of intellectual dishonesty that I do not wish to consider in an academic of your stature.

It is in absolute sincerity that I suggest you read the book "Objectivism in one lesson" by Andrew Bernstein- not as an attempt to 'convert' you but as a source against which you may wish to compare your assertions about the philosophy and correct, in a future edition, your intellectual inaccuracies regarding some very salient and important aspect of the philosophy. It is only the intellectually honest thing to do.