Having never heard much on Objectivism, I found this story of one reporter's trip to the Objectivist Conference hilarious. It seems they're having some problems in the movement.
An odd recipient for a reward.
Objectivist speaker tackles climate change and fossil fuels, with predictable results:
It seems being an Objectivist is a lonely lifestyle
The article reads like a surreal comedy, it feels like Wes Anderson could make it into a film.
This was the grim setting for a nearly week-long celebration of Rand's genius that coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of her clarion call for a capitalist-aligned cultural and aesthetic movement, The Romantic Manifesto. Thrumming in the background was a related, similarly unnerving trend for Objectivists: The romance of the movement has lost a good deal of its cachet in an unequal, austerity-battered America—particularly when it comes to pulling in the young recruits who were once the backbone of the Rand insurgency. All the kids these days are becoming socialists and communists. Only 45 percent of young Americans view capitalism positively, compared with 51 percent who profess a fondness for socialism
An odd recipient for a reward.
We were interrupted by some timely welcoming remarks by the Ayn Rand Institute's president and CEO, Tal Tsfany, who had the honor, he told us, of announcing 2019's Self Made Man award. The crowd gathered close with excitement as the winner was announced: Leonard Peikoff.
Everybody clapped, and though there seemed to be a strong case that the inheritor of Rand's fortune and founder of the group that was hosting the event might have serious eligibility issues for such a distinction, I didn't hear any grumbling. His award, we were told, would be on display in the third floor art gallery all week. Someone else accepted it on his behalf
Objectivist speaker tackles climate change and fossil fuels, with predictable results:
The moral case for fossil fuels, it turned out, was a Steven Pinker–esque tribute to the bright side of human progress. "The world is better than ever," Epstein declared, thanks in no small part to energy derived from fossil fuels. Environmentalism is thus anti-humanist. "People are just looking for negatives about fossil fuels," he lamented. "They're not looking for positives." He then drilled the crowd on some useful rhetorical flourishes that he has passed on to policy-makers. ("To paraphrase Atlas Shrugged," he said, "I want them to have the words they need.") When he pulled up the famous "hockey stick" graph showing a dramatic spike of atmospheric carbon levels after the industrial era, he told us that it actually charted a great saga of "human flourishing."
An exuberant question-and-answer session followed. When someone noted that his peers were alarmed by a rapidly warming climate, Epstein took a dig at the Green New Deal championed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, saying, "I think she should be called Venezuela Ocasio-Cortez!" When another audience member invited him to respond to accusations that his acceptance of fossil fuel industry dollars might preclude him from being objective, Epstein steamrolled the question with a John Galt–style show of brio: "I'm that superhero who's coming to help this industry tell the truth."
Epstein's talk drove home the perverse incentives the Objectivist dogma offers to on-the-make intellectuals: Selling out to the highest bidder is not merely condoned; it's deemed a positive moral virtue. It didn't even matter if Epstein really believed his own advocacy; maybe he did, maybe he didn't. What mattered above all is the belief in the sanctity of the transaction. "That was very interesting," one of the young Objectivists murmured to me on the way out.
It seems being an Objectivist is a lonely lifestyle
Still, there remains something notionally rebellious about hardcore Randianism that continues to captivate young followers even through these dark days. But the challenge is keeping them hooked once they've come down from their first Galt high. Even Brook admitted that it was a tough sell. "It alienates you from so many people," he told me. "The people around you think you are crazy." The socialists have weekly happy hours at hipster bars in Brooklyn, and conservatives have Trump rallies, but the cult of the individual has nothing comparable on offer. "It's lonely," he admitted
The article reads like a surreal comedy, it feels like Wes Anderson could make it into a film.