11-20-10 Hodgepodge
Saturday, November 20, 2010
De-Listings
Update: A reader emails me with the question of whether the Hsiehs' recent post on this matter was a factor in my decision, noting that its time stamp appears to be hours before this one. No, it was not, and at least when I made my rounds before I started this post, it was not available on the web. That said, I haven't read it yet, either.
Second Update: After reading the post above, my concerns regarding the Hsiehs no longer apply. I am adding both of their blogs, which I enjoy, back to the blogroll. I will also re-list both TOS and Principles in Practice. Speed is often, but not always, a virtue in blogging, and I acted in unnecessary haste yesterday. That lesson learned, I apologize to the Hsiehs and Craig Biddle for this post, to my readers for two retractions in a month, and to my old friend Dismuke: Had I remembered his advice from early on, none of this would have happened. (I do remain concerned about the "Justice" essay.) Finally, I will start acting on that advice now and warn that I will almost certainly reject any further comments about the Peikoff-McCaskey mess.
The following has been my longstanding policy regarding links to subject matter external to this blog:
Links from this site to others are strictly for my own convenience. The fact that I have provided a link to another site does not in any way imply an endorsement of that site or a guarantee that its content will remain unaltered after the time I provided the link.Even so, I occasionally remove links that I think could reasonably be taken as endorsements of sites that promote major factual, theoretical, or philosophical positions I judge as wrong.
I have done this today.
Due to my own very serious reservations about Craig Biddle's "Justice for John P. McCaskey," I have removed links to The Objective Standard, Principles in Practice, and the blogs of two other individuals who have expressed agreement with and have promoted that essay. My reservations go beyond the primary one I expressed when I retracted my own support for that essay more than two weeks ago. However, I will not elaborate further on those reservations at this time.
Update: A reader emails me with the question of whether the Hsiehs' recent post on this matter was a factor in my decision, noting that its time stamp appears to be hours before this one. No, it was not, and at least when I made my rounds before I started this post, it was not available on the web. That said, I haven't read it yet, either.
Second Update: After reading the post above, my concerns regarding the Hsiehs no longer apply. I am adding both of their blogs, which I enjoy, back to the blogroll. I will also re-list both TOS and Principles in Practice. Speed is often, but not always, a virtue in blogging, and I acted in unnecessary haste yesterday. That lesson learned, I apologize to the Hsiehs and Craig Biddle for this post, to my readers for two retractions in a month, and to my old friend Dismuke: Had I remembered his advice from early on, none of this would have happened. (I do remain concerned about the "Justice" essay.) Finally, I will start acting on that advice now and warn that I will almost certainly reject any further comments about the Peikoff-McCaskey mess.
Weekend Reading
"To an ethical subjectivist, everyone's desires are equally valid, and one must acquiesce to others' demands in the name of fairness." -- Don & Bernice Richmond in "The Evil of Compromise," originally at The Naples Daily News (via HBL)
"At the very least, the public should know the consequences if the EPA has its way." -- Paul Saunders in "EPA ozone targets will hurt job creation in Lehigh Valley, New Jersey," at The Lehigh Valley Express-Times (via HBL)
Harriman Blogs
Via Burgess Laughlin, I see that David Harriman is discussing some of the criticisms of his book, The Logical Leap.
From the Vault
Writing about barbecue last year, I made the following point:
Man is an integrated being of mind and body, and mere physical survival is not the same thing as living a life proper to man. Pleasurable activities like sex -- including some that are risky or dangerous if performed carelessly or to excess -- are necessary to an enjoyable, properly human, life.Also, amusement ensues in the comments.
Art and a Movie
"I am just back from seeing the new Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner romantic flick, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. The movie was light, fun, and a not terribly-original, but enjoyable take on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. -- Michael Randall
-- CAV
Updates
11-21-10: Added update to first section.
11-21-10: Added second update to first section.
18 comments:
Gus,
I agree with Craig's piece, "Justice for John P. McCaskey."
www.galileoblogs.blogspot.com
I like your writings, but I do not agree with you on this one.
Dr. Peikoff may be the "world's foremost authority on Objectivism," but he is fallible, and he has demonstrated that on several occasions, including this McCaskey matter.
Best wishes,
GB
>However, I will not elaborate further on those reservations at this time.
I wish that you would because I am interested in your reasoning. To go from one position to its polar opposite seems like quite a change. What, if I may ask, led you to make it?
GB,
The way Peikoff handled this is proof of his fallibility. No argument from me on that.
Anon.,
It is indeed.
Regarding my switch: I had not been following this dispute as closely as many and basically allowed myself to forget (or not put together) several things about it that I *already knew* when I read the Biddle post. These things together meant that there was no solid basis for concluding that Peikoff had condemned McCaskey. That was sloppy thinking on my part, pure and simple. On top of that, I should have waited before posting on that subject.
It was after discussing the post with others and during subsequent readings that the other problems became clear to me.
Gus
I am baffled by the whole affair. I am not impressed with how Dr. Peikoff managed his disagreement with Dr. McCaskey, nor with how the ARI board managed the public fallout from Dr. Peikoff’s letter. I think Dr. Brook’s statement, despite its veneer of calm, is essentially a slap in the face of those who read Dr. Peikoff’s letter and took it at face value. I am insulted by it.
Nor do I take much comfort in Dr. Brook’s argument that Since David Harriman’s book was a major project of the institute, it demanded McCaskey’s unconditional support as long as he was a member of ARI’s board. To claim that is to claim that David Harriman was given a blank check to write whatever he wanted and that his writing is somehow above scholarly criticism. That is absurd.
Craig Biddle essentially looked at the facts as he found them and gave his best judgment. I do not fault him for that. Unlike Robert Tracinski, Biddle did not bring in every slight from the past decade, but focused his statement on the specific problems he faced having relationships with all the parties involved. Craig Biddle is not the villain here.
Nor are the Heish’s. If they had questions and reservations, they had every right to express them. If people at ARI did not like their assessment or thought it was missing important context, they did not have to wait a month and a half to express it.
My opinion of ARI has been greatly changed by this whole affair. I wish them well, but for now at least, I will not support them. They have lost my trust and they will simply have to earn it back if I am ever to support them again.
"I think Dr. Brook's statement, despite its veneer of calm, is essentially a slap in the face of those who read Dr. Peikoff's letter and took it at face value. I am insulted by it. "
What part about admitting it was a mistake to release a small sliver of an email conversation to the public did you not understand?
"Dr. Brook's argument that Since David Harriman's book was a major project of the institute, it demanded McCaskey's unconditional support as long as he was a member of ARI's board."
That's their longstanding policy. The idea of this being an argument or a demand for no debate is absurd.
To lighten the mood I suggest GvH is rather miffed about his beloved Arsenal FC falling to a rare defeat from a winning 2-0 position against their hated rivals of Spurs.
"I think Dr. Brook’s statement, despite its veneer of calm, is essentially a slap in the face of those who read Dr. Peikoff’s letter and took it at face value."
Well, perhaps those who took the letter at face value deserve a gentle slap in the face. This is especially true for anyone who has studied Objectivism long enough to be aware of the issue of context.
If you walk through a room and overhear something provocative in a very brief snippet of conversation, do you "take it at face value" and run with it by telling everyone? Or do you seek clarification? And if it is not possible to obtain clarification, do then just go ahead and run with it nevertheless? Or do you file it away as an out of context curiosity and keep your wild speculative potentialities that have occurred to you to yourself?
Dr. Peikoff's email made it immediately obvious that it was but one brief snippet of a wider conversation and that it assumed a great deal of context that was not covered in the email. To take it at face value and ignore the fact that there clearly was some sort of wider context behind it is irresponsible.
Most responsible commentators on this matter did not take the letter at face value and recognized that they only had incomplete information.
I do believe that ARI's subsequent handling of the matter once the email became public was a very unfortunate self-inflicted wound - which ARI's statement more or less admits.
ARI's position apparently was that the dispute between Drs. Peikoff and McCaskey was a strictly private matter. I think it is more accurate to say that it perhaps ought to have been a strictly private matter. But the reality is that, the very moment Dr. McCaskey released the email, the conflict entered the public realm just as surely as if it had been published on the front page of the daily paper.
Dr. Peikoff states that he gave permission to McCaskey to make the email public because he "did not want to give him the opportunity to charge that I was engaged in a cover-up."
But if Dr. Peikoff was aware of that potentiality, then he and/or somebody at ARI should also have been aware that there was much in the letter that Peikoff's enemies could take out of context and twisted into all sorts of things.
To be fair, pretty much anything Dr. Peikoff says is subject to being distorted and taken out of context - as years of history demonstrate. My strong guess is that Dr. Peikoff is at a point in his life where he doesn't give much of a damn what his critics say or think or do. But since ARI's mission involves outreach to people who are new to Ayn Rand and who do not have the context to make sense of such issues, ARI must be concerned with appearances and the various distortions and misconceptions spread by its detractors.
In retrospect, that the minute that permission was given to McCaskey to publish the email, someone should have drawn up contingency plans in the event that McCaskey actually DID publish it.
McCaskey's resignation falls into the category of "behind the scenes office politics." Traditionally, such things HAVE been private matters. If you learn about a wonderful new software program that benefit you enormously, should the alleged mistreatment of a board member by the software company's founder be a factor in your decision to purchase the software? I am not indifferent to injustice - but when I buy software or donate money for intellectual activism, I am more concerned about the end RESULTS I will get for my money. EVERY organization has its share of "office politics" - imagine having to sort through all that every time you make a decision to deal with an organization.
Historically, most people have never even be aware of an organization's office politics. No traditional news outlet can afford to devote expensive print space or air time to such sorts of bickering that most people couldn't care less about. But we live in a new world where blogs and message boards are amplified by social media. The result is a de facto "Objectivist media" world that ranges from pretentious and/or disreputable tabloid-like sites up to thoughtful outlets of quality.
Like it or not, in such a world, things such as ARI office politics can and will become "news" - and there is little that ARI or anyone else can do to prevent it.
And, like it or not, in such a world, people such as Drs, Pekioff, McCaskey, Brook and even bloggers become de facto "celebrities" who will occasionally be subjected to the same sort of gossip mongering that pop culture celebrities are subjected to by various tabloid and entertainment magazines. Real life celebrities have no choice but to deal with such stuff as best they can.
In such a world, organizations with niche appeal such as ARI and those who become "Internet famous" within a particular niche will have no choice but to deal with the new realities presented by niche media and social networks as best they can. I promise you this much: this will not be the last social network feeding frenzy that ARI will have to contend with. There are plenty of people who will be all too eager to whip up another one when the pretext presents itself.
ARI wasn't only party in this mess to underestimate the potency of informal forums and social networking.
I saw a number of comments on various blogs that went WAY over the top. And, in some cases, I suspect the individuals who made them are necessarily bad people as much as they are either immature, clueless or have poor judgment. As a result, they will forever have egg on their face.
Unfortunately, a lot of people feel comfortable "thinking out loud" online without fully realizing that they are PUBLISHING their thoughts to the world. The informality of many venues can be very deceptive.
There is a HUGE difference between what is acceptable to contemplate in the privacy of your own mind verses actually giving voice to it.
For example, it might be entirely appropriate to privately consider the possibility that a person you hold in high regard is perhaps being dishonest, emotionalistic, or disengaged from reality. But to actually voice to such thoughts is often profoundly inappropriate.
There are occasions when it can be beneficial to bounce such thoughts off of other people and benefit from their input - but ONLY when it is in the private company of close and trusted confidants who know your context, character and intentions.
Unfortunately, there are many who interact on message boards, blogs or facebook walls the same way and with the same intimacy that they would in a gathering in a friend's living room.
For the same reason you would not feel comfortable holding the same conversation you might have in someone's living room on the set of a television program being broadcast live, you should not have a similar comfort level when discussing such matters on a message board or blog comment.
I don't care how obscure or informal the venue might be, when you post something on the Internet, you need to exercise the same level of judgment you would if you knew that your comments would appear on the front page of your daily newspaper. Indeed, an ill-considered comment on an obscure blog can live on much longer because most of what is in a daily newspaper is thrown away and forgotten about after a few days. Your online brain farts live on and are subject to key word searches from Google which has far, far more reach than does any newspaper or broadcast outlet.
Half-thoughts and speculation about people who are important to you are generally best left unexpressed or, at most, expressed only in private conversation with trusted friends.
Internet communities are wonderful places for far flung people with unconventional interests to interact and enjoy shared values. I think it is understandable that people seek from such communities a certain amount of "visibility" that they are unable to get from their more conventional local in-person acquaintances. I think a quest for such "visibility" might explain why so any people are inclined to "think out loud" online and do things like putting up blog postings detailing rather intimate and personal aspects of their lives. There are Objectivist bloggers I have never met and whose postings I read only on rare occasion but whose financial and sexual lives I know far more about than I do of close friends I have known for years. Maybe they get a sense of visibility from it - but there is such a thing as being TOO visible.
You never know who might be reading what you are writing - or who might be reading it years from now. So your best assumption is to assume that EVERYBODY is reading and exercise good judgment accordingly.
> What part about admitting it was a mistake to release a small sliver of an email conversation to the public did you not understand?
With the utmost respect, I did not understand the part that then attempted to blame Biddle and the Heish’s for the conflagration. I did not think that fair.
That is a much-needed dose of reality. Thanks, Dismuke.
Several comments are here that were in the comment queue, but of which I received no email notification. These are the ones between Dismuke's first comment and the comment above this one.
Gus, thanks for the link to my blog post on 'Ghosts of Girlfriends Past', but shouldn't there be a time limit, a statute of limitations, on how far back in a blog you go to link to a post.
I stand by my judgment of them movie and sculpture, but not by the quality of my writing. :( I spent the past 15 minutes editing that post. Thanks!
Michael,
You're welcome. I'd have linked even if there WERE a statute of limitations, though. Didn't notice the date, and I think I found the post through another blog.
Anon,
Yes. I did see that Arsenal lost to Hotspur. That's my "domestic rivalry" matchup, as Tottenham's mascot is a gamecock, and one of my many pet names for my wife is "rooster" (Yes, I know...). It's an amusing coincidence that there is in fact also an intense rivalry between the teams.
On learning of that result, I said to Mrs. Van Horn: "The Roosters won today."
Gus
On the November 21 comment at 4:17 I wrote:
"And, in some cases, I suspect the individuals who made them are necessarily bad people as much as they are either immature, clueless or have poor judgment."
I just noticed that I made a major typo in that. It should read "I suspect the individuals who made them are NOT necessarily bad people as much as they are either immature, clueless or have poor judgment."
There ARE a few people whose comments on the matter led me to conclude that they are probably bad people. But I have certainly NOT concluded that about EVERBODY whose comments went a bit over the top for the reasons I mentioned.
Thanks for the clarification.
Dismuke has kept a very cool, rational head throughout this affair, and I applaud his example.
RE; Arsenal. "Hotspurs"? I just found the answer to a question I haven't asked in over thirty years: whence came the name of my old soccer team back in grade 2.
I wonder if there will be a single trivia question left unanswered in my mind by the time I leave this world, thanks to the Internet.
RE: Dismuke -- Agreed. He also correctly called the issue of the conflict of interest, as well as indicated that the email really needed a larger context to be interpreted correctly from the get-go. (Should have kept that in mind the first time I read Biddle's piece...)
RE: Hotspur -- Yeah. We'll know our trivia, but will we know anything else?
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