Atlas Shrugged LO9835

Grover Partee (gpartee@halcyon.com)
Sun, 8 Sep 1996 17:50:11 -0700

Hal Popplewell says (in LO9815):

--- Quote ---
. . . Galt collected up the finest minds in the world and bound them
together in a common cause of huge scope and import. He was, obviously, an
inspirational leader as well as an individual innovator - bearing the mark
of both these types of genius. By bringing these people together, in fact,
innovation after innovation resulted, so much so that the characters in
the novel treat the innovations quite "matter of fact"ly - Little doubt
that John Galt had formed the epitome of the Learning Organizations.
--- End quote ---

Please consider whether or not we might easily say the following:

-- pseudo-quote --
. . . Hitler collected up the finest minds in the world and bound them
together in a common cause of huge scope and import. He was, obviously, an
inspirational leader as well as an individual innovator - bearing the mark
of both these types of genius. By bringing these people together, in fact,
innovation after innovation resulted, so much so that the characters in
the novel treat the innovations quite "matter of factly" - Little doubt
that Adolf Hitler had formed the epitome of the Learning Organizations.
-- end pseudo-quote --

Hmm. OK, I'll agree that "finest minds in the world" may be a bit of a
stretch and we have to set aside our usual convention of considering an
"innovation" as some sort of step forward. The Blitzkreig is, I believe,
so considered by military theorists, but few people today are willing to
accept Auschwitz as any sort of step forward. But, with those provisos,
is the above not essentially true?

The concern I have is not that John Galt did bad things or was not
successful or that Objectivism is essentially evil. Rather I would argue
that the tools presented in Rand's and Braden's philosophy lend themselves
as easily -- perhaps even more so -- to a totally self-centered and
self-serving, amoral aquisition of power and wealth to the detriment of
others and to the detriment, if need be, of our organizations. It is, in
fact, an end-justified, might-makes-right philosophy. I'm right because I
say I'm right and who are you to argue with me. After all, I'm
successful, aren't I? Note the quote from the review cited by John Paul
Fullerton <jpf@mail.myriad.net> in LO9816:
> For Rand, the ultimate goalfor humanity on this earth is each
> person's own life; the ultimate beneficiary of action, each
> person's own self.

(Hmm, what's the proper form of citation here. Is that Fullerton
describing what Nicholas Dykes said Leonard Peikoff said Ayn Rand said or
. . . . Oh, well, it's all in LO9816 so I guess you can go sort it out for
yourself. It's also referenced to:

http://avocado.wustl.edu/~diana/objectivism/misc/opar-review.html

if you want to see the original. Thank you, John, for bringing that to
our attention.)

There is certainly little room for altruism here. And, as John points
out, there's also little reason for the Objectivist to waste time talking
to people with whom s/he disagrees. Thus, there's little room for
learning either. (I don't learn much if I spend all my time talking to
people who only know what I know!) Objectivism does have relevance to our
discussion, but mostly, I think, in a cautionary sense. Peter Block argues
(in "Stewardship") that the root of many of our organizational problems
and perhaps the greatest stumbling block for a Learning Organization is
the persistent paternalism of our organizations. It's supported both by
executives who want to be the "Daddy" and staff who just want to find a
better "Daddy." If we're going to learn, however, we need to understand
that (1) we are not going to be taken care of (i.e., John Galt is not
coming to save us) and (2) we have no business taking care of others
(i.e., we aren't John Galt either.) Care taking is just being a "good
Daddy."

Grover Partee
Facilitation & Process Support
Seattle, WA

-- 

Grover Partee <gpartee@halcyon.com>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>