No tribe can define me

I was confused and upset in 2021. It was the year of the Capitol invasion and the COVID chaos. I no longer knew what I believed or whether anything made sense. I was reading the news, and I saw a National Guard soldier reading Atlas Shrugged, while resting. That picture intrigued me. There was a mess going on, I did not know who to believe and why, Washington streets were blocked, and National Guards were protecting the government buildings. Protecting them for what exactly? I did not know. I had no idea if those inside of these buildings were my enemies or allies. I was deeply confused, I did not know what to believe or value on the larger scheme of things.

I never considered religion as a guide. Faith had no appeal for me. So I made the decision to study philosophy.

I sympathized with Objectivists, so I decided to consider their full position seriously. I chose to study philosophy with an Objectivist perspective.

After long years of painful study, crises, and struggle, I believe I am now confortable as an Objectivist. There was a huge amount of context required before I could reach that conclusion with confidence. I learned a great deal of history, and I also completed fifty lectures of Leonard Peikoff’s History of Western Philosophy, each two hours long. But the process was long and difficult. I had my own contradictions and emotions to reconcile. Still, I persisted—grappling with the ideas and discussing them.

I believe I became an Objectivist when I accepted the Objectivist view of the role of emotions and their reconciliation with reason. At that moment, I recognized that my mind was sovereign, and that my future emotions would follow from the convictions I formed today. Of course, reaching such a conviction is not simple. But that was the turning point. The fact is that later on my emotions did follow. I have a completely different life today—far better than before. I feel differently. Studying Objectivism changed my life. It made things more simple, not complicated.

Being an Objectivist, to me, had nothing to do with belonging to a group. It had nothing to do with how I felt while reading Atlas Shrugged. It came from the conviction that I could—and should—navigate life using my own judgment as long as I did that in the way proper for a human being: reason.

Since I now hold with full conviction that the rational mind is the ultimate judge—and since I agree with the Objectivist framework for making that judgment—I call myself an Objectivist.

Objectivism rejects the idea of an “official” judgment outside my own mind that I must accept on faith. I agree with this.

Objectivism holds that truth and value are formed by a rational mind in contact with reality. Both mind and reality are required—not one without the other. I agree with this.

So anyone who believes there is an “official Objectivist” position on truth or moral judgment that releases him from forming his own conclusions is practicing Objectivism incorrectly. He believes he agrees with Objectivism, but in fact, he does not.

Likewise, if someone believes that acting as an Objectivist is defined by “associating himself with Rand or with Objectivists,” he is practicing Objectivism incorrectly. He believes he agrees with Objectivism, but in fact, he does not.

I believe one becomes a real Objectivist when he takes full responsibility for his own conclusions, using Objectivism as a framework he has understood—and therefore holds with conviction—to guide him. He regards his mind as sovereign, and he does not allow his feelings to have the final say in anything.

A general election in a deeply dysfunctional culture is extremely difficult to judge. I abstained from voting in 2024. I wanted my vote counted, so I wrote in George Washington for President. I did that because I could not reach a conviction about either option, and I despised both. So I abstained.

That does not make me more of an Objectivist than the person who voted for Trump, nor more of an Objectivist than the person who voted for Kamala.

However, I do morally judge people’s behavior after the election. I judge those who use fear—not reason—to make political judgments. I judge those who surrender their minds to fear and who are unable to conduct a civilized, rational discussion aimed at helping each other understand issues more clearly while setting their own emotions aside.

I reserve the right to morally judge emotionalists who evade thinking—those who succumb to fear and seek protection in a tribe: whether the tribe of those who call themselves “Objectivists,” or “anti-leftists,” or “MAGAists,” or any other “ists” who believe that joining a tribe releases them from the responsibility to judge things on their own.

I thank Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, Harry Binswanger, and many others who taught me so much about human nature. I say today, with conviction, that I am not one of their followers. I am one of their students—someone who will not memorize their dictates, and who will accept what they say only once I understand and agree. I know that if I were their follower, they would have nothing but contempt for me. They would not accept a blind follower as a student—someone who lets others define for him who he is.

But I say what I say not because they said. I say what I say because I hold the conviction that I am the ultimate judge of what is true and what is good, and I need a great deal of rationality and honesty to do that.