As expected, The Objectivist Center has officially changed its name — yet again. The Center Sometimes Mistaken for Objectivist will henceforth be known as “The Atlas Society.” Renaming your organization and its publication three times in 16-some years definitely inspires confidence, I think. It gives the solid impression of knowing what you’re doing. Or not.

The No Longer (Or Ever Really) Objectivist Center mailed a memo to its “members and friends” informing them of the change. I received a copy, so I imagine they really scraped the bottom of their mailing list barrel with this mailing. I’ve scanned and ocr’ed it with my fancy new scanner, so that I could quote it in its entirety:

The Atlas Society and The Objectivist Center

To: Our Members and Friends
From: The Executive Director and Trustees
Date: May 22, 2006
Topic: The Atlas Society and The Objectivist Center Names

Many of you have noticed the increased use of our “Atlas Society” name on our op-eds, emails, website and elsewhere. Perceptive members!

As you know we’ve had an Atlas Society since 1999. That name and the special part of our website were meant to appeal to those who read Ayn Rand novels and are taken — as so many of us are — by the excitement, romance and vision of a benevolent society of productive individuals. Rand’s books sell hundreds of thousands of copies a year. Thus there is a potentially huge audience for our organization. And now that an Atlas Shrugged movie is seriously in the works, that audience is likely to grow.

Thus our Trustees have decided to use The Atlas Society as our official name, which will help us promote our ideas to Rand readers and fans, as well as the general public while reserving The Objectivist Center name for our more academic and scholarly activities.

You’ve already seen some of the results of our outreach efforts. We’ve upgraded our website and are now posting new material at least every week. We are sending weekly emails to those who’ve signed up for updates as well. Further, The New Individualist has a new, more newsstand-worthy look, variety and style, and we indeed intend to get it on newsstands in the
future.

As part of this outreach strategy the Atlas name will invoke the Rand novel that has changed so many lives. Atlas is a less intimidating name for those unfamiliar with philosophy than is “Objectivism,” although our goal is to introduce them to the philosophy behind the novels that they love.

Our Trustee Walter Donway put it well when he said that ultimately we are trying to create an Atlas society.

We understand this to be the positive meaning of “Atlas.” This is not Atlas bowed and bloodied under the unfair yoke of carrying the world, even as he’s damned by the envious for his strength and virtues as his knees buckle under the burden.

This is the Atlas who welcomes the challenge to his mind, his strength and the best within him, who takes on the most difficult tasks because of the resulting joy in hard-won successes, the Atlas who celebrates each victory because each is the result of his own reason and productivity, the Atlas in all of us.

We thank you, our members and friends, for your support and look forward to promoting the principles of a rational, prosperous, benevolent society symbolized by Atlas!

This change of name is good news — and not just because it’s yet another highly visible example of the organization’s incompetent floundering. The name change distances the organization from Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. After all, the symbol of Atlas refers to far more than Atlas Shrugged. Given the origin of the symbol in Ancient Greek myth, the name “The Atlas Society” does not necessarily imply Ayn Rand.

Of course, this new “Atlas Society” will still claim to represent Ayn Rand’s philosophy — at least for a while. They’ve been explicitly distancing themselves from that prickly philosophy of Objectivism for some time now; it’s just too uncompromising for Ed Hudgins. The new name will allow them to do that so much more easily. I wouldn’t dignify that shift by calling it more honest, but it will be more accurate. Happily, the letter suggests an acceleration of that general trend:

As part of this outreach strategy the Atlas name will invoke the Rand novel that has changed so many lives. Atlas is a less intimidating name for those unfamiliar with philosophy than is “Objectivism,” although our goal is to introduce them to the philosophy behind the novels that they love.

Ed Hudgins’ general view is that Objectivism is just too hard for people to understand and accept, so we need to ease them into it slowly rather than forthrightly challenging their bad ideas. Given the above comments, I expect that process of easing to be even more slow in the future. Again, that’s good news, since people genuinely interested in Objectivism who accidentally start with “The Atlas Society” will soon look for something more serious.

Even better, the “Atlas” of this new “The Atlas Society” is not the Atlas of Atlas Shrugged at all. Consider, for a moment, how Ayn Rand uses the symbol. Francisco D’Anconia comes to office of Hank Rearden to convince him to go on strike, to convince him to reject the sanction of the victim, to refuse to allow his mind and his values to be used by parasites as weapons of his own destruction. I cannot quote the whole conversation; it’s too long. So let me start with Francisco’s comment just before his reference to Atlas:

“You’re guilty of a great sin, Mr. Rearden, much guiltier than they tell you, but not in the way they preach. The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt–and that is what you have been doing all your life. You have been paying blackmail, not for your vices, but for your virtues. You have been willing to carry the load of an unearned punishment–and to let it grow the heavier the greater the virtues you practiced. But your virtues were those which keep men alive. Your own moral code–the one you lived by, but never stated, acknowledged or defended–was the code that preserves man’s existence. If you were punished for it, what was the nature of those who punished you? Yours was the code of life. What, then, is theirs? What standard of value lies at its root? What is its ultimate purpose? Do you think that what you’re facing is merely a conspiracy to seize your wealth? You, who know the source of wealth, should know it’s much more and much worse than that. Did you ask me to name man’s motive power? Man’s motive power is his moral code. Ask yourself where their code is leading you and what it offers you as your final goal. A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue. A viler evil than to throw a man into a sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he leap in, of his own will, and that he build the furnace, besides. By their own statement, it is they who need you and have nothing to offer you in return. By their own statement, you must support them because they cannot survive without you. Consider the obscenity of offering their impotence and their need–their need of you–as a justification for your torture. Are you wiling to accept it? Do you care to purchase–at the price of your great endurance, at the price of your agony–the satisfaction of the needs of your own destroyers?”

“No!”

“Mr. Rearden,” said Francisco,’ his voice solemnly calm, “if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of this strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders–what would you tell him to do?”

“I … don’t know. What … could he do? What would you tell him?”

“To shrug.”

In Atlas Shrugged, Atlas represents the man of the mind unjustly condemned yet burdened by the code of the looters. He is the man who does not yet recognize that his choice to work in the world of the looters is what keeps that world alive. He is Hank Rearden before his liberation, the Hank Rearden who guiltily succumbs to the unjust reproaches of his mother, the belligerent mooching of his brother, and the poisonous manipulations of his wife.

This new “Atlas Society” specifically rejects that image of Atlas:

We understand this to be the positive meaning of “Atlas.” This is not Atlas bowed and bloodied under the unfair yoke of carrying the world, even as he’s damned by the envious for his strength and virtues as his knees buckle under the burden.

So is “The Atlas Society” instead embracing the liberated Atlas who has shrugged off the burden unjustly imposed upon him? No, that’s not mentioned at all. Instead, this new “Atlas” is some bromidic hash without relation to either Atlas Shrugged or Greek myth:

This is the Atlas who welcomes the challenge to his mind, his strength and the best within him, who takes on the most difficult tasks because of the resulting joy in hard-won successes, the Atlas who celebrates each victory because each is the result of his own reason and productivity, the Atlas in all of us.

Um, okay. But how exactly is that Atlas of any kind? It’s not, obviously. It’s just Ed Hudgins’ lame idea of vaguely Objectivish moral inspiration. If anything, it’s still pre-shug Hank Rearden, only when in his mills rather than at home. And that’s not Objectivism. (Admittedly, that these folks are not promoting Objectivism is not news!)

As a final note, I cannot help but observe that the web site of The Atlas Society is as pathetically out-of-date as ever.