I think people have a built-in instinct towards self-preservation. What sometimes happens though, is people love something so much, such as a novel, that it becomes an inseparable part of who they are. And that’s when cultish behavior starts, because an attack on that idea becomes an attack on them personally. To find fault with that idea is to find fault with them.
Now one thing (not the only thing) that made Objectivism different from other philosophies was that the founder presented it, not as a dry collection of premises and conclusions in an academic journal, but rather by writing a novel about it, about how some perfect exponents of this philosophy (Howard Roark, etc) would live their lives. So if there is a disproportionate number of cult like behavior in followers of this philosophy, maybe it is something to do with the presentation as a novel and not the ideas themselves or even the founder.
I think people have a built-in instinct towards self-preservation. What sometimes happens though, is people love something so much, such as a novel, that it becomes an inseparable part of who they are. And that’s when cultish behavior starts, because an attack on that idea becomes an attack on them personally. To find fault with that idea is to find fault with them.
Now one thing (not the only thing) that made Objectivism different from other philosophies was that the founder presented it, not as a dry collection of premises and conclusions in an academic journal, but rather by writing a novel about it, about how some perfect exponents of this philosophy (Howard Roark, etc) would live their lives. So if there is a disproportionate number of cult like behavior in followers of this philosophy, maybe it is something to do with the presentation as a novel and not the ideas themselves or even the founder.