Why Reading Medieval Latin Is Central to the Purpose of the Atlanta Objectivist Society

Every Saturday morning, 4 or 5 of us meet at a bookstore. We drink coffee and read passages from the Vulgate Bible. We've read the Prodigal Son, some Ecclesiastes, and the Ten Commandments. We also argue over deponent verbs forms and whether to translate "legis" as a genitive noun or as a second person singular verb. We aren't a Bible study group. We are the Latin Club of the Atlanta Objectivist Society.

Why do we read the Bible? Because we are all pretty much fascinated by Medieval Latin. But don't worry; we are going to read other things too. Next in line are The Legends of Early Rome by the Roman historian Livy. (No, I did not name my child after him.)

This blog post is about the importance of groups like ours for a community Objectivist club.

The Latin club began with one of my periodic language acquistion whims. I'd been wanting to refresh my Latin and so had a friend from our club. I talked it over with him, and we thought, "Why not open it up to our members? Probably noone else will want to do it, but we might as well ask." As it turns out, there are way more nerds in the AOS than we imagined.

A lot of times, the focus of an Objectivist club ends up on philosophy. Lectures, book discussion groups, and political arguments are par for the course. And there is nothing wrong with those things, of course. But if these clubs are going to be a real social network for the members (kinda like the social network of a church is my goal), there must be room for people to do optional values together. Our Latin group has almost nothing to do with Objectivism, but it provides the members a way to pursue an unrelated passion with people who share their values. AOS has several other groups that meet that same optional value need: Oist Playgroup (for parents and kids to get together every other week and socialize), Econ club (for nerds of another stripe to talk over inflation, investing, and the Fed), and a monthly movie night (with social time before and after the movie). Basically, our idea is that if you are gonna watch movies or conjugate verbs, why not do them with like-minded people?

These optional value groups create ties beyond "Hey, we share a philosophy." Because they are smaller groups, more introverted members of AOS get to live in their comfort zone sometimes (not just mine, which is the huge monthly social!). They give people a chance to get to know each other while pursuing values, very specific, shared values, and as we all know, once you have read the Bible together and cracked jokes about Tolkein and South Park based on Latin, you have really forged a bond.

There are several members of the Latin group that I don't see at other functions very often, and that tells me that they do want to be a part of our community, just not in the more traditional activivites. We have several members who aren't Objectivists, but just folks who are interested in Ayn Rand's ideas (the pre-req for AOS). I like that the Latin club shows them that we are not Randroids, that we have favorite books outside Atlas Shrugged, and that we have values that aren't Objectivism. It's a kind of outreach to provide a setting for interested people to see us as normal, as regular people who do regular things. If translating Latin can be called normal and regular. :)

Here at AOS, we love the Mini-Con, the lectures, the study groups, and the large socials, but I think what will make our organization into a great social network are the optional value groups popping up. I would encourage other clubs to start as many of these as possible; I know that some already have hiking groups and probably others. Our policy is that if you want to get together for anything (no matter how obscure, as the Latin club illustrates), all you have to do is organize it. We will promote the group for you, through email and the website. We think that this grassroots kind of organizing benefits our club by getting members more directly involved with running it and by guaranteeing that we will have more groups than Jenn and I could have thought of on our own.

I'll end with this Latin biblical quote, which is the motto of my alma mater and the atmosphere I think optional value groups create in the AOS:

Ecce quam bonum et quam iucundum habitare fratres in unum. (Psalm 133)

"Look how good and how joyful it is for brothers to live in unity."