All new ideas arise from conflict. . . . [E]very time man has had a new idea it has been a challenge to the sacred ideas of the past and the present and inevitably a conflict has raged.
— Saul Alinsky
Written by Travis D.
It is, in fact, true that I briefly flirted with Randian ideas and the possibility of holding Objectivist beliefs.
Then I turned 17.
Sunday, 24 Apr, 2011 at 4:00 pm
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The Big Hurt [New]
Sunday, 24 Apr, 2011 at 10:52 am
I made the big mistake of hitting play once on a Rand video. What a mistake that was. That this humanity hater’s message is listened to and adhered to by so many makes one furious. Probably people don’t realize the message but think it’s cool because others say it’s cool.
Sunday, 24 Apr, 2011 at 4:31 pm
What’s really cool is not being a worthless asshole who feels like merely existing is more than sufficient contribution to the wellbeing of their fellow man.
Daniel [New]
Sunday, 24 Apr, 2011 at 8:51 pm
As easy as it is to mock objectivists (and I’m not above it) I do wonder what, if anything could be done to help the ones that don’t progress past the point of the 17 year old ever in their lives?
I fear for too many they won’t realize until they too, are crushed under the heel of those they worship. Even then, I’m not sure rationalization wouldn’t find a way to keep them going.
SpitBall [New]
Monday, 25 Apr, 2011 at 6:59 am
I still read Atlas Shrugged on a fairly regular basis. I know that likely makes me a pariah in these parts. I appreciate her anti-fascist perspective most of all. Ms. Rand really needed to get out into the streets, bars, and clubs, IMHO. A lost weekend (week?) at a Dead show would have benefited her psyche, I think.
The most striking aspect of Rand’s work in our current political culture is how poorly those who are slammed as “Randians” are at following anything remotely reminiscent of what she proposed in her books. Just like all those a-holes in the Bush Administration that were supposed to be using The Prince and The Art of War as their playbook. I doubt they ever read past the first few pages.
Clearly, the term “Randian” has tremendous negative weight (almost up there with Nazi), so many folks toss it around just to make their political opponents look bad. I suspect many of those who consider Rand a malevolent force never read her books, either.
The Big Hurt [New]
Monday, 25 Apr, 2011 at 10:10 am
I haven’t read her books but I’ve listened to her and what I heard (individualism crap) was pure evil. She got a place in my pantheon of evil, next to milton friedman.
SpitBall [New]
Tuesday, 26 Apr, 2011 at 10:41 am
Individualism and Egoism are over-rated and, to some extent, not even the point of the books. I know Rand latched onto those aspects and pushed them in her later years. One of the reasons I would have liked to accompany her on a lost weekend was to point out that the characters she points to as individualists are, really, nothing of the sort. The industrialists (and others) that take off to the Rockies don’t go there all by themselves to live out the rest of their lives on their own. They organize and alternative society and set about building it up and moving it forward. John Galt as a community organizer. He organized a scoiety that aimed to recognize the individual and their relationship to the society in which they live and work. Rand was strongly anti-totalatarian and so did not favor the kind of forced participation in the larger society that was reflected in Soviet labor camps, or the collective hatred of the Fascists and Nazis. I give her credit for that, and her utter disdain for inherited wealth – the uber-moochers.
Her attitudes toward the arts, romance and society? In these areas, I disagree adamantly. Folk music, modern dance and impressionist art are particular endeavors Rand also detested. All of these spring from the same place that Galt got his reason. A point Ms. Rand took great pains not to address.
Emocrat [New]
Monday, 25 Apr, 2011 at 10:26 am
Ayn Rand at a Dead show. Hmm. New title: Atlas Tripped?
That would make a good satirical film. Something along the lines of combiningFear & Loathing in Las Vegas and Triumph Of The Will, perhaps directed by Terry Gilliam.
I’ve never understood the attraction to Rand. I started reading The Fountain Head and after ditching that one after 60 pages, tried Atlas Shrugged. I ditched that one almost halfway through. Suffice it to say she totally creeped me out when I was 16 and that was enough for me. Oh, and those awful 20+ page speeches. That’s literary torture, IMO.
Reading Rand didn’t make most people Randians, just as those of us who wanted to understand Naziism read Mein Kampf and didn’t become Nazis. I don’t consider Rand herself a malevolent force. I consider many of her followers to be so, as is demonstrated every single day by Republican Randians like Paul Ryan and perhaps Barack Obama–Neo-Liberalism, after all, has some pretty strong agreements with Rand. Ryan’s utter contempt for anything resembling a social contract is pure Rand. The GOP is the Party of Rand in many respects. Whether they really understand her or not is another question, as one could easily claim their lack of reading comprehension is nearly total, much as their Nazi ancestors loved Nietzsche and newt Gingrich quotes Thomas Jefferson more than anyone else.
I mostly think of Rand herself not as evil, but rather as a messed up person with dissociative issues, who really didn’t like the human race very much and never emotionally matured past puberty. Oddly enough, this also describes the American Right.
SpitBall [New]
Tuesday, 26 Apr, 2011 at 10:46 am
I agree with the gist of your last paragraph, although such immaturity is not restricted to the American Right.
Emocrat [New]
Tuesday, 26 Apr, 2011 at 11:21 am
Sad, but true. I also like your comment above, as you’ve neatly outlined the positive aspects of her work and with a succinctness Rand herself could have only dreamt of.
But you’ve also indirectly pointed out the mythical nature of her work. She despised inherited wealth, even though that’s where almost all wealth comes from. She catapulted the myth of the Self-Made Man, even though there really is no such thing. She despised totalitarianism, but she was really quite fond of Power, which is why her attitude towards sex was really more about power relations than “romance” or other silly bourgeois notions. That, in particular, is what I found really creepy about her.
Of course, it’s these myths, rather than reality, which has transfixed Righties. That’s not really Rand’s fault. Just as it wasn’t Nietzche’s fault that Hitler so much enjoyed misreading him. But she did sell a bill of goods to a bunch of ignorant people. She sold elitism, egoism and greed as desirable, even virtuous qualities, while trashing more humanitarian efforts as “immoral.” We even see these kind of attitudes from our own Democratic President, who nods in approval to those on Wall Street that enriched themselves as they crashed our domestic economy. That wealth is deserved, he says, because they earned it and as such, he celebrates it.
So she’s definitely left her mark and it’s hard not to pick at the scabs.