Why I Like Ayn Rand
Very few authors have the stamina to develop a system. Ayn Rand had a system of her own. It may be philosophically unsound, it may be juvenile in certain aspects, and it may lack humanity. But it’s there, and she gives voice to it.
Yes, Rand was a pompous, arrogant, sometimes ridiculous crypto-fascist. But she was fiercely intelligent, too. And her fiction, though riddled with problems, is entertaining for a reason that applies to few other novels: it sets out to demolish everything people treasure and rebuild mankind. She failed. So what?
It takes enormous gusto to write the way Rand did. Her key ideas – especially her ethical stances – are problematic for many people, but she didn’t flinch from expounding them anyway. She was vilified, ridiculed and outright insulted, and did not seem to care.
I’m not an Objectivist by any stretch, but I find her inspiring. Not because she created compelling characters, and not because her fiction was particularly good. I like Rand because she was capable of being subtle, satiric, and brave: she pit idea against idea, concept versus concept in her novels, let her tinfoil characters speak for themselves (and the philosophy they represented) and clearly had a good time doing it. If you hate her, it won’t matter in the long run, because she never cared, and her books reek of not caring.
She plotted haphazardly, her characters were wooden, her style was literary but grating. Her philosophical system is corrupt. She failed to change the world. Her following is a cult. But I like Ayn Rand because despite all of this, she has entertained me, shown me how not to write, and made me think about what it means to be disliked.
thanks for sharing.blackhawk tactical pants.
— Spambot
"I could have done worse!" exultantly cried the murderer Lebret, sentenced at Rouen to hard labor for life. — Félix Fénéon
I like her name. and I like saying it.
Ayn Rand
Aynnnnnnn Rannnnnnnnd
AAAAAAAAAyyyyynnn RRRRRRRRRRaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnddd
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAyyyyyyyyyyyyyyynnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnndddddddddddd
Ayn Rand
I feel the need to chime in here. I'm not gonna get involved in a back and forth or anything, but I just want to say that, after years of being told I had to read 'The Fountainhead,' I finally let a friend convince me to read it.
And I loved it.
It's seriously one of the best books I've ever read. Not only are the ideas and philosophies about life that are discussed in it, enlightening. But the story and characters itself, are just terribly moving. Easily one of the best love stories I can recall. And there were lines in it that just rocked me. No kidding: I'd read the line(s) and then sit there for like 5 mins, just thinking about it.
Here are some of my favorites:
"But you see, I have, let's say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I've chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I'm only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards--and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one."
- Howard Roark
"Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us."
"But I don’t think of you."
- Ellsworth Toohey and Howard Roark
"Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don't ask them to achieve self-respect."
- Dominique Francon
"Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence."
- Howard Roark
Wanna have the pants scared off you in 90 seconds?
Watch 'Laundry Day', my new horror short:
Yes, Rand was a pompous, arrogant, sometimes ridiculous crypto-fascist. But she was fiercely intelligent, too. And her fiction, though riddled with problems, is entertaining for a reason that applies to few other novels: it sets out to demolish everything people treasure and rebuild mankind. She failed. So what?
It takes enormous gusto to write the way Rand did. Her key ideas – especially her ethical stances – are problematic for many people, but she didn’t flinch from expounding them anyway. She was vilified, ridiculed and outright insulted, and did not seem to care.
I’m not an Objectivist by any stretch, but I find her inspiring. Not because she created compelling characters, and not because her fiction was particularly good. I like Rand because she was capable of being subtle, satiric, and brave: she pit idea against idea, concept versus concept in her novels, let her tinfoil characters speak for themselves (and the philosophy they represented) and clearly had a good time doing it. If you hate her, it won’t matter in the long run, because she never cared, and her books reek of not caring.
She plotted haphazardly, her characters were wooden, her style was literary but grating. Her philosophical system is corrupt. She failed to change the world. Her following is a cult. But I like Ayn Rand because despite all of this, she has entertained me, shown me how not to write, and made me think about what it means to be disliked.
So in short, you like a crap author.
Yes, Rand was a pompous, arrogant, sometimes ridiculous crypto-fascist. But she was fiercely intelligent, too. And her fiction, though riddled with problems, is entertaining for a reason that applies to few other novels: it sets out to demolish everything people treasure and rebuild mankind. She failed. So what?
It takes enormous gusto to write the way Rand did. Her key ideas – especially her ethical stances – are problematic for many people, but she didn’t flinch from expounding them anyway. She was vilified, ridiculed and outright insulted, and did not seem to care.
I’m not an Objectivist by any stretch, but I find her inspiring. Not because she created compelling characters, and not because her fiction was particularly good. I like Rand because she was capable of being subtle, satiric, and brave: she pit idea against idea, concept versus concept in her novels, let her tinfoil characters speak for themselves (and the philosophy they represented) and clearly had a good time doing it. If you hate her, it won’t matter in the long run, because she never cared, and her books reek of not caring.
She plotted haphazardly, her characters were wooden, her style was literary but grating. Her philosophical system is corrupt. She failed to change the world. Her following is a cult. But I like Ayn Rand because despite all of this, she has entertained me, shown me how not to write, and made me think about what it means to be disliked.
So in short, you like a crap author.
No. These are the REASONS WHY I like a crap author!
thanks for sharing.blackhawk tactical pants.
— Spambot
"I could have done worse!" exultantly cried the murderer Lebret, sentenced at Rouen to hard labor for life. — Félix Fénéon
I feel the need to chime in here. I'm not gonna get involved in a back and forth or anything, but I just want to say that, after years of being told I had to read 'The Fountainhead,' I finally let a friend convince me to read it.
And I loved it.
that's why i got it but haven't had the time to read it, saw it on sale and remembered we had a short discussion about it. i'm planning on reading it soon.
Is there an illustrated version of The Fountainhead?
probably, it might contain just letters though.
"Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence."
If this were true, Dennis, then the time I spent helping care for my grandmother with Alzheimar's disease, while living on property I never bought and on a modest cash stipend that came only from my family, was time spent beneath any reasonable person's dignity.
Meanwhile, a "self-made man" out making a fortune running a criminal cartel, selling street drugs, or selling weapons to both sides of a nasty war, would be someone we could all applaud for possessing the dignity of his independence.
This is why some of us don't like Ayn Rand. Her ideas are ugly and wrong and appeal to base, fascist tendencies in people.
Humans are not independent. We are interdependent. Compassion should factor into ones concept of personal dignity.
I love books full of ideas, myself. The world has seen good philosophers and good novelists wrapped up in one and the same person. Iris Murdoch, for example.
..
VP - Workshop Dog
¿How do you guys define fascist?
My def: A system in which a government leaves nominal ownership of the means of production in the hands of private individuals but excercises control by means of regulatory legislation and reaps most of the profit by means of heavy taxation.
That's ripped from page 18 of Linda and Morris Tannehill's "The Market for Liberty". Fascism is the system implemented by the national socialists (nazis). All socialism must have a nationalistic tendency, but with national socialism, it seems the emphasis is on the nationalism more than the socialism (you do it for the nation via socialism rather than you do it for the socialism via the nation).
It's likely we're simply defining words differently, which is just a matter of clarification.
Rand likely denounces 'sacrifice', which seems odd on its face. How Rand would define sacrifice should likely be titled 'altruistic sacrifice', giving without expectation of gain. The difference is thus:
A mother does not buy a dress for herself so that her child may have a winter coat. That is not a sacrifice, it is a gain, she gains the benefit of her child's comfort, which comforts her conscience.
A mother who buys neither the dress nor the coat but instead gives the money blindly to a third party (whether government or charity or whatever) gains nothing from the exchange that she would have wished to acquire (but why would someone do something they do not wish to do? So she gains something, peace of mind, whatever). That would be a sacrifice, hence nothing in return.
When someone like Rand says sacrifice is bad because it violates your personal ambitions, it does not violate your personal ambitions to give to charity if that makes you feel fulfilled. It is if you receive nothing in return from your donation. The thing to understand is that ultimatey Rand is not railing against that which you see as a duty, just railing against the notion of it being a duty over being a choice.
At least that's my understanding of Rand's Objectivism. Though as I've stated earlier, I haven't read her stuff itself and don't consider myself an Objectivist, though I agree with much of the philosophy. I feel the wrong stuff is emphasized and is then not so much misinterpreted, but not understood to the fullest.
"They sold you hippies grunge, hip hop, now liberty activism."
"Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence."
If this were true, Dennis, then the time I spent helping care for my grandmother with Alzheimar's disease, while living on property I never bought and on a modest cash stipend that came only from my family, was time spent beneath any reasonable person's dignity.
Meanwhile, a "self-made man" out making a fortune running a criminal cartel, selling street drugs, or selling weapons to both sides of a nasty war, would be someone we could all applaud for possessing the dignity of his independence.
This is why some of us don't like Ayn Rand. Her ideas are ugly and wrong and appeal to base, fascist tendencies in people.
Humans are not independent. We are interdependent. Compassion should factor into ones concept of personal dignity.
I love books full of ideas, myself. The world has seen good philosophers and good novelists wrapped up in one and the same person. Iris Murdoch, for example.
..
Yes! Thank you. I read the Fountainhead in high school, and I came away from it completely depressed. But that was what the point of the book was: she wanted me to feel just as depressed as she did.
There is hope, but not for us.
Humans are not independent. We are interdependent. Compassion should factor into ones concept of personal dignity.
..
I love this.
¿How do you guys define fascist?
For broadest agreement, I'm happy to go with the most homogenized dictionary definitions we can find.
(fascist)▸ noun: an adherent of fascism or other right-wing authoritarian views
(fascism)▸ noun: a political theory advocating an authoritarian hierarchical government (as opposed to democracy or liberalism)
It has less to do with free enterprise undermined by exorbitant taxation, and more to do with the consolidation of power (political, cultural, and economic, as well--all forms of power) into the hands of a very few. The outer expression of fascism is usually some form of oligarchy. It's the idea that a ruling elite knows best, and exercises rightful authority over the unwashed masses. The idea that democracy leads only to mediocrity and that social justice is overraterd or irrelevant. Life will be better for everyone, the thinking goes, if we let the rich get richer while appointing all the leaders from among their own social class. Alternatively, instead of an already entrenched ruling elite, it can be an upstart ruling elite like Hitler created, presenting itself as the only legitimate answer.
Fascism is a way of thinking. It would be a fascist assumption, for example, that anyone living in poverty must lack virtue. Since America is a nation of opportunity, you must be a lazy bum or a drug addict if you can't afford health insurance. Now, if we look around, we could certainly find people who support that thesis; but we could also find counterexamples of virtuous people who are living in poverty, often for reasons quite beyond their immediate control.
The thing to understand about Ayn Rand is that she suffered under some of the worst imposed socialism that the world has ever seen, in Soviet Russia. It was dishonest and corrupt. Human initiative was crushed under excessive regulations. Petty government officials did have a ridiculous amount of power over private citizens. People who wanted to go into business had to jump through hoops that make any comparable red tape in this country laughable; for example, imagine needing to project your first year's earnings based on pure guesswork, and then pay your estimated taxes in advance. Imagine breaking into a cold sweat if you earned one ruple more than you'd anticipated. Imagine an elaborate protocol of bribes and payoffs to corrupt officials that have to be made to keep them from shutting your business down. America has never seen anything vaguely resembling the corrupt and overpowering form of socialism that the Soviets invented.
Ayn Rand came here at a time when we needed left wing social legislation to protect the working classes, and she feared the encroachment of Soviet style socialism here. But leaping from the legitimate left wing legislation that balances things in a working democracy to the conclusion it will slide into Soviet style socialism is something philosophers call the slippery slope fallacy.
Rand was an alarmist. Her idea of liberty realized would be a bleak, cold place, full of injustice; law of the jungle instead of rule of law. Survival of the meanest is where her ideas lead.
VP - Workshop Dog
I think that Rand has a point, in that it's not good to be too selfless. If you exist only to please others, than I think that's not a good thing. Altruism when taken in its purest form seems too extreme. I think it's about striking a balance between selfishness and altruism.
Sarry Phil, I dont read anything created by a woman.
If Rand has a single, valid, overarching point in her philosophy, one big thought that is true--and I'll be glad to grant her one in spite of numerous grating smaller differences--I think it is this: that it's bad for people to blindly follow a collectivist agenda. Or to blindly follow any agenda, let me add. Because authoritarianism is authoritarianism. You know, Communist rhetoric that underneath all its frills simply announces: The Party has determined that this is what everyone must do because this is in the best interest of The People.
Something like that has no more valid claim to moral authority than, Here is what we must do, because our wise benevolent Dictator-for-Life, His Eminence, has declared it so.
Neither of these positions involves intelligent input or real process. It makes not a damn bit of difference whether it's ultra left wing or ultra right wing if it boils down to unquestioning obedience to authority.
I'll also grant her a point or two for the statement: "Man is not a sacrificlal animal." But the way I choose to unpack and interpret that phrase is going to be vastly different from the bulwark of Randian philosophy.
Taking up your point about "altruism, in its purest form, seems too extreme," I would have to query with
When have we ever seen it? Where on Earth has it ever been practiced on any scale?
Some people believe in great sages and philosophers like Socrates and The Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth who were supposed to embody some version of enlightened humanity which includes altruism as a natural extension of their beingness, but an example of enlightened humanity to follow is nothing at all like trying to create an altruistic society through legislation. You can't force evolution. Trying to force the evolution of an enlightened secular society of high cooperation is the great fallacy of Communism, and ends up being more evil and repressive than any other system under the sun.
What I'm getting at is this: realizing the need for a finely worked-out balance between the amount of selfishness we tolerate or even endorse in a society and the amount of collective cooperation we compel, I believe that larger point is non-controversial. It is only in the particulars that reasonable people will differ.
VP - Workshop Dog
"Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence."
If this were true, Dennis, then the time I spent helping care for my grandmother with Alzheimar's disease, while living on property I never bought and on a modest cash stipend that came only from my family, was time spent beneath any reasonable person's dignity.
Meanwhile, a "self-made man" out making a fortune running a criminal cartel, selling street drugs, or selling weapons to both sides of a nasty war, would be someone we could all applaud for possessing the dignity of his independence.
This is why some of us don't like Ayn Rand. Her ideas are ugly and wrong and appeal to base, fascist tendencies in people.
Humans are not independent. We are interdependent. Compassion should factor into ones concept of personal dignity.
I love books full of ideas, myself. The world has seen good philosophers and good novelists wrapped up in one and the same person. Iris Murdoch, for example.
..
I think you've expressed it correctly, and made me more conscious of what it is that I DON'T like about Rand. If you think that Iris Murdoch is worth giving a shot, then I certainly will in the near future. I've always respected your opinions.
thanks for sharing.blackhawk tactical pants.
— Spambot
"I could have done worse!" exultantly cried the murderer Lebret, sentenced at Rouen to hard labor for life. — Félix Fénéon
What I'm getting at is this: realizing the need for a finely worked-out balance between the amount of selfishness we tolerate or even endorse in a society and the amount of collective cooperation we compel, I believe that larger point is non-controversial. It is only in the particulars that reasonable people will differ.
But there is such a thing as an extremist. The balancing act might seem perfectly reasonable and pretty obvious to most people, but I fear some people might be pulled towards extreme selfishness, and fall into the Gordon Gekko "greed is good" state of mind.
I think that what this thread just turned into, is one of the main reasons why I always avoided Rand's work. People either love it or hate it. And the ones that hate it... really hate it. I do notice though, that people tend to bring a lot of baggage into the book. And while I'm not saying that you are doing this, Mark; it makes them look at the book in very black and white terms.
Facism didn't even occur to me when I finished the book. I took so much more away from it. What I took from the book was to not live your life through other people. To not rely strictly on the opinions of others.
I'm an independent filmmaker. My life right now, is all about trying to have a vision, and see it through, so that people understand and hopefully appreciate it. Yet I'm attempting to strive forward in an industry where the people that pull the strings are so caught up in what is accepted and "safe," that 99% of the time they're too frightened to try anything new or daring. I could list off hundreds of examples of this, but I don't think I have to.
Don't forget that Ayn Rand is an author. Not a politician. And she wrote about an architect. And the theories of collectivism that she talked about in "The Fountainhead" have come true. Her predictions have come true.
When she talks about altruistic selflessness... she's not talking abotu Gandhi. She's talking about the group of authors, playrights, artists, poets, actors, directors and architects in her novel, that have all sold out, in order to be praised and recognized for crap. The audience loves it, because they've been told to love it, but critics and marketing. This is exactly what happens in her novels. And it's why it takes people such a long time to recognize the beauty in something new, rather than something recycled.
You're all allowed to turn the volume on this novel up to 11, but if you do that, I feel it didn't speak to you personally at all. And that's fine. But then you should just dismiss it and move on, and not try and tear it down. Granted, I have never read much more about Rand's philosophies in any non-fiction content. Nor have I yet read "Atlas Shrugged."
But I do know this book spoke to me. It smacked me in the face. In a good way. It felt completely relevant to me for the times we live in.
Everything you guys are discussing, I didn't get from the book. Or if I did, it didn't piss me off as much, because I kept it relegated to the boundaries in the book that Rand clearly set.
Wanna have the pants scared off you in 90 seconds?
Watch 'Laundry Day', my new horror short:
The point I was getting at was that fascism means different things to different people. The simplest definition is 'far right' politics, which is the equivalent of communism being summarized as 'far left'. I used to see a 'left' and a 'right', and I don't anymore. It's authority vs. liberty, where lefties tend to prefer economic control and 'social' freedom, and the 'right' tends to prefer (relative) economic liberty but are more socially controlling. I say relative because you're hard pressed to find a politician these days who is speaking out against the strongest of economic controls which is enabled by gov't but not in public hands, the 'federal' reserve.
'Right-wing' can be equated with free markets like 'private prisons' are not governmental. Just because the ownership is not of the state, they're still given coercive monopolistic power by state subsidy, making them 'private' in name only.
Interestingly enough, in libertarian 'politics' (often lack therof for the anarcho-branches) left-libertarians are those who work solely outside of the system, where right libertarians are those who work within, seen by the left-libertarians to legitimize the system by their participation. The left label comes from the Marxist structuralist view that the system is designed to resist progress, whereas the right are associated with the rest of 'conservative' america who feels there is value in the republic's process.
Many right-libertarians are minarchists (they believe in a small state), but are not exclusively minarchist. Anarcho-capitalists such as Murray Rothbard worked within the system, though he believed in just as much of a state as those who called themselves left-libertarians. The left-libertarian label is sometimes used by libertarian socialists, which further confuses the mix. When I use left-libertarian, I mean voluntaryists or agorists who do not work within the system, as opposed to voluntaryists who may chose to (try to) change things from within.
This is why I find it difficult to buy a label of 'fascist' (being 'far-right') for Rand's work. No doubt it teeters on overly individualistic, but bringing in words which to some people associate imagery of government-induced genocide (aren't they all government induced?) can be confusing at best and misleading at worst. Fascist, I'd also say, has strong implications of a sense of mob-sanctioned injustice. Individualism seems to be in direct opposition to mob sanctioned anything.
My issue with Objectivism is its praise of selfishness. I feel there is a necessary place for selfishness, and I will never threaten aggression against someone who chooses to be a selfish prick, and I also feel it is through selfishness that selflessness has any value whatsoever. Selfish vs. selfless is nowhere near as black and white as good and evil, and even good and evil I consider heavily shaded in grey.
"They sold you hippies grunge, hip hop, now liberty activism."
Some people believe in great sages and philosophers like Socrates and The Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth who were supposed to embody some version of enlightened humanity which includes altruism as a natural extension of their beingness, but an example of enlightened humanity to follow is nothing at all like trying to create an altruistic society through legislation. You can't force evolution. Trying to force the evolution of an enlightened secular society of high cooperation is the great fallacy of Communism, and ends up being more evil and repressive than any other system under the sun.
This is kind of splitting hairs on my part, but wouldn't you say that one of the difference between someone like Jesus Christ and Buddha vs. someone with the ideals of a Socrates or a Rand is that Jesus or Buddha proposed personal altruism, rather than the altruism of a government or nation? That's a pretty big difference, to me, though you might not think so. Render under Caesar that which is Caesar's, and all that.
There is hope, but not for us.
Your a pimp Phil. please reach you hand down the heavens and pinch Moreys ass to make sure his not dreaming.
This is kind of splitting hairs on my part, but wouldn't you say that one of the difference between someone like Jesus Christ and Buddha vs. someone with the ideals of a Socrates or a Rand is that Jesus or Buddha proposed personal altruism, rather than the altruism of a government or nation? That's a pretty big difference, to me, though you might not think so. Render under Caesar that which is Caesar's, and all that.
Interesting that you draw that conclusion. Christian Anarchists apply the Jesus ethics to social interaction as well (not swearing allegiance, non-violence, etc).
The big diff between Jesus and Buddha vs. most philosophers is action. Though I'd say Rand, having an agenda, could be consider to have been taking action. Marx was one of the first, I believe, or, one of the first recognized to have exclaimed that philosophy is worthless that does not involve action on the part of the follower. Thoreau could be considered an act philosopher for having done time in a cell for a principle rather than just exclaiming it.
Also, for what reason did you add 'render unto ceasar'? Is it supposed to mean Jesus did not intend social resistance, but rather just personal?
"They sold you hippies grunge, hip hop, now liberty activism."
I think that what this thread just turned into, is one of the main reasons why I always avoided Rand's work. People either love it or hate it. And the ones that hate it... really hate it. I do notice though, that people tend to bring a lot of baggage into the book. And while I'm not saying that you are doing this, Mark; it makes them look at the book in very black and white terms.
Rand herself often presented her ideas in absolutist or very black and white terms, which makes polarizing reactions from people easy to comprehend and forgivable, I think.
Facism didn't even occur to me when I finished the book. I took so much more away from it. What I took from the book was to not live your life through other people. To not rely strictly on the opinions of others.
That's an excellent message to take from it, Dennis. And I definitely see how her book could be read on that level and that level alone. I have no gripe with this whatsoever. It could be exactly the medicine someone needs, especially an original artist who is trying to overcome all the social programming to be a "people pleaser." If it worked for you as a real inspiration on this one issue, then it did the best work a Rand novel could possibly ever do. My criticism would not be aimed at denigrating that.
I'm an independent filmmaker. My life right now, is all about trying to have a vision, and see it through, so that people understand and hopefully appreciate it. Yet I'm attempting to strive forward in an industry where the people that pull the strings are so caught up in what is accepted and "safe," that 99% of the time they're too frightened to try anything new or daring. I could list off hundreds of examples of this, but I don't think I have to.
Ditto what I said above. Let her book be mad fuel for the creation of excellent films that the stuffed shirts aren't ready for.
Don't forget that Ayn Rand is an author. Not a politician. And she wrote about an architect. And the theories of collectivism that she talked about in "The Fountainhead" have come true. Her predictions have come true.
I used to sometimes object to the amount of sociological and political debate that discussions engendered in the classroom of one of my favorite literature professors. It seems like every grad student in English Literature these days is attuned only to varieties of Marxist and feminist deconstruction. They go into a work of literature loaded with an agenda, sniffing for some dead corpse with a label like "cultural misogyny." That's the idea that the author has unconsciously maligned ALL WOMEN with the way he portrays particular women as characters. And it makes a nice little industry out of mostly pretentious criticism, where you can be the rising star in a graduate program in literature by acting like an amateur sociologist.
I wanted to spend more time talking about aesthetics and the technical ways in which the author achieved certain effects. But then, I had my own agenda. I was reading imaginative literature with an eye toward how to make imaginative literature, instead of an eye toward how to write some inferior species of sociological criticism.
I think you make a great point that we all come to literature with our own baggage and let me add to that, our own agenda as readers. We want certain things from it, we don't want certain other things. Some of the things we don't want will only bore us. Other things that we don't want will positively offend us. And this is all natural and good and part of being readers. We're entitled to bring all of ourselves into our reading of literature and to react however we will.
Whenever I would object to the constant politicizing of everything we read, my instructor would remind me that "Writing a novel is a political act." The others were just as entitled to focus all of their interpretations at the level of social criticism as I was to make an occasional point about a brilliant use of literary technique. It's just that there were a lot more of them playing that game, and only one or two other writers in the room who would smile and nod sympathetically when I tried to fight back for the making of literature as an artform over the making of literary criticism as an armchair form of sociology.
But to this I need to add the important qualifier that we were reading authors like George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Angela Carter, and Salman Rushdie. Authors who are authors first and foremost, and only secondarily philosophical or political thinkers. They always have points to make about how people live or ought to live, but it's usually a bit more subtle.
..
VP - Workshop Dog
I think then, that I was sort of lucky. I always knew there was controversy about Rand's work. And I knew that her books illicited this sort of discussion. But I didn't know much more. Nor, did I know too much about her theories. So for me, I went into the book sort of innocent, and was rewarded with an amazing story about one man's long journey to "success."
I got multiple, stirring court room scenes, that conjured up books like "Inherit The Wind" and "To Kill A Mockingbird." I read one of the strongest monologues I've ever heard a character give (I think it goes on for like 5 pages). A truly unique and frightening villain, in Ellsworth Tooey. The fall of a titan like Gail Wynand, which, for me, rivaled the fall of Charles Foster Kane. And, as I said earlier, a truly honest and passionate love story. The painstankingly way in which Rand patiently developed the love of Howard Roark and Dominique Francon, and the way it finally culminated, had me crying in the end.
Just truly great, romantic, sweeping stuff.
All the facist political debating can stay in the classroom, for all I care.
Wanna have the pants scared off you in 90 seconds?
Watch 'Laundry Day', my new horror short:
I see what you're driving at, but I don't think it divides up quite that neatly. First, I don't think there's a neat line for personal-religious-transcendent ways of being versus political-secular-immanent ways of being (or living in the world and implementing change.) On the one hand, every act is a political act, even the choice not to engage with secular politics. On the other hand, no one acting on the stage of the world, completely enmeshed in the politics of the day, succeeds for long without some reference to lasting or higher values.
Next, to the extent the distinction holds, we can't really have Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha) and Jesus (The Christ) over on one side of the room versus Socrates and Rand over on the other. It's easy enough to think of the former as religious figures and the later as secular thinkers, but it's a superficial distinction at best. For starters, consider just how much more Socrates has in common with the religious figures than he has with Rand. In addition to his position with them in antiquity instead of modernity, he was not advocating anything like Rand's radical and romantic individualism. Socrates had a concept of duty or ones place in the order of things which the Buddha would have called Dharma. At the very same time, he was a questioner of all things, including the established order, and this made him a bit of a rabble-rouser, like Jesus. Likewise, Socrates could have fled with the assistance of his pupils and gone into exile, instead of accepting the judgment of the State that he was "corrupting the morals of Athens youth." He chose to submit to the judgment of the State and drink the hemlock, instead. It's a whole lot like Jesus receiving martyrdom for his adherence to a higher law, if you really think about it. So does it make sense that we have no temples to Socrates when churches of Christ are everywhere? I'm not sure that it does. The English philosopher Bertrand Russell certainly considered Socrates an even better model of sagehood than Jesus, and explains why in his book, Why I Am not a Christian.
Meanwhile, the Buddha never claimed to be the incarnation of a god and never claimed to be anything more than a man, as Jesus did. He taught a way beyond suffering, but never once did he say, I Am the WAY. When people asked him speculative questions about life after death and so forth, he'd say something like "One world at a time." He always brought the attention back to the practice which has come to be known as Buddhism, a peaceful contemplative practice that embodies the importance of harmlessness and ethical living, but doesn't really stress big metaphysical beliefs. In the Christian worldview, you Must believe in the divinity of Christ to receive salvation. If you can't stretch your mind to encompass that belief or if you formerly held to it but now you doubt it, then you're in grave danger of damnation, perhaps you are one of the Lost.
Nothing in Buddhism makes literal belief in the transcendent personality and ongoing power of The Buddha a necessary thought.
For that matter, if you're a Buddhist, you can spend lifetime after lifetime perpetuating your own suffering through self-importance, vanity, attachment to the senses, attachment to your passions, and petty feelings like jealousy and the desire for revenge. You can even spend time in "hell" between human lifetimes, or during them. There are all sorts of other realms you can be born into, some of them better than life here and some of them worse. And none of them last forever. You've always got some chance of liberating yourself from the chain of rebirth and joining the transcendent ones, just by taking up your practice in earnest again.
Some Buddhists believe in many gods and some Buddhists are atheists and some Buddhists believe that many gods exist as subliminal expressions of human consciousness, but have no independent existence without us. They might be more powerful and long-lived than we are, they might even act as intercessors if we pray to them, but they can't possibly last forever. No need in Buddhism for wrestling with the contradiction of the God of Classical Theism Who is All-Powerful, All-Knowing, Benevolent, and lasts forever, all of this despite the existence of Evil.
A central tenet of Buddhism is impermanence. It is believed that if you meditate well enough, for long enough, you'll come to recognize the impermanent and transitory nature of all things. Likewise, the law of dependent arising, the mutually interdependent connection of all things. No need to adopt these assumptions on faith. The main thing is to practice.
Which is a long way of saying that Buddhism, underneath its antiquity and oriental garments, is a philosophical approach to living that may have more in common with Socrates or even Epicurus than with a revelatory and insistently positive faith system like Islam or Christianity. What it has in common with Chritainity is similar ethics and also the virtue of being a living tradition, but the metaphysical views are so completely different that some westerners looking into it deeply enough wouldn't even be able to consider it a religion, which would make the Buddha a secular philosopher like Socrates.
Splitting hairs is fine, but you've got to split them finely enough.
Socrates will have to join Siddhartha and Jesus among the honored sages of antiquity, while Rand is clearly the odd man out, a denizen of the modern world and a romantic individualist with some strengths as a novelist, perhaps, but some real limitations as a philosopher.
VP - Workshop Dog
![[ It's Rational! ]](http://www.saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/images/ayn_seal_of_approval_button.jpg)
This thread has the Ayn Rand SEAL OF APPROVAL.
thanks for sharing.blackhawk tactical pants.
— Spambot
"I could have done worse!" exultantly cried the murderer Lebret, sentenced at Rouen to hard labor for life. — Félix Fénéon
zzzzz.
I don't need a book to tell me what to think.
I mean, sure, Fight Club tells you what to think, but it's a story about a guy's invisible friend kicking his ass, not about a communist love triangle.
"Nine times out of ten it's an electric razor, but sometimes..."
On the fascist tendancies :
The root of any totalitarian political system is an all-encompassing (totalising) philosophical system, an attempt to find a definitive interpretation to all of existence, above all others. Marxism owes a lot to Hegel, and Heidegger saw in nazism, at least for a time, a concrete movement in accordance to his worldview.
Rand's philosophy, for all I know, is a very poor totalising system. In her vision, there is only one interpretation according to which the "enlightened being" conquers his world, one way to judge people, and necessarily one way to formulate a hierarchy among them. This is where Rand can be accused of fascist tendancies. Fascism defines itself by the concentration of power by a dominating elite, whose legitimacy lies in its proximity to the ideal, the one who completely lives and thinks according to the totalising philosophy.
Kinda beside the point, but I think there's something to Socrates having to drink his concoction as opposed to his execution being something forced upon him. It's one thing not to resist what is being done to you, another to psuedo-participate.
...Rand's philosophy, for all I know, is a very poor totalising system. In her vision, there is only one interpretation according to which the "enlightened being" conquers his world, one way to judge people, and necessarily one way to formulate a hierarchy among them. This is where Rand can be accused of fascist tendancies. Fascism defines itself by the concentration of power by a dominating elite, whose legitimacy lies in its proximity to the ideal, the one who completely lives and thinks according to the totalising philosophy.
I think that's the misconception of it, that individualism must manifest itself in the strongest sense. People looking to abolish rulers in general as opposed to people looking for new rulers will not allow a new ruler to culminate, whether an ubermensch or whatever. I'm an voluntaryist, and just because I feel there should be no democratic law does not mean I don't wear my seatbelt, or don't give to charity, etc. This gets into some Kierkegaard angst stuff over whether one needs to do something bad to prove to themselves that they have free will, but I feel that transcends the presence of gov or rulers or not.
Also, Rand was not a total voluntaryist (meaning she didn't even take her doctrine to its logical ends (what I call logical)). She was a minarchist, and justified her position using a 'competing governments' scenario. I'll stop there cause I don't wanna turn this into another Giggan Anarchist thread, but just wanted to point out how some Randian stuff isn't exactly Randian (freer market than she wanted, for example).
"They sold you hippies grunge, hip hop, now liberty activism."
Too fookin late.
Which Ann Rand book shouldI start with? I think I have the Fountainhead somewhere.
Strat with the one you all ready have?
I think Tyler durden spoke about her on the blue print. Maybe, its been awhile. What are her books about?
I think Tyler durden spoke about her on the blue print. Maybe, its been awhile. What are her books about?
You of all people would like them. They are about greed, power, mercilessness and wealth.
thanks for sharing.blackhawk tactical pants.
— Spambot
"I could have done worse!" exultantly cried the murderer Lebret, sentenced at Rouen to hard labor for life. — Félix Fénéon
Derek, read The Fountainhead.
thanks for sharing.blackhawk tactical pants.
— Spambot
"I could have done worse!" exultantly cried the murderer Lebret, sentenced at Rouen to hard labor for life. — Félix Fénéon
I think Tyler durden spoke about her on the blue print. Maybe, its been awhile. What are her books about?
You of all people would like them. They are about greed, power, mercilessness and wealth.
I was right. I will put her brick books on my wish list.
Thanks Phil, Ive dug it out and moved it to my must read shelf.
I would recommend Anthem--it's her shortest and probably most unique work--but that's probably because it's the first book I've read of hers.
As for her in general...she has some good ideas, like about individual liberty and freer markets. She also had some bad ideas, like her rampant homophobia. I just take from the good ideas and disregard the bad.
As for her writing...she's pretty good at description, and makes a good plot--my problem is that she has the characters rant way for fucking too long. When a character of yours has a 60 page monologue...that's pushing it, to me.
i take it you also hate filibusters.
I had to google it, but yeah, those are a pain in the ass. Hell, just about anything involving the federal level of government is a pain in the ass, so I digress.
Good man.
"They sold you hippies grunge, hip hop, now liberty activism."
She plotted haphazardly, her characters were wooden, her style was literary but grating. Her philosophical system is corrupt.
Basically why I dislike her. I don't care about her personal life or her cult. Her books suck.
Good enough, I guess. You could learn how not to write from any number of authors that entertain you. Which you probably have?