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I think this thread was started and commented on mostly by people that have never read any Ayn Rand.
I'm no fan of Rand as a person nor as a "philosopher", but most people who bring her up use her as some type of boogeyman or completely make s--t up about what she believed.
There are PLENTY of holes in Objectivism and plenty of flaws in Rand's character, but she is not the embodiment of evil that so many of her detractors like to claim and much the criticism seems to come from a hysterical, ivory tower elitist viewpoint.
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Originally Posted by jojajn
This is a chance for Ayn Rand followers to give an example of how they would apply her philosophy to disasters such as Sandy caused.
Or does Ayn Rand insist that one only reads her stuff and not apply critical thinking about it to actual circumstances?
Isn't there some thread about Jews that you should be stinking up with anti-Semitic rants?
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Originally Posted by jojajn
Good points here. Ayn Rand's philosophy puts man back at an animal level of primitive thinking.
The problem is that we are indeed animals and that so many people seem to forget that. We see it every day. Take a quick look on these boards and tell me the hyperbolic shirking from the countless partisans of every stripe claiming that those who disagree with them in the slightest degree are evil and stupid and their opponents are not just wrong or misguided, but a threat to the very existence of all that is good and decent. That is a primitive tribalism in its modern form. You see it high schools, the workplace, HOA meetings, football games, the military (dogfaces versus the Chair Force, etc.), and so on. It is human instinct to group together with those you view similar and oppose those who you view as different than you.
I believe that is what a majority of politics boils down to. That is why so many politicians feed off of the "us versus them" mentality. Democrats like to view themselves saving America from the gun totin' redneck and the Religious Reich that will reestablish slavery and shoot all gays. Republicans like view themselves as saving America from the leftie radicals that will make sodomy mandatory after they hand over the country to a bunch of Islamic terrorists.
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Originally Posted by DiogenesofJackson
I think Rand Paul fits the definition of a Ayn Rand follower--or at least his parents do given that they named him for the writer.
Ron Paul was influenced by Ayn Rand and liked a lot of her writings, but there are differences. She would have despised the fact that Ron Paul was religious and would have immediately opposed him on those grounds. She also would have claimed that he "stole" her philosophy (like she was first person to be wary of government power or to support the free market) and opposed him on those grounds as well.
That was the thing about Ayn, she was so knee-jerk opposed to the slightest difference in viewpoint and so unwilling to work with similar, yet different views that she virtually guaranteed that Objectivism would go no further than a cult or a passing fancy of college students.
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Originally Posted by DiogenesofJackson
Oh my gosh, this guy is off his rocker!
God help us if Romney/Ryan wins.
In all fairness; Obama's "You didn't build that" speech could have been taken from one of her books.
Also, read the comments section so left-wing websites (not even a hard left website, left-of-center is usually good enough) and hear some of their economic "arguments" and tell me that some of those people couldn't audition for a villain in one of her books.
Ayn Rand's philosophy, and her life, fit the clinical definition of a Narcissist... grandiose, self-absorbed, exploitative, entitled, and totally lacking in empathy or any sense of accountability (aka, "it's all about ME!"). And arguably the popularity of Rand and her best-known work, "Atlas Shrugged", arose out of the conformity and alienation of the 50's (which of course, also gave us the McCarthy era).
Christopher Lasch and others have suggested that this alienation, disconnection and post-WWII consumer capitalist culture have actually been creating a "Culture of Narcissism", where we increasingly depend on what we consume to make us feel good, to tell us how we live and work, and to basically define who we are. So it's probably not so surprising that the folks now most obsessed with defending that Capitalism and those values, should also feel so "special" and "entitled" (and dogmatic).... and should also view Rand's self-absorbed justification as their "bible".
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy;
that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." -John Kenneth Galbraith
Not that I disagree with the spirit of this well-written and thoughtful post, and I hate to quibble over minor details, but there's a vast body of literature that destroys this myth of the 1950s as the decade of "conformity." It's puzzling that you mentioned the conformity of the 50s in the same sentence with the alienation of the 1950s, which seems to be saying that it was both conformity (suggesting collective thought) while at the same time people retreated to their inner citadel--to borrow a phrase from Isaiah Berlin (hey, we're talking about the 50s, right?).
The 1950s as a decade of conformity is largely a myth and I'll just point out why it was so (in America), at least according to the historical literature.
Comic book culture continued to explode--and parents detested these things--yet a larger and growing number of adult Americans purchased and read these consumables.
If the 1950s could be characterized as a decade of conformity, then Kerouac's exploits might have come a bit later than 1959.
Moreover, if you call the 1950s a decade of conformity, then where do you place the African American civil rights struggle in that paradigm? Certainly Rosa Parks was no conformist.
Anticommunism, or the Second Red Scare, certainly gripped the American consciousness, but even it faded by the end of the 50s. During its height, people refused to name names (when called by committees, both state level and federal) and some anticommunists accused other anticommunists of being just what they were not--communists!
Civic organization affiliation reached a peak level during the 1950s because people wanted to get involved. Some of these long standing civic organizations struck out on their own. The DAR, for example, opposed Hawaiian statehood rather vociferously--and the United Nations--both feats occurred far outside the political mainstream.
Betty Friedan began work on her seminal book (although not published until the 1960s), The Feminine Mystique. She attributes her reaction as contained in the book to the myth of 1950s-era conformity, but if it were truly a conformist utopia, then she wouldn't have reacted to it.
Juvenile delinquency was a charge oftentimes leveled at the youth generation and received its documentation in movies like Rebel Without a Cause. In most cases, youth merely acted as youths do--independent and questioning authority--which many proclaimed was evidence of the delinquent behavior. Yet if the decade were truly conformist, then the youth would have gone along with their parents' wishes, right?
Upon closer inspection, the 1950s were really just like any other decade in terms of conformity vs. nonconformity.
While Atlas Shrugged came out in the 1950s, the basis of Rand's so-called "objectivist" thought really originated in the 1930s. Of course, this "objectivist" thought of hers was merely what she called her long string of logical fallacies disguised as "writing."
I'm no fan of Rand as a person nor as a "philosopher", but most people who bring her up use her as some type of boogeyman or completely make s--t up about what she believed.
There are PLENTY of holes in Objectivism and plenty of flaws in Rand's character, but she is not the embodiment of evil that so many of her detractors like to claim and much the criticism seems to come from a hysterical, ivory tower elitist viewpoint.
Isn't there some thread about Jews that you should be stinking up with anti-Semitic rants?
The problem is that we are indeed animals and that so many people seem to forget that. We see it every day. Take a quick look on these boards and tell me the hyperbolic shirking from the countless partisans of every stripe claiming that those who disagree with them in the slightest degree are evil and stupid and their opponents are not just wrong or misguided, but a threat to the very existence of all that is good and decent. That is a primitive tribalism in its modern form. You see it high schools, the workplace, HOA meetings, football games, the military (dogfaces versus the Chair Force, etc.), and so on. It is human instinct to group together with those you view similar and oppose those who you view as different than you.
I believe that is what a majority of politics boils down to. That is why so many politicians feed off of the "us versus them" mentality. Democrats like to view themselves saving America from the gun totin' redneck and the Religious Reich that will reestablish slavery and shoot all gays. Republicans like view themselves as saving America from the leftie radicals that will make sodomy mandatory after they hand over the country to a bunch of Islamic terrorists.
Ron Paul was influenced by Ayn Rand and liked a lot of her writings, but there are differences. She would have despised the fact that Ron Paul was religious and would have immediately opposed him on those grounds. She also would have claimed that he "stole" her philosophy (like she was first person to be wary of government power or to support the free market) and opposed him on those grounds as well.
That was the thing about Ayn, she was so knee-jerk opposed to the slightest difference in viewpoint and so unwilling to work with similar, yet different views that she virtually guaranteed that Objectivism would go no further than a cult or a passing fancy of college students.
In all fairness; Obama's "You didn't build that" speech could have been taken from one of her books.
Also, read the comments section so left-wing websites (not even a hard left website, left-of-center is usually good enough) and hear some of their economic "arguments" and tell me that some of those people couldn't audition for a villain in one of her books.
Ayn Rand didn't do philosophy and her "written" works hardly count as "philosophy" so you and I disagree on your most fundamental premises.
Ayn Rand didn't do philosophy and her "written" works hardly count as "philosophy" so you and I disagree on your most fundamental premises.
Rand was a polemicist.
I think the quotation marks I used when I referred to her as a philosopher pretty obviously suggested that I do not consider her a philosopher and I agree with you calling her a polemicist.
So we actually aren't disagreeing on my "most fundamental premises".
I have also stated that I am not a big fan of Rand as a person and there is much about Objectivism which I disagree even oppose. That being said, I do think a lot of Rand's stances are misinterpreted (often intentionally) by many of her critics and although I disagree with her on a lot (her opinion that primitive peoples do not deserve any types of rights and that "civilized" people can do pretty much whatever they wanted to them for example); she did say some sensible things.
I find almost appalling is that is where the majority of the criticism of the things she actually stood for. That most of her critics seem take more issue with this quote:
Quote:
I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine
Than they do with this quote:
Quote:
What was it they were fighting for, if they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their "right" to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it. Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent.
That is what I am afraid of. Rand's philosophy not only divides our country, but turns every person against their neighbor with the: "every man for himself" model of thinking.
I think we can contemplate what damage this mode of thinking could do to our moral and country, especially during times of crisis such as the destruction from Sandy.
Beware of any politician who has planted the seed of Ayn Rand in their political views!
Did you ever read any of her books ? That is NOT the stories she tells.
Why not pose that same question to the followers of Stephen King ?
Really..people follow authors and practice their works of fiction ?
Location: On the "Left Coast", somewhere in "the Land of Fruits & Nuts"
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DiogenesofJackson
Upon closer inspection, the 1950s were really just like any other decade in terms of conformity vs. nonconformity.
We take a lot for granted today. Being of a "certain age" myself, I grew up in the 50's when Leave It To Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet were among the ideals, and the promise that things would be swell if you were WASP and lived a certain sort of life, along with certain values... although not so much for everyone else who didn't quite "fit in".
And your casual "re-interpretation" of Feminist motives aside, there was a reason that Kerouac, and Ginsberg and the Beats, and their eventual successors, the Counter-Culture, all came along... and it wasn't because they were living in some non-conformist utopia! In fact the very appeal of tv shows today, like Mad Men, is the reminder just how quaint so many of even those 60's attitudes were, re: gender, race, families, ambition, smoking, drinking, business, etc..
Heck, I recall working in a mens' clothing store in L.A., right after getting out of the service in the late 60s. Mens clothing back then was just starting to "experiment", first lead by golfing sportswear. But even then, the notion of guys wearing a colored shirt that wasn't blue, white or button-down was considered "daring"!
You've come a long way baby (er, dude)! Although apparently some folks now wanna take us back there.
We take a lot for granted today. Being of a "certain age" myself, I grew up in the 50's when Leave It To Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet were among the ideals, and the promise that things would be swell if you were WASP and lived a certain sort of life, along with certain values... although not so much for everyone else who didn't quite "fit in".
And your casual "re-interpretation" of Feminist motives aside, there was a reason that Kerouac, and Ginsberg and the Beats, and their eventual successors, the Counter-Culture, all came along... and it wasn't because they were living in some non-conformist utopia! In fact the very appeal of tv shows today, like Mad Men, is the reminder just how quaint so many of even those 60's attitudes were, re: gender, race, families, ambition, smoking, drinking, business, etc..
Heck, I recall working in a mens' clothing store in L.A., right after getting out of the service in the late 60s. Mens clothing back then was just starting to "experiment", first lead by golfing sportswear. But even then, the notion of guys wearing a colored shirt that wasn't blue, white or button-down was considered "daring"!
You've come a long way baby (er, dude)! Although apparently some folks now wanna take us back there.
It really wasn't my "causual 're-interpretation'" but I'm just following the scholarship of quite a few authors, one of whom is Paul Carter, who wrote Another Part of the 50s, in addition to Joanne Meyerowitz's (ed.) anthology entitled Not June Cleaver. They really make you question the conformity thesis.
And I agree, people today do want to take us back to this imagined past, recorded for posterity in sitcoms like Leave It To Beaver.
I think the quotation marks I used when I referred to her as a philosopher pretty obviously suggested that I do not consider her a philosopher and I agree with you calling her a polemicist.
So we actually aren't disagreeing on my "most fundamental premises".
I won't be a burden on you and you won't be a burden on me. I won't be a parasite
on you and I won't allow you to be a parasite on me. You won't suck my blood and
I won't suck yours.
I'll help who I want, when I want, if I want according to my own judgement and
discretion.
The people I'll most admire and want to assist are the people who are too proud to
ask for or accept my assistance. America used to be full of people like that. That's
part of what made her great. Leeches couldn't build America and leeches can't sustain her.
My life belongs to me. I'll take my chances. You take yours.
What about the mentally/physically disabled, the elderly, the sick, Children, those who need help after a disaster such as Sandy,...........etc..........?
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