Ayn Rand's ideas help kill an American Icon. (brainwash, solution, party)
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I was hoping for something a little more substantial .... like a particular paragraph or discussion to provide context, rather than assuming this to be true simply because you make the claim, and not just another distortion or misunderstanding.
I seriously doubt that anyone of sound mind would make such a claim, given the well understood instinct for survival inherent in most living things, including human beings. So forgive me if I refuse to take your word for it ... but I do not believe Ayn Rand suggested this at all, and anything remotely close to that is surely being taken out of context.
Taken from pp. 121-122 in Rand's For the New Intellectual. She also asserts this is in Atlas Shrugged.
I'm afraid HistorianDude may be correct. I don't think you've read much or anything of Rand. This isn't exactly a minor point in Rand's epistemology.
If you want more examples, I'm sure I can provide some.
Taken from pp. 121-122 in Rand's For the New Intellectual. She also asserts this is in Atlas Shrugged.
I'm afraid HistorianDude may be correct. I don't think you've read much or anything of Rand. This isn't exactly a minor point in Rand's epistemology.
If you want more examples, I'm sure I can provide some.
HistorianDude is not correct in this circumstance. Rand could basically exchange her economic theories for natural theories like evolution and the laws of thermodynamics.
Rand grew up in the oppressive regimes she writes about and was always the top dog in all of her classes. She writes from experience while people that despise her write from self delusions of grandeur and optimism about achieving an utopian society.
I hope you don't think that the U.S. operates in anything even remotely similar to a free market. From housing to banking to your local grocery store to farms to big industry. Government colludes with the powerful to create monopolies that then implement more regulation in their favor and then it rinses and repeats till you're stuck with a giant black hole formally known as the Federal Government that looks more like a corporation of cronies matched with bribes and payoffs that opposes any questioning of its size, scope and mission.
It continues to grow and assert its influence through force and coercion but that won't last for forever. Equal and opposite reaction and all that will reign supreme.
I'll throw one out there off the top of my head: Her contention that human beings lack instincts.
You mean like losing the instinct to move when your situation becomes dire enough? Why move when you can just compel the government to feed, cloth and house you?
WWHHD? What would Homo Habilis?
HH had a brain size half that of Homo Sapien Sapien and yet HH would up and move in a heart beat if its circumstances became that of not being able to eat. What does that say about HSS?
Taken from pp. 121-122 in Rand's For the New Intellectual. She also asserts this is in Atlas Shrugged.
I'm afraid HistorianDude may be correct. I don't think you've read much or anything of Rand. This isn't exactly a minor point in Rand's epistemology.
If you want more examples, I'm sure I can provide some.
Ridiculous suggestion. First, to extract and then construct a challenge to Rand's philosophy based on this example suggests that you are not up to the discussion, as I previously stated that it is not a philosophical point at all, but a statement in a fictional novel challenging the definition of the word "instinct".
Moreover, given it's lack of importance to either the theme of the novel or Rand's ideological views, being an excerpt from a very voluminous novel that I read maybe 30 years ago, it's ASININE to expect me to immediately recognize where you might have gleaned this "she doesn't believe humans have instincts" nonsense, though I did figure it out, prior to your follow up post identifying the reference.
But if you wish to align yourself with the human hot air generator, be my guest, as I have a spare foot to kick your arse while I'm kicking his. It's rather easy work too, requiring no heavy lifting.
Rand grew up in the oppressive regimes she writes about and was always the top dog in all of her classes. She writes from experience while people that despise her write from self delusions of grandeur and optimism about achieving an utopian society.
The irony, of course, being that Rand ran her small cult in ways eerily similar to those you would have found in Stalin's Soviet Union.
1. She insisted on absolute adherence from her followers to any of her followers.
2. She frequently purged cult members who dissented or did not sufficiently demonstrate their loyalty.
3. She fudged facts about her past to increase her legend.
4. She even went so far as to arrange or end the personal relationships of her cult members.
It isn't that difficult to understand Rand when you learn about her past. Rand was what we would call a misanthrope and elitist. Unfortunately, her misanthropy went beyond just that to what would be undoubtedly diagnosed as depression (probably bi-polar) or a mental illness today. She became addicted to prescription pills. She was vindictive and self-obsessed to the point of appearing to be a sociopath. Her treatment of her husband, in particular, whom everyone described as a good, decent person, was the epitome of cruelty as she fooled around with her "intellectual heir," Nathaniel Branden, who was half her age. This was a profoundly screwed-up human being.
Now, we have many profoundly screwed-up human beings, but few are so self-obsessed as to try to create an entire philosophy just to justify their own hang-ups, preferences and hatreds. Just to illustrate how cultish and absurd she became, because she disliked mustaches on men, Greenspan, Branden and the others could not grow mustaches. Rand liked cigarettes, so everyone smoked because it reflected a "sense of life."
She was a tortured, self-obsessed human being who tried to construct a philosophy to justify her behavior and beliefs. Her life was a series of fallings-in and fallings-out with various people. She spent her life searching for her John Galt, never coming to the elementary realization that no such people do or could ever exist, neglecting a decent man who loved her, in the process. In truth, she was a rather pitiful figure.
Ridiculous suggestion. First, to extract and then construct a challenge to Rand's philosophy based on this example suggests that you are not up to the discussion, as I previously stated that it is not a philosophical point at all, but a statement in a fictional novel challenging the definition of the word "instinct".
Moreover, given it's lack of importance to either the theme of the novel or Rand's ideological views, being an excerpt from a very voluminous novel that I read maybe 30 years ago, it's ASININE to expect me to immediately recognize where you might have gleaned this "she doesn't believe humans have instincts" nonsense, though I did figure it out, prior to your follow up post identifying the reference.
But if you wish to align yourself with the human hot air generator, be my guest, as I have a spare foot to kick your arse while I'm kicking his. It's rather easy work too, requiring no heavy lifting.
I referenced Rand's non-fiction book, For The New Intellectual. The last thing I want to do is brag about reading Rand's stuff, but I read every piece of non-fiction she ever produced. That you are unaware of this book suggests you know very little about her. This will probably end poorly for you.
That Rand believed that humans have no innate knowledge is far from an obscure point. In fact, it's essential to her belief system which is grounded in her belief in the human mind being a "tabula rosa," as she put it. As a blank slate, she argued that humans need to develop an orderly, rational philosophy in order to survive, unlike other animals who are born with innate knowledge. I'm not going to explain this any further. If you're going to get on here and claim you know something of what she wrote, you really need to actually read her writings. I would suggest moving past her pap, but if you are dead-set in continuing with this, you should at least respect yourself and everyone else enough to take the time to learn what she actually wrote and argued.
No stretch. Greenspan admitted that his ideology from Ayn Rand is what guided his mistaken pursuit of deregulation of banking which caused the economic collapse of 2008.
What part of Ayn Rand ideology included government insuring mortgages that shouldn't have been issued?
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It's rather easy work too, requiring no heavy lifting.
