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Ayn Rand

Melendwyr said:
I can't say how funny it is that you're critiquing my linguistic skills while failing to use them yourself.
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You're right. I am failing to use your linguistic skills. Just how I would do such a thing escapes me. But if I were to somehow use your linguistic skills, apparently I'd have trouble with pronouns.
 
delphi_ote said:
That brave industrialists are the only thing keeping a society together was more or less the moral of the book. If you missed that, you probably skipped most of the 50 page speech. Who is John Galt? He answers the question himself:
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OK. You got me. I did, indeed, skip most of John Galt's monologue.


Axl Rose isn't trying to tell me how to live with every lyric to his songs. He doesn't write his songs to express a philosophy.
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I don't really care what motivated Rand to write AS. I read it as a novel, without worrying too much about the story behind it. In much the same way I listen to GnR without worrying about why they wrote "I Used to Love Her".
 
delphi_ote said:
You're right. I am failing to use your linguistic skills. Just how I would do such a thing escapes me. But if I were to somehow use your linguistic skills, apparently I'd have trouble with pronouns.
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Linguistic skills, delphi, not my linguistic skills.

Of course, you knew that.
 
No, Rand holds humanity in contempt and elevates individuals.

Not true. Rand elevates individualism and egoism, as a theory, and judges people as good or bad simply to the extent that they fulfill these theories in their behavior.

She only likes those individuals who follow her philosophy of individualism. They have intrinsic worth. She couldn't care less for the rest of mankind, the vast majority. They are worthless, as a punishment for not being "individualists".

Her heroes, for this reason, are really robots who act and speak, not as actual individuals do, but as mechanisms who are in reality "the amazing walking and talking objectivist philosopher".
 
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She holds humanity as it currently is in contempt, too, although she seemed to have high hopes for its future potential.

Which is the very essence of fascism: people as they actually are have no worth and no intrinsic value; all that matters is to realize their "future potential" by creating some utopia.

This is precisely how Hitler, Mao, Stalin and the rest of them viewed the world. What does it matter if a few lousy millions drop dead along the way? It's a small price to pay to get to utopia, especially when one remembers how contemptible and worthless most of those millions were.

This is the mindset that brought us the gulags and death camps.
 
Skeptic said:
She holds humanity as it currently is in contempt, too, although she seemed to have high hopes for its future potential.

Which is the very essence of fascism: people as they actually are have no worth and no intrinsic value; all that matters is to realize their "future potential" by creating some utopia.

This is precisely how Hitler, Mao, Stalin and the rest of them viewed the world. What does it matter if a few lousy millions drop dead along the way? It's a small price to pay to get to utopia, especially when one remembers how contemptible and worthless most of those millions were.

This is the mindset that brought us the gulags and death camps.
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Mao and Stalin weren´t exactly fascists. There is a clear difference in fascist versus communist philosophies (though not one that makes a difference if you´re on the receiving end).

For communists, every one has the same value, so it´s okay to sacrifice a few (millions) for the (real, perceived, or claimed) benefit of the many (millions).
For fascists, some have more values than others, and others again have no value, so it´s okay to sacrifice the worthless, even if it was for no reason at all.

Then again, for Ayn Rand, it seems, everything is okay for those who can muster the will to just do it.
 
You're correct, of course, Chaos, though I say that in this case it's a distinction that makes no (or little) difference. I think "fascist mindset" is still the closest to what I mean, since "totalitarian mindset" doesn't necessarily imply the attempt at utopia that motivated the Communists and Nazis.
 
Skeptic said:
You're correct, of course, Chaos, though I say that in this case it's a distinction that makes no (or little) difference. I think "fascist mindset" is still the closest to what I mean, since "totalitarian mindset" doesn't necessarily imply the attempt at utopia that motivated the Communists and Nazis.
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Nothing says 'fascism' like individualism and lack of government control, right?
 
Skeptic said:
You're correct, of course, Chaos, though I say that in this case it's a distinction that makes no (or little) difference.
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Still, it IS a difference: mass murder in communism could be called an accident by virtue of not being the point of the whole exercise - if the exercise itself wasn´t such a mind-boggling idiocy.
The difference is mainly afterwards, after the regime has collapsed. You can hang the KZ guard that herded jews into the gas chamber - but you can hardly hang the farmer who didn´t grow enough wheat to feed the population because there was no adequate equipment for him.

I think "fascist mindset" is still the closest to what I mean, since "totalitarian mindset" doesn't necessarily imply the attempt at utopia that motivated the Communists and Nazis.
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I prefer to call it "utopian mindset". Anyone who thinks that negative effects on "them" - the "others", those who disagree or don´t "get it" - don´t matter as long as "the goal" is reached is dangerous.
 
Melendwyr said:
Nothing says 'fascism' like individualism and lack of government control, right?
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You don't get it, Melendwyr: what makes Rand a fascist is not the details of her particular solution that will lead us all to utopia.

Like all simplistic solutions for complex problems, it doesn't matter: her "individualism and lack of government control" would fail to bring utopia just like Marx's collectivism, Hitler's racism, Do and Peep's (of "heaven's gate" fame) uFO mysticism, and so on.

What DOES matter is her view of humanity. She sees human beings--at least the 99.9% of humanity that disagrees with and/or never heard of her ideas--as worthless pions without any intrinsic value.
 
Skeptic said:
You don't get it, Melendwyr: what makes Rand a fascist is not the details of her particular solution that will lead us all to utopia.
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The fact that she's not actually interested in having the government run people's lives makes her a fascist? I don't think that word means what you think it does.

What DOES matter is her view of humanity. She sees human beings--at least the 99.9% of humanity that disagrees with and/or never heard of her ideas--as worthless pions without any intrinsic value.
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It's 'peons', Skeptic.

And she doesn't value human life? Really, that is a remarkably weak accusation. Rand notes that value is subjective arbitrary -- people can be said to have true values only to the degree that they recognize and operate according to the objective principles that define reality. To the degree that people do not do this, their methods fail, their goals are not achieved and ultimately they produce their own destruction.

It's people like you who used to burn heretics at the stake, who burned down the Library of Alexandria, who blew up the World Trade Towers, and who try to teach lies in science classes.
 
Chaos said:
I prefer to call it "utopian mindset". Anyone who thinks that negative effects on "them" - the "others", those who disagree or don´t "get it" - don´t matter as long as "the goal" is reached is dangerous.
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Yet Rand doesn't suggest exploiting people to reach the goal. Quite the opposite -- the "goal" is to let those who are capable of reaching any goal to do so.

How is it unfair to be fair? How is it unjust to be just?
 
Melendwyr said:
How is it unfair to be fair? How is it unjust to be just?
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Is it fair to compete in a market economy using deliberately anti-competitive practices like buying out the rail business your competition uses and closing it down? Is it just to pollute the air to produce your goods and ignore the potential enviornmental or health effects? Is taking a man's life because he did not make a decision fair? Is intentionally destroying civilization knowing full well that innocent children will starve just?

Such complicated moral issues may at first seem difficult to sort out. How can you always know what is fair and just and act accordingly? Thinking about the complexities of a particular situation is for the sniveling non-Objectivists.

Just remember the one simple question: WWARD?
 
Melendwyr said:
Yet Rand doesn't suggest exploiting people to reach the goal. Quite the opposite -- the "goal" is to let those who are capable of reaching any goal to do so.
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Yes - and **** those who can´t. The "Dagny and the guard" episode shows clearly that, according to Rand, if you want something, and somebody else stands in the way, it´s perfectly okay to kill him.

How is it unfair to be fair? How is it unjust to be just?
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What do fairness and justice have to do with Rand´s mindset. "Do what you want, take what you want, kill whom you want" is neither fair nor just.
 
Chaos said:
Yes - and **** those who can´t. The "Dagny and the guard" episode shows clearly that, according to Rand, if you want something, and somebody else stands in the way, it´s perfectly okay to kill him.
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Wrong.

Either you're willfully misunderstanding the point, or you're too dumb to have a meaningful conversation with.
 
Melendwyr said:
Yet Rand doesn't suggest exploiting people to reach the goal. Quite the opposite -- the "goal" is to let those who are capable of reaching any goal to do so.

How is it unfair to be fair? How is it unjust to be just?
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Does Rand insist that, to reach your goal, you can't hurt anyone else?
 
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