Ayn Rand

[drkitten]

I feel for you. As much as I'm trashing Rand on this thread, I happen to agree with many of the elements of Objectivism. If I hadn't been exposed to those ideas before reading Atlas Shrugged, I might have been more receptive to the book as a whole.

Well, unforunately, I think that captures another weak aspect of Objectivism (the philosophy) -- despite the way Randroids present it as a revolutionary and world-altering philosophy, there's really very little that's actually philosophically new in it. To be fair, there's not much "new" that can be said about Aristotelian ontology after all these centuries.... but if you're into Nietzschean supermen making up their own rules of conduct on the strength of pure will, I can recommend another source for Nietzschean philosophy.

There's an old joke about a very negative book review. "This book is both original and thought-provoking. Unfortunately, the original parts are not thought-provoking, and the thought-provoking parts are not original." Add "appallingly badly written" into the mix, and you've got a pretty good description of Atlas Shrugged.

 

[specious_reasons]

... but if you're into Nietzschean supermen making up their own rules of conduct on the strength of pure will, I can recommend another source for Nietzschean philosophy.

Thanks, but no.

Oh, and this past weekend, I saw a brief snippet of "Dirty Dancing" which happened to be this part:

Robbie Gould: I didn't spend all summer long toasting bagels just to bail out some little chick who probably balled every guy in the place.
[Baby is pouring water into glasses for him]
Robbie Gould: A little precision please, Baby... Some people count and some people don't.
[brings out a copy of The Fountainhead from his pocket]
Robbie Gould: Read it. I think it's a book you'll enjoy, but make sure you return it; I have notes in the margin.

 

[BlackCat]

Ok, ok, I think I finally get it now. This thread is actually an Ayn Rand rant fest thread. Silly me, here I thought we were going to have an actual honest discourse about her ideas. Sorry about that misunderstanding.

I feel for you. As much as I'm trashing Rand on this thread, I happen to agree with many of the elements of Objectivism. If I hadn't been exposed to those ideas before reading Atlas Shrugged, I might have been more receptive to the book as a whole.

Thanks specious. And thanks for writing out why you thought the book was so unbelievable. I meant to say that last time.

I would say, though, that the "scoffer effect", while real, tends to be a folie de deux: A vehemently attacks view X, B decides A is scoffing, not at X, but at him personally, counter-attacks A, and we have the making of a nice, long, flame war...

T'ai Chi already tried this, and got hammered roundly when it became obvious that it was another one of his trolly little threads.

I didn't actually read through the thread, I just took the idea from the first post. It seemed to apply to the situation at the time. I like Skeptic's idea, though. Perhaps B gets offended because he takes X idea so seriously that any attack on it becomes personal to him. (Isn't it folie a deux? And are you implying that A and B have mental disorders? )

BlackCat

 

[Zbu]

Thanks, but no.

Oh, and this past weekend, I saw a brief snippet of "Dirty Dancing" which happened to be this part:

You know, that was my real first exposure to Rand because when I saw that at the age of nine, I had no freaking clue what that was about. And now that I realize the true extent of Rand's writings, it strikes me as odd how a freaking waiter has the gall to go on about that. If anything, that example in Dirty Dancing showcases the major flaw everybody has been talking about on these boards: it really is a philosophy for high schoolers of 'undiscovered genius.'

Seriously, if the waiter was so rich, why would he be a waiter? Rand-wise, he would probably just another person for Dagny to shoot to kill more time before the Galt Speech of Indeterminable Length. Maybe that was in the uncut version of 'Shrugged?'

 

[specious_reasons]

You know, that was my real first exposure to Rand because when I saw that at the age of nine, I had no freaking clue what that was about. And now that I realize the true extent of Rand's writings, it strikes me as odd how a freaking waiter has the gall to go on about that. If anything, that example in Dirty Dancing showcases the major flaw everybody has been talking about on these boards: it really is a philosophy for high schoolers of 'undiscovered genius.'

Seriously, if the waiter was so rich, why would he be a waiter? Rand-wise, he would probably just another person for Dagny to shoot to kill more time before the Galt Speech of Indeterminable Length. Maybe that was in the uncut version of 'Shrugged?'

I have trouble imagining an uncut version!

IIRC, the waiter was a middle-class college student, and this was his summer job. i.e. not rich enough to go to the Catskills, but someone who was expecting more out of life later. Maybe I have my facts wrong, though.

It's interesting how the movie used Rand as a shorthand to cement the man's "jerk" status. It makes me more impressed with "Dirty Dancing" as a movie - that some thought was put behind the details, and it's not just a fluffy coming-of-age story.

 

[Skeptic]

Rand-wise, he would probably just another person for Dagny to shoot to kill more time before the Galt Speech of Indeterminable Length.

Which, considering the alternative of LISTENING to the damn thing, might be the better option.

If anything, that example in Dirty Dancing showcases the major flaw everybody has been talking about on these boards: it really is a philosophy for high schoolers of 'undiscovered genius.'

Essentially, yes. Like Nietzsche freaks with their dog-eared copy of Also Sprach Zaratustra, Rand freaks with their Atlas Shrugged are usually losers, mice who would be supermen.

 

[WonderfulWorld]

Skeptic: Considering how many people have read Atlas Shrugged and took it seriously, and yet aren't "freaks," you might want to check your data. Perhaps you are confusing the few for the many. (I use the word "perhaps" rhetorically.)

Other points, in no particular order: Galt's "engine" wasn't described in a way that suggested "free energy" any more than a solar cell is a free-energy device. But it did explicitly rely on a "new theory of energy" (or something like that -- and please remember that this was written before we'd even gotten to "electroweak", so I don't think Rand was out of line to suggest a scientific advance). I've read the book twice (and Galt's speech .5 times -- heh), and don't remember anything about static electricity. I would have noticed that.

My peeve with most anti-Rand arguments is that they grossly misrepresent what she said or meant. E.g., the "Nietzschean Supermen" argument, which is a stock strawman -- but Nietzsche has been misrepresented so badly in most popular discussion, that it's hard to work up too high a lather over the misrepresentations of Rand in comparison to Nietzsche.

Part of the misunderstanding is Rand's fault, due to the way she expressed herself, but in fairness one does have to remember that English was not her first language, nor even her second. E.g., she used the word "egotism" in The Fountainhead where she meant "egoism." It's not the same thing, and it makes a difference. On the other hand, I have a friend (who has a Ph.D. in Philosophy) who misunderstands Rand entirely of his own fault: Because he's stuck on academic uses of words and apparently doesn't own a standard dictionary. E.g., Rand's use of the word "existence," which my friend takes to mean the attribute of existence. No, that's not what she meant, but thanks for playing. (It's no use quoting Rand's explanation on that, either, because my friend wants her to have made that mistake. So much for that high-priced UNC PhD.)

By the way, I wish I had read The Fountainhead when I was thirteen. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble figuring some of that stuff out for myself -- or not figuring it out, as it frequently happened. I know a lot of 40-year-olds who still haven't. On the other hand, that would have made me an unbearable 13-year-old, especially to my religious mother. Mommy's Little Atheist was enough trouble when he couldn't put his finger on the problem....

Mike.

 

[Skeptic]

Skeptic: Considering how many people have read Atlas Shrugged and took it seriously, and yet aren't "freaks," you might want to check your data.

I wasn't talking about everybody who read it. I was talking about the formal or informal members of the objectivist cult.

Other points, in no particular order: Galt's "engine" wasn't described in a way that suggested "free energy" any more than a solar cell is a free-energy device. But it did explicitly rely on a "new theory of energy" (or something like that -- and please remember that this was written before we'd even gotten to "electroweak", so I don't think Rand was out of line to suggest a scientific advance). I've read the book twice (and Galt's speech .5 times -- heh), and don't remember anything about static electricity. I would have noticed that.

The point of the criticism is that crediting Galt with the invention of such a revolutionary motor is another piece in the story that makes Galt the most moral AND most determined AND most intelligent AND most industrious AND most strong-willed AND smartest (etc. etc. etc.) person who ever lived. He completely lacks all crediblity as a character. Even if such an engine was in fact possible in real life, it wouldn't matter for this huge flaw in the novel.

My peeve with most anti-Rand arguments is that they grossly misrepresent what she said or meant. E.g., the "Nietzschean Supermen" argument, which is a stock strawman -- but Nietzsche has been misrepresented so badly in most popular discussion, that it's hard to work up too high a lather over the misrepresentations of Rand in comparison to Nietzsche.

Nietzsche IS awfully misrepresented by his idiot followers, but Rand has none of the depth or intelligence or Nietzsche. It's not even close. Nietzsche was a great intellect, Rand, mediocre.

She has one "great idea" (egoism as the source of virtue and morality) which has the rather obvious problem of being utterly false. Plato already highlighted, 2400 years before Rand, the problem with Rand's argument: if egoism is one's guiding light, then the best course is to pretend to be honest and brave for "outward consumption", and to actually be a dishonest, cheating bastard.

Rand cannot solve this ancient problem, so she stacks the deck in her novels so that the most egoist people--or more precisely, the people who give speeches in favor of egoism--just happen to actually also be the most upright, honest, and all-around wonderful. It doesn't work. It strains crediblity waaaaaaaaay past the breaking point, for we all know that in real life selfish egoists behave in exactly the opposite way, at least in private.

On the other hand, I have a friend (who has a Ph.D. in Philosophy) who misunderstands Rand entirely of his own fault: Because he's stuck on academic uses of words and apparently doesn't own a standard dictionary.

True, true... the "turn to language" in philosophy had made phlosophy a bit of a joke, as philosophers spend all their time trying to find what sentences like "I'd like the special and a glass of milk" or "John is a good home-run hitter" really mean.

But once you leave that nonsense aside and concentrate on Rand's moral and ethical views--the real business of philosopy--you see that she is deeply lacking, for reasons that are thousands of years old and articulated as early as Plato, if not much earlier.

It's not her language that's the problem, it's the essence of her claims.

By the way, I wish I had read The Fountainhead when I was thirteen. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble figuring some of that stuff out for myself -- or not figuring it out, as it frequently happened. I know a lot of 40-year-olds who still haven't. On the other hand, that would have made me an unbearable 13-year-old, especially to my religious mother.

Did it occur to you that the reason objectivists are unbearable is precisely because they think they have access to a holy text by the one true prophet that "figured it all out", and they feel immensely superior to the poor, blind 40-year-olds who haven't?

Replace The Fountainhead in the quote above with The Bible and see how it sounds. Like a Christian Fundamentalist preaching?

...exactly.

 

[delphi_ote]

I know a lot of 40-year-olds who still haven't.

True. There are many immature 40 year olds who never develop beyond the mental adolescence of "selfish is good."

 

[Orwell]

10 pages on Rand!

What a friking waste of time!

 

[delphi_ote]

10 pages on Rand!

What a friking waste of time!

Too many pages about a trite subject. I'm suddenly having a vague feeling of deja vu. Anybody else getting that?

Weird.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

I've read about it, and at first glance it was appealing. I find some things resonate with me, but on further analysis it seems that to attain "true happiness" I have to stop doing the things that make me happy. What if being altriuistic actually does bring me happiness? It'll "lead me to ruin"? Financial, I can see, but considering the main goal in life is to attain personal happiness, I really don't see why I NEED financials to do that. It can help, I won't deny that, but people can easily do everything Rand suggests and still be miserable in the process.

Further, let's just examine the "sacrifice yourself for the world" issue. Let's say someone actually did need to sacrifice their own life to save everyone else's, like our lord and savior, Spock. It seems to me such an action would be contrary to your own happiness and therefor evil. No matter how you wrap your head around it, being alive will always have the chance to yield more happiness than death, but apparently if I just let everyone else die so I can live, that's the correct choice to make. Thing is, though I COULD become happy in that situation, I wouldn't want to. I'd rather die knowing others would live, no matter how evil Rand seems to think something like that is. (I say that NOW of course, but when actually put in that situation I'm not sure how I'd react, but then who does?)

And she goes on to say all our instincts must agree with her philosophy. She seems to think that we are always sexually attracted to people who share our philosophy. Now she's really stepping over the line and making testable claims. Seems to me something like this should be left to science. Sure if that wasn't the case it "wouldn't make sense" to her, but that's reality for you. It doesn't really care what your philosophy is. Thing is, the universe is just doing what it does. It never promised that our very existance has a single perfect method of being. Maybe there is no cohesive moral system that simply is the only logical way to live one's life. Maybe every single moral system we can come up with is arbitrary, and there is no absolute morality. Apparenlty, some philosophers can't accept a "there is no moral law", because they demand total consistancy with our preferences and moral code and what they observe about the universe. Thing is, I'm pretty sure that's not possible, nor should that be such a big deal. I think it all ends with some odd demand that everything in the universe, including us, MUST behave perfectly logically at all times. A nice dream, but unfortunatly, our direct observations have already proven that totally untrue. People do totally illogical things all the time, which I think is the ultimate proof that the universe doesn't really have an absolute plan for "it's children" to live by.

I value my own happines, and I value the happiness of others, and I would prefer to keep that mindset. Sometimes I will work towards one, sometimes I will work towards another, and sometimes I'll be in a moral paradox, but that's life. No one ever said the world was perfect.

 

[Skeptic]

And she goes on to say all our instincts must agree with her philosophy. She seems to think that we are always sexually attracted to people who share our philosophy. Now she's really stepping over the line and making testable claims. Seems to me something like this should be left to science.

It WAS tested.

Rand's lover, Nathaniel Branden, was also one of her closest followers in the objectivist movement. Both were married when their affair started, and decided to tell nobody about it except their respective spouses (to be fair to Rand, that took guts.) Amazingly, his wife and her husband agreed to let the lovebirds have a free afternoon every week to, er, spend time togther.

Alas, the romance ended when Rand--then nearing her 60s--couldn't understand why Branden, still in his 20s, is not sexually attracted to her any more. So she banished him from the movement and attempted to destroy his career.

Long story. Quite different, I might add, than John Galt's lovelife.

The universe... never promised that our very existance has a single perfect method of being.

Ah, there's the rub. This obvious truth is unbearable to many who keep looking for perfect "systems".

 

[ZirconBlue]

I've read about it, and at first glance it was appealing. I find some things resonate with me, but on further analysis it seems that to attain "true happiness" I have to stop doing the things that make me happy. What if being altriuistic actually does bring me happiness? It'll "lead me to ruin"?

[snip]

Further, let's just examine the "sacrifice yourself for the world" issue. Let's say someone actually did need to sacrifice their own life to save everyone else's, like our lord and savior, Spock. It seems to me such an action would be contrary to your own happiness and therefor evil.

[snip]

The argument is that you shouldn't be forced to sacrifice yourself for others, not that it is evil to give.

 

[HeavyAaron]

She made you read "Atlas Shrugged" and didn't put out?

I used to love to get guys to read Rand & then not "put out".

Would y'all stop ending sentences in prepositions!

 

[hgc]

Would y'all stop ending sentences in prepositions!

Why? This is not and has never been a useful English grammar rule. It's a good rule in Latin, and some 19th century grammarian thought Latin rules should apply to English. In most cases, the "preposition" at the end of the sentence is actually functioning as an adverbial particle -- as in the examples cited.

 

[Disco]

Yeah, HeavyAaron, what (ever) hgc said!



MHB

 

[HeavyAaron]

Why? This is not and has never been a useful English grammar rule. It's a good rule in Latin, and some 19th century grammarian thought Latin rules should apply to English. In most cases, the "preposition" at the end of the sentence is actually functioning as an adverbial particle -- as in the examples cited.

Okay, first off I thought I was being funny (I have an odd sense of humor) for objecting to minutia instead of the rather crass phrase itself. I thought I was further making that clear by making a seriously obvious grammatical error of my own. And if that wasn't enough I put it in a rant.

Secondly, as long as we're getting technical my understanding is that the word "out" is an adverbial particle in this context, not really just serving as one. Thus the phrase "put out" has become a "phrasal verb." But that's just not very funny, is it?

Aaron

ETA, because it's great “This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.” - Churchill

 

[WonderfulWorld]

I wasn't talking about everybody who read it. I was talking about the formal or informal members of the objectivist cult.

I'm curious what you mean by "informal" or even "formal", since there really is no such thing as either, unless you mean those who actually write or speak for the Ayn Rand Institute, or people who write or speak for some other explicitly (or at least putatively) "Objectivist" group. There are a lot of people who consider themselves "objectivists" (just as someone might consider himself "Marxist" or "Marxian" or "Trotskyist" or "Kantian" or "socialist" or whatever) who just don't fit your description.

The point of the criticism is that crediting Galt with the invention of such a revolutionary motor is another piece in the story that makes Galt the most moral AND most determined AND most intelligent AND most industrious AND most strong-willed AND smartest (etc. etc. etc.) person who ever lived. He completely lacks all crediblity as a character. Even if such an engine was in fact possible in real life, it wouldn't matter for this huge flaw in the novel.

Galt was not characterized at the smartest person who ever lived -- nor as the most moral, nor any of the other things you describe. At least by my recollection, Rand made no comparison of Galt to people in times other than the "present" of the novel. (I guess I'm accusing you of hyperbole.)

What you call a "flaw" was Rand's stated intent, that Galt (among others) should be a "romantic" (not the pulp-fiction sense) hero -- an image of mankind as we should aspire to be. She wasn't writing a "realist" novel, and she hated them and the antiheroes that usually show up in them. You may still think it a flaw, but it was her explicit intent and is the main reason the book is and has been so popular: Because people want to look up, not down or horizontally.

Nietzsche IS awfully misrepresented by his idiot followers, but Rand has none of the depth or intelligence or Nietzsche. It's not even close. Nietzsche was a great intellect, Rand, mediocre.

She has one "great idea" (egoism as the source of virtue and morality) which has the rather obvious problem of being utterly false. Plato already highlighted, 2400 years before Rand, the problem with Rand's argument: if egoism is one's guiding light, then the best course is to pretend to be honest and brave for "outward consumption", and to actually be a dishonest, cheating bastard.

Rand was quite familiar with Plato, and detested nearly everything about him. (So do I.) The argument must implicitly assume that the dishonest, cheating bastard might successfully fool all the people all of the time, which is (gently, now) not bloody likely. In other words, your "egoist" is either a damnfool or insane. Rational self-interest would prohibit any such attempt because it will obviously fail.

Did it occur to you that the reason objectivists are unbearable is precisely because they think they have access to a holy text by the one true prophet that "figured it all out", and they feel immensely superior to the poor, blind 40-year-olds who haven't?

Again with that premise, which I doubt based on personal experience. As a 13-year-old, yes, I would have been one seriously unbearable jerk because I was too immature to have have "a center" (or social grace, for that matter). That's why 13-year-olds can't vote or drink or choose to have sexual relationships. I have no doubt that there are adults who have the same shortcoming, but as I said, you have a problem with your data.

Replace The Fountainhead in the quote above with The Bible and see how it sounds. Like a Christian Fundamentalist preaching?

That's your best strawman of the day! I said it could have saved me time trying to figure some things out for myself. How does that suggest that I wish it wasn't (or weren't!) my responsibility to think for myself? (Which is what the Bible does for people -- unless I, too, am guilty of a strawman.) [Merde], by that standard, I probably shouldn't read Plato, either, because I wouldn't want to let someone else put an idea in my head!

(But I'll go ahead, because I think I can handle it. )

 

[WonderfulWorld]

Rand's lover, Nathaniel Branden, was also one of her closest followers in the objectivist movement. Both were married when their affair started, and decided to tell nobody about it except their respective spouses (to be fair to Rand, that took guts.) Amazingly, his wife and her husband agreed to let the lovebirds have a free afternoon every week to, er, spend time togther.

Alas, the romance ended when Rand--then nearing her 60s--couldn't understand why Branden, still in his 20s, is not sexually attracted to her any more. So she banished him from the movement and attempted to destroy his career.

Well, yes, that is Nathaniel and Barbara Branden's version of events. Apparently not the whole story, I noticed.

Okay, I should explain. I noticed three things: There is another (more detailed) version of events; Barbara Branden's biography of Ayn Rand is frequently self-contradictory; and Nathaniel Branden is given to buffoonery in his public speeches.

Okay, on that last one, I have a data issue: n=1. But it's supported by Christopher Hitchens' observation that Nathaniel Branden is "an amiable crackpot." Also, "I don't think he believes anything anymore." Not "any of it" but "anything." For what it's worth, that last observation also jibes rather well with the (fuller) version of events that I've seen; the suggestion was that Branden rejected everything (the entire Objectivist epistemology, at least) for nothing, which made him "a monster" to Ayn Rand. Also, rejecting it and her in a letter and not in person is really ... childish and low. I almost punched a guy for doing that to a female friend of mine, once. I probably would have if he'd been standing there when I heard about it.

Perhaps "nothing" and "monster" are hyperbole, but my point is that the truth of the matter is not quite so simple as you stated. Which, I hope, would be rather obvious just from a quick read of your version.

[Edited because I can't spell, punctuate, or, apparently, write clearly.]