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Ayn Rand

hgc said:
Do you want to join my special people's club?

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Oh, crap. That was a depressing movie.
 
Skeptic said:
in reality formed an intolerant cult that suppresses any dissent from the guru's teaching and sees all non-members in their select, elite group as inferior, subhuman creatures.
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This is an example of the difference between ARI and TOC. The former is lead by Peikoff and believes in a closed system while the latter believes that Objectivism is an open system to be updated and expanded upon.

Everyone that has posted seems to enjoy giving their negative interpretations of her writings, but no one has yet to provide specific quotes where she said

freedom for only a handful
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a wealthy industrialist was simply better than other people
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You wealth is a good indicator that God likes you, so you're going to heaven. How you got that way is immaterial.
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There are 'special people' who are meant to run the world, and everyone else, who is there to, at best, help the special people fulfill their destiny
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This "I hate Ayn Rand" bandwagon is great at producing strawmen, but not so good at actual documentation.

Rand wrote about heroic characters. Roark is an example of someone from humble beginnings that succeeding without compromising his principles. She used people like Roark and Galt to represent her Objectivist philiosophy.

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
— Ayn Rand, Appendix to Atlas Shrugged
 
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Moliere said:
Everyone that has posted seems to enjoy giving their negative interpretations of her writings, but no one has yet to provide specific quotes
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Well, I don't have a copy of the book on me. My comments are just what I got from reading The Fountainhead. And what I got was almost all negative.

Moliere said:
Roark is an example of someone from humble beginnings that succeeding without compromising his principles.
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Maybe. But from what I remember, the book didn't allow for any principles except those held by Roark and people like him. It seemed, at least within the book, like either you agree with Roark and hold the same principles he does, or you're an unprincipled fool/villain doomed to failure. It doesn't allow for competing ideas or philosophies.
 
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Moliere said:
Everyone that has posted seems to enjoy giving their negative interpretations of her writings,
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Well, I came away with a negative interpretation of her writing. I don't think I need to identify exactly which molecule of which substance offended my taste buds to say the dish left a bad taste in my mouth.

This "I hate Ayn Rand" bandwagon is great at producing strawmen, but not so good at actual documentation.
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I for one will admit this is my own, subjective rememberance of something I read almost two decades ago.

Rand wrote about heroic characters. Roark is an example of someone from humble beginnings that succeeding without compromising his principles.
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He blew up his own building. That's not success to me, it's irrational obstinancy. Real life is not amenable to those that refuse to compromise. Or refuse to even consider that they might possibly be in error every once in awhile.

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life,
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What happens when one's happiness conflicts with someone elses? What if I were to desire nothing more than to kidnap and tie up some hot girl at random, dress her up in Princess Leia's gold bikini, spank her with a flounder, then read de Sade to her while eating sushi off her naked midriff? What if she's not amenable to that? Whose happiness prevails?

with productive achievement as his noblest activity,
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Productive to what standard? Is a lazy munderscorer that can complete 150 units of some product or other yet always working with minimal effort a better person than the old one-armed man who works as hard as he can but only makes 80 units?

and reason as his only absolute."
— Ayn Rand, Appendix to Atlas Shrugged
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Reason is only a tool, not a source of unimpeachable wisdom, and with incorrect premises will produce bad results. Pretty crappy "absolute," if you ask me.

ETA: I should also mention I have little to no use for "absolutes." I'm not even convinced such a creature exists outside theoretical physics and the fevered dreams of mystics.
 
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Moliere said:
I would expect a skeptic forum to better appreciate a philosophy that "celebrates the power of man's mind, defending reason and science against every form of irrationalism. It provides an intellectual foundation for objective standards of truth and value."
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It pays lip service to reason and science, yes. But just the refusal to entertain the possibility of error is unscientific.

And there are no "objective standards of truth and value." The only way you can get there is by choosing premises that lead to that conclusion, which is begging the question, which is a logical fallacy, which is, class? Irrational.
 
Dcdrac said:
This is jsut an opinion.

I have just finished reading Atlas Shrugged and it has to be the worst, most poorly written idealogically driven book i have read since reading the communist manifesto.

Was Rand some kind of nazi idealogist or something?

because that is the impression I have formed of them after reading this book.
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It demonstrates her philosophy in a concrete world. I'm sure the entire economy collapsing because a few people went to live in a valley is realistic, just like I'm sure a guy could recite 50 pages of self indulgent ******** to the American people in a radio address while they all paid rapt attention. Because her novel creates such realistic situations, its application to the real world is obvious.

I can't keep this up. Rand was an awful philosopher, an awful novelist, and an awful human being.
 
Another point on Atlas Shrugged I'd like to bring up: the only semi-likable character in the whole ****ing whole novel is Rearden. As the "story" (for lack of a better term) progresses, he becomes more and more of an inconsiderate jackass.

In the end, I came to view the novel as a morality tale warning against the follies of following Rand's line of thinking, and Rearden as its tragic hero. Seen in that light, you can think of the novel as Rand more or less repeating over and over, "My ideas are ignorant, selfish, and destrictive." It's a lot easier to read that way.
 
Piscivore said:
Real life is not amenable to those that refuse to compromise. Or refuse to even consider that they might possibly be in error every once in awhile.
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Sounds like 90% of the people on this forum. Show me some threads of people that were presented with an opposing argument and changed their viewpoint. (see my old challenge on this subject: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39493) I'm pretty sure most people come here with a set opinion and just want to troll each other's threads.

Piscivore said:
What happens when one's happiness conflicts with someone elses? What if I were to desire nothing more than to kidnap and tie up some hot girl at random, dress her up in Princess Leia's gold bikini, spank her with a flounder, then read de Sade to her while eating sushi off her naked midriff? What if she's not amenable to that? Whose happiness prevails?
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Just in time. Its been at least 3-4 posts since someone threw out yet another strawman. Just for the record, since Rand held the individual as the ideal it would be contradictory to enslave another for your happiness.

Piscivore said:
Productive to what standard? Is a lazy munderscorer that can complete 150 units of some product or other yet always working with minimal effort a better person than the old one-armed man who works as hard as he can but only makes 80 units?
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Productivity is based upon the standards of the company and industry that has employed the above workers. If the one-armed man can't keep up and do the minimum work that the other workers are doing he should find a position that would better utilize his talents. Its not a matter of one worker being a better person its about being productive in a free society.

Piscivore said:
ETA: I should also mention I have little to no use for "absolutes." I'm not even convinced such a creature exists outside theoretical physics and the fevered dreams of mystics.
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So reality doesn't exist? This chair, this desk, this computer that I am using don't exist. If I wish and pray hard enough they will disappear or turn into an apple? Slavery isn't wrong? You have no core philosophy, your principles just blow in the wind depending on who you're around? What do you mean by this?
 
delphi_ote said:
Did we make fun of your messiah? Oh no! :rolleyes:
You poor Objectivists. Always persecuted for being wrong.
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Thank you for providing the first ad hominem attack. Being an atheist I have no messiah. I don't blindly follow anyone and I am more than willing to change my view when a better argument is presented. Until then, happy trolling.
 
Every so often I decide to read a bunch of books on the same subject or author. Most recently I spent the summer reading most of the Oliver Sacks books I had not read... and a few years ago it was Michael Crichton... and 20 years ago it was Ayn Rand.

I started with The Fountainhead, then We the Living, Atlas Shrugged (by the way I skimmed the 50 page speech... it was just so much "blah, blah, blah..."), followed by Anthem... and finally her biography by Barbara Brandon. (I own a collection of her shorter fiction works, but I have not read it yet... I bought 20 years ago and never started to read it).

I could see where there is a great deal of validity to her statements on "those who do"... and the others. If there is one book to read of hers I think it would be We the Living. It is the closest to what was her reality, and possibly the best because it was the most honest (even though I spent the last chapter thinking Kira was an idiot).

Too bad it was her first book... because Atlas Shrugged was horrible. It was overwrought, and (I do this with every writer and movie) so implausible. Not only the interpersonal relationships, but also the technical stuff (even taking in to consideration the era it was written in).

There is some comparison between her and Orwell. They were both ardently against communism. It was from her works that I found out the origen of the reason my dad thought commies were bad: "From each take what they are worth and their ability... to each what they need" (or something to that effect, where the worker bees are expected to perform to support the malingerers who seem to need, need, need and want, want, want). BUT... the Animal Farm phrase seemed to pop up: "All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others".

By the way, I followed my "Ayn Rand Passion" by reading Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. Well, it is a twist. By the way, I will read a Steinbeck book every few years. We had several Steinbecks in the family book collection when I was growing up because of the 3.5 years living near his old stomping grounds (we lived in Pacific Grove, CA when my dad was in Vietnam, and the in Ft. Ord when he returned stateside... the longest time in my youth I lived in the same place!).

A couple of years ago I read Tobias Wolff's Old School. He has an amusing depiction of what happens when she visits the (fictional) prep school the character attends.
 
Moliere said:
Thank you for providing the first ad hominem attack. Being an atheist I have no messiah. I don't blindly follow anyone and I am more than willing to change my view when a better argument is presented. Until then, happy trolling.
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For all the glorifying of the self and bravely striding into rooms and taking charge Rand talks about, you all whine an awful lot. Why is it the disciples of Rand lose all sense of perspective and humor?

And while I'm asking questions about the Zen of Rand, does anyone know if Rand was a bad philosopher who wrote trite novels or a bad novelist who wrote trite philosophy?
 
Moliere said:
This "I hate Ayn Rand" bandwagon is great at producing strawmen, but not so good at actual documentation.
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Er, we're talking about whether her writing is good or bad. What more evidence except for the book itself one needs?

Rand wrote about heroic characters. Roark is an example of someone from humble beginnings that succeeding without compromising his principles. She used people like Roark and Galt to represent her Objectivist philiosophy.

Precisely. Which is why the books are horrible: they're preachy, for starters, and they have utterly unbelievable characters. Rand's "heroic" characters are one-dimensional creations that exist, it seems, only to do things that "prove" her pilosophy is correct.

Of course, the funny thing is that her heroic characters are NOT objectivists. Roark and Galt are honest, upright, brave, etc., etc., etc. And why? Because they act as if they believe in the value of honesty and bravery for its own sake. This is pure Kant or Plato, ethically speaking. That calculating, scheming, weak "bad guys" are the ones who are "objectivists"--namely, who act only for their own self-interest without regards to others.

Rand's novels disproves themselves, since it is clear as day that the difference between the "good guys" and the "bad guys" is not that that "good guys" simply calculate their own utilities or interests better than the "bad guys", but that they act according to impersonal, absolute principles that have little to do with their self-interest.

It is totally unreasonable to act as Rand's heroes were acting. Certainly if their goal is their own happiness or self-interest. In the novels, they win; in real lift, they would lose and be laughed at. But in both cases, they would still be doing the morally correct thing. This simply disproves objectivism (as if Plato's dialogues hadn't done it long before.)
 
Moliere said:
I would expect a skeptic forum to better appreciate a philosophy that "celebrates the power of man's mind, defending reason and science against every form of irrationalism. It provides an intellectual foundation for objective standards of truth and value."

Or is it more about trolling the thread until I leave?
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Well, Moliere, I'm with you and for the same reasons.

Hate to say it folks, but the negative comments that I've read in this thread seem the result of shallow reading or shallow minds.

Neither of which is worthy of you.

Read her work or don't - it doesn't matter to me.

My favorite of her books is Atlas Shrugged, and I find the story, characters, and philosophy magnificent. Her writing style isn't always my favorite, but that doesn't get in the way of the rest of it for me.

Is it too long? No. Grow up and read.
 
Complexity said:
Is it too long? No. Grow up and read.
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50 page monologue? The author needs to grow up.

ETA For the record, I've read Moby Dick cover to cover (you want a deep book that cuts to the core of the human condition on every page with majestic prose, read Melville) and the entire Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson (even his editor doesn't finish his books.) Length is not a problem for me. Depth is not a problem for me. Tedious self indulgence with no cadence and stilted dialogue wears on me after about 20 pages. Pile an unrealistic premise, no sense of humor, and boring characters on top of that and we've got a problem. Only Rand would top even all that by turning the whole mess into a preachy unethical fable.
 
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Complexity said:
...Hate to say it folks, but the negative comments that I've read in this thread seem the result of shallow reading or shallow minds.
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I will confess to the shallow reading since I skimmed the fabled 50+ page speech that she sweated blood over.

But it is my own prudish character that disbelieves in eventually falling in love with the person who engages in anonymous sex in an alley in the first section of the book.

My shallow mind thinks that is shallow behavior.
 
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