Ayn Rand

[delphi_ote]

I'm never even took an English A-level, but that strikes me as remarkably unbeautiful. It's not exactly Raymond Chandler, is it?

It is both difficult to read, and hard to parse for meaning. The imagery is confusing:

• It requires one to visualise malice as some sort of human entity.
• But not just malice, the malice of mediocrity. I had never previously considered mediocrity to have a malicious component.
• Then we must think about it holding up an abyss. An abyss is a just a big hole, a lack of stuff. It's hard to hold a lack of stuff up.
• The abyss represents emptiness. That's ok, as an abyss is pretty empty, but it doesn't help with the holding up bit.
• To cap it all, we have think about the malice of mediocrity doing all this boastfully.
• Oh, and some bodies are going to fall in, too. Malice should take a care not to hold the abyss directly above its head, or all those falling bodies could do some damage.

It reminds me of HP Lovecraft. Although he probably would have used 'abysm'. Probably thrown in a 'gibbous' here and there, too.

But it sounds so deep and intellectual!

 

[Skeptic]

"If we do away with private fortunes we'll have a fairer distribution of wealth." If we do away with genius we will have a fairer distribution of ideas."

This analogy fails since a genius can give their ideas to others (in the forms of books, papers, scientific theories, etc.), and in any case no matter how smart one guy is it doesn't cause anybody else to become dumber. On the other hand, if one rich person has all the money everybody else must have none.

"questions of truth do not enter into social issues. No principles have ever had an effect on society."

Oh REALLY? There have been quite a few religious wars which would never have been fought if those on both sides did not believe, passionately, that they have the one truth and everybody else is simply refusing to recognize it. Guess what: I think bin Laden REALLY BELIEVES the one true God Allah wants him to spread the truth of Islam everywhere. If he was working for "the interest of the moment", he would have stayed a mutli-multi-millionaire in Saudi Arabia. Same goes, for that matter, for Muhammad and Jesus, which seemed to have had a bit of influence on history.

"that as man must produce the physical values he needs to sustain life, so he must acquire the values of character that make life worth sustaining. That as man is a being of self made wealth, so is he a being of self made soul. That to live requires a sense of self value, but man who has no automatic values, has no automatic sense of self esteem and must earn it by shaping his soul in the image of his moral ideal."

Apparently, at night Ms. Rand would change into her secret identity of Captain Obvious, fighter for worn cliches. Gee, self-worth comes from having a character up to one's moral ideals? This is at least as old as Plato, if not far older.

"you are guilty of intolerance, because you don't treat your desire to live and their desire to kill you as a difference of opinion."

Presumably meant sarcastically.

"They did not know and their panic was the last of their struggle to escape the knowledge. That his merciless sense of justice, which had been their only hold on him, which had made him take any punishment and give them the benefit of any doubt, was now turned against them. That the same force that had made him tolerant was now the force that made him ruthless. That the justice which would forgive miles of innocent errors of knowledge, would not forgive a single step taken in conscious evil"

Gee: deliberate evil is worse than mere error. Captain Obvious, pick up the white courtesy phone... this, too--the notion of intentionality (i.e., that killing someone in a freak accident is a lesser crime than killing someone deliberately) is, of course, as old as Plato and Aristotle, and one of the bases of the justice system for the last 1000 years. There's much interesting to say about intentionality and its relation to punishment, but Rand doesn't say it.

 

[Jorghnassen]

But it sounds so deep and intellectual!

Therein lies the problem. It reeks of arrogance and pretentiousness, and lacks elegance and simplicity. But I can certainly see the appeal to the "woe is me, I am an unrecognized genius who's despised and hated by those of lesser intellect" crowd, because Ayn Rand was exactly like that, except she happened to be actually smart enough to get published...

 

[JamesM]

I'm never even took an English A-level

Nor, it would appear, did I take basic English syntax. D'oh!

 

[Skeptic]

Therein lies the problem. It reeks of arrogance and pretentiousness, and lacks elegance and simplicity. But I can certainly see the appeal to the "woe is me, I am an unrecognized genius who's despised and hated by those of lesser intellect" crowd, because Ayn Rand was exactly like that, except she happened to be actually smart enough to get published...

Well, there's that, and there's also the aspect of one-stop shopping for all your intellectual needs: "Here is this GENIUS that has it all figured out. Just do as she says and you will always be correct about everything."

Which is why most people "into" Ayn Rand quit the Objectivist club around age 24 or so, once they realize no ideology has the complete and true answer for everything--at about the same age, that is, their college buddies from the other side of the political spectrum stop going to the interminable meetings of the local "International Socialist Revolution" club.

 

[delphi_ote]

One thing I've always wondered about Rand's philosophy: what makes it unethical to steal? The more I think about it, the more it seems that stealing would be a virtue under her philosophy.

 

[Skeptic]

One thing I've always wondered about Rand's philosophy: what makes it unethical to steal? The more I think about it, the more it seems that stealing would be a virtue under her philosophy.

Not exactly. Stealing, like murder, etc., is something a REAL objectivist would not do since it would in the long term not be to his benefit. There's one tiny problem: it won't.

 

[CFLarsen]

Not exactly. Stealing, like murder, etc., is something a REAL objectivist would not do since it would in the long term not be to his benefit.

How so?

 

[delphi_ote]

Not exactly. Stealing, like murder, etc., is something a REAL objectivist would not do since it would in the long term not be to his benefit. There's one tiny problem: it won't.

Right. Why would it be bad in the long term to steal or murder if you know you're not going to get caught and it benefits you to do so? The characters in Atlas Shrugged do exactly that in the final "action" sequence.

That little soliloquy Dagny gives before she caps the guy is great. Anyone remember it?

 

[Skeptic]

How so?

I was quoting Rand there, not giving my own view. Indeed, as they say, "that's the rub". It is for this reason that Rand's view fails.

You got to give Rand credit for trying to get morality out of egoism without resorting to heaven, hell, divine punishment--or force of arms by the government--or other fictions to keep people "in line". The problem is, it doesn't work.

 

[TragicMonkey]

It reminds me of HP Lovecraft. Although he probably would have used 'abysm'. Probably thrown in a 'gibbous' here and there, too.

"With eldritch horror I beheld the awful malice of ancient Cthulhu holding up Its own Cyclopean emptiness as an abysm to be filled by the bodies of man under a sickly green gibbous moon."

 

[Vagabond]

"With eldritch horror I beheld the awful malice of ancient Cthulhu holding up Its own Cyclopean emptiness as an abysm to be filled by the bodies of man under a sickly green gibbous moon."

That is funny! As I said I myself don't buy into Rand's philosophy so I am not the person to defend her or anything she said. I was just throwing out a few quotes for arguements sake. I think Rand was trying to come up with a philosophy in which greed and selfishness were virtues. It mainly breaks down in the necessity of people to fight to defend their country. You can't come up with a really good basis for doing this that is purely self serving. There has never been a civilization in history in which cowardice was a virtue. This is an objective fact she failed to notice.

 

[Vagabond]

One thing I've always wondered about Rand's philosophy: what makes it unethical to steal? The more I think about it, the more it seems that stealing would be a virtue under her philosophy.

Her morality isn't far from Epicurian or hedonism. What is best for you is okay. She might decide stealing isn't a good idea because you are likely to be caught. She wouldn't think anything of stealing if you knew you would get away with it and would probably applaud you. Although the Spartans had a simliar opinion on this.

 

[bignickel]

"I saw the impertinent malice of mediocrity boastfully holding up its own emptiness as an abyss to be filled by the bodies of it's betters."

Oh wow. So that's where Dave Sim's 'Reads' section of Cerebus came from. Just replace 'mediocrity' with "the female void", and 'bodies' with "male creative light", and it's Cerebus #186.

(I've only read one paragraph of 'Atlas Shrugged", so I really can't comment at all about Ayn Rand or her writing. But alot of these quotes are a heck of alot like the stuff Dave Sim wrote in later Cerebus issues)

 

[Vagabond]

Oh wow. So that's where Dave Sim's 'Reads' section of Cerebus came from. Just replace 'mediocrity' with "the female void", and 'bodies' with "male creative light", and it's Cerebus #186.

(I've only read one paragraph of 'Atlas Shrugged", so I really can't comment at all about Ayn Rand or her writing. But alot of these quotes are a heck of alot like the stuff Dave Sim wrote in later Cerebus issues)

Whose this Dave Sims guy? An infamous plagiarist?

 

[epepke]

True. "A is A" was particularly helpful for learning!

It should have been A is for A-hole.

Even if one doesn't dislike Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged is poor. After about page 800, you have to start thinking, "Stop beating the horse! It's dead already!"

 

[epepke]

Third, and this was most important of all: Galt creates an impossible engine! It was some BS out pulling static electricity out of the air, but it was an engine that was essentially creating power from nothing - it would have been a Zero Point Energy engine if she wrote this book now.

But that is Rand's philosophy, to wit: if you have a big enough penis, and you like violent sex, you can do anything, including disregard physics.

 

[Skeptic]

But that is Rand's philosophy, to wit: if you have a big enough penis, and you like violent sex, you can do anything, including disregard physics.

No you can't!

There was a young fellow named Fisk
Whose stroke was exceedingly brisk
With such super-speed action
The Lorenz contraction
Had flattened his prick to a disk.

 

[hgc]

But that is Rand's philosophy, to wit: if you have a big enough penis, and you like violent sex, you can do anything, including disregard physics.

Isn't that brilliant? The Special People's Club revenge fantasy is fueled by a perpetual motion machine. You couldn't ask for a more clever twist.

 

[dann]

It mainly breaks down in the necessity of people to fight to defend their country. You can't come up with a really good basis for doing this that is purely self serving. There has never been a civilization in history in which cowardice was a virtue. This is an objective fact she failed to notice.

The necessity of people to fight to protect their country exists as coercion. Don't all countries have laws like that? 'All able-bodied men' of a certain age etc.?
And then you also need a very good excuse to make it appear as if the war is somehow in the interest of common people (they are the ones who have to sacrifice their lives!): WMDs, Evil Empires, the Axis of Evil, for instance ...
That cowardice was never a virtue says it all about the so-called civilizations so far: The leaders are whisked away to a safe place in a hollowed out mountain and the peasants are encouraged to make a stand and fight bravely. Very hard to work into a Rand novel!