Speaking of Ayn Rand… The Toast has a series of mashups showing how Ayn Rand might have handled certain pop culture series (the one at the link is ‘Ayn Rand does Harry Potter’)
rumleechsays
Heh! Damn unfair about ska though, Rudy.
birgerjohanssonsays
The rich/dominant class always has a need for “courtier philosophers” that praise them. In Socrates´days, there were sophists who would tell people what they wanted to hear.
newenlightenmentsays
Ayn Rand is to economics what the Marquis De Sade is to sex
AndrewDsays
newenlightenment, isn’t that an insult to the Marquis De sade?
Mobiussays
I have read one…count ’em ONE…Terry Goodkind book. Turns out he is a big fan of Rand. In the middle of what had been a fair, if not really good, story he suddenly went off on a 4 or 5 page Randian rant about the evils of the welfare state. The story went downhill from there. I have never had a desire read another of his books.
Rand’s “I’ve got mine” philosophy is terrible.
Mobiussays
Oh…and does it surprise anyone that certain Republicans are enamored with Rand?
Snoofsays
Goodkind is neither good, nor kind.
Wizard’s First Rule, his first book, is a fairly standard fantasy novel, though with the benefit of hindsight it’s possible to see the warning signs. It wasn’t until later in the series that he moved from writing Objectivist-flavoured fantasy to Objectivist propaganda disguised as fantasy.
Atlas Shrugged: an essay on how you can have a Libertarian paradise if only you can pull a perpetual motion machine out of your arse. (See also: way too many SF copy-cats involving markets magically expanded by non-Newtonian space-drives and other dei ex machina.)
What’s with all these people stumbling over how to pronounce her name? All you have to remember is that it rhymes with “Mine.”
Snoofsays
Daz: Keeper of the Hairy-Eared Dwarf Lemur of Atheism @ 13
Atlas Shrugged: an essay on how you can have a Libertarian paradise if only you can pull a perpetual motion machine out of your arse. (See also: way too many SF copy-cats involving markets magically expanded by non-Newtonian space-drives and other dei ex machina.)
Just more proof that governments are stifling innovation and crushing hard-working inventors everywhere! If they’d stop enforcing the ridiculous “Laws” of Thermodynamics and let the Market handle it, we’d have perpetual motion machines on every corner!
antepreprosays
Snoof
Wizard’s First Rule, his first book, is a fairly standard fantasy novel, though with the benefit of hindsight it’s possible to see the warning signs. It wasn’t until later in the series that he moved from writing Objectivist-flavoured fantasy to Objectivist propaganda disguised as fantasy.
It’s funny, I watched the Legend of the Seeker TV adaptation of the first book. Did not notice any warning signs for Objectivism. Did notice something of a BDSM fetish, though (lots of women in chains, in leather, and often with magic that involved pain for themselves, others, or both.) Wonder if that might be related?
Also, possibly the most ridiculous name for a villain in all of history, excluding fan fiction. That probably is related. A fan of cartoonish literature like Rand’s would inevitably write up a Big Bad and call him “Darken”. It was practically destiny.
Snoofsays
anteprepro @ 16
It’s funny, I watched the Legend of the Seeker TV adaptation of the first book. Did not notice any warning signs for Objectivism. Did notice something of a BDSM fetish, though (lots of women in chains, in leather, and often with magic that involved pain for themselves, others, or both.) Wonder if that might be related?
Oh, Goodkind has all sorts of other issues in his writing too, not just the Objectivism. Presumably the producers thought sex and sexualised violence would sell better than forty minute rants about how feminism, socialism, vegetarianism, gun control and pacifism are evil, though.
Content note: description of oeuvre of very rapey Objectivist author below, non-graphic.
Good kind is also really, REALLY into depicting rape, right down to explicitly sentencing a main character to be literally raped to death, dumping her alone into a pit filled with the worst rapists and murderers in the kingdom. Women are raped as punishment by a constant succession of rapists, the Big Bad (first big bad) has women who were raped and tortured all their lives into becoming torturous killers themselves, it makes Game of Thrones look like The Newlyweds, as far as being explicit about rapeyness.
I swear that is an accurate transcription of what’s in the actual book.
Galt’s Fluffers: is it being stupid that draws them in, or does the stultifying prosaic hypnosis cause it over time?
vaiytsays
Ayn Rand is to economics what the Marquis De Sade is to sex
newenlightenment, isn’t that an insult to the Marquis De sade?
Damn right, her writing is nowhere near The 120 Days of Sodom in quality. I’d say Atlas Shrugged is to economics what Gor is to gender relations.
Her phylosophy is like a less cool version of the Sith Code – which is just dumbed down Nietzsche to begin with.
frugaltoquesays
@Mobius #10
Same here. Goodkind’s “Law of nines”. It was an okay story, since I’ve read nothing else from Goodkind, but all of a sudden there’s this b.s. about how you shouldn’t even call yourself a human being unless you can defend yourself with a gun and some other rant about “takers” ruining some far off fantasy land or whatever.
I’m just like, “Dude, shut up and get back to telling your story.”
Pteryxxsays
For an antidote to rapey fantasy series, check out Jenny Trout’s discussion of Outlander on Starz.
In further contrast from that HBO juggernaut, Outlander puts sexuality front and center, rather than utilizing a character’s attitude toward sex as shorthand characterization in regards to morality. Neither does it cheapen the value of sex in storytelling by using it as a constant backing track, as Game of Thrones has coyly done to entertain the male gaze during scenes of protracted exposition. Outlander approaches sex in a way that’s only shocking because it isn’t shocking at all. It’s non-violent, sensual, natural, and the woman is framed as more than an object for male pleasure. Female sexuality isn’t demonized, and engaging in sex doesn’t diminish Claire as a character. Outlander is the rare television drama that shows us a woman who is sexually experienced without being the villain of the piece, and a man who sees her desire and pleasure as a participatory experience, rather than an object to edify his own importance.
Muzsays
birgerjohnson @7
The rich/dominant class always has a need for “courtier philosophers” that praise them. In Socrates´days, there were sophists who would tell people what they wanted to hear.
Yes, I’ve often thought this sort of thing. It seems so perfectly on point you can just about hear anti-new deal industrialists saying “We need a philosophy! The Commies have reams of the stuff! A uniquely American Ideology that people can get behind. We’ll put it in the schools!”
And the fact that it’s less a philosophy than a line by line contradiction of Marxist thinking, it seems almost made to order.
(of course, Rand’s history itself explains that just as well. It must have looked like a gift though.
laurentweppesays
Ayn Rand: How is she still a thing?
Has hiding one’s egoism behind a pretense of ideology fallen out of fashion recently?
Snoofsays
laurentweppe @ 25
Has hiding one’s egoism behind a pretense of ideology fallen out of fashion recently?
Hiding one’s egoism behind an ideology that enshrines egoism as the highest good.
I’d say, “How ironic”, but I am no longer confident in my ability to recognise irony.
That’s probably because it’s fucking impossible to pronounce, not because of her horrible ideas. Kinda the opposite of why the name Adolf has fallen by the wayside.
soogeeohsays
That’s probably because it’s fucking impossible to pronounce
Is that the case?
Sastreisays
I haven’t listened to the video, but I did skim through it for onscreen text. While I don’t agree with Rand’s apparent statement in there against birthright citizenship (being a benefactor of such myself), I don’t see why she is so despised among the left/non-religious. The takeaway message I got from reading Atlas Shrugged was “never work solely for the benefit of someone else, unless that is what makes you happy.”
Anthony Ksays
I don’t see why she is so despised among the left/non-religious.
I don’t despise Ayn Rand. I despise her acolytes.
The takeaway message I got from reading Atlas Shrugged was “never work solely for the benefit of someone else, unless that is what makes you happy.”
It took her 1168 pages to say that? I’ve even less respect for her fans now. At any rate, that’s about the tritest thing I’ve ever read.
antepreprosays
Sastrei:
I don’t see why she is so despised among the left/non-religious.
Have you actually bothered to read any of the actual criticism?
Here’s a fisking of Atlas Shrugged I haven’t quite read myself yet, but it promises to be informative/entertaining.
Maybe that will help, if you are legitimately wondering.
If you aren’t, and are just trying to play games by sanitizing Rand’s ideology and trying to disingenuously make it seem more rational and ethical than it actually is, you won’t find many here who will be willing to play along.
During her own lifetime, Rand became a famous and controversial figure. A best-selling author, she also carried her message to university classrooms, to Hollywood, to Congress, to the editorial page, to talk shows and radio programs. Her presence has only increased since her death in 1982, as her philosophy has become more well-known. Today, her books have sold in the millions, and she’s the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary, a U.S. postage stamp, university courses, and a philosophical society devoted to the study of her thought.
Fueled by her vision of man as a heroic being and by the original philosophy behind it, more and more people, from all walks of life, from businessmen to students to professors to athletes to artists, are saying the same thing: “Ayn Rand’s writings changed my life.” https://www.aynrand.org/about
With regard to her name, a search of ‘how to pronounce Ayn Rand’ turns up the above link first (although I didn’t find a pronunciation on the first page). The second hit is to and article by the Christian Science Monitor.
Born Alisa Rosenbaum, Ayn Rand changed her name after moving to the US in 1926. When said correctly, Ayn should rhyme with “line.”
Been calling her “Ann” or “Ian” all these years? According to the book “Letters of Ayn Rand,” edited by Michael Berliner, Rand was addressing questions about her name as far back as 1937. In response to a fan’s letter that year, she wrote:
“… I must say that ‘Ayn’ is both a real name and an invention. The original of it is a Finnish feminine name … Its pronunciation, spelled phonetically, would be: ‘I-na.’ I do not know what its correct spelling should be in English, but I chose to make it ‘Ayn’ eliminating the final ‘a.’ I pronounce it as the letter ‘I’ with an ‘n’ added to it”
U Froodsays
While I don’t agree with Rand’s apparent statement in there against birthright citizenship (being a benefactor of such myself),
I think Rand would approve of that, disagreeing with parts of Objectivism when it hurts you specifically.
Also, what’s with the shitting on ska, John Oliver?
This rude girl will never give up the skank.
Sastreisays
Anthony K – You haven’t answered my question, but you did demonstrate the attitude which prompts my question. Thank you.
anteprepro – Thanks for the Patheos link. However, I’m into the second blog posting and already Adam Lee seems to have blown right past the point of the cited paragraph. He mentions Dagny recklessly ordering the train to move past a red light, fair criticism if there’s nothing in the text to contradict it sure, but the cited paragraph rather seems to me to be about damning the attitude of “it’s not my job” – something that I can assure you, is a crippling reality in an office (or hell, fast food) environment. What’s offensive about taking responsibility?
Also put down the pitchforks. I know this blog has it’s fair share of malicious trolls, but I can only say rest assured my questions are in good faith. I have read several articles and criticisms of her work and they frequently seem to me to miss the point of the work in question, as with the Patheos link above.
antepreprosays
Sastrei, if you are asking questions in good faith, then your reading ability is slanted in a very convenient direction. A bizarre coincidence. No, Adam Lee isn’t blowing the past point. But you are.
Your rebuttal is that the text contradicts Adam and the cited text is about an “It’s not my job” attitude
The text alludes to the obvious point that going through a stop signal could be dangerous, but the strong implication is that the main reason they’re doing this is to avoid any possibility of blame:
“Lady, I don’t intend to stick my neck out,” he said.
“He means,” said the fireman, “that our job’s to wait for orders.”
“Your job is to run this train.”
“Not against a red light. If the light says stop, we stop.”
“A red light means danger, lady,” said the passenger.
“We’re not taking any chances,” said the engineer. “Whoever’s responsible for it, he’ll switch the blame to us if we move. So we’re not moving until somebody tells us to.” [p.23]
Now, I’m not a railroad engineer, but it seems to me as if the crew are the ones in the right here. Although the text paints them as being cowardly and unreasonable, I’d think this is what a good driver should do. If a signal on the line tells you to stop, even if there’s no obvious reason, does it really sound like a good idea to just decide it must be broken and proceed through it?
So for one, it isn’t about it not “being their job” as much as not wanting to be blamed for a mishap or risk doing something that isn’t protocol and getting in trouble. For two, yes, they are also concerned about danger. And Lee goes into detail after about why the workers actually have a damn good point.
In addition, the larger meta point Adam is making is that Ayn Rand is intentionally stacking the deck in her favor, crafting a fictional world that only looks at what she wants to look it and ignoring all possible alternative perspectives. In fact, the last paragraph of the article explains that:
Because this is Atlas and the protagonists are never wrong, we’re not meant to think of this as a foolhardy and dangerous decision. We’re meant to admire her for her bold and daring decisiveness while everyone else stands around helplessly wringing their hands – “the hard, exhilarating pleasure of action,” as the text puts it.
But what it actually shows is that in Rand’s world, there’s an author on board, arranging events so that her dashing capitalists are always right, even when they make decisions that in reality could easily prove disastrous. (Can you imagine the newspaper headlines? “22 Dead in Train Collision Caused by Railroad Executive Who Didn’t Want To Be Late For Meeting”?) Since many people take Atlas as a guide for how they should act in reality, you can start to see the danger of this book.
Your whining about “pitchforks” is not going to help you, by the way. This is a rude blog, and you are starting to look dishonest. We have a three post rule where we give people the benefit of the doubt. If you throw that away, then the rudeness will come.
It’s not that hard to discredit her considering she is not even considered a philosopher by academics. She is just a poor writer who pushed the ideology of an anti-thesis to communism by writing really bad fantasy books
Anthony Ksays
Anthony K – You haven’t answered my question, but you did demonstrate the attitude which prompts my question. Thank you.
You didn’t ask a question. You made a claim about leftist non-religious people. As one of them, I corrected you regarding my own feelings.
Also put down the pitchforks.
I pitchfork for my own benefit, not yours. As such, my pitchfork goes down when I’ve satisfied myself that I’ve pitchforked enough.
I have read several articles and criticisms of her work and they frequently seem to me to miss the point of the work in question, as with the Patheos link above.
There’s a much more parsimonious explanation for this observation.
antepreprosays
Jeremy Claywell
It’s not that hard to discredit her considering she is not even considered a philosopher by academics. She is just a poor writer who pushed the ideology of an anti-thesis to communism by writing really bad fantasy books
Your whining about “pitchforks” is not going to help you, by the way.
It wasn’t whining, it was a sincere request with a bit of humor injected. I failed to use a smiley to convey that.
You do make me realize that I’m picking the parts out of Rand’s work that I most enjoy or find most emotionally rewarding, and giving the rest a perhaps unwarranted “pass” (the notorious 50-some page speech for example). I think perhaps because I’m used to watching sci-fi, so to me Atlas Shrugged is another science fiction novel that’s a product of it’s time. I disregard the inapplicable parts or the silly parts, and focus on the aspects I enjoy or find most relevant to me.
Anthony K – I used a “dog whistle” without realizing it.
Sastreisays
#42 – And now I know what you guys mean when you talk about blockquote fails. D’oh.
anteprepro – Not sure what you are getting at. I know that conservatives worship her, but that also tells me conservatives can’t read (if only it were so, then O’Reilly and the rest of them wouldn’t make so much damn money off those awful books).
drstsays
I enjoyed the “Legend of the Seeker” show – definitely reminded me of Xena and I thought Richard was a pretty progressive character regarding his views on women and sex even if the show overall had some issues. However a friend of mine described the tv show as having “1000% less rape than the books” so I never bothered to check them out. I didn’t note any strong Objectivist slant to the show but I was not really focusing on the politics.
Though I had trouble taking Darken Rahl seriously because he was Haldir! Then the actor popped up on “Sleepy Hollow” last fall as Tarleton, so apparently he gets cast as bad guys a lot.
It’s not that hard to discredit her considering she is not even considered a philosopher by academics. She is just a poor writer who pushed the ideology of an anti-thesis to communism by writing really bad fantasy books
I think someone forgot to tell her she wasn’t a philosopher:
I am often asked whether I am primarily a novelist or a philosopher. The answer is: both. In a certain sense, every novelist is a philosopher, because one cannot present a picture of human existence without a philosophical framework. . . . In order to define, explain and present my concept of man, I had to become a philosopher in the specific meaning of the term.— Ayn Rand, “Preface,”
For the New Intellectual
PHILOSOPHER
To create her unusual stories and characters, Rand had to define the new ideas and principles that guide her heroes. She had to create a new philosophy. “I am interested in philosophical principles,” she wrote, “only as they affect the actual existence of men; and in men, only as they reflect philosophical principles.”
For Rand, philosophy is not an esoteric subject but a daily force shaping individual lives and human history. You must have some view of the kind of world you live in, of how best to understand and deal with it, and of what to aim at in life. Your only choice is whether your philosophical premises are acquired by your own independent thinking or absorbed unquestioningly from those around you.
Formally, Rand called her philosophy “Objectivism,” but informally she called it “a philosophy for living on earth.”
You do make me realize that I’m picking the parts out of Rand’s work that I most enjoy or find most emotionally rewarding, and giving the rest a perhaps unwarranted “pass” (the notorious 50-some page speech for example). I think perhaps because I’m used to watching sci-fi, so to me Atlas Shrugged is another science fiction novel that’s a product of it’s time. I disregard the inapplicable parts or the silly parts, and focus on the aspects I enjoy or find most relevant to me.
So you admit to a cherry picked, biased view of her work? I think this would be the time for you to stop commenting on Ayn Rand, her “philosophy”, Atlas Shrugged, or libertarianism and rectify that problem.
Anthony Ksays
@Sastrei:
You do make me realize that I’m picking the parts out of Rand’s work that I most enjoy or find most emotionally rewarding, and giving the rest a perhaps unwarranted “pass” (the notorious 50-some page speech for example). I think perhaps because I’m used to watching sci-fi, so to me Atlas Shrugged is another science fiction novel that’s a product of it’s time. I disregard the inapplicable parts or the silly parts, and focus on the aspects I enjoy or find most relevant to me.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with reading a book the way you describe in this paragraph. But it is important to be aware of the other parts, especially in the context of a discussion as to why (or why not) a particular author is “still a thing”, or why certain groups find the policies and ethics of self-described fans of an author’s work problematic. You can’t gloss over the racist tropes in “Song of the South” and then wonder why it’s decried as racist.
What’s offensive about taking responsibility?
That’s some real question-begging there. Don’t do that.
Sastreisays
Tony – I gained a realization today that I look at the novel differently from most other people and that it explains why I don’t get hung up on the same flaws in her work the way other people do. I wouldn’t have made that realization had I simply sat down and shut up like you seem to want me to do.
But then, a hatred of regulation is part of Rand’s profound contempt for democracy itself, which can be seen in her description of “the woman in Roomette 9, Car No. 12 … a housewife who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing, to control giant industries, of which she had no knowledge.” Rand and her followers don’t think a “housewife” has the right to elect politicians who regulate giant industries.
Hopefully the criminal justice system will bring justice to the McElroy household and to other fraud victims. These government agencies can be very effective at such tasks, although perhaps less so now that tax cuts for the wealthy have eaten into their operating budgets.
The truth is that we need government, in the form of police, legislatures—and yes, regulators—to protect us from the psychopathic lack of empathy which, along with the sadomasochistic sexuality, is such an integral part of the Randian ideal.
What sort of society would voluntarily surrender itself to people like the sociopath Ragnar, the rapist Francisco, or the rough-trade cruiser Rearden? That would be an act of collective masochism.
And let’s get one thing straight: Ayn Rand isn’t a deep thinker. She’s a gelatinous mass of chaotic and violent drives, loosely wrapped in pseudo-Nietzschian babble. Her writings are intellectually shallow econo-porn, part Krafft-Ebing and part Horatio Alger, possessing neither coherence nor philosophical depth. Rand writes that Galt’s Gulch represents “the mind on strike,” but it’s more like a work slowdown.
The bloggers at ThinkProgress explain that the philosophy Ayn Rand laid out in her novels and essays was, ” a frightful concoction of hyper-egotism, power-worship and anarcho-capitalism. She opposed all forms of welfare, unemployment insurance, support for the poor and middle-class, regulation of industry and government provision for roads or other infrastructure. She also insisted that law enforcement, defense and the courts were the only appropriate arenas for government, and that all taxation should be purely voluntary. Her view of economics starkly divided the world into a contest between ‘moochers’ and ‘producers,’ with the small group making up the latter generally composed of the spectacularly wealthy, the successful, and the titans of industry.”
3. Ayn Rand Railed Against Government Benefits, But Grabbed Social Security and Medicare When She Needed Them
AlterNet’s Joshua Holland has the goods: “Her books provided wide-ranging parables of ‘parasites,’ ‘looters’ and ‘moochers’ using the levers of government to steal the fruits of her heroes’ labor. In the real world, however, Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits under the name of Ann O’Connor (her husband was Frank O’Connor).
4. Rand Worked on a Movie Script Glorifying the Atomic Bomb
According to author Greg Mitchell, Rand called the nuclear weapon capable of incinerating entire cities “an eloquent example of, argument for and tribute to free enterprise.”
5. Billionaires and Corporations Use Rand’s Writings To Brainwash College Students
Pam Martens reported that Charles Koch, who pushes “millions of dollars through his foundation into economic programs at public universities and mandating approval of faculty and curriculum in some instances,” partnered with the “southern banking giant BB&T … mandating that Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged is taught and distributed to students.”
Anthony Ksays
I wouldn’t have made that realization had I simply sat down and shut up like you seem to want me to do.
You also annoyed and irritated a least a couple of people with your insistence that others do the work for you, not to mention the fact that your realization wasn’t that people view the book differently than you as much as it was that you simply ignore the parts you don’t like and then expressed puzzlement over the fact that other people don’t do that. You hardly need to play twenty questions with people to have the realization that your knowledge of a book is incomplete.
So, yeah, sitting down and shutting up may not have benefited you. But your process here sure hasn’t been of any benefit to the people you’re asking to do the work for you.
I gained a realization today that I look at the novel differently from most other people and that it explains why I don’t get hung up on the same flaws in her work the way other people do. I wouldn’t have made that realization had I simply sat down and shut up like you seem to want me to do.
I’m not merely asking you to sit down and be quiet (and there’s nothing wrong with that, btw, that’s how I came to learn about feminism-by shutting my trap and learning). I’m also suggesting you rectify the problem of cherry picking the bits of Atlas Shrugged that you like while in the midst of a discussion of why people find Ayn Rand’s work and “philosophy” problematic. You can’t have a fully informed view of her work and discuss it in any meaningful way if you simply pick and choose the stuff you like.
And yes, you can have that realization while sitting down and shutting up. You might not want to. You might want to pontificate about things you don’t understand. But you can choose to not talk and educate yourself fully.
gussnarpsays
Ditto on Terry Goodkind. There I was, happily reading along, a bit disturbed by the rapey bits and some of the violence, but as a young male at the time, probably not as bothered as I should have been, but really caught up in some of the new ways of imagining a fantasy world and some of his world building, when suddenly I pick up the new book and, bam, the new bad guy is a clear and pathetic allegory for the (defunct) soviet bloc, but with incredibly exaggerated levels of evil and suddenly the methods used by the big bad in book one are actually the right thing to do in the face of this horrible collectivist enemy. Fascism will save us all from the collectivist evil so maybe we can be free later on or “You’re totally free to do as you chose, but I’ll kill you and everyone you care about if you don’t do what I think you should”, and then the whole, pacifists are sheep who deserve to be slaughtered, and worse, they enable the evil doers to prosper. We must go to total war and kill all the enemy without regard unless they choose to come around and join us, in which case we can ignore some of the evil things they do as long as they’re committed to the greater goal of defeating collectivism…. Guy was outright evil. For a moment I hoped that maybe he’d pull a turn around and the people trying to rid the world of magic would turn out to be the good guys and take out the previous hero…but no, just endless pages of objectivist pseudo-philosophy. Not to mention the whole story became utterly incoherent. I gave up. I still don’t know if he ever settled any of his prophecies or wrapped up the story in any reasonable way, and I don’t care.
Terry Goodkind – what happens when an imaginative fantasy author is a little too full of himself and Ayn Rand.
Ayn Rand – what happens when a philosopher with interesting ideas about how people relate gets a little caught up in thinking these things are applicable to making rules about how we ought to relate and then writes endless pages of boring purple prose advocating them by making straw enemies for her heroes.
The Republican Party – what happens when people apparently don’t get that Ayn Rand wrote fiction.
AlexanderZsays
Saad #28
Kinda the opposite of why the name Adolf has fallen by the wayside.
Funny you should mention him. He is the reason I’ve been mispronouncing her name all this time:
Ayn Rand – Ein Reich – Ein Fuhrer.
Apparently her made up name is pronounced like ع.
Sastreisays
Hm. #50 was a reply to Tony! The Queer Shoop not Anthony K.
Anthony K – Thanks. :) I haven’t read Song of the South, but I had been wondering if maybe there was some White Supremacist rhetoric or something equally objectionable tucked away in Rand’s works that I should be aware of (I’ve only read Atlas Shrugged and seen the old 50’s Fountainhead adaptation).
Hm. #50 was a reply to Tony! The Queer Shoop not Anthony K.
Yes, you addressed it to me, but this is an open thread. Anyone can comment on anything they choose. Comments need not be addressed to anyone in particular. Did you think you were having private conversations with people?
gussnarpsays
Also, I don’t know how far the Seeker TV show got, but the objectivism doesn’t really show up until a few books in. By book 4 it becomes just awful. I don’t think anyone in their right mind would make a TV show with any intention of using the later books as source material.
Alverantsays
I remember reading “Wizard’s First Rule” too. I didn’t care for it much and it had some tropes and disturbing passage. I remember this spoiled rich girl 8-10 IIRC trying to taunt the hero by saying she was going to have his romantic interested raped to death. I remember thinking, how strange it was that a female would be gleefully be talking about another female being raped. I finished the book because I had already started it, but I didn’t go back and now I want to go back even less.
The problem with social commentary in fiction is that things work out or don’t work out only because the author wanted it to. It’s like technobabble in Star Trek; “the free markets will solve everything” is pretty much the same as “reverse the polarity of the ion flow”.
Ah, I see. Thanks to Tony too for that explanation on her name.
But now I have to ask: Do you speak Arabic/Urdu/other related languages. I’m assuming you’re familiar with the culture or a related culture as you saw my name and knew I’d know that letter.
Sastreisays
Tony @ #58 – I wrote post #56 before I saw posts #51 onward. As Anthony can be shortened to Tony, I didn’t want to risk a misunderstanding in some way.
AlanMacsays
“Still a thing” ?? I don’t understand how she became “a thing”. Because I’m a Sci-fi geek, friends way back in high school ( almost 50 years ago) suggested I read “Atlas Shrugged”. I don’t think I got 1/2 of the way through it. It was nothing more then a very badly written Heinlein novel. Nothing in the novel is either allegorical or applicable to the real world. Her dystropia is totally unbelievable as a functioning society. And her solution… perpetual motion machines and , I guess, “adamantium”…..even at the age of 15 I wasn’t buying it.
These people think HER name is hard to pronounce? Geez!
Thomathy, Such A 'Mosays
There is no need, WithinThisMind, to malign lousy writers, narcissistic sociopaths, liars hypocrites. Any Rand merely is; she’s as one of a kind a douchebag as I hope (do not spoil this hope) her name is and remains.
rumleech, CaitieCat
I’m afraid he’s got apalling taste; he doesn’t like Scotch either.
ohkaysays
The Randites live in their own little incestuous bubble, inhaling their own gaseous emissions. Similarly, the NFL puts together a panel to look into domestic abuse, composed of 11 men and zero women. Federal bank regulators are so cozy with Wall St. that they can’t bring themselves to criticize Goldman Sachs’ egregious conflicts of interest. Fox News feeds itself such a steady diet of horseshit that it continues to deny and twist the science of climate change.
One of Niven’s Laws is relevant here, I think: There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it. Similarly, there are no ideas so good that they can’t be made into shit by horrible implementation. And that’s how I see Objectivism: There actually are some decent ideas swimming around in it—”don’t initiate the use of force” being one such, IMAO—but the intellectual/philosophical superstructure which Rand constructed on top of those decent ideas… well, that superstructure is not decent at all.
Regarding this post’s titular question, seems to me that markmckee @19 pegged it: There’s always a place for someone who’s willing to tell the rich/powerful/strong (a) that it is absolutely right for them to be rich/powerful/strong, and (b) that anybody who disagrees with their absolute rightness is, therefore, absolutely wrong.
Randian philosophy gives rich people permission to keep all their money. Not unlike most religions. This is why they stick around.
In fairness to most religions, they typically don’t think the rich should keep all their money, and they actually serve as vehicles for redistribution, however weak or symbolic it may be. This is a big part of why Rand hated them.
Yes, Area Man, many religions dofrownonthesesortsofthing, but I’m not sure whether that really has a lot of effect?
Note that each linked word is to a different religious group, and that this was about five minutes’ “research” on teh Google machine.
Al Dentesays
Sastrei-
My objections to Rand are that she’s a poor writer; a self-proclaimed “philosopher” who indulges in fallacies such as strawnman, poisoning the well, composition and false dilemma; and an ideologue whose ideology is anti-human. Her fictional worlds in both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are two-dimensional, unrealistic utopias.
In Atlas Shrugged John Galt talks about intelligence and education without considering who will pay for the schools or who will teach the teachers. Galt expects the police to protect him but has no concern about how they’re staffed or funded. Galt spends his time in a valley where no disasters occur, no accidents happen, and no real life takes place.
If an earthquake destroys my house, that’s something I can’t control; it doesn’t matter how prepared I was or how hard I worked. Trying to recover from something like that can cripple a person, both financially and mentally, unless they have help from those who understand that we’re all in this together, we need each other to function as a society, and an earthquake might hit any of our houses. Rand not only rejects this concept, she even rejects private help (read her strawman attack on altruism).
I don’t see why she is so despised among the left/non-religious.
It’s not hard to figure out. Her belief system is hyper-elitist and holds that the rich don’t merely have more money than the rest of us, but that they’re morally superior to us. She regarded the masses as literally worthless. Since the left, pretty much by definition, favors some measure of egalitarianism, Rand represents the precise inverse of their beliefs. Combine that with her ridiculous arrogance coupled with a strong and ironic sense of victim-hood, and what you’ve got is barf inducing.
The takeaway message I got from reading Atlas Shrugged was “never work solely for the benefit of someone else, unless that is what makes you happy.”
You must have read a different book than I did. Rand certainly did not believe that it was okay to work for the benefit of others if it made you happy. Or more specifically, no rational person would be happy doing so. She was against altruism in any form.
fakeemailaddresssays
@quentinlong: It could equally be said there are no (non-trivial, non-contrived) philosophies so wrong that they have no good ideas*. The Nazis built the Autobahn and made important advances in certain fields of medical research. MRAs defend men who can’t get custody of their children unless their heroin-addicted exes are actually in prison. IS seeks to re-establish law and order in Syria. I’m sure that Rand had some good ideas too.
@71: No one ever said they weren’t hypocrites. It’s just that plutocracy is not a formal part of the belief system of any religion that I’m aware of, and many are explicitly against it (and most require alms for the poor). That’s a way in which religion and Rand don’t mix.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
I’m sure that Rand had some good ideas too.
Then you should have been able to enumerate a couple….that you didn’t is telling.
One of Niven’s Laws is relevant here, I think: There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.
Well yes. Like someone who thinks a good way to revitalise the space-program is to convince the president that space-mounted weapons would be a neat idea.
cksays
Mobius wrote:
Oh…and does it surprise anyone that certain Republicans are enamored with Rand?
It’s a little surprising. As John Oliver points out, she was an atheist, pro-choice, and didn’t like Reagan much. Any one of those ought to be enough to be put on their shitlist (least of all, taking ideas coming from a woman), but it seems her philosophy of “wealth/greed makes right” is just too good for them to pass up.
Numerous readers have already listed the reasons why, judged as a conventional novel, it’s pretty bad: wooden dialogue, over-the-top melodrama, characters barely recognizable as human. But of course, Atlas doesn’t ask to be judged as a conventional novel. Rand and her followers clearly saw it as a secular Bible: a Book of Books that lays out for all eternity, through parables and explicit exhortation, what you should value and how you should live your life. This presents an obvious problem for me: how does one review a book that seeks, among other things, to define the standards by which all books should be reviewed?
Mulling over this question, I hit on an answer: I should look not at what’s in the book—whose every word is perfect by definition, to true believers who define ‘perfect’ as ‘that exemplified by Atlas Shrugged‘—but at what’s not in it. In other words, I should review the complement of the book. By approaching the donut through the hole, I will try to explain how, even considering it on its own terms, Atlas Shrugged fails to provide an account of human life that I found comprehensive or satisfying.
It’s always funny to see Republicans distance themselves from Rand because of her atheism. “Oh, we’re all in favor of her elitism, greed, selfishness, and complete indifference, if not malicious opposition, to the well-being of other people. But atheism? That’s going too far! We’re not evil or anything!”
Drolfesays
Also funny is to read the YouTube comments full of Libertarians touting the non-aggression principle as if it wasn’t stupid and circular and as if Rand gave a shit about it or libertarianism. She explicitly disclaimed libertarianism and mocked libertarians. Nothing about the heroes of her “novels” epitomizes non-aggression unless you read them with confirmation bias — e.g., “taxes are theft, so of course Galt is justified!”
In short, even Ayn Rand knew libertarianism was stupid. Even this is not enough for movement conservatives to jettison her repulsive views.
Nothing about the heroes of her “novels” epitomizes non-aggression unless you read them with confirmation bias…
Not just that, but her heroes use aggression frequently and unapologetically. Ragnar Danneskjold is a literal pirate who attacks relief ships and steals their cargo (and the world’s navies, inexplicably, are too wussy to stop him). Nat Taggart threw a government official down a flight of stairs because he dared offer him a loan. Dagny Taggart bribes and threatens people if she needs to get something done. Francisco D’Anconia intentionally defrauds his investors and engages in criminal negligence that he happily knows will kill people. Francisco and Hank Reardon bitch-slap Dagny when they fuck her, and Hank threatens to beat his wife up if she objects to his fucking Dagny. Galt pretends he has the right to kill Dagny because her plane crashed on his property. And on it goes.
Basically, Rand has a different standard of morality for her heroes than she has for everyone else. Her heroes are superior people, so the normal rules don’t apply. It’s just elitism at its ugliest, and any attempt to construe her beliefs as principled is merely a cover for that.
Nothing about the heroes of her “novels” epitomizes non-aggression unless you read them with confirmation bias…
Not just that, but her heroes use aggression frequently and unapologetically. Ragnar Danneskjold is a literal pirate who attacks relief ships and steals their cargo (and the world’s navies, inexplicably, are too wimpy to stop him). Nat Taggart threw a government official down a flight of stairs because he dared offer him a loan. Dagny Taggart bribes and threatens people if she needs to get something done. Francisco D’Anconia intentionally defrauds his investors and engages in criminal negligence that he happily knows will kill people. Francisco and Hank Reardon slap Dagny around when they fuck her, and Hank threatens to beat his wife up if she objects to his fucking Dagny. Galt pretends he has the right to kill Dagny because her plane crashed on his property. And on it goes.
Basically, Rand has a different standard of morality for her heroes than she has for everyone else. Her heroes are superior people, so the normal rules don’t apply. It’s just elitism at its ugliest, and any attempt to construe her beliefs as principled is merely a cover for that.
Loren Petrichsays
As to money, one of AR’s characters makes a speech about it in AS that can be summed up as “The love of money is the root of all good.”
That’s Francisco d’Anconia’s “money speech”.
Rand apparently stating that nuclear weapons are “an eloquent example of, argument for and tribute to free enterprise” is quite amusing. Nukes were developed by the US government harnessing a huge amount of resources and utilising the talents of thousands of scientists, engineers, and other technicians, not the product of some lone genius and his private corporation.
Anders Kehletsays
I once worked at a bank where they had randomly placed bookshelves filled with copies of Atlas Shrugged. I didn’t know about Rand at the time, so it just seemed rather odd to me. It seemed more like a statement than anything else.
–
Fricking hell. Just looked them up on Wikipedia and apparently they’ve paid for a Danish translation of AS and distributed 10000 copies and, of course, all new employees get a copy too.
Is there ANYTHING good about her? I have some friends who seem to like certain pieces of her actual epistemology, and find them useful when arguing against presuppositionalists and other Reformed (more like Deformed…) theists.
In particular, her pointing out that knowledge is hierarchical (and one need not be an Objectivist to argue this) is useful against Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology, as well as the conceptual-axiomatic claims made by van Til and his hangers-on. If a concept can be reduced to other concepts, you cannot assert it as properly basic, as the concepts it reduces to are more basic.
Basically, is there anything redeeming about her work, and if so what is it? I don’t want to commit the genetic fallacy; even Hitler was right about some things, like if he ever said “the sky is blue” and things like that.
brettsays
There’s tidbits in there that are interesting, amidst the dreck. Francisco D’Anconia’s “money” speech gets close to some interesting ideas that economist Daron Acemoglu has written about in terms of “extractive” vs “inclusive” institutions (such as how states that glorify plunder and theft – the “aristocrat of the sword” – are inherently prone to violent overthrow), although it’s unfortunately included with gold-buggery and other nonsense. Rand also reserves much of her greatest scorn for crony capitalists like James Taggart and Orren Boyle – they come off more offensively than Cuffy Meigs (who is just a thug) and Fred Kinnan (who is portrayed as an corrupt, bluntly amusing union leader who knows he’s just there to squeeze off money for himself and his workers).
My personal favorite scene is probably Hank Rearden arguing with the leaders in New York City to the part where he’s looking at his mills with admiration and resignation. I think it’s the best written part of the entire book, particularly the line where he thinks “Who is the guiltiest man in the room?” “I am”, and realizes that it’s not going to get better – and that he should have walked away years ago. And he does, thankfully without causing massive environmental damage (like Ellis Wyatt) or doing a slow burn on his own company like D’Anconia.
While it’s wrapped in this creepy “superman vs sheep” aspect that never feels coherent in trying to justify the actions of the “Great Men” (especially when the pirate comes into play), I will give Rand creative credit vis a vis the marxist narrative that owners and entrepreneurs were only unnecessary parasites who fed off the workers. She turned it on its head, saying, “No, the creators are the more important part of what make these enterprises possible – and if the best of them started walking away on an indefinite strike to do little more than what it takes to survive in isolation, the country would slowly bleed to death economically.”* And she does show that in the book, albeit in incredibly incompetent and drawn out form. People like Mulligan, Danagger, Wyatt, and so forth withdrawing over the course of the book weakens the national situation more and more even if it never kills it outright.
* Of course, the joke of the whole thing is that for all that rambling about “going Galt” that Colbert made fun of a while back, none of our present capitalists are particularly inclined to actually go on strike and push their luck. In fact, technically advocating for pro-business policies would be a cardinal sin in that philosophy.
birgerjohanssonsays
“… I must say that ‘Ayn’ is both a real name and an invention. The original of it is a Finnish feminine name … Its pronunciation, spelled phonetically, would be: ‘I-na.’ ”
.
The Swedish version is Aina. A common name two generations back. Ayn is an abbreviation.
BTW why was she so rapey in her fiction? Is this something about a strong ubermesch that must be full of testosterone? (I don’t buy that testosterone equals rape, but apparently Aina Randsdottir thought it did)
brettsays
@birgerjohansson
BTW why was she so rapey in her fiction? Is this something about a strong ubermesch that must be full of testosterone?
I think that’s exactly it, having read both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. It doesn’t jibe well with the fact that this is supposed to be all voluntary trade and exchange – her Great Men were apparently rapacious in bed but then somehow restrained themselves from rapacity in their business lives.
randaysays
An alternative to Rand’s dystopia is B.F. Skinner’s “Walden II”. As for philosophy, read Herbert Marcuse’s “One-Dimensional Man.” Rand is a good example of one-dimensional thinking.
BTW, for conservatives, Rand was in favor of gay rights.
Of course, the joke of the whole thing is that for all that rambling about “going Galt” that Colbert made fun of a while back, none of our present capitalists are particularly inclined to actually go on strike and push their luck.
I’m pretty sure that our contemporary Wall Street geniuses and other rich assholes are the very last people who would ever leave society. Not just because they wouldn’t know how to feed themselves, but because they are, almost by definition, society’s greatest beneficiaries. What’s the point of being super-rich if you don’t have other people to lord over?
I seriously think that every time one of them threatens to go Galt, we should buy that person a train ticket to some isolated Colorado mountain valley and beg them to go. Colbert would have a field day with their excuses.
AlexanderZsays
Saad #61
But now I have to ask: Do you speak Arabic/Urdu/other related languages. I’m assuming you’re familiar with the culture or a related culture as you saw my name and knew I’d know that letter.
I know only some Arabic – just the very basics.
A similar letter also exists in Hebrew, which I do speak.
2kittehssays
Now, I’m not a railroad engineer, but it seems to me as if the crew are the ones in the right here. Although the text paints them as being cowardly and unreasonable, I’d think this is what a good driver should do. If a signal on the line tells you to stop, even if there’s no obvious reason, does it really sound like a good idea to just decide it must be broken and proceed through it?
Stuff I learned from a railway friend years ago: Stopping at a red light is one of the first things drilled into trainee drivers. If you’re asked in an oral exam whether you can pass a red light, the only acceptable answer is NO. Don’t even say “No, unless …” You’ll be asked about exceptions later. Anything but that initial NO is an instant fail.
As for the pronunciation of Rand’s name, why’s it so strange to think people wouldn’t know how to say it? How many have heard it, or would bother Googling anyway? I still think of it as Ane (short for anal gland, maybe). Rhyming with line just sounds like someone’s putting on a really nasal Strine accent.
She also insisted that law enforcement, defense and the courts were the only appropriate arenas for government, and that all taxation should be purely voluntary.
So how the hell did she think the police and court officials and so on were to be paid? No, don’t tell me, rhetorical quesiton, I don’t really want to know more about her poisonous notions.
*Shudder!*
I’ll be in the shower if anyone needs me.
Context for the non-video’d:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/john-oliver-presents-the-enduring-influence-of-ayn-rand-selfish-sshole/
I’m liking the idea of them replacing her with Drake.
…baiting the Objectivists, eh?
I’m game. It’s been a while.
Speaking of Ayn Rand…
The Toast has a series of mashups showing how Ayn Rand might have handled certain pop culture series (the one at the link is ‘Ayn Rand does Harry Potter’)
Heh! Damn unfair about ska though, Rudy.
The rich/dominant class always has a need for “courtier philosophers” that praise them. In Socrates´days, there were sophists who would tell people what they wanted to hear.
Ayn Rand is to economics what the Marquis De Sade is to sex
newenlightenment, isn’t that an insult to the Marquis De sade?
I have read one…count ’em ONE…Terry Goodkind book. Turns out he is a big fan of Rand. In the middle of what had been a fair, if not really good, story he suddenly went off on a 4 or 5 page Randian rant about the evils of the welfare state. The story went downhill from there. I have never had a desire read another of his books.
Rand’s “I’ve got mine” philosophy is terrible.
Oh…and does it surprise anyone that certain Republicans are enamored with Rand?
Goodkind is neither good, nor kind.
Wizard’s First Rule, his first book, is a fairly standard fantasy novel, though with the benefit of hindsight it’s possible to see the warning signs. It wasn’t until later in the series that he moved from writing Objectivist-flavoured fantasy to Objectivist propaganda disguised as fantasy.
Atlas Shrugged: an essay on how you can have a Libertarian paradise if only you can pull a perpetual motion machine out of your arse. (See also: way too many SF copy-cats involving markets magically expanded by non-Newtonian space-drives and other dei ex machina.)
[rumleech #6, have one on me.]
What’s with all these people stumbling over how to pronounce her name? All you have to remember is that it rhymes with “Mine.”
Daz: Keeper of the Hairy-Eared Dwarf Lemur of Atheism @ 13
Just more proof that governments are stifling innovation and crushing hard-working inventors everywhere! If they’d stop enforcing the ridiculous “Laws” of Thermodynamics and let the Market handle it, we’d have perpetual motion machines on every corner!
Snoof
It’s funny, I watched the Legend of the Seeker TV adaptation of the first book. Did not notice any warning signs for Objectivism. Did notice something of a BDSM fetish, though (lots of women in chains, in leather, and often with magic that involved pain for themselves, others, or both.) Wonder if that might be related?
Also, possibly the most ridiculous name for a villain in all of history, excluding fan fiction. That probably is related. A fan of cartoonish literature like Rand’s would inevitably write up a Big Bad and call him “Darken”. It was practically destiny.
anteprepro @ 16
Oh, Goodkind has all sorts of other issues in his writing too, not just the Objectivism. Presumably the producers thought sex and sexualised violence would sell better than forty minute rants about how feminism, socialism, vegetarianism, gun control and pacifism are evil, though.
Jesus Christ. How is HE still a thing?
Randian philosophy gives rich people permission to keep all their money. Not unlike most religions. This is why they stick around.
Content note: description of oeuvre of very rapey Objectivist author below, non-graphic.
Good kind is also really, REALLY into depicting rape, right down to explicitly sentencing a main character to be literally raped to death, dumping her alone into a pit filled with the worst rapists and murderers in the kingdom. Women are raped as punishment by a constant succession of rapists, the Big Bad (first big bad) has women who were raped and tortured all their lives into becoming torturous killers themselves, it makes Game of Thrones look like The Newlyweds, as far as being explicit about rapeyness.
End content note.
Also, There. Is. An Evil. Chicken.
I swear that is an accurate transcription of what’s in the actual book.
Galt’s Fluffers: is it being stupid that draws them in, or does the stultifying prosaic hypnosis cause it over time?
Damn right, her writing is nowhere near The 120 Days of Sodom in quality. I’d say Atlas Shrugged is to economics what Gor is to gender relations.
Her phylosophy is like a less cool version of the Sith Code – which is just dumbed down Nietzsche to begin with.
@Mobius #10
Same here. Goodkind’s “Law of nines”. It was an okay story, since I’ve read nothing else from Goodkind, but all of a sudden there’s this b.s. about how you shouldn’t even call yourself a human being unless you can defend yourself with a gun and some other rant about “takers” ruining some far off fantasy land or whatever.
I’m just like, “Dude, shut up and get back to telling your story.”
For an antidote to rapey fantasy series, check out Jenny Trout’s discussion of Outlander on Starz.
birgerjohnson @7
Yes, I’ve often thought this sort of thing. It seems so perfectly on point you can just about hear anti-new deal industrialists saying “We need a philosophy! The Commies have reams of the stuff! A uniquely American Ideology that people can get behind. We’ll put it in the schools!”
And the fact that it’s less a philosophy than a line by line contradiction of Marxist thinking, it seems almost made to order.
(of course, Rand’s history itself explains that just as well. It must have looked like a gift though.
Has hiding one’s egoism behind a pretense of ideology fallen out of fashion recently?
laurentweppe @ 25
Hiding one’s egoism behind an ideology that enshrines egoism as the highest good.
I’d say, “How ironic”, but I am no longer confident in my ability to recognise irony.
A minor bit of good news: Ayn is not in the top 1000 names for any year of birth in the last 70 years.
Pierce, #27,
That’s probably because it’s fucking impossible to pronounce, not because of her horrible ideas. Kinda the opposite of why the name Adolf has fallen by the wayside.
Is that the case?
I haven’t listened to the video, but I did skim through it for onscreen text. While I don’t agree with Rand’s apparent statement in there against birthright citizenship (being a benefactor of such myself), I don’t see why she is so despised among the left/non-religious. The takeaway message I got from reading Atlas Shrugged was “never work solely for the benefit of someone else, unless that is what makes you happy.”
I don’t despise Ayn Rand. I despise her acolytes.
It took her 1168 pages to say that? I’ve even less respect for her fans now. At any rate, that’s about the tritest thing I’ve ever read.
Sastrei:
Have you actually bothered to read any of the actual criticism?
Here’s a fisking of Atlas Shrugged I haven’t quite read myself yet, but it promises to be informative/entertaining.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/series/atlas-shrugged/
Maybe that will help, if you are legitimately wondering.
If you aren’t, and are just trying to play games by sanitizing Rand’s ideology and trying to disingenuously make it seem more rational and ethical than it actually is, you won’t find many here who will be willing to play along.
When I first came across her name, I had no idea how to pronounce it. Then I took to teh Google and found out how. It didn’t take very long.
Did you know Ayn Rand is an Icon?
With regard to her name, a search of ‘how to pronounce Ayn Rand’ turns up the above link first (although I didn’t find a pronunciation on the first page). The second hit is to and article by the Christian Science Monitor.
I think Rand would approve of that, disagreeing with parts of Objectivism when it hurts you specifically.
Also, what’s with the shitting on ska, John Oliver?
This rude girl will never give up the skank.
Anthony K – You haven’t answered my question, but you did demonstrate the attitude which prompts my question. Thank you.
anteprepro – Thanks for the Patheos link. However, I’m into the second blog posting and already Adam Lee seems to have blown right past the point of the cited paragraph. He mentions Dagny recklessly ordering the train to move past a red light, fair criticism if there’s nothing in the text to contradict it sure, but the cited paragraph rather seems to me to be about damning the attitude of “it’s not my job” – something that I can assure you, is a crippling reality in an office (or hell, fast food) environment. What’s offensive about taking responsibility?
Also put down the pitchforks. I know this blog has it’s fair share of malicious trolls, but I can only say rest assured my questions are in good faith. I have read several articles and criticisms of her work and they frequently seem to me to miss the point of the work in question, as with the Patheos link above.
Sastrei, if you are asking questions in good faith, then your reading ability is slanted in a very convenient direction. A bizarre coincidence. No, Adam Lee isn’t blowing the past point. But you are.
Your rebuttal is that the text contradicts Adam and the cited text is about an “It’s not my job” attitude
Here is the relevant passage from his article.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2013/04/atlas-shrugged-signal-passed-at-danger/
So for one, it isn’t about it not “being their job” as much as not wanting to be blamed for a mishap or risk doing something that isn’t protocol and getting in trouble. For two, yes, they are also concerned about danger. And Lee goes into detail after about why the workers actually have a damn good point.
In addition, the larger meta point Adam is making is that Ayn Rand is intentionally stacking the deck in her favor, crafting a fictional world that only looks at what she wants to look it and ignoring all possible alternative perspectives. In fact, the last paragraph of the article explains that:
Your whining about “pitchforks” is not going to help you, by the way. This is a rude blog, and you are starting to look dishonest. We have a three post rule where we give people the benefit of the doubt. If you throw that away, then the rudeness will come.
It’s not that hard to discredit her considering she is not even considered a philosopher by academics. She is just a poor writer who pushed the ideology of an anti-thesis to communism by writing really bad fantasy books
You didn’t ask a question. You made a claim about leftist non-religious people. As one of them, I corrected you regarding my own feelings.
I pitchfork for my own benefit, not yours. As such, my pitchfork goes down when I’ve satisfied myself that I’ve pitchforked enough.
There’s a much more parsimonious explanation for this observation.
Jeremy Claywell
Boom. That puts it well.
And extra bonus explanation for us Lefties extra don’t like her: Because she is the right-wing messiah and she is used to justify their amoral politics. As Sastrei actually already knows: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/06/11/girl-criticizes-math-ability-of-old-man/comment-page-1/#comment-809329
#42 – And now I know what you guys mean when you talk about blockquote fails. D’oh.
anteprepro – Not sure what you are getting at. I know that conservatives worship her, but that also tells me conservatives can’t read (if only it were so, then O’Reilly and the rest of them wouldn’t make so much damn money off those awful books).
I enjoyed the “Legend of the Seeker” show – definitely reminded me of Xena and I thought Richard was a pretty progressive character regarding his views on women and sex even if the show overall had some issues. However a friend of mine described the tv show as having “1000% less rape than the books” so I never bothered to check them out. I didn’t note any strong Objectivist slant to the show but I was not really focusing on the politics.
Though I had trouble taking Darken Rahl seriously because he was Haldir! Then the actor popped up on “Sleepy Hollow” last fall as Tarleton, so apparently he gets cast as bad guys a lot.
Oh boy:
One. More. Post.
Jared Claywell @39:
I think someone forgot to tell her she wasn’t a philosopher:
both from here: https://www.aynrand.org/about
I wonder…can you be a philosopher if you simply say you’re one? Does it work that way?
“I wonder…can you be a philosopher if you simply say you’re one? Does it work that way?”
Yes. It doesn’t mean anyone else will consider you one though.
Sastrei @42:
So you admit to a cherry picked, biased view of her work? I think this would be the time for you to stop commenting on Ayn Rand, her “philosophy”, Atlas Shrugged, or libertarianism and rectify that problem.
@Sastrei:
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with reading a book the way you describe in this paragraph. But it is important to be aware of the other parts, especially in the context of a discussion as to why (or why not) a particular author is “still a thing”, or why certain groups find the policies and ethics of self-described fans of an author’s work problematic. You can’t gloss over the racist tropes in “Song of the South” and then wonder why it’s decried as racist.
That’s some real question-begging there. Don’t do that.
Tony – I gained a realization today that I look at the novel differently from most other people and that it explains why I don’t get hung up on the same flaws in her work the way other people do. I wouldn’t have made that realization had I simply sat down and shut up like you seem to want me to do.
What happened when some libertarians went off to build Ayn Rand’s vision of paradise
10 problems with Ayn Rand
You also annoyed and irritated a least a couple of people with your insistence that others do the work for you, not to mention the fact that your realization wasn’t that people view the book differently than you as much as it was that you simply ignore the parts you don’t like and then expressed puzzlement over the fact that other people don’t do that. You hardly need to play twenty questions with people to have the realization that your knowledge of a book is incomplete.
So, yeah, sitting down and shutting up may not have benefited you. But your process here sure hasn’t been of any benefit to the people you’re asking to do the work for you.
Sastrei @50:
I’m not merely asking you to sit down and be quiet (and there’s nothing wrong with that, btw, that’s how I came to learn about feminism-by shutting my trap and learning). I’m also suggesting you rectify the problem of cherry picking the bits of Atlas Shrugged that you like while in the midst of a discussion of why people find Ayn Rand’s work and “philosophy” problematic. You can’t have a fully informed view of her work and discuss it in any meaningful way if you simply pick and choose the stuff you like.
And yes, you can have that realization while sitting down and shutting up. You might not want to. You might want to pontificate about things you don’t understand. But you can choose to not talk and educate yourself fully.
Ditto on Terry Goodkind. There I was, happily reading along, a bit disturbed by the rapey bits and some of the violence, but as a young male at the time, probably not as bothered as I should have been, but really caught up in some of the new ways of imagining a fantasy world and some of his world building, when suddenly I pick up the new book and, bam, the new bad guy is a clear and pathetic allegory for the (defunct) soviet bloc, but with incredibly exaggerated levels of evil and suddenly the methods used by the big bad in book one are actually the right thing to do in the face of this horrible collectivist enemy. Fascism will save us all from the collectivist evil so maybe we can be free later on or “You’re totally free to do as you chose, but I’ll kill you and everyone you care about if you don’t do what I think you should”, and then the whole, pacifists are sheep who deserve to be slaughtered, and worse, they enable the evil doers to prosper. We must go to total war and kill all the enemy without regard unless they choose to come around and join us, in which case we can ignore some of the evil things they do as long as they’re committed to the greater goal of defeating collectivism…. Guy was outright evil. For a moment I hoped that maybe he’d pull a turn around and the people trying to rid the world of magic would turn out to be the good guys and take out the previous hero…but no, just endless pages of objectivist pseudo-philosophy. Not to mention the whole story became utterly incoherent. I gave up. I still don’t know if he ever settled any of his prophecies or wrapped up the story in any reasonable way, and I don’t care.
Terry Goodkind – what happens when an imaginative fantasy author is a little too full of himself and Ayn Rand.
Ayn Rand – what happens when a philosopher with interesting ideas about how people relate gets a little caught up in thinking these things are applicable to making rules about how we ought to relate and then writes endless pages of boring purple prose advocating them by making straw enemies for her heroes.
The Republican Party – what happens when people apparently don’t get that Ayn Rand wrote fiction.
Saad #28
Funny you should mention him. He is the reason I’ve been mispronouncing her name all this time:
Ayn Rand – Ein Reich – Ein Fuhrer.
Apparently her made up name is pronounced like ع.
Hm. #50 was a reply to Tony! The Queer Shoop not Anthony K.
Anthony K – Thanks. :) I haven’t read Song of the South, but I had been wondering if maybe there was some White Supremacist rhetoric or something equally objectionable tucked away in Rand’s works that I should be aware of (I’ve only read Atlas Shrugged and seen the old 50’s Fountainhead adaptation).
Incidentally sastrei, the links I dug up for you @51 illustrate some of the problems with Ayn Rand’s work. You might oughta read ’em.
Sastrei @56:
Yes, you addressed it to me, but this is an open thread. Anyone can comment on anything they choose. Comments need not be addressed to anyone in particular. Did you think you were having private conversations with people?
Also, I don’t know how far the Seeker TV show got, but the objectivism doesn’t really show up until a few books in. By book 4 it becomes just awful. I don’t think anyone in their right mind would make a TV show with any intention of using the later books as source material.
I remember reading “Wizard’s First Rule” too. I didn’t care for it much and it had some tropes and disturbing passage. I remember this spoiled rich girl 8-10 IIRC trying to taunt the hero by saying she was going to have his romantic interested raped to death. I remember thinking, how strange it was that a female would be gleefully be talking about another female being raped. I finished the book because I had already started it, but I didn’t go back and now I want to go back even less.
The problem with social commentary in fiction is that things work out or don’t work out only because the author wanted it to. It’s like technobabble in Star Trek; “the free markets will solve everything” is pretty much the same as “reverse the polarity of the ion flow”.
AlexanderZ, #55
Ah, I see. Thanks to Tony too for that explanation on her name.
But now I have to ask: Do you speak Arabic/Urdu/other related languages. I’m assuming you’re familiar with the culture or a related culture as you saw my name and knew I’d know that letter.
Tony @ #58 – I wrote post #56 before I saw posts #51 onward. As Anthony can be shortened to Tony, I didn’t want to risk a misunderstanding in some way.
“Still a thing” ?? I don’t understand how she became “a thing”. Because I’m a Sci-fi geek, friends way back in high school ( almost 50 years ago) suggested I read “Atlas Shrugged”. I don’t think I got 1/2 of the way through it. It was nothing more then a very badly written Heinlein novel. Nothing in the novel is either allegorical or applicable to the real world. Her dystropia is totally unbelievable as a functioning society. And her solution… perpetual motion machines and , I guess, “adamantium”…..even at the age of 15 I wasn’t buying it.
Along with being a lousy writer and narcissistic sociopath, Ayn Rand is a liar and hypocrite.
These people think HER name is hard to pronounce? Geez!
There is no need, WithinThisMind, to malign lousy writers, narcissistic sociopaths, liars hypocrites. Any Rand merely is; she’s as one of a kind a douchebag as I hope (do not spoil this hope) her name is and remains.
rumleech, CaitieCat
I’m afraid he’s got apalling taste; he doesn’t like Scotch either.
The Randites live in their own little incestuous bubble, inhaling their own gaseous emissions. Similarly, the NFL puts together a panel to look into domestic abuse, composed of 11 men and zero women. Federal bank regulators are so cozy with Wall St. that they can’t bring themselves to criticize Goldman Sachs’ egregious conflicts of interest. Fox News feeds itself such a steady diet of horseshit that it continues to deny and twist the science of climate change.
If you haven’t already done so, you should listen to the “This American Life” show about federal regulators and Goldman Sachs. Very depressing —
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/536/the-secret-recordings-of-carmen-segarra
One of Niven’s Laws is relevant here, I think: There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it. Similarly, there are no ideas so good that they can’t be made into shit by horrible implementation. And that’s how I see Objectivism: There actually are some decent ideas swimming around in it—”don’t initiate the use of force” being one such, IMAO—but the intellectual/philosophical superstructure which Rand constructed on top of those decent ideas… well, that superstructure is not decent at all.
Regarding this post’s titular question, seems to me that markmckee @19 pegged it: There’s always a place for someone who’s willing to tell the rich/powerful/strong (a) that it is absolutely right for them to be rich/powerful/strong, and (b) that anybody who disagrees with their absolute rightness is, therefore, absolutely wrong.
In fairness to most religions, they typically don’t think the rich should keep all their money, and they actually serve as vehicles for redistribution, however weak or symbolic it may be. This is a big part of why Rand hated them.
Yes, Area Man, many religions do frown on these sorts of thing, but I’m not sure whether that really has a lot of effect?
Note that each linked word is to a different religious group, and that this was about five minutes’ “research” on teh Google machine.
Sastrei-
My objections to Rand are that she’s a poor writer; a self-proclaimed “philosopher” who indulges in fallacies such as strawnman, poisoning the well, composition and false dilemma; and an ideologue whose ideology is anti-human. Her fictional worlds in both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are two-dimensional, unrealistic utopias.
In Atlas Shrugged John Galt talks about intelligence and education without considering who will pay for the schools or who will teach the teachers. Galt expects the police to protect him but has no concern about how they’re staffed or funded. Galt spends his time in a valley where no disasters occur, no accidents happen, and no real life takes place.
If an earthquake destroys my house, that’s something I can’t control; it doesn’t matter how prepared I was or how hard I worked. Trying to recover from something like that can cripple a person, both financially and mentally, unless they have help from those who understand that we’re all in this together, we need each other to function as a society, and an earthquake might hit any of our houses. Rand not only rejects this concept, she even rejects private help (read her strawman attack on altruism).
It’s not hard to figure out. Her belief system is hyper-elitist and holds that the rich don’t merely have more money than the rest of us, but that they’re morally superior to us. She regarded the masses as literally worthless. Since the left, pretty much by definition, favors some measure of egalitarianism, Rand represents the precise inverse of their beliefs. Combine that with her ridiculous arrogance coupled with a strong and ironic sense of victim-hood, and what you’ve got is barf inducing.
You must have read a different book than I did. Rand certainly did not believe that it was okay to work for the benefit of others if it made you happy. Or more specifically, no rational person would be happy doing so. She was against altruism in any form.
@quentinlong: It could equally be said there are no (non-trivial, non-contrived) philosophies so wrong that they have no good ideas*. The Nazis built the Autobahn and made important advances in certain fields of medical research. MRAs defend men who can’t get custody of their children unless their heroin-addicted exes are actually in prison. IS seeks to re-establish law and order in Syria. I’m sure that Rand had some good ideas too.
@71: No one ever said they weren’t hypocrites. It’s just that plutocracy is not a formal part of the belief system of any religion that I’m aware of, and many are explicitly against it (and most require alms for the poor). That’s a way in which religion and Rand don’t mix.
Then you should have been able to enumerate a couple….that you didn’t is telling.
Well yes. Like someone who thinks a good way to revitalise the space-program is to convince the president that space-mounted weapons would be a neat idea.
Mobius wrote:
It’s a little surprising. As John Oliver points out, she was an atheist, pro-choice, and didn’t like Reagan much. Any one of those ought to be enough to be put on their shitlist (least of all, taking ideas coming from a woman), but it seems her philosophy of “wealth/greed makes right” is just too good for them to pass up.
Might as well mention an interesting essay from a few years ago by Scott Aaronson, “The complement of Atlas Shrugged.” Excerpt:
It’s always funny to see Republicans distance themselves from Rand because of her atheism. “Oh, we’re all in favor of her elitism, greed, selfishness, and complete indifference, if not malicious opposition, to the well-being of other people. But atheism? That’s going too far! We’re not evil or anything!”
Also funny is to read the YouTube comments full of Libertarians touting the non-aggression principle as if it wasn’t stupid and circular and as if Rand gave a shit about it or libertarianism. She explicitly disclaimed libertarianism and mocked libertarians. Nothing about the heroes of her “novels” epitomizes non-aggression unless you read them with confirmation bias — e.g., “taxes are theft, so of course Galt is justified!”
In short, even Ayn Rand knew libertarianism was stupid. Even this is not enough for movement conservatives to jettison her repulsive views.
Not just that, but her heroes use aggression frequently and unapologetically. Ragnar Danneskjold is a literal pirate who attacks relief ships and steals their cargo (and the world’s navies, inexplicably, are too wussy to stop him). Nat Taggart threw a government official down a flight of stairs because he dared offer him a loan. Dagny Taggart bribes and threatens people if she needs to get something done. Francisco D’Anconia intentionally defrauds his investors and engages in criminal negligence that he happily knows will kill people. Francisco and Hank Reardon bitch-slap Dagny when they fuck her, and Hank threatens to beat his wife up if she objects to his fucking Dagny. Galt pretends he has the right to kill Dagny because her plane crashed on his property. And on it goes.
Basically, Rand has a different standard of morality for her heroes than she has for everyone else. Her heroes are superior people, so the normal rules don’t apply. It’s just elitism at its ugliest, and any attempt to construe her beliefs as principled is merely a cover for that.
Not just that, but her heroes use aggression frequently and unapologetically. Ragnar Danneskjold is a literal pirate who attacks relief ships and steals their cargo (and the world’s navies, inexplicably, are too wimpy to stop him). Nat Taggart threw a government official down a flight of stairs because he dared offer him a loan. Dagny Taggart bribes and threatens people if she needs to get something done. Francisco D’Anconia intentionally defrauds his investors and engages in criminal negligence that he happily knows will kill people. Francisco and Hank Reardon slap Dagny around when they fuck her, and Hank threatens to beat his wife up if she objects to his fucking Dagny. Galt pretends he has the right to kill Dagny because her plane crashed on his property. And on it goes.
Basically, Rand has a different standard of morality for her heroes than she has for everyone else. Her heroes are superior people, so the normal rules don’t apply. It’s just elitism at its ugliest, and any attempt to construe her beliefs as principled is merely a cover for that.
As to money, one of AR’s characters makes a speech about it in AS that can be summed up as “The love of money is the root of all good.”
That’s Francisco d’Anconia’s “money speech”.
Rand apparently stating that nuclear weapons are “an eloquent example of, argument for and tribute to free enterprise” is quite amusing. Nukes were developed by the US government harnessing a huge amount of resources and utilising the talents of thousands of scientists, engineers, and other technicians, not the product of some lone genius and his private corporation.
I once worked at a bank where they had randomly placed bookshelves filled with copies of Atlas Shrugged. I didn’t know about Rand at the time, so it just seemed rather odd to me. It seemed more like a statement than anything else.
–
Fricking hell. Just looked them up on Wikipedia and apparently they’ve paid for a Danish translation of AS and distributed 10000 copies and, of course, all new employees get a copy too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxo_Bank#Sponsorships
Is there ANYTHING good about her? I have some friends who seem to like certain pieces of her actual epistemology, and find them useful when arguing against presuppositionalists and other Reformed (more like Deformed…) theists.
In particular, her pointing out that knowledge is hierarchical (and one need not be an Objectivist to argue this) is useful against Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology, as well as the conceptual-axiomatic claims made by van Til and his hangers-on. If a concept can be reduced to other concepts, you cannot assert it as properly basic, as the concepts it reduces to are more basic.
Basically, is there anything redeeming about her work, and if so what is it? I don’t want to commit the genetic fallacy; even Hitler was right about some things, like if he ever said “the sky is blue” and things like that.
There’s tidbits in there that are interesting, amidst the dreck. Francisco D’Anconia’s “money” speech gets close to some interesting ideas that economist Daron Acemoglu has written about in terms of “extractive” vs “inclusive” institutions (such as how states that glorify plunder and theft – the “aristocrat of the sword” – are inherently prone to violent overthrow), although it’s unfortunately included with gold-buggery and other nonsense. Rand also reserves much of her greatest scorn for crony capitalists like James Taggart and Orren Boyle – they come off more offensively than Cuffy Meigs (who is just a thug) and Fred Kinnan (who is portrayed as an corrupt, bluntly amusing union leader who knows he’s just there to squeeze off money for himself and his workers).
My personal favorite scene is probably Hank Rearden arguing with the leaders in New York City to the part where he’s looking at his mills with admiration and resignation. I think it’s the best written part of the entire book, particularly the line where he thinks “Who is the guiltiest man in the room?” “I am”, and realizes that it’s not going to get better – and that he should have walked away years ago. And he does, thankfully without causing massive environmental damage (like Ellis Wyatt) or doing a slow burn on his own company like D’Anconia.
While it’s wrapped in this creepy “superman vs sheep” aspect that never feels coherent in trying to justify the actions of the “Great Men” (especially when the pirate comes into play), I will give Rand creative credit vis a vis the marxist narrative that owners and entrepreneurs were only unnecessary parasites who fed off the workers. She turned it on its head, saying, “No, the creators are the more important part of what make these enterprises possible – and if the best of them started walking away on an indefinite strike to do little more than what it takes to survive in isolation, the country would slowly bleed to death economically.”* And she does show that in the book, albeit in incredibly incompetent and drawn out form. People like Mulligan, Danagger, Wyatt, and so forth withdrawing over the course of the book weakens the national situation more and more even if it never kills it outright.
* Of course, the joke of the whole thing is that for all that rambling about “going Galt” that Colbert made fun of a while back, none of our present capitalists are particularly inclined to actually go on strike and push their luck. In fact, technically advocating for pro-business policies would be a cardinal sin in that philosophy.
“… I must say that ‘Ayn’ is both a real name and an invention. The original of it is a Finnish feminine name … Its pronunciation, spelled phonetically, would be: ‘I-na.’ ”
.
The Swedish version is Aina. A common name two generations back. Ayn is an abbreviation.
BTW why was she so rapey in her fiction? Is this something about a strong ubermesch that must be full of testosterone? (I don’t buy that testosterone equals rape, but apparently Aina Randsdottir thought it did)
@birgerjohansson
I think that’s exactly it, having read both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. It doesn’t jibe well with the fact that this is supposed to be all voluntary trade and exchange – her Great Men were apparently rapacious in bed but then somehow restrained themselves from rapacity in their business lives.
An alternative to Rand’s dystopia is B.F. Skinner’s “Walden II”. As for philosophy, read Herbert Marcuse’s “One-Dimensional Man.” Rand is a good example of one-dimensional thinking.
BTW, for conservatives, Rand was in favor of gay rights.
@30, Sastrei
well, maybe if you watch the video. gawwed.
I always wondered who cleaned the toilets in the Gulch.
I’m pretty sure that our contemporary Wall Street geniuses and other rich assholes are the very last people who would ever leave society. Not just because they wouldn’t know how to feed themselves, but because they are, almost by definition, society’s greatest beneficiaries. What’s the point of being super-rich if you don’t have other people to lord over?
I seriously think that every time one of them threatens to go Galt, we should buy that person a train ticket to some isolated Colorado mountain valley and beg them to go. Colbert would have a field day with their excuses.
Saad #61
I know only some Arabic – just the very basics.
A similar letter also exists in Hebrew, which I do speak.
Stuff I learned from a railway friend years ago: Stopping at a red light is one of the first things drilled into trainee drivers. If you’re asked in an oral exam whether you can pass a red light, the only acceptable answer is NO. Don’t even say “No, unless …” You’ll be asked about exceptions later. Anything but that initial NO is an instant fail.
As for the pronunciation of Rand’s name, why’s it so strange to think people wouldn’t know how to say it? How many have heard it, or would bother Googling anyway? I still think of it as Ane (short for anal gland, maybe). Rhyming with line just sounds like someone’s putting on a really nasal Strine accent.
So how the hell did she think the police and court officials and so on were to be paid? No, don’t tell me, rhetorical quesiton, I don’t really want to know more about her poisonous notions.
So, I shall just leave these thoughts from Dead Philosophers In Heaven here.
Why is Ayn Rand still a thing? Because hypocrisy never goes out of style.