A letter from Ayn Rand

[EricK]

My mother tells me that if she was in an art gallery with her mother-in-law and asked her what she thought of a picture, my grandmother would always insist on knowing who painted the picture before offering her opinion.

It seems to me that something similar is happening here - people are basing their opinion of the contents of this letter on their knowledge of the author, and their pre-existing opinion of her.

She is simply offering her niece an interest-free loan on the condition that she makes a genuine promise to repay it - having been burned twice before making loans to family memebers. What is wrong with that?

 

[maxparrish]

My mother tells me that if she was in an art gallery with her mother-in-law and asked her what she thought of a picture, my grandmother would always insist on knowing who painted the picture before offering her opinion.

It seems to me that something similar is happening here - people are basing their opinion of the contents of this letter on their knowledge of the author, and their pre-existing opinion of her.

She is simply offering her niece an interest-free loan on the condition that she makes a genuine promise to repay it - having been burned twice before making loans to family memebers. What is wrong with that?

In this forum, if Ayn Rand were quoted as opposing the eating of human flesh, 90 percent of the responses would embrace cannibalism.

 

[Jarhyn]

My mother tells me that if she was in an art gallery with her mother-in-law and asked her what she thought of a picture, my grandmother would always insist on knowing who painted the picture before offering her opinion.

It seems to me that something similar is happening here - people are basing their opinion of the contents of this letter on their knowledge of the author, and their pre-existing opinion of her.

She is simply offering her niece an interest-free loan on the condition that she makes a genuine promise to repay it - having been burned twice before making loans to family memebers. What is wrong with that?

In this forum, if Ayn Rand were quoted as opposing the eating of human flesh, 90 percent of the responses would embrace cannibalism.

No. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Although there might be a good number of jokes about taking up cannibalism. Also, cannibalism isn't ethically wrong within Ayn's philosophy. Strangely enough, that's one of the ways her broken clock is right: cannibalism isn't wrong. However she doesn't go far enough to say that killing people is wrong, If they do not provide informed consent free of coercion. Also, it most assuredly is usually very stupid due to the prions and other complications from eating humans. Not that Ayn would care about any of that. I can imagine she'd be quite OK with someone who controlled all the food ransoming it out in exchange for the lives of someone's children.

 

[laughing dog]

My mother tells me that if she was in an art gallery with her mother-in-law and asked her what she thought of a picture, my grandmother would always insist on knowing who painted the picture before offering her opinion.

It seems to me that something similar is happening here - people are basing their opinion of the contents of this letter on their knowledge of the author, and their pre-existing opinion of her.

She is simply offering her niece an interest-free loan on the condition that she makes a genuine promise to repay it - having been burned twice before making loans to family memebers. What is wrong with that?

Did you read the letter? Because it takes Ayn Rand a lot more words to get to that simple point.

 

[arkirk]

My mother tells me that if she was in an art gallery with her mother-in-law and asked her what she thought of a picture, my grandmother would always insist on knowing who painted the picture before offering her opinion.

It seems to me that something similar is happening here - people are basing their opinion of the contents of this letter on their knowledge of the author, and their pre-existing opinion of her.

She is simply offering her niece an interest-free loan on the condition that she makes a genuine promise to repay it - having been burned twice before making loans to family memebers. What is wrong with that?

In this forum, if Ayn Rand were quoted as opposing the eating of human flesh, 90 percent of the responses would embrace cannibalism.

You really have a LOW opinion of us don't you? She's not around to ask, but it is entirely possible she would not object to cannibalism as long as only Communists were on the menu.

 

[arkirk]

$25 and a promise that Auntie Ayn will never speak or write to you again?

Take the money and for goodness's sake don't even think about paying it back!

My thoughts exactly! She want to loan the girl $25 and then over a year get back $49. Usurious bitch!

OOPS! guess she wasn't a usurious bitch...missed the part about six months to get settled. She's still a bitch.

 

[jab]

My mother tells me that if she was in an art gallery with her mother-in-law and asked her what she thought of a picture, my grandmother would always insist on knowing who painted the picture before offering her opinion.

It seems to me that something similar is happening here - people are basing their opinion of the contents of this letter on their knowledge of the author, and their pre-existing opinion of her.

She is simply offering her niece an interest-free loan on the condition that she makes a genuine promise to repay it - having been burned twice before making loans to family memebers. What is wrong with that?

I agree; my only problem with this letter of Rand's is that it's somewhat longwinded.
P.S. I find Rand's Philosophy largely appalling, and her novel The Fountainhead dreary to the extreme.

 

[EricK]

My mother tells me that if she was in an art gallery with her mother-in-law and asked her what she thought of a picture, my grandmother would always insist on knowing who painted the picture before offering her opinion.

It seems to me that something similar is happening here - people are basing their opinion of the contents of this letter on their knowledge of the author, and their pre-existing opinion of her.

She is simply offering her niece an interest-free loan on the condition that she makes a genuine promise to repay it - having been burned twice before making loans to family memebers. What is wrong with that?

Did you read the letter? Because it takes Ayn Rand a lot more words to get to that simple point.

I was going to comment that the style was not to my liking. But is that really important? Not everyone can write as well or as concisely as I!

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

My mother tells me that if she was in an art gallery with her mother-in-law and asked her what she thought of a picture, my grandmother would always insist on knowing who painted the picture before offering her opinion.

It seems to me that something similar is happening here - people are basing their opinion of the contents of this letter on their knowledge of the author, and their pre-existing opinion of her.

She is simply offering her niece an interest-free loan on the condition that she makes a genuine promise to repay it - having been burned twice before making loans to family memebers. What is wrong with that?

Did you read the letter? Because it takes Ayn Rand a lot more words to get to that simple point.

An affliction all too common in Rand's writing. "The covers of her books are too far apart." "She can compress the most words into the smallest ideas." etc..

aa

 

[RavenSky]

My mother tells me that if she was in an art gallery with her mother-in-law and asked her what she thought of a picture, my grandmother would always insist on knowing who painted the picture before offering her opinion.

It seems to me that something similar is happening here - people are basing their opinion of the contents of this letter on their knowledge of the author, and their pre-existing opinion of her.

She is simply offering her niece an interest-free loan on the condition that she makes a genuine promise to repay it - having been burned twice before making loans to family members. What is wrong with that?

I think that if she had limited her comments to essentially what you wrote above, no one would think anything of it.

My main thought was that Ayn Rand never says in 5 words what she can use 500 to lecture people with. My second thought was that she must have been a major DebbieDowner at parties.

All that said, I do agree with Rhea that it was very cheeky of the niece to ask a near stranger for money for a dress. My response would have been much briefer than Ayn's. I would have said "no"

 

[laughing dog]

Did you read the letter? Because it takes Ayn Rand a lot more words to get to that simple point.

I was going to comment that the style was not to my liking. But is that really important? Not everyone can write as well or as concisely as I!

There was no need for her sermonizing and demonizing in the letter.

 

[Rhea]

My mother tells me that if she was in an art gallery with her mother-in-law and asked her what she thought of a picture, my grandmother would always insist on knowing who painted the picture before offering her opinion.

It seems to me that something similar is happening here - people are basing their opinion of the contents of this letter on their knowledge of the author, and their pre-existing opinion of her.

She is simply offering her niece an interest-free loan on the condition that she makes a genuine promise to repay it - having been burned twice before making loans to family memebers. What is wrong with that?

The bitchy snide mean-hearted way she wrote to her niece, that's what's wrong with it.

I can understand a letter saying that niece must understand she is asking for someone else to provide money, which isn't free, but this is an excellent opportunity to learn the very important ins-and-outs of borrowing and lending, and yes, Auntie will lend the money if permitted to use the loan as a chance to provide niece with a very important lesson.

But the bitchy mean-girl shit about how auntie won't talk to your deadbeat sisters any more and won't talk to you, either, if you don't get the lesson right is just plain hollow character lacking any empathy or love. This letter isn't a nice lesson for niece, it's a cold slap in the face - do you want to be my bitch?

 

[untermensche]

...The bitchy snide mean-hearted way she wrote to her niece, that's what's wrong with it....

Yes, totally lacking in any real human emotion with a conceit that she understands everything beyond doubt.

No humility or empathy.

Not a person you would want to spend much time with.

 

[bilby]

She discovered, wrote, and established a philosophy of individual, social, and economic life. She produced a literature of enlightenment to the benighted, an illumination of the nature of evil in contemporary society. For tens of millions she has provided a foundation of learning that influenced and informed their lives (e.g. Greenspan, Ryan, etc.) and like Friedman and Buckley she was a crucial counter-weight to the overwhelmingly liberal zeitgeist of the 60s and early 70s.

She was for youthful millions the first opportunity to break free of mind deadening liberalism - and the enormous antipathy to her legacy is a marker of her success.

She was one of a string of ideologues of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, each of whom was convinced that their new philosophy could lead to utopia, if only the rest of the world would fall into line.

Fortunately, her Objectivism was never attempted as a guiding principle for a nation state; other contemporary ideas were, unfortunately, less comprehensively disdained - Soviet and Chinese Communism; National Socialism; Spanish and Italian flavours of Fascism; Japanese Military Imperialism; South African Apartheid - every one of these ideologies generated by the navel gazing of self-appointed philosophical geniuses that was actually tried, ended in disaster. There is no reason to imagine that those (like Objectivism) that were not tried would have been any more successful.

All of these ideologues - Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, Pot, Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, Tojo, Smuts, Rand, and dozens of others, had devoted followings - and most still have devotees today, any of whom, if asked, will tell you that their chosen demagogue, unique (or at least rare) amongst all of mankind, "produced a literature of enlightenment to the benighted, an illumination of the nature of evil in contemporary society. For tens of millions (s)he has provided a foundation of learning that influenced and informed their lives" - or some similarly pathetic gushing hagiography that bears little relationship to observed reality.

All of these utopian dreamers were badly wrong; but that didn't mean that they were not dangerous then, nor that they cannot become dangerous again, if we allow hero-worship and piss-poor philosophising to replace humanity and freethought.

If we accept that "enormous antipathy to [a person's] legacy is a marker of [their] success", then we must conclude that Hitler and Stalin were amongst the most successful political philosophers of recent memory.

 

[untermensche]

She discovered, wrote, and established a philosophy of individual, social, and economic life. She produced a literature of enlightenment to the benighted, an illumination of the nature of evil in contemporary society. For tens of millions she has provided a foundation of learning that influenced and informed their lives (e.g. Greenspan, Ryan, etc.) and like Friedman and Buckley she was a crucial counter-weight to the overwhelmingly liberal zeitgeist of the 60s and early 70s.

She was for youthful millions the first opportunity to break free of mind deadening liberalism - and the enormous antipathy to her legacy is a marker of her success.

She was one of a string of ideologues of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, each of whom was convinced that their new philosophy could lead to utopia, if only the rest of the world would fall into line.

Fortunately, her Objectivism was never attempted as a guiding principle for a nation state; other contemporary ideas were, unfortunately, less comprehensively disdained - Soviet and Chinese Communism; National Socialism; Spanish and Italian flavours of Fascism; Japanese Military Imperialism; South African Apartheid - every one of these ideologies generated by the navel gazing of self-appointed philosophical geniuses that was actually tried, ended in disaster. There is no reason to imagine that those (like Objectivism) that were not tried would have been any more successful.

All of these ideologues - Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, Pot, Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, Tojo, Smuts, Rand, and dozens of others, had devoted followings - and most still have devotees today, any of whom, if asked, will tell you that their chosen demagogue, unique (or at least rare) amongst all of mankind, "produced a literature of enlightenment to the benighted, an illumination of the nature of evil in contemporary society. For tens of millions (s)he has provided a foundation of learning that influenced and informed their lives" - or some similarly pathetic gushing hagiography that bears little relationship to observed reality.

All of these utopian dreamers were badly wrong; but that didn't mean that they were not dangerous then, nor that they cannot become dangerous again, if we allow hero-worship and piss-poor philosophising to replace humanity and freethought.

If we accept that "enormous antipathy to [a person's] legacy is a marker of [their] success", then we must conclude that Hitler and Stalin were amongst the most successful political philosophers of recent memory.

Marx had nothing to do with the Soviet Union or China and did not envision such a system.

Marx was primarily a critic of the capitalism that existed in Europe in his day.

And many of his criticisms are still valid.

 

[bilby]

She was one of a string of ideologues of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, each of whom was convinced that their new philosophy could lead to utopia, if only the rest of the world would fall into line.

Fortunately, her Objectivism was never attempted as a guiding principle for a nation state; other contemporary ideas were, unfortunately, less comprehensively disdained - Soviet and Chinese Communism; National Socialism; Spanish and Italian flavours of Fascism; Japanese Military Imperialism; South African Apartheid - every one of these ideologies generated by the navel gazing of self-appointed philosophical geniuses that was actually tried, ended in disaster. There is no reason to imagine that those (like Objectivism) that were not tried would have been any more successful.

All of these ideologues - Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, Pot, Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, Tojo, Smuts, Rand, and dozens of others, had devoted followings - and most still have devotees today, any of whom, if asked, will tell you that their chosen demagogue, unique (or at least rare) amongst all of mankind, "produced a literature of enlightenment to the benighted, an illumination of the nature of evil in contemporary society. For tens of millions (s)he has provided a foundation of learning that influenced and informed their lives" - or some similarly pathetic gushing hagiography that bears little relationship to observed reality.

All of these utopian dreamers were badly wrong; but that didn't mean that they were not dangerous then, nor that they cannot become dangerous again, if we allow hero-worship and piss-poor philosophising to replace humanity and freethought.

If we accept that "enormous antipathy to [a person's] legacy is a marker of [their] success", then we must conclude that Hitler and Stalin were amongst the most successful political philosophers of recent memory.

Marx had nothing to do with the Soviet Union or China and did not envision such a system.

Marx was primarily a critic of the capitalism that existed in Europe in his day.

And many of his criticisms are still valid.

I see. So would you say that Marx does not belong in my list, because uniquely amongst all mankind, he produced a literature of enlightenment to the benighted, and an illumination of the nature of evil in contemporary society? Do you claim that for tens of millions, he has provided a foundation of learning that influenced and informed their lives, and that as a result he should not be included?

 

[untermensche]

Marx had nothing to do with the Soviet Union or China and did not envision such a system.

Marx was primarily a critic of the capitalism that existed in Europe in his day.

And many of his criticisms are still valid.

I see. So would you say that Marx does not belong in my list, because uniquely amongst all mankind, he produced a literature of enlightenment to the benighted, and an illumination of the nature of evil in contemporary society? Do you claim that for tens of millions, he has provided a foundation of learning that influenced and informed their lives, and that as a result he should not be included?

He stands out like a sore thumb in that list. Mostly a list of dictators.

You know Marx himself never hurt anyone? He was an intellectual, not a political leader.

 

[bilby]

I see. So would you say that Marx does not belong in my list, because uniquely amongst all mankind, he produced a literature of enlightenment to the benighted, and an illumination of the nature of evil in contemporary society? Do you claim that for tens of millions, he has provided a foundation of learning that influenced and informed their lives, and that as a result he should not be included?

He stands out like a sore thumb in that list. Mostly a list of dictators.

You know Marx himself never hurt anyone? He was an intellectual, not a political leader.

You know Rand herself never hurt anyone? She was an intellectual, not a political leader.

 

[untermensche]

He stands out like a sore thumb in that list. Mostly a list of dictators.

You know Marx himself never hurt anyone? He was an intellectual, not a political leader.

You know Rand herself never hurt anyone? She was an intellectual, not a political leader.

Yes, it was ridiculous to include her on that list as well.

Unlike Marx she had no expertise in economics or anything.

 

[Enigma]

My mother tells me that if she was in an art gallery with her mother-in-law and asked her what she thought of a picture, my grandmother would always insist on knowing who painted the picture before offering her opinion.

It seems to me that something similar is happening here - people are basing their opinion of the contents of this letter on their knowledge of the author, and their pre-existing opinion of her.

She is simply offering her niece an interest-free loan on the condition that she makes a genuine promise to repay it - having been burned twice before making loans to family memebers. What is wrong with that?

The bitchy snide mean-hearted way she wrote to her niece, that's what's wrong with it.

I can understand a letter saying that niece must understand she is asking for someone else to provide money, which isn't free, but this is an excellent opportunity to learn the very important ins-and-outs of borrowing and lending, and yes, Auntie will lend the money if permitted to use the loan as a chance to provide niece with a very important lesson.

But the bitchy mean-girl shit about how auntie won't talk to your deadbeat sisters any more and won't talk to you, either, if you don't get the lesson right is just plain hollow character lacking any empathy or love. This letter isn't a nice lesson for niece, it's a cold slap in the face - do you want to be my bitch?

Were there others with empathy or love who were offering a better deal than an interest-free loan for the equivalent of ~$250 in today's money?

Judging from the various posts on the thread, I wouldn't be surprised if "Auntie Ayn" was a lender of last resort after the empathic and loving family members said no.

Is there really much cause for anyone here to celebrate their own moral superiority when the most generous offer in the room was from the heartless capitalist ice-queen and probably still would have been from said ice-queen had any posters here been asked for money under equivalent circumstances?