ruby sparks
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Do they really. Gosh.
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Ayn Rand clubs fall on hard times
- Thread starter lpetrich
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Do they really. Gosh.
I'm sure you couldn't love. Tell us all of Ayn's days on public assistance?
PyramidHead
Contributor
Love how his reply was edited like four times, all to encapsulate how little it bothers him to be called dogmatic despite using that term to describe everyone to the left of Barry Goldwater
Cheerful Charlie
Contributor
Anus Rand has poisoned a lot of minds. So we have a system that leaves a lot of people behind. We are told real people pull themselves up by their boot straps. Rugged individualism taken to extremes.
In actuality, it is the height or enlightened selfishness to have a society where all have a chance of decent health care, decent education, decent wages rather then the pittance allowed by our robber baron overlords, Anus Rand's supermen.
I myself think this sort of enlightened self interest is far more rational and sensible than the sour, rancid ideology of Anus Rand, so beloved by idiot politicans such as Paul Ryan who mandated his aides and interns read "Atlas Shrugged". I believe it is about time to wring the Anus Rand Objectivism ideology out of US politics and adopt the enlightened selfishness of the Scandinavian nations which have demonstrated that is just a better way than anything Rand's ideology can generate based of her basic idiotic ideas.
In actuality, it is the height or enlightened selfishness to have a society where all have a chance of decent health care, decent education, decent wages rather then the pittance allowed by our robber baron overlords, Anus Rand's supermen.
I myself think this sort of enlightened self interest is far more rational and sensible than the sour, rancid ideology of Anus Rand, so beloved by idiot politicans such as Paul Ryan who mandated his aides and interns read "Atlas Shrugged". I believe it is about time to wring the Anus Rand Objectivism ideology out of US politics and adopt the enlightened selfishness of the Scandinavian nations which have demonstrated that is just a better way than anything Rand's ideology can generate based of her basic idiotic ideas.
The problem with her bullshit, as anthropologists tell us, is that humans are cooperative in nature, so that must be replaced by a self-aggrandizing belief system.
Politesse
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This anthropologist would tell you that humans are inherently social, but only situationally cooperative...
Cheerful Charlie
Contributor
Unfortunately, humans are cursed with the ability to think abstract thought. Allowing us to create ugly ideologies, savage cultures, racism, bad religions and religious ideas, foolish societies and more. Humans can become cooperative in doing evil things based on bad abstract thinking. "We have to kill all the Jews to save Germany". Jim Crow is part of God's plan. "Kill the Tutsis" And so on. Cooperation may become rather suspect with people like Ayn Rand who preaches extreme selfishness. Foolish people swayed by the latest Faux news talking head tirade.
So our situation/society is set up to cock-block any cooperativeness that might arise and threaten/fuck up capitalism.
And our ruling industrial class cooperates in managing the unsubstantial people.
ruby sparks
Contributor
I wish you would hurry up and move to North Korea so that we don't have to put up with you on the internet. Or even turning on the lights in your house after dark.
I wish you would hurry up and move to North Korea so that we don't have to put up with you on the internet. Or even turning on the lights after dark.
And the "debate" came to a close with a tired/tried and true surrender quip, and a wish for the totalitarian removal of opposing views from the internet. Fweedumb.
As US tax payers we helped fund North Korea's purchase of nuclear reactors, a mere 2 years before placing them on an "axis of evil" list, from a company Don Rumsfeld had once sat on the board if directors of. The deal was a wonderful display of bipartisanship, the plan having been initiated under the Clinton regime and wrapped up under the Bush regime.
And it's still dark over there you say. Well I'll be.
ruby sparks
Contributor
Yes, I've read of that.
Just so you know, I'm basically reading Rand to see if she really was as bad as they say she was. I've heard nothing about her that makes me think I'll find out that I like her approach. But I thought I'd get it from the horse's mouth. If it indeed turns out that she was as bad as often reported (for instance if her philosophy was so myopic that it omits co-operation, or the harmful side of selfishness, from the equation) then I will damn it. However, I challenge you to reasonably find much actual dogma in what I said:
Indeed I'm not even sure what dogma you were talking about, to be honest.
Ayn Rand is nothing but dogma.
ruby sparks
Contributor
She may well be. I would not be surprised. That is definitely the word on the street. But I have only read about her and not read her, so I am giving the first hand material a go. I am as much expecting the bad press to be confirmed as I am anything else. That said, my first impressions (and I have not got far into either book) is that so far, she seems intellectually capable, at least. But it's early days, in my case.
I guess though I was curious to see whether she really was as bad as they say, or whether her neoliberal fans have left something out.
She is intellectually capable of vomiting up feudalistic fantasies, quite. Why we had a speaker of the house who demanded his underlings read her as he gutted public assistance programs that even his own mother had enjoyed. A pious little christian boy at that.
Cheerful Charlie
Contributor
I have not read Anus Rand much in years. I just manage to download a copy of "The Virtue of Selfisness" and "Capitalism - The Unknown Ideal" I will read her over the next few weeks or months, if my head does not turn to mush doing so. I note that our very stable Genius, Trumpo has admitted to reading Rand and enjoying her. The founders of the Cato Institute were Rand fans, and FSM knows who the hell else. Oh yeah, Alan Greenspan. I may need several bottles of dark rum to do this project.
I would like to take Rand's ideas on the desirability of selfishness and reframe them from a rational selfish Scandinavian perspective.
We tried the extreme laissez faire and that was a bust. So was the gilded age of trusts, monopolies and robber barons. Today's Reagan revolution, gilded age robber baron capitalism is not desirable. I am sure we will not see a solution to all of this in Ayn Rand's gubbage.
I would like to take Rand's ideas on the desirability of selfishness and reframe them from a rational selfish Scandinavian perspective.
We tried the extreme laissez faire and that was a bust. So was the gilded age of trusts, monopolies and robber barons. Today's Reagan revolution, gilded age robber baron capitalism is not desirable. I am sure we will not see a solution to all of this in Ayn Rand's gubbage.
Jarhyn
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I have found that, after a cursory scan of the primary arguments Rand makes, that she is thoroughly and completely ignorant of such problems as the falling problem, halting problem, and problem of perspectives, whose interactions within nature render selfishness unviable, not to mention other primary issues.
Selfishness only works when one perspective on a problem is sufficient: Even a clever man (or woman) cannot think his way around all obstacles. In fact, even the cleverest of people may not have a hope of solving a problem for which their preconceptions dispose them away from an investigation, including and perhaps especially the idea that the perspective of others may be necessary.
And in accepting the value of the perspectives of others, one either contributes in kind, and freely, or someone is a parasite to all that do, and ought be excluded from communication, as we can plainly see being a parasite as a threat to the "self" of the community.
Strike 1 against the virtuousness of selfishness.
Selfish also only works when the organism knows when to stop preparing and act. One individual may prepare too much, or too little, may implement too early or too late. Only by having multiple instances of preparation and execution can the best, or at all functional, attack against a problem be made. This requires multiple attempts, and in fact multiple perspectives.
An inability to sacrifice through making an attempt, even if it may be doomed to fail, on behalf of the "self" of the community is in fact deleterious to the community. Individuals must halt and make an attempt for the community to function. Failures will have to happen for successes to exist, and successes allow the community to co tinue to exist. Any that refuses to act for the whole must be cast out.
Strike 2 Rand.
Third, we are all falling. We may, at any time, pass what we have, our knowledge and occasionally our genetics (though this is not as important as knowledge) to someone who is a bit further off the ground. Those of us obsessed enough with self and philosophy may pass more: our basic lenses through which we understand the universe. Selfishness fails here, because as you fall to your death without passing knowledge you and every meaningful thing about you dies forever. As you fall to this death without accepting the knowledge of others you lose whatever means they had acquired to slow their fall. And by not accepting the existence and consideration of everything that comes adjacent to what you think is valuable you are showing others that you will not carry them on and risk the same for yourself.
Strike 3 Rand.
And that's just from three problems that I personally view are important.
Jason Harvestdancer
Contributor
Arctish
Centimillionaire
I read Atlas Shrugged about 10 years ago and I recently got interested in reading The Fountainhead.
I think it's a worthwhile endeavor. A lot of leading Republicans are fans, and some of them are devotees. It helps to know what arguments they think are convincing even if you don't find them convincing at all.
ruby, you'll soon discover that Ayn Rand's heroes are sociopaths. They don't care about other people and don't understand why they should. They're selfish assholes, even the ones the reader is supposed to like. You will find little to admire about Roark, but have fun reading Ayn Rand going on and on about how people like us don't deserve to even look upon the products of such genius.
I think it's a worthwhile endeavor. A lot of leading Republicans are fans, and some of them are devotees. It helps to know what arguments they think are convincing even if you don't find them convincing at all.
ruby, you'll soon discover that Ayn Rand's heroes are sociopaths. They don't care about other people and don't understand why they should. They're selfish assholes, even the ones the reader is supposed to like. You will find little to admire about Roark, but have fun reading Ayn Rand going on and on about how people like us don't deserve to even look upon the products of such genius.
Arctish
Centimillionaire
Regarding that last panel, what did you make of Dagny pointing a gun at that guard and telling him he had to make a choice or she would kill him, and then when he didn't want to choose, she killed him?
What did you think of that pirate, Ragnar Danneskjöld, sinking ships and putting the lives of sailors in peril and their livelihood at an end, because he didn't like humanitarian aid programs?
What did you think of Francisco D'Anconia slapping Dagny so hard she almost passed out because she made a joke about getting lower grades so she would fit in better at school?
And how about those rape scenes?
I think Rand approved of physical force when it was her Objectivist Heroes doing the forcing. She just didn't want to admit it.