Ayn Rand clubs fall on hard times

[Jason Harvestdancer]

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.

Did you know there's a difference between initiation of physical force and retaliatory physical force? That's a common mistake people make when confronted with any sort of freedom oriented ideology. "You don't approve of hitting first? You must be a pacifist who approves of nobody ever hitting anyone. You approve of hitting back? You must be an aggressor who believes in hitting anyone at any time." That says everything you need to know about Dagny pointing a gun and Ragnar sinking ships. That says everything you need to know about when Rand approved of physical force, no matter who used it. Once you unravel that particular misunderstanding, you will understand much more of her ideology than you currently do.

There was only one rape scene. That is a rather thorny issue.

 

[Jarhyn]

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.

Did you know there's a difference between initiation of physical force and retaliatory physical force? That's a common mistake people make when confronted with any sort of freedom oriented ideology. "You don't approve of hitting first? You must be a pacifist who approves of nobody ever hitting anyone. You approve of hitting back? You must be an aggressor who believes in hitting anyone at any time." That says everything you need to know about Dagny pointing a gun and Ragnar sinking ships. That says everything you need to know about when Rand approved of physical force, no matter who used it. Once you unravel that particular misunderstanding, you will understand much more of her ideology than you currently do.

There was only one rape scene. That is a rather thorny issue.

Rand fails to accept in many cases that physical force is implied and preemptively threatened through the context of a situation.

Let's for a moment imagine two men with a cave full of gold between them. Let's also imagine that people in this scenario, need gold for some practical reason.

Now, there is nothing about this land that says it must belong to one man or the other. Land is itself agnostic to that, and it merely is. Ownership is merely something decided upon by the two parties here.

If one man stands in the entryway of the cave with spear in hand and says "you may not take this gold, it is mine", he is fundamentally Randian.

The problem is, he also has a spear: the threat of violence is not at an attempt of the other to harm them, the threat of violence is one on pain of taking any of the gold in the cave. Should the second man attempt to get that gold, the first will have violated this restriction Rand puts on the initiation of force: they will use force, not on force in kind, but on any attempt even to bypass force.

The problem with Rand is that she DOES espouse the use of physical force, to take resources, to seek rent for them, even though those resources are held by others. Likewise she espouses the use of force to maintain control of things, means of production, when the originator has not contributed anything bto holding the thing, again in and of itself agnostic to any real concept of "ownership".

In all these scenarios, ownership is merely something agreed to by people, and often only at the threat of force. What good are these agreements as to the basic nature of ownership when merely made at the already-agreed-unethical threat of force?

 

[Arctish]

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.

Did you know there's a difference between initiation of physical force and retaliatory physical force?

Yes. Initiation of physical force can happen at any time but retaliatory physical force can only happen when someone else has initiated physical force, and it must be directly connected to that force, as in a response or reaction.

That's a common mistake people make when confronted with any sort of freedom oriented ideology. "You don't approve of hitting first? You must be a pacifist who approves of nobody ever hitting anyone. You approve of hitting back? You must be an aggressor who believes in hitting anyone at any time."

Someone who doesn't approve of hitting first _might_ be a pacifist who disapproves of hitting people at all times, or s/he might simply believe that initiating force is bad but responding forcefully to it is perfectly fine. Someone who approves of hitting back might also be an aggressor at times, but not necessarily.

That says everything you need to know about Dagny pointing a gun and Ragnar sinking ships. That says everything you need to know about when Rand approved of physical force, no matter who used it. Once you unravel that particular misunderstanding, you will understand much more of her ideology than you currently do.

So Dagny was responding to the force others used against John Galt by killing a guard who couldn't choose which authority figure to follow, the railroad executive demanding entrance to a secure government facility or his lawful superiors, and that made it okay for her to shoot him? She demanded performance, and even though Objectivism says it's wrong to demand performance from another, when Dagny does it, it's okay?

Ragnar Danneskjöld has even less justification. Who was it who initiated force against him? There's no indication he had any complaints about how life treated him before John Galt recruited him to help destroy the economy. Then all of a sudden he's filled with righteous indignation over taxes and decides to attack the merchant marine fleet. Sure, Rand says he wouldn't kill sailors if he could avoid it, but then totally ignores the fact he could avoid it by not attacking their ships and dumping them into the middle of the Atlantic. She glosses over him killing the ones who tried to defend themselves, their friends, and their ships, because in her world, common folk who resist the will of Objectivist Heroes deserve to die.

Dagny and Ragnar don't just employ force, they initiate it. And they violate a couple of really important Objectivist principles, like how no one owes anything to anyone else, and how no one can demand performance from another.

There was only one rape scene. That is a rather thorny issue.

You're right. Hank didn't rape Dagny. He was brutal and contemptuous but that's how she likes it.

 

[bilby]

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.

The thing that struck me, particularly in Atlas Shrugged was that the success or failure of any risky activity was entirely determined by the character's adherence (or otherwise) to Rand's brand of morality.

Everything the heroes touched turned to gold; Invent a new alloy? It will be stronger and more durable than steel. Encounter a red 'danger' signal on the railroad? If you are Dagny, you can order the engineer to proceed through it, secure in the knowledge that your superheroic selfishness will ensure that there isn't any actual danger ahead, and that your decisive action will simply avoid an unnecessary delay. Try doing that if you have the moral turpitude to engage in kindness or to accept assistance from others - you can guarantee that your decision will end in disaster.

It's easy to show the rewards of virtue and the punishments for vice when you are the author of a novel, wielding the Word of God. But this undermines the value of your morality tale - inconsistent application of good fortune, based on the character's character makes for a neat early medieval style morality play, aimed at an audience of acolytes and believers; But it makes for a cartoonish and farcical novel, at least if your readers are awake.

All in all, I didn't hate either The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged; both were fairly entertaining as long as you skip the lengthy expositions on the virtue of being a dick to everyone. But they are no more a reflection of reality than are any fantasy novels. They work as stories in their own fictional worlds - which is as much as you can expect from middle-of-the-road junk literature. I read a LOT of junk Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Post-Apocalyptic drama, and Disaster novels. Rand's fiction fits in well with these.

There's a whole sub-genre of Christian post-apocalyptic work coming out of the USA, which pretends to be run-of-the-mill tales of a plucky band of survivors of some global catastrophe (nuclear war, bio-weapon attack, zombie virus, etc.,) right up until the heroes realize that some of their party are evil, usually because they decide to goof off and smoke weed when supposedly on guard duty, allowing the bad guys to attack, and suddenly the hero remembers his Bible study, which he had neglected, and has a blinding realization that the Christians were right all along, and that the disaster was really the tribulations from the Book of Revelation. These novels are typically $0.99 on Kindle, and the fore-shadowing stands out like a dog's balls. I find them utterly hilarious, and Rand's novels are amusing in much the same way - they just substitute Christianity with super-selfish, greed-is-good capitalism.

As John Rogers so eloquently put it: "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

 

[ruby sparks]

Ok so I finished 'The Virtues of Selfishness' last night and have watched a few interviews with Ayn Rand.

I can see very little to admire. Her philosophy pretty much IS as bad as reported, imo.

The biggest problem with it, imo, is that it is an idea taken too far. One can understand it as a reaction to its opposite extreme (what Rand calls Collectivism) and indeed understand why she reacted so strongly against that, given her personal and family history growing up in Soviet Russia, but it goes too far the other way. In other words, it's extremist, dogmatic and idealist (in the sense of being unrealistic and simplistic).

If it wasn't taken so far, there might be a lot to be said for the ideas of personal, individual responsibility, self-actualisation and hard work.

In a way, she offered a version of natural selection (survival of the fittest) as applied to economics. The missing part (and it's a huge omission, imo) is that for a social species, co-operation is as useful, and as innate, as individual selfishness. There is no value in a member of a non-social species helping another, because they are merely competitors. In humans, there is value, because we interact reciprocally, and it is part of the reason for our success as a species (in terms of proliferation). It's not an accident that the Golden Rule, or versions of it, has emerged in almost every human society.

I think she hit the nail on the head by implying that we are all ultimately self-interested though. One could call this an objective reality. But it doesn't make co-operation 'false', or a whim, it just makes it an actual, and arguably 'as rational' feature of an 'ultimately selfish' social model. It's as in-built a function.

 

[Fentoine Lum]

Ok so I finished 'The Virtues of Selfishness' last night and have watched a few interviews with Ayn Rand.

I can see very little to admire. Her philosophy pretty much IS as bad as reported, imo.

The biggest problem with it, imo, is that it is an idea taken too far. One can understand it as a reaction to its opposite extreme (what Rand calls Collectivism) and indeed understand why she reacted so strongly against that, given her personal and family history growing up in Soviet Russia, but it goes too far the other way. In other words, it's extremist, dogmatic and idealist (in the sense of being unrealistic and simplistic).

If it wasn't taken so far, there might be a lot to be said for the ideas of personal, individual responsibility, self-actualisation and hard work.

In a way, she offered a version of natural selection (survival of the fittest) as applied to economics. The missing part (and it's a huge omission, imo) is that for a social species, co-operation is as useful, and as innate, as individual selfishness. There is no value in a member of a non-social species helping another, because they are merely competitors. In humans, there is value, because we interact reciprocally, and it is part of the reason for our success as a species (in terms of proliferation). It's not an accident that the Golden Rule, or versions of it, has emerged in almost every human society.

I think she hit the nail on the head by implying that we are all ultimately self-interested though. One could call this an objective reality. But it doesn't make co-operation 'false', or a whim, it just makes it an actual, and arguably 'as rational' feature of an 'ultimately selfish' social model. It's as in-built a function.

I think she hit the nail on the head by implying that some are all ultimately self-interestedly preoccupied and drawn to authoritarianism based upon socioeconomic status and class.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Sowing the wind in UK

https://qz.com/942295/ayn-rands-con...hy-is-now-required-reading-for-british-teens/
....
Now, what’s sparked so much fascination among US conservatives is making its way into classrooms across the pond. This year, Ayn Rand’s works are appearing for the first time in A-Level Politics, a curriculum taught in secondary and pre-university schools in the UK.
British teens who plan to attend university typically take A-Level (officially known as “the General Certificate of Education Advanced Level”) courses in various subjects from ages 16 to 18, and then sit for examinations whose results are used by many schools as application assessments. While the most popular A-Level classes are in broad subjects such as literature and mathematics, the politics course is a favorite for students aspiring to go into business or government.
....
A-level students in the UK will now be called upon to know and understand the core tenets of Rand’s philosophy, along with those of other conservative thinkers like Thomas Hobbes and Edmund Burke. (The A-Level politics course also includes the study of liberalists like John Locke and John Stuart Mill, socialists like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, feminists like Simone de Beauvoir, and more.)
...

 

[ideologyhunter]

I read The Fountainhead, strictly because of the ridiculous Gary Cooper movie version. I don't think I'd invest any more time in things Aynal; life being as short as it is. She's a ponderous writer, and, as in Shaw, the characters are all archetypes. Unlike Shaw, she's turgid and humorless.

 

[WAB]

Rand's only good novel was We the Living. The Fountainhead celebrates a rapist/arsonist; and Atlas Shrugged is a comic book, with an unintentionally hilarious climax.

 

[ruby sparks]

I agree with he above two posts. Not only is her philosophy dodgy, but her writing is at best, average, in literary terms. I'm cutting her some slack because it was 1943 after all, but even then, other writers from the 1940's.....

So I'm going to persevere with 'The Fountainhead'. It's bold, at least. Plus, I'm an architect, and apparently one of a very small minority who haven't read it.

Interestingly, I read that the character of Howard Roark was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright. However, I realise that the similarities may not extend particularly far, and that the choice of an architect as protagonist really only serves as a vehicle for ideas that don't really have to do with architecture primarily.

But the idea that the architect knew best what buildings should be like, and that clients and the public didn't, was a common theme in (bold, new) 20th Century Modernism, but thankfully it has been on the wane and is quite rightly a tarnished idea, imo.

 

[ruby sparks]

Sowing the wind in UK

https://qz.com/942295/ayn-rands-con...hy-is-now-required-reading-for-british-teens/
....
Now, what’s sparked so much fascination among US conservatives is making its way into classrooms across the pond. This year, Ayn Rand’s works are appearing for the first time in A-Level Politics, a curriculum taught in secondary and pre-university schools in the UK.
British teens who plan to attend university typically take A-Level (officially known as “the General Certificate of Education Advanced Level”) courses in various subjects from ages 16 to 18, and then sit for examinations whose results are used by many schools as application assessments. While the most popular A-Level classes are in broad subjects such as literature and mathematics, the politics course is a favorite for students aspiring to go into business or government.
....
A-level students in the UK will now be called upon to know and understand the core tenets of Rand’s philosophy, along with those of other conservative thinkers like Thomas Hobbes and Edmund Burke. (The A-Level politics course also includes the study of liberalists like John Locke and John Stuart Mill, socialists like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, feminists like Simone de Beauvoir, and more.)
...

I guess one could say that she deserves to be on the curriculum because of the influence her ideas have wielded and still do. I personally am glad that I can now say with at least some justification why I think her philosophy and politics are toxic, because now I know a bit more about them. Putting her on he curriculum doesn't endorse her any more than putting other influential but controversial (or worse) people on the curriculum.