Ayn Rand: The Philosophy of the Psychopath

[Svartalf]

So, objectivist or not, you are a complete masochist?

[Bella Fortuna]

[Clinton Huxley]

Apparently, Rand is a "gateway drug" to right-wing politics. Lots of impressionable youths read her stuff and the ones who don't grow up become little libertarians...

[hadespussercats]

My parents were (are) fans, and I read The Fountainhead in High school.

She didn't appeal to me then. Even less now.

[amused]

Like most architects, I read The Fountainhead, a long time ago. Did the main character wear a cape? I don't remember much about it, but for some reason architects are now supposed to wear capes. I recently read Atlas Shrugged and found it repetitive and implausible. Good luck with that perpetual motion machine! The romance writing tangents were stupid.

The recent movie was made on the cheap because they were under a deadline for expiration of the film rights. So that was just a placeholder until they can come up with a proper budget.

[Coito ergo sum]

So, objectivist or not, you are a complete masochist?

They're not as bad as every rabid "Rand was a psychotic" person makes them out to be.

It's a major "red flag" to me that I need to do my own reading when people start describing something or someone with words like: stupid, evil, idiot, psychotic, monster, wants children to starve, let them starve, rich people should have unrestrained power, sociopathic, and all those other negative descriptors we all hear.

She wasn't stupid, evil or a monster, and she did not have the desire to see people dying en masse. And, the philosophy makes sense within its premises, axioms and assumptions. One may certainly take issue with all of those, and the conclusions drawn, but the sloppy ad hominem nonsense, and the straw man bullshit of an article in the OP doesn't do anyone any service.

I also have no problem reading almost anything. I've even read several versions of the Christian and Catholic Bibles, an English translation of a Hebrew/Jewish Bible, the Qu'ran, the Book of Mormon, the I'Ching, the Baghavad Gita, the Satanic Bible and many other religious texts. In my Norse history phase, I read every English translation of the medieval Icelandic Sagas and the Heimskringla from cover-to-cover. If one can get through that, then Rand is a cake walk.

[Coito ergo sum]

Apparently, Rand is a "gateway drug" to right-wing politics. Lots of impressionable youths read her stuff and the ones who don't grow up become little libertarians...

Lord Huxley, don't you have any roinish and slubberdegullion commoners to thrash for assuming a presumptuous demeanor?

[Ian]

She wasn't stupid, evil or a monster, and she did not have the desire to see people dying en masse. And, the philosophy makes sense within its premises, axioms and assumptions. One may certainly take issue with all of those, and the conclusions drawn,

One could say exactly the same things about Karl Marx and his ideas. But attempting to put his noble theories into practice has time and again proved disastrous. I don't need to actually say anything personally derrogatory about Rand to infer that attempting to put her philosophy into real-world practice would also prove to be disastrous.

[Clinton Huxley]

Apparently, Rand is a "gateway drug" to right-wing politics. Lots of impressionable youths read her stuff and the ones who don't grow up become little libertarians...

Lord Huxley, don't you have any roinish and slubberdegullion commoners to thrash for assuming a presumptuous demeanor?

well, I had scheduled you in for later

[Coito ergo sum]

She wasn't stupid, evil or a monster, and she did not have the desire to see people dying en masse. And, the philosophy makes sense within its premises, axioms and assumptions. One may certainly take issue with all of those, and the conclusions drawn,

One could say exactly the same things about Karl Marx and his ideas. But attempting to put his noble theories into practice has time and again proved disastrous. I don't need to actually say anything personally derrogatory about Rand to infer that attempting to put her philosophy into real-world practice would also prove to be disastrous.

Quite. I'm not an Objectivist either.

[Drewish]

It has a fair claim to be the ugliest philosophy the postwar world has produced. Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power. It has already been tested, and has failed spectacularly and catastrophically.

Quite the intro. Like most such pieces this seems to build the arguments against Objectivism from a misrepresentation of it. Basically think secular Positivism, political minarchism, moral and ethical individualism (of the enlightened self interest variety), and aesthetics romanticism.

I do not agree with the aesthetics, but those are hardly the contentious points of the philosophy. The disdain fro Objectivism seems to come from its rejection of collectivism. Although this is something that people might gather exists as an axiom from a passing reading of Atlas Shrugged, Objectivism has no quarrel with collectivism of a voluntary nature. Individuals choosing to work as a team or coordinate efforts is entirely acceptable to Objectivists. In fact I (and many other Objectivists) would argue that enlightened self interest would lead one to voluntary cooperation in many occasions:



What we argue against is the use of violence or threats there of to force people into collective groups.

[Seabass]

I wonder how many of the anti-Rand crowd have actually read her work? I would bet that upwards of 9/10 Rand haters have never actually read any of her books. All this Ayn Rand bashing looks like so much mindless tribalism and bandwagoning from rabid anti-capitalists. The anti Rand faction looks almost as culty as the Rand faction, if you ask me.

For the record, no I'm not an objectivist or a Randroid, and I've never actually read any of her books, but I think I know groupthink when I see it.

[Audley Strange]

I wonder how many of the anti-Rand crowd have actually read her work? I would bet that upwards of 9/10 Rand haters have never actually read any of her books. All this Ayn Rand bashing looks like so much mindless tribalism and bandwagoning from rabid anti-capitalists. The anti Rand faction looks almost as culty as the Rand faction, if you ask me.

For the record, no I'm not an objectivist or a Randroid, and I've never actually read any of her books, but I think I know groupthink when I see it.

There really isn't any other kind of "think" since we don't exist in a vacuum though I do get your point. I read Anthem as a kid after being foolish enough to appreciate Rush and Peart's obsession with her. All I recall was Peart is a rip off merchant and there was some crap about a light-bulb being important. However then, as now, I consider her a Sci-Fi writer.

What I find interesting is that Orwell does kind of the same thing from a different slant in at least two of his fictions, yet no one (outside some conspiracy nuts) believe in the theory of Oligarchical Collectivism and no one (outside certain tossers on some fora I've encountered) promote equality for all but some being more equal than others.

I was about to say what makes her special, then I realised she's not. Heinlein, Roddenberry, Hubbard and no doubt others I'm forgetting have all been keen to spout their political bollocks in fiction, simply because then they can dismiss any rational critique as "well it's fiction."

[Ian]

I wonder how many of the anti-Rand crowd have actually read her work? I would bet that upwards of 9/10 Rand haters have never actually read any of her books. All this Ayn Rand bashing looks like so much mindless tribalism and bandwagoning from rabid anti-capitalists. The anti Rand faction looks almost as culty as the Rand faction, if you ask me.

For the record, no I'm not an objectivist or a Randroid, and I've never actually read any of her books, but I think I know groupthink when I see it.

I wouldn't deign to read all of Atlas Shrugged - by most accounts it's tedious, and even if it wasn't it's still an 1100+ page doorstop - but I did read through the climax, John Galt's long (25-40 pages, depending on which version you get) ideological speech over the radio, which is what the whole book builds up to. Needless to say, I despised what he had to say.

But in keeping with my thoughts of Rand and Marx being on opposite ends of a socioeconomic philosophers' spectrum, I don't mind saying that I despise Marx even more.

[Drewish]