jacob wrote:
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As it happens, Atlas Shrugged also functions as a litmus test of the reader's political beliefs. I have yet to see anyone who leans left have anything nice to say about it. Conversely, people who lean right tend to worship this book... until they get a little more life experience.
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The last part of this comment really resonated with me. I greatly enjoyed Atlas Shrugged as a teenager and into my young adult years. I still enjoy it to the point of watching the movie in past couple of years (not recommended); the characters are indeed caricatures of both sides of the spectrum.
slightly off-topic -- my first experience with Amazon.com's personalization advertising was with Atlas Shrugged. I saw Atlas Shrugged advertisements everywhere on that site to the point that I was convinced that it was one of the top books in the world! (This was many years ago, and yes I am not brightest bulb in the christmas tree...)
Ayn Rand and her books are incredibly popular to hate. It's so common amongst the intelligentsia to hate on Ayn Rand and describe her characters/ideology as antisocial, psychopathic, etc. The problem is most of her haters have not read her non-fiction writing, and are reacting without much context.
Ayn Rand states that her fiction books are written according to the romanticism aesthetics -heroic individualistic triumph. They're a fictionalized account of a simplified world designed to highlight her ideology under extreme conditions. Yes, it's very black & white, and very polarizing. But that's art for you..
The base of her philosophy is very cool, since she attempts to axiomatically build a philosophy from 3 self-evident axioms. However, it suffers the same problem as all other philosophies do - without a healthy dose of continuous empiricism they rapidly diverge from reality.
Most haters of Rand, having suffered through her fiction, never make it to the rather unimpressive nonfiction. There are some original thoughts in Objectivist Metaethics (much more lucidly explained by Tara Smith), generalization by measurement ommission is interesting. But she believed to have bridged the is-ought dichotomy, made epistemology objective, shown that free will exists by referring to self-evidence and derived logically that we should have a minimal government from consciousness and existence exists. Lots of crazy in there, too. In most of her nonfiction, she references liberally from her fiction, and references little else while attempting to explain life, the universe and everything in complete objectiity.
One reason for the dismissal of Rand among philosophers is that Rand simply has little to offer and a lot of nonsense to sift through, shows poor reasoning skills in general as well as poor knowledge of the vast field of philosophy including a complete misinterpretation of Kant and a romantic idealization of Aristotle. If she is aware of any other philosophers, the comment is mostly that they "are mystics" and not worthy of Rand's grandiose intellect. Romantically idolizing reason does not lead to much command of it.
A lot of even her non-fiction is simply a rationalization for anti-social behavior - The virtue of selfishness being the most obvious example. As conservative intellectual Russell Kirk put it: "If you believe selfishness is a virtue, you will believe anything."
The argument behind selfishness is that if you're rationally selfish, you end up making the world a better place, because you benefit from that anyways.
As for altruism, the implication was that altruistic people are actually selfish bastards anyways, and are just hiding their true nature, and not being rational about their selfishness. In the last decade, I think there's been a number of scientific papers that have pointed out the selfishness of altruism after all.
If you're not "rational" about your selfishness, then you're focusing on short-term gains that hurts yourself & others in the long run.
Rand redefines both altruism and selfishness. Whereas altruism means concern for the welfare of others and selfishness means its opposite. Rand defines selfishness as productivity and reason and altruism as pointless self-sacrifice. Nobody who argues for more altruism makes a point of hating productivity and reason and forcing people to destroy everything that is good, but that is what Rand's ridiculous fiction is displaying.
She then takes down her strawman-altruism and deifies productivity and reason to then sneak in the aspect of not caring about others.
The idea that one can be productive and reasonable with a goal of making the world a better place not just for him, but for others for the most part simply does not compute with Rand. Buddhist monks or charity workers do not enter her picture except maybe as negative examples. Producing wealth for yourself is good. Producing wealth for others is bad and also nonexistent in Rand's fictional world. This unneccessarily connects the unproductive with the charitable and the productive with the uncharitable.
Sure, there are liars who hide behind lofty ideals they pretend to represent only to justify their shitty behavior. Rand does just that with the ideas of liberty and freedom.
It occurs to me that the real problem is that Ayn Rand has the basic view that people are idiots. So her fiction displays most people behaving in extremely idiotic ways, which is where all the ridiculousness comes from.
The last piece of Galt's speech chapter. .. Who can't love this stuff!
"In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not- quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.
Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.
"But to win it requires your total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.
"You will win when you are ready to pronounce the oath I have taken at the start of my battle—and for those who wish to know the day of my return, I shall now repeat it to the hearing of the world: "I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
I have read as much of Rand's fiction that I can find and I loved it all however Atlas Shrugged didn't really do it for me. I don't like the way she makes people out to be heroes especially in Atlas Shrugged because they overachieve on societies terms.
The Fountainhead was phenomenal in my opinion but it was about a guy who followed his dreams and wouldn't be compromised. Anthem was also great. Atlas Shrugged to me was warped. To me it said that there are special people out there and if we don't bow down to them enough they might not keep giving so much of themselves to us. I think that this is basically BS. To me if there was no Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or whoever there would have been someone else just as good. The special people in Atlas Shrugged to me are in reality lucky as well as having some great attributes. I also think that who really gives a shit - we don't all have to make millions of dollars to have a good life.
I watched the documentary on Netflix this morning. From what I have heard from various sources including mainstream media and public radio, I always figured her ideas were too extreme for me. But after watching the documentary today, I can admit that I might have dismissed Atlas Shrugged too quickly and primarily because it's 1,200 pages. (Lonesome Dove is very long too, but I really enjoyed it.)
I am one who leans left many times, but I do believe that we often cause our own bad luck.
I once got into an argument with my neighbor who was complaining about being upside down on his mortgage. I asked him point blank if anyone forced him to sign the loan documents. Of course he said no. Then I asked, who else can you blame then? Boy that caused an explosion.... I was in the same boat as he was, but to a lesser degree. I can't agree that those who didn't make bad choices are forced to subsidize those who did. Of course now I understand that by paying taxes we're all subsidizing each other in many ways.
I am no libertarian expert, but what I have learned of objectivism from the 84 minute documentary is that it sounds very libertarian to me in terms of political leanings.
Controversial for sure, but as an aspiring writer myself I applaud her efforts to write the novel. Few bestsellers take the middle of the road in their work and those that do probably don't sell in large volumes. I think she honestly thought she was doing to world a service by writing it.
I have several other books at various stages of completion, but I am going to pick up Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead to add them to my reading queue.
I can see why those on the right and left failed to strongly embrace her immediately. Her views about religion p.o.'d the right and her ideas of selfishness p.o.'d the left.
The documentary pointed out that her ideas mostly appeal to the young college age folks who "haven't given up" yet and decided to settle for less than they really wanted out of life.
It occurs to me that the real problem is that Ayn Rand has the basic view that people are idiots. So her fiction displays most people behaving in extremely idiotic ways, which is where all the ridiculousness comes from.
Maybe.
Personally, I hold the view that it comes from Rand herself being extremely idiotic.
As a self identifying libertarian, I have to admit that Atlas shrugged was a slog. Rand had a few good ideas, and a writing style best described as "painful". If you have the tolerance to get thru it, the experience may be worth it to you, like a Marathon or riding a century. If you are masochistic, you may enjoy it, the same can be said of marathoners.
the fountainhead was better, but was still painful.
She's writing moral fables, and her lessons are repeated and repeated.
The outrage from the left makes sense when you consider that all her works expose the variety of ways that compassion and the good of the community are used for selfish and evil ends.
In that way it does serve as a handy guide to behavior patterns of people best avoided.
like basic training, it's something I'm glad I did, never want to do again, and can't endorse without equivocation.
I liked the book a lot. I'd say I'm a pragmatic libertarian that identifies slightly more closely with the mindset of the left than the right (although I have never voted democrat in a presidential election - libertarian x1 and repub x2).
When our first daughter was tiny, and never slept at night, I would stay up (for hours) with her and knock out a chapter of Atlas Shrugged occasionally. Holding her in my arms, and thinking through the themes in the book - an interesting experience. I was thinking "is this the world my daughter has been born into?".
@fiby41:
Are you soliciting opinions? Personally, ain't Rand fan at all. It's very primitive, schematic. When I grew up in Soviet Union, we read many books at school that were written using the same formula, only + and - were shifted: communists were the good guys and capitalists were the bad guys. Boring. Real life is so much more complex. OTOH, it's a reference point, because many people have read it. To sum it up, it's a popular, long, primitive, and boring book. If I knew then what I know now I wouldn't have read it, I started it out of ignorance and finished it out of stubbornness.
