Can someone explain Ayn Rand to me?!

Ayn Rand Philosophy: MINE, MINE ALL MINE AND YOU CAN'T HAVE IT HAHAHAHAHA!!!

I see Randianism as a slight wrinkle on basic Calvinism, which included the idea that moral rectitude was rewarded by God with material prosperity, so therefore it was possible to gauge who among the upright was the most upright and who among the righteous was most righteous, by looking at their wealth. After all, because God has predestined all of us to our lot, it would be unthinkable that God would knowingly reward purity and righteousness with illness, poverty, misfortune and endless fruitless labors.

This was always a crock, but it has just enough of the Grasshopper vs. Ant fable in it to appear mildly plausible.

well, in rand's defense (not that i would), she ups the credibility of her argument by removing divine providence from the equation. thus one's material station in life derives not from preordained destiny, but from the congruence of one's actions & abilities with a sort of logical morality, the basic desire of the universe, or some such. which makes the whole thing harder to dismiss out of hand. though i still do, ha ha ha.

Aimless you do realize it's really easy to call Randianism a crock without pretending it has anything to do with God

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2010/08/worldsbiggestwriting-660x647.jpg
“The main reason I did it is because I am an Ayn Rand fan,” he says. “In my opinion if more people would read her books and take her ideas seriously, the country and world would be a better place — freer, more prosperous and we would have a more optimistic view of the future.”
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/worlds-biggest-writing/

can someone explain that man to me?!

melvillean 7 hours ago

I would write "Don't" in Canada.

if she was alive today she'd have a vv quotable column on 'the corner'

"The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky."

- Flannery O'Connor

Ayn Rand is an extremely interesting personality because of the historical and pop culture references she makes. Her work is sort of a document of mid-century economic and social relations. I highly recommend the documentary "A Sense of Life", it spends a lot of time on her Hollywood roots and her affection for the early film industry. As a media phenomenon she is very interesting. But she praises individualism and I don't understand how this squares with how some of her followers use her. I don't think a lot of them see her as a historic persona. I don't think they know a lot about Russia or respect her Russian roots.

If she were alive today she'd get a lot of attention, not all of it from "followers". I am not sure she would enjoy being cited as an influence by tea partiers, for example. She seemed to do everything possible to deter that sort of hero worship.

I don't think her fiction is that hot either but it is illuminating, again for its historic relevance. In the same way that detective fiction might be. I thought the "great books" model died with postmodernism.

She seemed to do everything possible to deter that sort of hero worship.

not true at all

that "Sense of Life" documentary is terrible btw.

I agree that she is fascinating though and was in many ways a remarkable if rather repugnant person.

Why is "A Sense of Life" terrible? Not too many documentaries are about a Russian immigrant getting her start in early Hollywood.

It white-washes basically everything about her!

It's total hagiography

have not seen the doc. i only know that, "she seemed to do everything possible to deter that sort of hero worship" = lolz for days.

You want to be the most right person on the earth, go ahead. I am sorry I spent any worthless time on something that seems to have influenced a lot of people. I should spend more time mining ilx for lolz that I can dwell on for days. As for the hero worship stuff, it's in the bios about her alienating her followers, if you care to read them.

The film isn't hagiography at all! It's about cultural context.

Rejecting/ostracizing those in her circle who disagreed with her does not equal "discouraging hero worship".

no, i don't mean to deny yr appreciation of the cultural context-setting thing, but want to inject a measure of perspective re: her relationship to the cult of her. she built that shit.

PSST:

http://vimeo.com/13589866

I love how this thread never gets revived without somebody being a hard-on about Ayn fucking Rand.

8==================D ---------------------------- [abt] AR

The day must have its night. We must have our Ayn Rand.

She is the tails to our heads on the Promethean coin.

Those two posts are an illustration of what makes a cult of personality : the people who choose to submit themselves to that personality. Ayn Rand is supposed to be about free will and choosing your destiny, any dumbfuck who turns that into an immobile cult icon isn't really processing the material mentally.

I am wondering what cult she was the leader of since she broke up any organization she was involved in.

I thought conservatism of the moderate / libertarian bent was about personal responsibility, something that would seem to be anti-cult. I don't see anything in Rand's thinking that disavows this.

her philosphy, on the face of it, would seem to be (as u say) "anti-cult". but her husbandry of the cult of her own majesty = something else entirely...

Ayn Rand is supposed to be about free will and choosing your destiny...

um, "supposed"

Nathaniel Branden to thread.

hahaha i didn't finish atlas shrugged but it was basically the most horrible and terrible book i have ever read. The only reason I got as far as I did was because about 50 pages in I hated her so much I wanted to beat her stupid book. I would indignantly read passages out to my bf at the time and he would laugh at them but I wouldnt think it was funny. I would be so angry! I used to throw it against the wall.

how many times can u throw 1 book before it is not book but some paper?

this was a pretty resilient paperback. i think it was held together by its awfulness. it actually still looks like its in good shape. btw one of my best friend claims this is his favourite book.

You must abandon this friend or eliminate him.

Using a copy of the book to accomplish the latter would be fitting, we think.

yeah, shit is annoying as hell. used to "enjoy" camille paglia in the same sense, but at least she's fun to fite with.

I feel like true members of the patron class -- you know, the ones that society would fall apart without -- would never write so badly. Being super into Ayn Rand is publicly admitting that you wouldn't know either a good book or a coherent philosophy if you accidentally tripped over one. Maybe it's not a cult, sure, fine, whatever. So it's some unreadable bullshit that's not a cult. If you want to motivate yourself into being all that you can be, you can read Aristotle and spare yourself slogging through these utterly artless train wrecks.

It is very much a cult, which we find admirable. All worthwhile points of view are fanatically followed. We find those on the opposite side worthy opponents. Those in the middle, mere dissenters or wafflers, not even fit to forcibly brainwash.

That said, all Objectivists must perish.

What about the Fountainhead? Her fans seem to rate that one more, they say Atlas Shrugged is kind of pretentious. I read that one but didn't finish, I must say I found it entertaining in a pulpish fashion. The style is very emotional, manipulative even if you're susceptible to that sort of thing.
As a psychology buff I have to pay attention, it tells me a lot about a certain 1950s mentality. I think that stuff was supposed to be mass market. Same with her "philosophy".

held together by its awfulness.

This is an excellent description of many things.

This is the problem I have with the whole Rand thing.

Other examples of popular culture make plot-references more generally, such as when in the TV series Gilmore Girls, Rory calls Lorelai "the Howard Roark of Stars Hollow" for being ruthless in a competition,[31] or Rory tells Jess about her love of the book and Jess expresses awe that she read it when she was only 10.[32]

The Fountainhead is read in many high school classrooms and has been a core work for the Advanced Placement curriculum.

In the epistolary novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the title character of Charlie is assigned The Fountainhead to read by his teacher, Bill, and later refers to the book as his "favourite".

In the Philip K. Dick novel and film adaptation A Scanner Darkly, a character attempting suicide picks The Fountainhead as an "artifact" to be found with his remains, his reasoning being it "would prove he had been a misunderstood superman rejected by the masses and so, in a sense, murdered by their scorn".

There is this theme when discussing or using (as Hollywood has done) Rand - that of the super bright "lonely" girl ...reading Ayn Rand and isn't that impressive. I suppose reading science texts or non-fiction or history is less sexy.

Not a literature snob but any high school teacher who makes The Fountainhead a requirement ought to be fired.

this is tossed-off but insightful i thought:

But the basic inverted Marxism at the heart of her ideology has become the central focus of both modern conservative thought and Republican policy-making. (That ideology holds that the world is fundamentally divided between virtuous creators of wealth and lazy parasites, the identity of whom is the reverse of what Marx believed.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/76735/ayn-rand-and-conservatism

ie i don't think she really understood capitalism. capital is not 'heroic'

How come in her books the protagonist keeps plugging away against mediocrity but never gets very far?

too many little people holding them back

"I only like big people"

Ayn Rand=fascinating to 11th graders whose have just been weaned off of Sweet Valley High and Hardy Boys novels (or whatever those children are reading these days)

big in india & i guess anywhere where ppl could feel threatened by egalitarian ideas

really? I hadn't noticed her popularity in India. where are you drawing that conclusion from (book sales or something?)

"I only like big people"

"It's capitalism that got small"

Ann Rind is so much easier to pronounce that Ayn Rand.

xp to shakey:

yeah lots of ppl I spoke to in india had read it, noticed the fountainhead in lots of roadside stalls, and it did seem to be well-known. poss just sheltered from rand in europe and maybe india is just more in sync w/ the US, or maybe a fad, but it was a bit of a thing.