tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3491139049757183162.post2117663841430027256..comments2023-05-24T06:35:13.131-07:00Comments on Sara Amis: On the resurgence of Ayn RandSara Amishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07630805993208700804noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3491139049757183162.post-21504708589637085292014-06-18T21:08:29.815-07:002014-06-18T21:08:29.815-07:00I read an essay once where a Rand scholar (I shudd...I read an essay once where a Rand scholar (I shudder at using the term, but being charitable on the internet is the only way to get listened to) was trying to defend that she had solved the Is-Ought problem. He even had quotes from her work. He only proved that she, and he, did not understand the problem. It was a very clever straw man - setting up a problem only slightly easier to solve than Hume's delicious, infuriating, frightening, conundrum - but it was still not an answer. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00821915044127809857noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3491139049757183162.post-20639841494303484072010-07-21T09:40:06.366-07:002010-07-21T09:40:06.366-07:00"For the recognition of private property has ..."For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be". That's Oscar Wilde, of course, but it's also the core difference, to my mind, between the popular but false individualism of Rand and her sort on the American right and the marginalised but genuine individualism of Thoreau, Whitman et al on the American left. I quite see where you're coming from. (In fact, I'm beginning to suspect we may have bumped into each other online before). I see and react to this polarity very strongly myself. My American left-liberal friends and colleagues seem to me to belong to a culture that's the best in the Anglophone world to be part of - tolerant, generous of spirit, broad in inspiration, open-minded yet intellectually vigorous and questioning, individualist and expressive but caring for others too - and I've no intention of ever returning to Britain for more than a holiday as a result. But the other America could scarcely be more different: five minutes of Fox News and I find myself wondering if Pravda was ever more vicious and callously dishonest. Behind the spurious Randian pseudo-individualism, there's actually a monstrous conformity and a loathing of any human difference that doesn't manifest itself in "successful" greed. As the Slate piece and your story illustrate, they even react to criticism with the utter predictability of a metronome...<br /><br />I suspect there may well be a deeper paradox there too. An oddity I've noted on both sides of the Atlantic is that political allegiances often seem to contradict the characters of those who hold them. Thus the left, certainly in Britain and also here to a slightly lesser extent, see individuals as importantly defined by relationships, and thus emphasise values such as care, social equality, solidarity in support of the oppressed, and so forth. But look at the behaviour of the Democratic Party, or indeed of the grassroots of the British Labour Party, and you'll find that there's endless internal dispute and splits as individuals just won't bury their own consciences in the collective. The talk is often collectivist, but the conduct is individualist. On the right, it's exactly the opposite. They are nominally supposed to stand for individualism, innovation and achievement through hard work, but they scarcely ever question authority within their party or split amongst themselves. Just look at how utterly predictable the views are, right across the range of issues, that you find coming from the congregations of the religious right, or the callers to talk radio stations - the homogeneity is stunning. No Maoist ever managed to get so many people to think exactly the same things, or to so predictably declaim any who dare to waver from the path of orthodoxy. There's a real set of contradictions there, and I think it says much about whose is the true individualism - that is, the truly felt variety.Sangiovese Fellowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12246682144420991093noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3491139049757183162.post-34629837351318577922010-07-20T23:19:29.701-07:002010-07-20T23:19:29.701-07:00I was more giving the devil her due :)
I posted...I was more giving the devil her due :) <br /><br />I posted a link to the Slate.com article on my Facebook page and promptly got someone defending her, starting with "If you've read her..." Yes, yes, I've read her, and I'm profoundly sorry that I can never get those moments of my precious irreplaceable life back. It's like I said, if you don't admire Rand the way they do then OBVIOUSLY you just don't UNDERSTAAAAAND....*sigh* <br /><br />*I* think Rand is an egocentric self-publicising mediocrity. But I tend to reside philosophically in a very different strand of American culture, the one where Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, John Muir and a whole bunch of freaks and weirdos hang out.Sara Amishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07630805993208700804noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3491139049757183162.post-10380716233262364542010-07-20T22:52:18.270-07:002010-07-20T22:52:18.270-07:00Well yes, one can respect somebody's ability t...Well yes, one can respect somebody's ability to shape their fixations into vocations even while recognising the fixations as unhealthy - and given Rand's situation in her final years, living a life like that of the elderly Scrooge but minus the redeeming ghosts, it's hard even to see her own life as much of an advert for her values in the end. It greatly helps career progress if what you're saying is congenial to powerful people, however. As Galbraith put it, "the modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness", and from that perspective, Rand's work has a natural and immediate appeal. One can easily understand why she soon found promoters. In broader terms, I do think that Rand connected to something distinctive in the American psyche, namely the idealisation of the self-creating commercially successful individual. (There's not another nation where she's regarded as anything more than an egocentric self-publicising mediocrity; it's only in the US that she's popularly revered). Hence there's another level to my analogy with English stately homes, for concern for social class has historically permeated English life in a way that's similarly distinctive to the culture, just as the ethos of possessive individualism runs deep and distinctive in America. But there are residues of those English attitudes here in the South too, often also bound up with old houses as you note, and indeed one of the pleasant surprises I have had since moving here has been the extent of Southern Anglophilia.Sangiovese Fellowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12246682144420991093noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3491139049757183162.post-57002754923313285442010-07-20T15:55:06.562-07:002010-07-20T15:55:06.562-07:00Heh. We have stately homes here in the South, too...Heh. We have stately homes here in the South, too, and romanticizing of same. Never mind that only a tiny fraction of the population lived that kind of lifestyle, at a huge cost to *other people.* <br /><br />Oh, Ayn Rand, we hardly knew ye. Despite pages and pages and pages...If you can't say anything else good about her (and I can't) at least she was able to make her crazy into a career. I have a certain degree of admiration for that.Sara Amishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07630805993208700804noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3491139049757183162.post-44416628250366541192010-07-20T15:29:22.021-07:002010-07-20T15:29:22.021-07:00Nice overview. As a British expat who's had oc...Nice overview. As a British expat who's had occasional unpleasant dealings with Randian types, I was at first bemused at how anybody at all could like her stuff. Nowadays I think that Rand novels are to American culture roughly what stately homes are to many conservative Brits: huge, outdated pompous edifices that can look briefly appealing from certain angles, but whose usual effect is to encourage gullible people to fantasise about themselves as holding seats of nobility in a natural aristocracy. In reality of course, the type of social order which both types of edifice serve to propagandize for is one that would put such fantasists in a very different social position, namely as that which is sat upon. On a related tack, you might like this sharp review of two biographical books on Rand by the award winning young British left journalist Johann Hari - http://www.slate.com/id/2233966Sangiovese Fellowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12246682144420991093noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3491139049757183162.post-56008212312498368202010-06-06T18:38:43.757-07:002010-06-06T18:38:43.757-07:00More or less...Rand was a big Nietzsche fan, appar...More or less...Rand was a big Nietzsche fan, apparently, but like so many things she didn't really understand him.Sara Amishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07630805993208700804noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3491139049757183162.post-16212963459224986162010-06-06T18:33:16.686-07:002010-06-06T18:33:16.686-07:00Nietzsche for morons, basically.Nietzsche for morons, basically.Dana Seilhanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11749354913843954242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3491139049757183162.post-753125157985543112009-11-16T21:57:13.178-08:002009-11-16T21:57:13.178-08:00I determined a while back that the best first-date...I determined a while back that the best first-date question is "What do you think of Ayn Rand?" Nice summation of her work.Faith Van Hornehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03323794807174371470noreply@blogger.com