Who is Ayn Rand?

[liveonearth]

She was born in Russia and immigrated to the US in 1905 at the age of 21. She wrote a bunch of interesting books in her time. I discovered Ayn Rand when I was in college in the 1980's. I read a pile of her books, and passed them on to my friends. The Fountainhead was the first that I read, followed by Atlas Shrugged and then plodding on through a few more before I burned out. In these novels she began to develop Objectivism, her very own philosophy. She became quite famous later in life and was associated with Alan Greenspan and a host of other intellectuals.

I find it interesting that these days people scoff at Ayn Rand in much the same way that they scoff at Ron Paul. As if they were the lunatic fringe, not the sanest people around. Anyone who has not read at least one of Ayn Rand's books has no right to denigrate her ideas. And I pity the fool who dismisses Ron Paul before they really listen to him speak about what is happening in our country today.

It is true that Objectivism does not address the decimation of Earth's resources that we are now facing. But Rand's philosophy does insightfully assess many assumptions in our culture that continue to cause trouble. For example, Rand observes that "values" in our culture involve not so much specific codes of behavior as the idea that one's actions are right and good if they are done for someone else. Acting for yourself is not seen as being righteous. Acting for others will get you into heaven. Rand reintroduced the idea of rational self interest. In our culture we go to great lengths to appear unselfish, because to be selfish is the greatest sin of all. But to be a self with needs is to be selfish. So to deny our inherent selfishness is to deny our very selves. There are deep problems associated with the religious-unduced selflessness slant of our culture. Objectivism seeks to be objective about what is happening and why. I appreciate that.

It appears that someone is trying to get Rational Self Interest back into college curriculums, by appealing to the self interest of Universities. According to The Week at least 17 universities accepted a million buck donations under the condition that Atlas Shrugged be required reading in a course on capitalism from a moral perspective. That should be an interesting course.

I didn't know it until just now, but Anglina Jolie and Brad Pitt are working on putting together a movie version of Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged. It's on the shelf for now, because they want to do it right and until the pieces come together they won't touch it. I look forward to that one coming through.

Apparently Ayn Rand blocked a number of attempts to make her book into a movie, fearing perhaps that Hollywood would be completely oblivious to Objectivism and misconstrue her lifework. I wouldn't doubt it.

The Youtube video below is by a serious young man who purchased Greenspan's recent autobiography The Age of Turbulence and reads a portion of it so us that considers Ayn Rand.

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Comments

[gavin6942.livejournal.com]

I don't consider Ron Paul part of the "lunatic fringe", but I do consider Ayn Rand in this way.

Her thoughts on property rights and racism are interesting, but I have to fundamentally disagree with any view that says our own self-interest must outweigh others. I mean, really, isn't THAT the root of many of society's problems today? Too many people not caring about others?

[(Anonymous)]

liveonearth, you have a better grip on Rand than gavin6942, but you both need to better your understanding of selfishness. Your own life is all that you have and all that you are. Your purpose in life is to maximize the quality of that life and for as long as possible. But to pursue "quality" requires a system of values to guide and discipline your choices that determine how you interact with the rest of reality. Your values are the results that you seek to gain with your actions.

If follows that in order to maximize your life, you should never intentionally sacrifice a greater value in order to get a lesser value. But that is what altruism demands -- self sacrifice. You must instead always seek to gain a higher value by giving up a lower value. That is selfishness. If the values are rationally identified vis a vis your nature (as a human) and the nature of reality and they are consistently applied to your actions, that is rational selfishness.

Recognize that this relationship to yourself is equally true for each and every other human. Therefore your every relationship with and action toward any other human is implicitly granted by you to be proper for them to hold with or act out toward you. Consequently, by Rand's philosophy, theft and murder are acts of self-sacrifice, not of selfishness. Helping bright young students with their college expenses in order to live in a world with more intelligent people is an act of selfishness. Giving your friendship to an acquaintance, or your love to a spouse, because they embody your own sense of life is an act of selfishness.

In any uncoerced exchange between two selfish humans, each will give the other something valued less than that which is received, the price in such an exchange is inherently just, and both will profit. Therefrom springs the efficacy of capitalism.

[b-vainamoinen.livejournal.com]

The thing I find interesting about Ayn Rand is that I agree with only about 80% of what she said -- which she would have found unacceptibly heretical, I think.

I am waiting EAGERLY for the Atlas Shrugged movie. It is going to be a glorious train wreck that will rival Battlefield Earth.