Not exactly grammatical, but I completely agree with the thread title.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy is essentially and thoroughly anti-Christian.
E.g. do not give all you have to the poor; keep it all and try grab as much more as you can.
Ayn Rand would reverse all of the Beatitudes. E.g. the meek are hopeless losers, give them nothing.
Conflating Ayn Rand and Republicanism is really pretty hilarious. Behold the cognitive dissonance!
Her philosphy in four words is “Free market capitalism” and “individualism”.
Her philosophy in a nutshell (expressed mostly through her novels but also through essays and non-fiction writings):
-Selfishness is the ultimate good so long as it does not involve physically harming or stealing from another person.
-Freemarket capitalism with only the most absolute minimal of restrictions is the most fair financial system ever devised.
–Government welfare programs are legalized theft because they involve taking from somebody better off to give to somebody poor.
–Government should exist to enforce contracts and build bridges and provide defense- nothing else.
–Nobody should be expected to contribute to a society if their work and money is taken from them through excessive taxes.
There is obviously merit to this: capitalism DOES provide more incentive for innovation than any other system, as evidenced by the Soviet Union, and nobody likes excessive taxes or welfare abuse. However, Rand is often seen- with some reason- as heartless and Ebenezer Scroogean (“Are there no workhouses? Then let them die and decrease the surplus population!”) in her outlook.
Like it’s polar opposite Marxism, Objectivism works well in theory/on paper/subtracting the human element. I think that Jon Stewart said it well in a recent interview: "
Objectivism works really well for extraordinary people but ironically it’s been co-opted into populism".
Its weak points also include such things as the ultimate results of a complete freemarket: without regulations it can strangle innovation (e.g.= imagine that you develop an operating system better than Windows or Mac either one- is it more likely that the world will welcome you with open arms and you’ll rule the market until a better product comes along, or that MS and Apple with their limitless resources will absorb your work if they can and if they can’t they’ll crush you like a cockroach?), or inherited wealth (she was obviously against any kind of inheritance tax)
This is vital to understanding her life and her character. Her father was well to do (not in the Romanov sense but certainly upper-middle class); he was a pharmacist who owned a small pharmaceuticals factory and distribution business- and the new governments confiscated everything the family had. Ayn Rand (born Alisa Rosenbaum) was an adolescent at the time and obviously never got over going from a life of comfort and some privilege to being destitute overnight as Bolshevism and Communism failed all around her.
She also earned her first “big money” in America during the 1940s/1950s when the income tax for the richest Americans was the highest in U.S. history (80-90%) and there was major and understandable outcry by people who were earning fortunes for hard work but keeping only 1/4 of it and that if they were lucky (or as George Harrison said in the 1960s of the UK *Tax Man *“Let me tell you how it will be/that’s 1 for you 19 for me/I’m the tax man…/you’re working for no one but me…”). She obviously saw this as a killer to free enterprise- and while I’m left of center I agree; if I ever make big money I sure as hell don’t want to turn over the lion’s share to the IRS, and neither did anybody else. She took it to radical ends though; Atlas Shrugged is almost the Anti-Marx, showing a world where the “producers” cause the revolution that topples the world order and perfects the nation.
The strangest thing about her philosphy though is that while there was nothing super new about it and her best parts are basically well expressed common sense (she was never that respected as a writer, incidentally- her works were too parabolic), her followers made her a near goddess. She had in her own lifetime and continues to have a cult like following. And, as mentioned by Zebra and in the Stewart piece, much of her message is forgotten (much like Jesus’s) by her most ardent supporters: she was an atheist who thought getting rid of organized religion was the one thing the Communists did right. She also would have thought bailouts were attrocious and she was a homophobe (yet she has some gays among her followers). However, she gets somewhat castrated into just “laissez faire” is good with most of the details being lost and the religion and social views being discarded as needed.
First, she’d be happy to be described as ‘anti-Christian’. She thought Christianity and all other religions were evil.
As for the beatitudes, Rand would have wholeheardedly agreed with, “Blessed are the pure of heart.” She would have stood by the righteous if they were being persecuted, and she had no problem with the meek or the peacemakers. However, she would not have agreed that the poor and hungry were ‘blessed’ - she would have perhaps felt sorry for them, and perhaps she would have looked for those among them who she felt deserving of her support. She would have categorically denied that the state of poverty or hunger somehow translated into a moral claim on her own life or liberty.
And exactly where are you seeing that?
This thread seems to have several groups of people in it - those who take the question in the OP seriously and are trying to answer the question, those who dislike Rand’s philosophy for good reasons and are trying to get that perspective across, and then the usual crowd of ankle-biters who don’t really know a damned thing, but they know that Ayn Rand is the enemy and they can’t resist bombing the thread with useless one-sentence critiques and dismissals and mockery based on what they’ve ‘heard’ about her.
We could use a lot less of the last group.
It’s been a while since I read the book, but this seems absolutely wrong to me. Roarke thought that beauty in architecture came from function. He hated needless ornamentation. The reason he was attracted to Cortlandt Homes was because he had a vision for an architecture that would meet the needs of the poor in better ways than anyone else had accomplished. He wasn’t doing it for the poor, but beauty in architecture to him was architecture that solved a problem in the most elegant way. He would have thought that there was nothing more useless than a building that no one used.
In larger terms, Roarke was of the modernist school that eschewed false ornamentation or building design for design’s sake at the expense of function. Rand’s model for Roarke was Frank Lloyd Wright, who was an American modernist.
Bullshit. There are many posts in this very thread that have grossly misrepresented her, and some of us who are explaining why.
Why do people enjoy condemning Ayn Rand but praise Nietschze? Their philosophies in many arenas were quite similar and the main difference was that Rand believed in freedom and democracy while Nietschze believed in some sort of a “scientific dictatorship”. I disagree with Rand on most of her philosophy (especially the metaphysics part) but I agree with her on the philosophy of art and some of her politics (though I’m not a total laissez-faire capitalist).
I wish I had the time to really contribute to this thread, but I don’t (and **Sam Stone **is doing very well without me). I’ll just add some “Random” thoughts from my own experience with her (I knew her in 1964-5).
She had, by far, the most brilliant mind of anyone I’ve ever encountered. Her mind almost seemed like the next step in evolution. Unfortunately, though, her intelligence could be so dazzling that it tended to blind the people close to her.
Her personal life was not the mess that her detractors would have you think. She was absolutely devoted to her husband . . . and within the context of Objectivist morality, her affair with Nathaniel Branden made perfect sense.
I don’t believe she ever took antidepressants (not that she couldn’t have benefited from them). She would not have taken any drug that would in any way alter her mental functioning.
In her personal life, she was an extremely generous person. She helped people directly and gave to charities, including scholarships . . . but she had to be convinced that someone was *worthy *or her assistance.
And by the way, she actually did summarize Objectivism while standing on one foot.
Who’s doing that exactly? Are there any “Know who I love? Nietschze…” threads going around here that I’ve got on ignore?
That’s not exactly a minor difference!
I agree than Rand is a far superior to Nietschze in the realm of politics as I’d prefer a democracy to this “scientific dictatorship” nonsense.
Nothing about Nietzsche’s philosophy even pretends to be “scientific,” AFAIK. His Ubermensch is a tough-guy aristocrat, not a rationalistic social engineer.
I don’t think Rand believed in democracy, either. Democracy is the idea that the state should be and do whatever the majority of the people want, even if that goes way beyond Rand’s ideal of a night-watchman state.
She is an uttely fascinating woman to watch and listen to. As others have said, the biggest problem with her philosophy is that, like Communism, it just doesn’t allow for the realities of human nature.
Nzinga, Seated, I’m going to post some links below so you can see what I mean. I think you’ll understand her views (and how compelling she was) a little better after watching them. The links are to interviews she did with Mike Wallace, Tom Snyder and two with Phil Donohue, the latter shortly after the death of her beloved husband and which she consented to as a way of forcing herself to get out and on with her life.
Mike Wallace, Part 1 (You can navigate to the remaining parts of each interview on Youtube.)
It’s amazingly ironic how many people who have (quite obviously) either never read or (equally obviously) ‘read’ it but didn’t understand what she was trying to say…ironic, that is, in a ‘Ayn Rand for Dummies’ thread anyway.
-XT
Some of the replies were very disappointing though I suppose they should be expected whenever the subject of Objectivism rears itself. What was disappointing is that I expect more from the SDMB than I do other boards. Some of the replies to the OP were nothing more than thread crapping.
Odesio
She makes her point in the first 30 or so pages, and adds nothing in the next billion pages.
That pretty much sums it up, Nzinga, Seated. If you don’t get it in the first few chapters, then just toss it.
I did the same thing with Lonesome Dove. Started reading it, then tossed it in the trash when 100 pages into it the fucker who wrote it was still introducing characters.
Others have summed up what Atlas is about - you either agree with it or you don’t, but there is no reason to feel compelled to read the damn thing. The first 30 or so pages is enough.
The first key to understanding Randism is to realize that she didn’t actually know what the word “objective” means.
Well that really added something meaningful to the discourse. Thank you very much for your contribution.
You’re welcome.
I’m glad that you were capable of appreciating this, by the way. Too often, fans of Rand have followed in her own inability to realize the blatant mis-labelling of her highly esoteric and subjective beliefs. It’s good that there are people, such as yourself, who are capable of realizing that most of her philosophy (whatever its actual intellectual value) is not in fact objective in any sense. And of course, it should go without saying that any philosophical content so completely at odds with its given label is obviously going muddy the waters, however unintentionally, for those who are actually aware of what objective means. For this reason, too, it is good that people such as yourself are capable of appreciating it when the potential semantic problems caused by this loose labelling are pointed out. It’s always nice to be on the same page, especially for the thoughts of a woman who has been so misunderstood, when the potential for semantic slipperiness is so high.
panache45, I’d be very interested in hearing more about your experiences with Ayn Rand, such as how you came to spend time with her, the nature of your relationship, and what if anything you learned from her or from that experience.
If you wouldn’t mind, that is.