Did Ayn Rand idolize a serial killer?

[Starving_Artist]

Have you ever considered writing a book detailing your experiences with Ayn Rand and what you learned about her during that time? I’ve been especially intrigued by your comment about how bright she was, that her mind seemed almost like the next step in evolution. I’ve watched her in interviews on television with Mike Wallace and Phil Donohue and found her fascinating and captivating to watch and listen to. I’d love to know more about your experiences with her and your impressions of her should you ever feel like sharing them.

[panache45]

@Starving_Artist

Have you ever considered writing a book detailing your experiences with Ayn Rand and what you learned about her during that time? I’ve been especially intrigued by your comment about how bright she was, that her mind seemed almost like the next step in evolution. I’ve watched her in interviews on television with Mike Wallace and Phil Donohue and found her fascinating and captivating to watch and listen to. I’d love to know more about your experiences with her and your impressions of her should you ever feel like sharing them.

If I ever do write a book, the 18 months when I knew her would be condensed into a short introduction. The rest of the book would be about all the years since then, as a “recovering” Objectivist.

I’d steal a phrase from an old Simon and Garfunkel song for the title: “Been Ayn Randed.”

[Starving_Artist]

Noooo! More Ayn Rand, please. Maybe write two books. One on her and one on your recovery. After all, your recovery would be more meaningful coming in the wake of a detailed personal account of your experiences with Rand herself.

Just kidding. It would be interesting to hear your first hand experiences with her though.

[SeldomSeen]

@BrainGlutton

An Objectivist Atlas will shrug
When his GF won’t go past a hug
Self-reliant as Rand
Is his own nimble hand
On his Fountainhead ready to tug!

:D:p;):)
I hereby nominate this for the best post in the whole durned thread…

BG, is it original?

[LonesomePolecat]

@elucidator

I eagerly await the first volume of Objectivist poetry.

I’m waiting for the Objectivist baby and child care book.

[BrainGlutton]

@SeldomSeen

:D:p;):)
I hereby nominate this for the best post in the whole durned thread…

BG, is it original?

Actually, it’s part of a series I’ve been working on.

[BigT]

It is my understanding that, while Rand may support charity, her philosophy, if used by everyone, would effectively eliminate it. It’s just an unavoidable consequence. When your primary concern is yourself, and that primary concern has no counter in in the form of a moral objection, the motivation to help others dries up. I’ve seen it time and time again with Objectivists looking down on poor people, claiming that, since they aren’t required to help them out, they aren’t going to. Imaging these people in a society with nobody to claim such was a wrong action.

You can always come up with more ways to help yourself and put off helping the poor. There is no part of Rand’s philosophy to stop this. The concept of altruism exist precisely because humans are not inherently altruistic.

[cckerberos]

@John_Mace

If you’re going to criticize a philosophy, at least take the time to understand it.

Knowledge as a prerequisite of criticism? What, you trying to turn GD into a barren wasteland or something?

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

FWIW, I appreciate the clarification on the initial question (not an assertion, no matter how feeble-mindedly some people may insist on misconstruing it), and panache’s details of her philosophy are also pretty interesting. But I wonder if we can just take it as read that a bunch of people loathe her, and move past that to discussing what she actually believed?

[Rand_Rover]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

FWIW, I appreciate the clarification on the initial question (not an assertion, no matter how feeble-mindedly some people may insist on misconstruing it), and panache’s details of her philosophy are also pretty interesting. But I wonder if we can just take it as read that a bunch of people loathe her, and move past that to discussing what she actually believed?

From the OP:

I’ve been of the general impression that Rand was a flaming asshole,

Perhaps you should take your own advice?

[Sitnam]

@The_Second_Stone

Who’s to say you aren’t. My beef with Ms. Rand is that she is a mediocre writer who is a teacher of evil. Machiavelli has an excuse with The Prince in that he intended it not for the whole world, but for an audience of one Lorenzo di Medici. … It is no accident that Hitler and Stalin had The Prince as their favorite book, kept on their nightstand. It is a study of how to be a sociopath. Machiavelli never meant it to be published.

Interesting that you argue people misinterpret Rand by citing your own misinterpretation of The Prince. Forget for a second that the entire thing is probably one huge piss-take, and instead focus on the dynamic and responsibility of one person being the State. The Prince argued (convincingly) that even at the cost of a few lives now, stability will save many more. Theres nothing sociopathic about learning to avoid civil war, avoiding foreign entanglements, avoiding conflicts of attrition. The Art of War is just a little more hands off with the particulars but I think Sun Tzu would nod his head in agreement throughout the entire book. And really, Hitler and Stalin. I’m sure its only the favorite book of successful evil people.

[John_Mace]

@BigT

It is my understanding that, while Rand may support charity, her philosophy, if used by everyone, would effectively eliminate it. It’s just an unavoidable consequence. When your primary concern is yourself, and that primary concern has no counter in in the form of a moral objection, the motivation to help others dries up. I’ve seen it time and time again with Objectivists looking down on poor people, claiming that, since they aren’t required to help them out, they aren’t going to. Imaging these people in a society with nobody to claim such was a wrong action.

You can always come up with more ways to help yourself and put off helping the poor. There is no part of Rand’s philosophy to stop this. The concept of altruism exist precisely because humans are not inherently altruistic.

If everyone used here philosophy, no one would accept charity, so it wouldn’t be an issue.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@John_Mace

If everyone used here philosophy, no one would accept charity, so it wouldn’t be an issue.

Mentally handicapped people would be self-sufficient Randians?

[John_Mace]

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

Mentally handicapped people would be self-sufficient Randians?

The premise was “her philosophy, if used by everyone”.

But I also don’t think Objectivism rules out charitable giving completely. In most cases, the mentally handicapped in an Objectivist society would be cared for by relatives and/or friends of the family.

[panache45]

Rand looked at it this way: Charity is not a moral obligation, but an act of generosity and benevolence . . . but only if you can afford it and only if the recipients deserve to be helped. And it is also morally proper to accept charity, but only on the same conditions.

My own take: It’s in my rational self-interest to live in a society of people who are free, healthy, educated and productive. So I have no problem helping people get back on their feet, as long as I can afford it and they deserve the help. But it’s not in my rational self-interest for the government to take my money and redistribute it to whoever they think needs and deserves it more than I do.

Actually, Rand did donate to certain charities, mostly for people trying to come here from totalitarian countries.

[BrainGlutton]

@BigT

It is my understanding that, while Rand may support charity, her philosophy, if used by everyone, would effectively eliminate it. It’s just an unavoidable consequence. When your primary concern is yourself, and that primary concern has no counter in in the form of a moral objection, the motivation to help others dries up. I’ve seen it time and time again with Objectivists looking down on poor people, claiming that, since they aren’t required to help them out, they aren’t going to. Imaging these people in a society with nobody to claim such was a wrong action.

You can always come up with more ways to help yourself and put off helping the poor. There is no part of Rand’s philosophy to stop this. The concept of altruism exist precisely because humans are not inherently altruistic.

Eh? Humans are inherently altruistic, it’s instinctive, we are social animals – in a way no other animal is. But the instinct seems generally limited to the in-group – starting with one’s own family (one is really serving the security and future of one’s own selfish genes; nevertheless, the instinct will be just as strong once you bond with an adopted child) – and then it’s a bit weaker when applied to one’s immediate community – and teaching is indeed necessary to extend it further. But no cynical politician had to invent the idea that dying for one’s country (or whatever human-thing-larger-than-oneself one is fighting for) is glorious; everybody already knows that instinctively.

Rand certainly was against “altruism,” but she was using the world differently from its popular meaning:

We now move from the Mind Screw to the Flame Bait. Normally, this would be dealt with under ethics, but several of Rand’s arguments against altruism were political in character. The issue of altruism is unquestioningly the area in which the vast majority of misunderstandings of Objectivism exist as well as the area where sacred cows are slaughtered.

Rand did not agree with altruism. She explicitly rejected the doctrine and considered it, essentially, a suicide morality that was advanced by power-crazed wannabe-dictators for the purposes of cloaking their Evil Plan in the robes of benevolence.

To most people, the charges she leveled at altruism wildly vary with what they have been told altruism actually means. To most people, altruism means (more or less) be kind to other people and refrain from being a jerkass.

This common definition of altruism is most emphatically not the definition Rand has in mind.

The word “altruism” was coined by Auguste Comte. He defined it as live for others and intended it to mean, basically, that a person can be called noble if the ultimate end of their actions is the benefit of others. In other words, the motive of service to others is intrinsically virtuous.

It is this definition of altruism that Rand was attacking. And Rand was not the only person to consider it insane. John Stuart Mill, a Utilitarian philosopher (not an ethical egoist like Rand), was quite shocked at the implications of Comte’s definition. For more on this, please see Robert L. Campbell’s ‘‘Altruism in Comte and Rand’’, The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 7, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 357 to 369.

Rand argued that Comtean Altruism essentially results in a situation where the ends justifies the means with “others” as the end. As long as the intended end is the benefit of others, anything goes. For someone as concerned as she was with individual liberty, this is an understandable concern; Comtean Altruism can easily justify revoking the liberty of individuals if it is “for their own good.”

Unfortunately, Auguste Comte’s original definition was made much Lighter and Softer by many people that continued to use the word he originally coined to mean things much less severe than Comte originally intended.

This Lighter and Softer version of altruism has, unfortunately for Rand, had such an influence on ethical discourse that altruism became, in the minds of most people, a synonym for good. And if “the good” and “good for others” became equated, then it was only a matter of time before “good for the self” became equated with evil.

Rand’s case against altruism is composed of multiple arguments. The first is that altruism does not actually define “the good”, what makes an action good is the intended beneficiary of it (i.e. other people). This in turn is the basis for her aforementioned political argument; that the doctrine can justify revoking individual rights “for the good of others.”

Rand also saw Comte’s Altruism not as a new idea, but as a variant of a long string of very old ideas that she opposed. Altruism argues that the self must serve others, but there are many ethical traditions that argue the self must also serve something other than itself in order to justify the self’s existence. For instance, monotheistic religions generally argue that individuals must serve God. Feudalism argued that individuals must serve their Monarchs. The common thread is that the individual must forego being concerned with their own interests and instead live for something outside themself; they must *sacrifice themself *for something else.

Rand assembled a very long list of traditions and ideas she believes to be related to, a cause of, or a consequence of, the basic belief that a human’s highest moral duty is to serve something that isn’t themself.

The idea she argued is the foundational cause of this belief is Original Sin. Original Sin is not merely the idea that Humans Are Flawed but that they are intrinsically flawed; to be evil is part of human nature. Objectivism rejects this idea because the nature of things is amoral; morality applies only in situations where choice exists and because a thing is what it is, it cannot choose its nature. Objectivism also argues that Original Sin is a belief from Platonic Realism in epistemology.

As stated before, Platonic Realism is the idea that universals, including “the good,” exist in a transcendent realm of perfection beyond our world. An implication of this idea is our world is inherently flawed; it can only approximate “the good” and it can never match it. Original Sin is the application of this to human beings.

Because, according to this idea, humans are intrinsically flawed, they have to justify their existence. How? By sacrifice and service to something greater than themselves. Enter various codes of selfless morality, each promoting a different thing to serve; a tribe, a god, a king, a country… the Aryan race, the universal brotherhood of the proletariat, the list goes on.

In short, Rand argued that Auguste Comte’s definition of Altruism is the best encapsulator of a long-existent moral tradition based in Platonic misanthropy, exploited by the power-hungry and used to control people. It is used to justify heinous acts and violate individual rights. Finally, it does not actually serve the function of an ethical code in the first place; it fails to give guidance on how to live: it essentially states that one must sacrifice their values/life to others (which in turn makes their life impossible/unbearable), in order to deserve the right to live. Likewise, if one chooses to instead live their life with their values, then they are denounced as evil and unfit to live by society. This simple contradiction makes Altruism, in Rand’s eyes, a morality completely impossible to practice.

[BrainGlutton]

@panache45

My own take: It’s in my rational self-interest to live in a society of people who are free, healthy, educated and productive. So I have no problem helping people get back on their feet, as long as I can afford it and they deserve the help. But it’s not in my rational self-interest for the government to take my money and redistribute it to whoever they think needs and deserves it more than I do.

Depending on circumstances, a case could indeed be made that that is in your rational self-interest – not merely your cooperation in paying, but the policy itself. You and yours have to live your lives in the setting of a healthy or an unhealthy society, and what you are describing might well be essential to society’s health. A perfectly self-reliant Objectivist can still lose a child to a mugging or a drive-by – and there was nothing you as an individual could have done to prevent that much crime from being out there on the streets; that’s state business.

[Evil_Captor]

@Captain_Amazing

She was 23 and hadn’t come up with Objectivism yet.

< Mo Sizlak mode >You know what I blame that on the downfall of? Society! < /mode >

[Evil_Captor]

I wonder what Ayn Rand would have thought of the Sharks in Suits phenomenon, the idea that corporations are well populated with functional psychopaths, people who are totally uninterested in the welfare of others but manage not to actually torture and kill others (that we know of). Would she regard them as misunderstood successful objectivists? As vindication of her ideas emerging from the corporate mob, much as the Internet emerged from DARPA? What’s the Randian take on this phenomenon?