# Did Ayn Rand sincerely believe that Objectivism would be good for mankind? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 17, 2013, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784 "2013-07-17T20:32:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/61 "2013-07-18T13:10:54Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But, she isn’t. (And that is not even one of the several meanings of “romantic.”) In the [Romanticism v. Enlightenment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Guizot) war, Rand is **solidly** on the side of Team Enlightenment. So is Karl Marx. (Rousseau, Nietzsche and Hitler play for Team Romanticism.) She calls her aesthetics “Romantic Realism”- the presentation of life as it should and can be. She would thus own being called a Romantic but not a Romanticist. Just like I may believe in Divine Creation via Evolution but am technically neither a Creationist nor an Evolutionist. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/62 "2013-07-18T14:03:47Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Rand did not believe in some monolithic “everyone”. There isn’t a “society” in the sense that decisions should be made for the “greater good”. Merely a collection of lots of people, each with their own needs, desires and agendas. It’s not that this reductionist picture of the anthill is completely wrong, it’s that it is incomplete without the holistic picture. Figure/ground. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/63 "2013-07-18T14:04:52Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I don’t know. Who is John Galt? Not you. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/64 "2013-07-18T14:09:01Z")
> [@FriarTed](#): > > She calls her aesthetics “Romantic Realism”- the presentation of life as it should and can be. She would thus own being called a Romantic but not a Romanticist. Once again, I think there was already an old word for that: [Homiletics.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homiletics) And a new one, too: [Author Tract.](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AuthorTract) Either is both better and more applicable than “Romantic Realism.” ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/65 "2013-07-18T15:13:08Z")
Admittedly I’ve never read the source material, but the impression that I get from what I know of her philosophy and its adherents was that rather than forming a philosophical system and seeing what conclusions result, it seems more that the conclusions that selfishness was moral and that support for the needy was bad came first and then a philosophy was developed to rationalize those conclusions. In this way its like creationists pointing at the grand canyon as evidence of the great flood. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/66 "2013-07-18T15:16:38Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > But I don’t doubt that Rand honestly believes that her philosophy is the best thing for humanity. > > So do you think she is actually greedy and wicked, or that she is honestly trying to practice what she calls ‘rational selfishness’ which she believes will result in a better life for everyone, including the less fortunate? > > I have tried a thread about Rand before. I am hoping this one will answer my questions and allow me the chance to discuss a topic that interests me, because like I said, whenever I try to have these discussions, especially in real life, I find that people won’t even take me seriously. I do not exaggerate when I say I have been called an idiot for even tussling with the subject as much as I have. That hasn’t been exactly fertile soil for discussion! You’re not an idiot. At issue is not whether she was genuinely committed to her convictions. She may well have been. But so was Marx. That doesn’t make it a good/right philosophy. What’s more, it’s easy to show how it falls short of being applicable in the real world. So while we can academically debate whether these types of utopias can be achieved if only people do as they “should”, the fact is that societies are simply to complex to realistically expect them to conform to a single minded ideal. In that respect alone, Rand’s idea are naive. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/67 "2013-07-18T15:51:08Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Admittedly I’ve never read the source material, but the impression that I get from what I know of her philosophy and its adherents was that rather than forming a philosophical system and seeing what conclusions result, it seems more that the conclusions that selfishness was moral and that support for the needy was bad came first and then a philosophy was developed to rationalize those conclusions. In this way its like creationists pointing at the grand canyon as evidence of the great flood. Charles Darwin started out as a traditional religious believer, and only very reluctantly, with anxiety, and by stages abandoned the faith, in light of his scientific discoveries whose implications he could not honestly deny to himself. I mention that only because it is a **highly unusual** story in intellectual history in any field. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/68 "2013-07-18T17:27:08Z")
An Objectivist Atlas will shrug When the ladies won’t go past a hug Self-reliant as Rand Is his own nimble hand On his Fountainhead ready to tug! ---
**Author:** ![MrQwertyasd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/69 "2013-07-18T18:33:23Z")
Maybe she just had slightly retarded empathy neurons. Time for a new thread. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/70 "2013-07-18T18:35:21Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#): > > Maybe she just had slightly retarded empathy neurons. Time for a new thread. A thread asking whether “empathy neurons” exist? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/71 "2013-07-18T18:36:05Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Admittedly I’ve never read the source material, but the impression that I get from what I know of her philosophy and its adherents was that rather than forming a philosophical system and seeing what conclusions result, it seems more that the conclusions that selfishness was moral and that support for the needy was bad came first and then a philosophy was developed to rationalize those conclusions. In this way its like creationists pointing at the grand canyon as evidence of the great flood. If we’re going to engage in some psycho-biographical speculation, it is impossible to overstate the impact the Russian revolution had on Alisa Rosenbaum. She came from a petit bourgeois Jewish family, and lived through the revolution and civil war and triumph of the Bolsheviks as a young adult. So the notion of collectivists smashing and enslaving a country was something she lived through. A cat that sits on a hot stove will never sit on hot stove again. But they won’t sit on a cold one either. The notion that the first real axiom of her ethical system was “helping starving people is bad” and the rest followed from that is simply ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/72 "2013-07-18T21:19:13Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > . . . Trinopus - Atlas Shrugged takes place in an alternate history. Much of the rest of the world consists of “People’s States of Wherever”, technologies like TV and the airplane are less significant, and the structure of the US Government is different. Since Ayn Rand could…you know..read, I’m pretty sure she knew what the actual title of the POTUS was. Why did she construct an entirely fictional world history? What significant advantage does this have over taking the real world and introducing a significant fictional change in the course of the novel? By separating her world from reality, it distances its moral lessons from relevance. She probably did know who the President was. But why does her world not even have a President? Why call it “The United States” if it more closely resembles Graustark? > [@](#): > > Based on her philosophy, they would either wash their own dishes and empty their own latrines, or pay someone else a fair wage to do it. You wouldn’t be killed. You would simply be evicted from the owner’s property and you’d have to figure your own shit out if you ran out of money. Would you be allowed to go free, perhaps to inform a highly interested U.S. Government about the location of Galt’s Gulch? Do they respect individual freedom that far? > [@](#): > > . . . Rand would be against your sense of entitlement that “washing dishes and cleaning latrines” is somehow less meaningful work and certain people deserve more or less money based on your arbitrary whim. You would appear to be projecting, given that I never said any such thing. > [@](#): > > But she would also be very much against TARP or any sort of financial bailouts or subsidies by the government. Then again, she would also have us on the gold standard so there would probably less of these exotic derivatives. Personally, I think TARP was a very good idea, as it lessened the severity of the recent recession. Tens of thousands of jobs were preserved, which would have been lost. The Federal Reserve Bank provides the same service, by preventing panics, which the gold standard (even if there were enough gold, which there isn’t!) can’t do. In these regards, Rand is (or would be) a fucking idiot. > [@](#): > > If you think running an investment bank is that easy, I would invite you to go apply for a job at Goldman Sachs or Bank of America and see if you can handle being an analyst. I couldn’t. But the vice-president of the bank could. And the CFO of the bank could. And the controller of the bank could. If the top tier executives were raptured, the economy would not collapse. > [@](#): > > According to Rand’s philosophies, it’s really none of your concern how the owners of a company spend their money or run their business. If a business owner wants to pull a Francisco d’Anconia and run his company into the ground out of spite, well, that should just make room for some aspiring entrepreneur to fill in the gap. If he is the sole owner, maybe. Was the oil tycoon the sole owner of his oil wells? In practice, of course, I favor eminent domain as a means of taking up public ownership of property that is in danger of being destroyed. Your right to set fire to your house is limited, and not solely by fire-hazard rules. When the guy in “Field of Dreams” started ploughing under his corn, there actually are legal mechanisms in place to stop him. (Not least, laws against self-harm.) I’m willing to admit that this degree of public/private intwinement is debatable. But if the Oil Guy wasn’t the sole owner of his oil wells, then he committed a crime against the property of other people. And, in the real world, oil tycoons are never the sole owners of their oil wells. > [@](#): > > But much like our world, the world of Atlas Shrugged had few people who could actually “do stuff”. I hold this premise of the novel to be a load of hooey. The real world has many, many, many people who can actually do stuff, and most of them do it pretty well. Go to any amateur art show. Attend any back-street concert. Read books by people who aren’t professionally published. (The SDMB has several.) Look at the tens of thousands of small businesses that succeed. Rand’s anti-humanism was, in my opinion, odious. She sold humanity short. ---
**Author:** ![dataguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eada6e/32.png) [@dataguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dataguy)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/73 "2013-07-18T21:38:44Z")
I read Atlas Shrugged years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. At the time, I considered it intellectually stimulating. However, I never seriously considered it a model for an actual society. It was just an interesting tale with philosophical overttones I agree with other posters who have pointed out that no theoretical system, whether political or economic, survives translation to the real world intact. This includes her theory of Objectvism. I think she realized this later in life and was trapped in a philosophical straightjacket of her own making. In her old age she was forced to accept Social Security, and maybe Medicare, but was too ashamed to apply for it herself, so she had [someone else do it for her](http://www.patiastephens.com/2010/12/05/ayn-rand-received-social-security-medicare/). I also agree that some of her positions are misinterpreted or misunderstood by many people. But her admiration for rugged individualism goes a step too far for me when she expresses admiration/fascination for a gruesome serial killer named William Edward Hickman, which was [discussed on this very board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=604618). Here’s one of her comments about him: > [@](#): > > This is not just the case of a terrible crime. It is not the crime alone that has raised that fury of public hatred. It is the case of a daring challenge to society. It is the fact that a crime has been committed by one man, alone; that this man knew it was against all laws of humanity and intended it that way; that he does not want to recognize it as a crime and that he feels superior to all. It is the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/74 "2013-07-18T21:50:23Z")
But, dataguy, can one consider her a hypocrite on the Social Security issue? She was collecting on a system that she was forced to pay into. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/75 "2013-07-18T22:02:18Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Personally, I think TARP was a very good idea, as it lessened the severity of the recent recession. Tens of thousands of jobs were preserved, which would have been lost. The Federal Reserve Bank provides the same service, by preventing panics, which the gold standard (even if there were enough gold, which there isn’t!) can’t do. > > In these regards, Rand is (or would be) a fucking idiot. Well, she had a lot to say about philosophy, ethics, politics, and art, but I never heard of her even pretending to understand economics. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/76 "2013-07-18T22:03:47Z")
> [@dataguy](#): > > I read Atlas Shrugged years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. At the time, I considered it intellectually stimulating. However, I never seriously considered it a model for an actual society. But Rand did. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/77 "2013-07-18T22:16:05Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Why did she construct an entirely fictional world history? Why did George Orwell or Aldous Huxley? > [@Trinopus](#): > > Would you be allowed to go free, perhaps to inform a highly interested U.S. Government about the location of Galt’s Gulch? Do they respect individual freedom that far? They respected it above all else. They let Dagny Taggart leave. > [@](#): > > I hold this premise of the novel to be a load of hooey. The real world has many, many, many people who can actually do stuff, and most of them do it pretty well. > > Go to any amateur art show. Attend any back-street concert. Read books by people who aren’t professionally published. (The SDMB has several.) Look at the tens of thousands of small businesses that succeed. And that’s great and all. And there is a place for art. But the world can run without artists. It can’t run without people who know how to build railroads and mines and electrical plants and steel mills and whatnot. Like most fiction, it’s an idealized world, not a roadmap for society. People in Atlas Shrugged are either Henry Ford, Bill Gates and Thomas Edison all rolled into one. Or they are Lumberg from Office Space. The problem with all absolutist ideologies, whether it’s laissez faire capitalism, communism, objectivism or whatever, is that they don’t account for the various exceptions for who the system doesn’t work (other than perhaps killing them or allowing them to go fuck themselves). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/78 "2013-07-18T22:37:55Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Why did George Orwell or Aldous Huxley? Not the same. Their dystopian novels were not alternate-history, they were set in the future relative to the time-of-writing and assumed a world that had grown out of the real world as it existed at the time-of-writing. _AS_ apparently assumes an alternate history, with what AH fans call the point-of-divergence at some time **before** Rand wrote it, but the POD is never specified or hinted at, AFAIK. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/79 "2013-07-18T22:39:06Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > But the world can run without artists. Try telling **that** to Howard Roark! :mad: ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2013, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784/80 "2013-07-18T22:40:31Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Like most fiction, it’s an idealized world, not a roadmap for society. See post #76. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ayn-rand-sincerely-believe-that-objectivism-would-be-good-for-mankind/663784.md?page=5)