Did Ayn Rand sincerely believe that Objectivism would be good for mankind?

[Trinopus]

@BrainGlutton

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.

Thank’ee: that needed rebutting.

It is kind of fun to explore the divergence point. It would seem to be after WWI, but before WWII. WWII seems to have happened, but very differently. It looks much as if Stalin started things rolling, and just ate up Europe. Europe, meanwhile, by its own domestic enlightenment, softened communism, so that it isn’t hard-edged Stalinist terror, just a very strong form of socialism.

No nuclear physics. No fission reactors. No A-bombs.

(My favorite extrapolation is that the nuclear physicists, like John Galt, all ran away and hid. Maybe they formed their own refuge, somewhere in the Alps. We could call it Fermi’s Freehold.)

[msmith537]

@BrainGlutton

See post #76.

“Should not” be used as a roadmap for society.

[dataguy]

@Nzinga_Seated

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.

I didn’t call her a hypocrite. But if she felt justified because of the reason you stated, why did she have someone else arrange the benefits instead of doing it herself, openly?

[Learjeff]

@Trinopus

I enjoyed reading Atlas Shrugged.

Me too, and it was great for stimulating discussion.
[/quote]

Rand’s problem is oversimplification. … She’s like an idiot cook who has just discovered pepper. For the next few weeks, everything tastes like pepper. The difference is that most people get over this kind of phase in a few weeks. She never did.

Oversimplification in one way, coupled with deep dive on the other. I look at it as someone who has a new hammer, so every problem looks like a nail. She puts the hammer through its paces!

@coffeecat

She constantly accused those who don’t agree of being irrational, evil rotters, which doesn’t exactly encourage calm, unemotional discussion.

Bingo, and she makes the same mistake in Atlas Shrugged. The result is a one-dimensional aspect to all characters: if you say you’re interested in the well-being of others, you must be an evil, self-absorbed, self-seeker, and (OMG!) a homosexual to boot. Anyone caught looking out for everyone is deeply flawed. Personally, I resent this, as while I recognize the virtue of selfishness, I also just happen to like other people and want to do good by them. While Objectivism allows this, Atlas Shrugged doesn’t quite.

@BrainGlutton

One reason is that she was at least as dogmatic, loud, shrill, unbending, self-righteous, and dismissive of disagreement as Karl Marx, or Rush Limbaugh, or Madalyn Murray O’Hair. The sort of personality at which even persons in complete intellectual agreement are tempted to scream, “Stop helping me!”

Yeah, she was a real asshole.

@Amateur_Barbarian

The largest portion of Rand’s followers appear to be - and often prove out to be, after literally exhausting argument - ignorant of other socioeconomic philosophies and thus have no basis to make a rational evaluation of Rand’s. They can only argue from within their understanding, not comparatively. The same is true of most starry-eyed Communists I’ve met. It isn’t that they examined all the schools of thought and chose one, it’s that the first one to come along filled their intellectual tank and eliminated any further need to understand.

True, but an idea isn’t responsible for its apologists. There are some good ideas behind Objectivism.
[/QUOTE]

@Little_Nemo

Ayn Rand sincerely believed that Objectivism was good for Ayn Rand. And in accord with her beliefs she didn’t give a damn if it was any good for mankind.

I disagree, as many of her arguments are essentially justified by a utilitarian metric in the end (while not at all endorsing utilitarianism as a fundamental principle.)

I remember reading Anthem. I couldn’t figure out whether it was brilliant satire or obsequious muck. I was disheartened to learn it was the latter, after learning a bit about Rand. Atlas Shrugged is dramatically better, though still fails IMHO as literature due to the one-dimensional aspect to the characters. Of course, I like a lot of novels that I’d say “fail as literature”. It’s not a great novel, but it’s a great read, and thought provoking.

I do recommend reading a volume of her essays. I think the one I read was “The Virtue of Selfishness” including that essay and others, along with essays by Milton Friedman (IIRC) and others.

[Learjeff]

At bottom, though, I feel Rand fails as a philosopher of ethics. One of her primary points is that Objectivism isn’t just a valid ethical system: it’s THE ONLY CORRECT ONE. She bases this argument on the need for survival: ethics are meaningless without the human race.

It’s an interesting argument, but I reserve the right to my own values, and the tenet that an ethical system is predicated on values. A shared ethical system is based on shared values. (I’m a humanist.) I do not believe that survival under any circumstances is necessarily better than failing to survive. Rand does not allow me this choice, and says I’m flawed for my beliefs.

Rand would be dismayed to learn that while logic is logic, it isn’t necessarly the best tool for all seemingly logical problems. She dismissed any objections to basic logic (which I doubt she understood, in the way that Russell and his readers might) as silly academic exercises. I bet she’d be astonished to learn of cases where alternative logic systems are used in hard-core physics. Because, well, “A is A,” y’know.

[Trinopus]

@Learjeff

. . . Bingo, and she makes the same mistake in Atlas Shrugged. The result is a one-dimensional aspect to all characters: if you say you’re interested in the well-being of others, you must be an evil, self-absorbed, self-seeker, and (OMG!) a homosexual to boot. . . .

It’s intriguing to note, though, that she learned a little in the period between writing “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged.” In the former, Ellsworth Toohey, the villain, is even more of a cardboard cut-out of sniggering villainy. He actually is made to come right out and say that it is his goal to deny as many rights as he can to good people. Like Queen Bavmorda or Skeletor, cackling and being evil for its own sake.

By the time of Atlas Shrugged, she had developed a (slightly!) more mature viewpoint, that the impulse to help others is, as a law of nature, harmful, and thus people who follow it, while they may have good intentions, are, unbeknownst to themselves, engaging in an “anti-life principle.”

It’s still wrong, but it is somewhat less wrong. She improved her error-riddled philosophy, by stepping away from at least one or two of her errors.

In another five hundred years, she might even have arrived at a degree of political and philosophical moderation.

[Trinopus]

@Learjeff

. . . Atlas Shrugged is dramatically better, though still fails IMHO as literature due to the one-dimensional aspect to the characters. Of course, I like a lot of novels that I’d say “fail as literature”. It’s not a great novel, but it’s a great read, and thought provoking. . . .

Oops, I should have commented on this above.

One character in Atlas Shrugged actually engages in character growth, and shows some serious dramatic cleverness. “The Wet Nurse.” The guy is brought in as a nonentity, a minor character, but, little by little, he grows. At the end, he has his climactic heroic scene, climbing up out of the ditch to deliver his news.

I don’t think Rand really knew what she was doing there. I think “The Wet Nurse” is just one of those characters that can surprise even the writer himself and herself. Kurt Vonnegut writes about how characters can sometimes develop a “life of their own,” and make decisions that the writer never expected.

And…you are one of the very few people I’ve ever heard take the view that I also take: the book is a pretty good read, all in all. Interesting characters, fun dialogue, some good dramatic business, competent narration.

I’ve read an awful lot of books that weren’t as good!

[panache45]

I’ve tried staying out of this thread, and I will . . . after I make just a few points.

As some of you know, I actually knew Ayn Rand . . . back in the ‘60s, for about 18 months. I had met her at a lecture, and our conversation pretty much lasted all those 18 months . . . until, of course, she denounced me as being “hopelessly irrational” (I was in good company).

First of all, she was by far the most intelligent human being I’ve ever met. Talking with her was like a chess newbie playing a Grand Master. She could follow an argument, 12 steps ahead of everyone else. At times she seemed like the next evolutionary step, after we mere humans become obsolete. And it was a special treat to play Scrabble with her . . . and get soundly beaten.

Yes, she believed that her philosophy would transform the world, for the better. We all believed it back then. But she warned us about getting involved in politics. She said there has to be an ethical revolution before a political one. We had to teach people to live for their rational self-interest first.

Which leads to the issue of charity or benevolence. Rand was, herself, an extremely generous person . . . mostly by being very supportive of young people who were needy, through no fault of their own. There’s a scene in Atlas where Dagny explains to her sister-in-law Cheryl that she wasn’t helping her because she suffered, but because she didn’t deserve to suffer. This is a distinction that a lot of critics miss. You can be extremely generous to people, but only the ones who deserve it and share your values. Her attitude wasn’t “I’ve got mine, fuck you;” but “I’ve got mine; if you want, let me help you get yours.” She did consider charity to be a virtue, though a minor one . . . as opposed to, say, Christianity.

For years, after my break with her, I tried to find out where was Objectivism’s fatal flaw; what was at the root of the philosophy’s errors. And I was always aware of the errors, but needed to discover the connections and causes. Rand was fond of saying “There are no contradictions; check your premises.” So I went back to her premises and I finally concluded that it was an epistemological error (Rand herself said that a philosophy is only as strong as its epistemology). I concluded that it was her definition of “Man, as a being of volitional consciousness, with Reason as his only absolute” and the idea that our minds, at birth, are entirely *tabula rasa. *What she ignored was the fact that we’re more than just consciousness; we’re also physical beings, and if your ethics are based exclusively on the needs of a volitional conscious, you’re ignoring your physical nature. If your political theories are based on the needs of “man the rational,” how can you ignore “man the healthy” or “woman the elderly”? I think every single flaw of Objectivism can be traced to these mistakes.

I still have an enormous respect for Rand, and will always be grateful for the things she taught me . . . though I am now more able to stand back and judge her more “objectively.”

Anyway . . . I’m not here to defend her or to engage in arguments; just explain her a little. I won’t be back in this thread; I really don’t have a dog in this fight anymore.

[BrainGlutton]

@panache45

Yes, she believed that her philosophy would transform the world, for the better. We all believed it back then. But she warned us about getting involved in politics. She said there has to be an ethical revolution before a political one. We had to teach people to live for their rational self-interest first.

Yeah, well, we already had that. Remember the '80s? Didn’t help things in general very much.

[bldysabba]

@panache45

For years, after my break with her, I tried to find out where was Objectivism’s fatal flaw; what was at the root of the philosophy’s errors. And I was always aware of the errors, but needed to discover the connections and causes. Rand was fond of saying “There are no contradictions; check your premises.” So I went back to her premises and I finally concluded that it was an epistemological error (Rand herself said that a philosophy is only as strong as its epistemology). I concluded that it was her definition of “Man, as a being of volitional consciousness, with Reason as his only absolute” and the idea that our minds, at birth, are entirely *tabula rasa. *What she ignored was the fact that we’re more than just consciousness; we’re also physical beings, and if your ethics are based exclusively on the needs of a volitional conscious, you’re ignoring your physical nature. If your political theories are based on the needs of “man the rational,” how can you ignore “man the healthy” or “woman the elderly”? I think every single flaw of Objectivism can be traced to these mistakes.

I still have an enormous respect for Rand, and will always be grateful for the things she taught me . . . though I am now more able to stand back and judge her more “objectively.”

Anyway . . . I’m not here to defend her or to engage in arguments; just explain her a little. I won’t be back in this thread; I really don’t have a dog in this fight anymore.

I find myself in agreement with your conclusion, having independently reached something quite similar to it earlier (I mention it up-thread). She does have some wiggle room there - she thinks man’s consciousness and attendant rationality are his most important distinguishing features, and those are thus the ones that should eventually take primacy. But that is easily the most flawed of her premises. Strangely, little to no criticism is ever turned upon this point, which is actually difficult to defend, but people will go on about how monstrous and selfish her ideas are, when in fact they are among the least monstrous things I’ve ever read, and as I’ve also mentioned upthread, helped me appreciate other people more. All you have to do is read for comprehension.

ETA: Another point since you knew her - is it true that she learned English only after reaching adulthood? That seems quite remarkable.

[msmith537]

@bldysabba

I find myself in agreement with your conclusion, having independently reached something quite similar to it earlier (I mention it up-thread). She does have some wiggle room there - she thinks man’s consciousness and attendant rationality are his most important distinguishing features, and those are thus the ones that should eventually take primacy. But that is easily the most flawed of her premises. Strangely, little to no criticism is ever turned upon this point, which is actually difficult to defend, but people will go on about how monstrous and selfish her ideas are, when in fact they are among the least monstrous things I’ve ever read, and as I’ve also mentioned upthread, helped me appreciate other people more. All you have to do is read for comprehension.

I think it would be more accurate to say that Rand sincerely believed that mankind would be better off if we were closer to idealized model described by Objectivism. That is to say, intelligent, rational and acting in enlightened self-interest.

The problem is people don’t act that way. Or at least enough of them don’t act that way to make universal application of that philosophy impractical.

@panache45

Which leads to the issue of charity or benevolence. Rand was, herself, an extremely generous person . . . mostly by being very supportive of young people who were needy, through no fault of their own. There’s a scene in Atlas where Dagny explains to her sister-in-law Cheryl that she wasn’t helping her because she suffered, but because she didn’t deserve to suffer. This is a distinction that a lot of critics miss. You can be extremely generous to people, but only the ones who deserve it and share your values. Her attitude wasn’t “I’ve got mine, fuck you;” but “I’ve got mine; if you want, let me help you get yours.” She did consider charity to be a virtue, though a minor one . . . as opposed to, say, Christianity.

I’m sure you know better than I, but Rand seemed to make a distinction between charity and benevolence and “altruism” as a moral and economic philosophy. I think this is where people get confused and equate Objectivism with “I’ve got mine, fuck you”.

Altruism is defined as "behavior that promotes the survival others at a cost to ones own or “self-sacrifice for the benefit of others”. Sounds pretty horrible to me. Like your needs and wants and interests and even your life in certain instances aren’t worth anything outside the context of the “greater good”. A lot of governments, religions and other institutions often expect their members to act in a manner that puts the greater good ahead of themselves. And yet there always seems to be some members in the inner circle for who the greater good seems to be a little better.

[BrainGlutton]

@msmith537

Altruism is defined as "behavior that promotes the survival others at a cost to ones own or “self-sacrifice for the benefit of others”. Sounds pretty horrible to me. Like your needs and wants and interests and even your life in certain instances aren’t worth anything outside the context of the “greater good”. A lot of governments, religions and other institutions often expect their members to act in a manner that puts the greater good ahead of themselves. And yet there always seems to be some members in the inner circle for who the greater good seems to be a little better.

From “The Art of Donald McGill,” by George Orwell (1941):

What [Donald McGill’s comic postcards] are doing is to give expression to the Sancho Panza view of life, the attitude to life that Miss Rebecca West once summed up as ‘extracting as much fun as possible from smacking behinds in basement kitchens’. The Don Quixote-Sancho Panza combination, which of course is simply the ancient dualism of body and soul in fiction form, recurs more frequently in the literature of the last four hundred years than can be explained by mere imitation. It comes up again and again, in endless variations, Bouvard and Pécuchet, Jeeves and Wooster, Bloom and Dedalus, Holmes and Watson (the Holmes-Watson variant is an exceptionally subtle one, because the usual physical characteristics of two partners have been transposed). Evidently it corresponds to something enduring in our civilization, not in the sense that either character is to be found in a ‘pure’ state in real life, but in the sense that the two principles, noble folly and base wisdom, exist side by side in nearly every human being. If you look into your own mind, which are you, Don Quixote or Sancho Panza? Almost certainly you are both. There is one part of you that wishes to be a hero or a saint, but another part of you is a little fat man who sees very clearly the advantages of staying alive with a whole skin. He is your unofficial self, the voice of the belly protesting against the soul. His tastes lie towards safety, soft beds, no work, pots of beer and women with ‘voluptuous’ figures. He it is who punctures your fine attitudes and urges you to look after Number One, to be unfaithful to your wife, to bilk your debts, and so on and so forth. Whether you allow yourself to be influenced by him is a different question. But it is simply a lie to say that he is not part of you, just as it is a lie to say that Don Quixote is not part of you either, though most of what is said and written consists of one lie or the other, usually the first.

But though in varying forms he is one of the stock figures of literature, in real life, especially in the way society is ordered, his point of view never gets a fair hearing. There is a constant world-wide conspiracy to pretend that he is not there, or at least that he doesn’t matter. Codes of law and morals, or religious systems, never have much room in them for a humorous view of life. Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie, and the reason why so large a proportion of jokes centre round obscenity is simply that all societies, as the price of survival, have to insist on a fairly high standard of sexual morality. A dirty joke is not, of course, a serious attack upon morality, but it is a sort of mental rebellion, a momentary wish that things were otherwise. So also with all other jokes, which always centre round cowardice, laziness, dishonesty or some other quality which society cannot afford to encourage. Society has always to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice. It has to demand faultless discipline and self-sacrifice, it must expect its subjects to work hard, pay their taxes, and be faithful to their wives, it must assume that men think it glorious to die on the battlefield and women want wear themselves out with child-bearing. The whole of what one may call official literature is founded on such assumptions. I never read the proclamations of generals before battle, the speeches of Führers and prime ministers, the solidarity songs of public schools and left-wing political parties, national anthems, Temperance tracts, papal encyclicals and sermons against gambling and contraception, without seeming to hear in the background a chorus of raspberries from all the millions of common men to whom these high sentiments make no appeal. Nevertheless the high sentiments always win in the end, leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic. Women face childbed and the scrubbing brush, revolutionaries keep their mouths shut in the torture chamber, battleships go down with their guns still firing when their decks are awash. It is only that the other element in man, the lazy, cowardly, debt-bilking adulterer who is inside all of us, can never be suppressed altogether and needs a hearing occasionally.

[bldysabba]

@BrainGlutton

From “The Art of Donald McGill,” by George Orwell (1941):

Could you explain your point in your own words? Your quoted extract is not doing a good job.

[bldysabba]

Here’s a quote of my own, from the comment section of the NYT(the fifth most highly rated), the column is on how women encourage men to be more generous. If anyone doubted that some forms of altruism demand that people not experience any good from their generosity, here.

The problem with this article started right at the beginning by citing Bill Gates as a generous billionaire. Bill Gates doesn’t just GIVE. He puts money in places where he wants to control the conversation. He floods certain areas with money so he can control the agenda. What makes Bill Gates an expert on education? The fact that he is a billionaire. If he were truly generous and truly giving, he would give money for research and then sit back with an open mind and let the researchers arrive at their conclusions. If he were truly generous, then he would pay taxes on his money and let it flow to society through government funding. But he takes his riches, uses them to avoid paying taxes, and uses them to control the agenda, and uses them in ways that people will lionize him. And his “generosity” does not crimp his lifestyle one iota.
Let’s scratch the surface on rich people’s 'giving." How many of them truly give?

Not only must you give away the majority of your fortune, you must also do it so that you have no say which causes it should go to, how it should be used, and, if you really want it to count, by the time you’re done giving, you’d better be hurting, by gad.

[BrainGlutton]

@bldysabba

Could you explain your point in your own words? Your quoted extract is not doing a good job.

He’s talking about self-sacrifice for the greater good, and society/institutions demanding same, and from his perspective, which is clearer than yours, that is neither a bad nor a remarkable thing at all.

[bldysabba]

@BrainGlutton

He’s talking about self-sacrifice for the greater good, and society/institutions demanding same, and from his perspective, which is clearer than yours, that is neither a bad nor a remarkable thing at all.

I note you’re still not bothering to explain your point. And the point that you’re alluding you want to make is moot. Rand wouldn’t have an issue with people giving up their life to protect an institution - as long as it was an institution they want protected, Galt was perfectly willing to give up his life for his ideals - ideals that he had examined and arrived at from the point of view of rational self interest.

[BrainGlutton]

@bldysabba

I note you’re still not bothering to explain your point. And the point that you’re alluding you want to make is moot. Rand wouldn’t have an issue with people giving up their life to protect an institution - as long as it was an institution they want protected, Galt was perfectly willing to give up his life for his ideals - ideals that he had examined and arrived at from the point of view of rational self interest.

Yeah, well, you don’t always get to pick and choose like that. The state’s claim to tax you is legitimate regardless of whether you approve of how the money is spent.

[bldysabba]

@BrainGlutton

Yeah, well, you don’t always get to pick and choose like that. The state’s claim to tax you is legitimate regardless of whether you approve of how the money is spent.

Unless you choose to go on strike, as people in Atlas Shrugged do. Which is also a legitimate response if you don’t approve of how your tax money is spent.
ETA: Not that taxation has much to do with sacrificing your life.

[Learjeff]

@Trinopus

One character in Atlas Shrugged actually engages in character growth, and shows some serious dramatic cleverness. “The Wet Nurse.” The guy is brought in as a nonentity, a minor character, but, little by little, he grows. At the end, he has his climactic heroic scene, climbing up out of the ditch to deliver his news.

True, but his growth is in one dimension. All characters are lined up against a single ruler. This is intentional, to support the thesis. This adds to it as an essay but detracts from it as literature. I’m sure Rand was more interested in the former than the latter.

Admittedly, Rand’s characters varied in ways that had to do with other dimensions, but none of these dimensions were really important to the plot or the outcome. Plus one for exposition, minus one for verisimilitude.

[Learjeff]

@panache45

I’ve tried staying out of this thread, and I will . . . after I make just a few points.

Please don’t stay out. I found your post interesting. I’m not surprised to hear your assessment of her intelligence.

My bottom line is that Rand is worth reading, even though I have some fundamental disagreements with her positions, and despite my criticism of AS as literature. (It doesn’t meet Nabokov’s nearly universally acknowledged acid tests for literature, but I’ve enjoyed a lot of great books that didn’t meet those criteria.)

Plus, I very much agree with Rand that there is a limit to productive capacity, but there is no end to need, so any attempt to base an economic system on need is doomed. While I tend to be in favor of a single-payer health care system (despite being fiscally conservative), this fact worries me.