I just read jarbabyj’s Ayn Rants.
That faint sound you hear on the breeze, coming from the direction of Arizona?
That’s me, giving jarbabyj a standing ovation.
Guin… glorifying rape, huh? I didn’t get that impression from the book, though I’ve only read it once. As I recall, the female in question wanted old Howard and didn’t admit it to herself, but Howard knew. A bit dramatic, I think, but there you go.
ITR" Many people have complained that this book is long. Well it isn’t.
Good. I’m glad we got that misconception cleared up."
I think the idea is that writing a novel trying to both show how a lack of philisophical principles and/or reason applied on a macro scale causes the downfall of society and offering a solution to the problem is something that might just take a few pages. I don’t know about what philosophers you look up now and then, but they can pump out a few thousand pages themselves over the course of their lifetime, and they don’t even have any character development to work with.
Maybe its just me, though.
I think this is a misrepresentation of everything she’s said. Anyone who acts without reason is “inferior.” There’s nothing which states you can’t have a reason to be compassionate.
Montfort said:
Oh, so you don’t believe in the existence of an external world which exists independent of human perception? You don’t believe that man uses reason-- primarily-- as a tool for understanding the world around him? You don’t believe that you should be the most important person to yourself?
Oh, and “Hi!” kabbes 
“His eyes were scornful. He owned her lips. ‘Merger,’ she cried, ‘merger,’ as he entered her with his corporate structure.”
The most important person to me is not myself, but the lovely woman quoted in my sig.
It’s too early on a Saturday morning, and I haven’t had any caffeine yet, to consider your other questions.
I thought it was agreed that libertarian does not equal objectivist/Randian. But, yes, I forgot about Tom Sawyer. While doing a quick perusal of post-1976 Rush, I passed over that song. It is rather Randian, I suppose. I prefer to think of it as Twainian, however.
I’m reading the reviews for both Atlas and Fountain. Blech.
I gotta read this crap now. I hope I don’t turn into a Randian…if I do, guys, promise me you’ll talk me back into it…
eris-I have a crazy belief that when a woman tells a guy no, he should stop, even if he thinks she wants him.
:rolleyes:
I also don’t believe a “perfect” human being fails to take into account those surrounding him, or doesn’t care about others. What Rand describes is known as a sociopath, or worse, a psychopath.
Whew, good thing this happens in a book then, huh? The Fountainhead glorifies rape like Platoon glorifies killing.
It is a common flaw of Randians to read her books like a bible. Apparently, it is a flaw of her opponents as well.
Silly me, I was under the impression though, that Roark was supposed to be her Ideal Man, perfect, a hero.
So, for a Perfect Man to be a rapist, you gotta wonder what this broad’s been smoking…
So, is it just a “story?” Or was it her perfect idea of what a man should be?
Rand had rather strange views on sex, it seems. She believed that dominance was a masculine trait, and that women should be submissive, but on their own terms. To her, this was perfectly rational.
In The Fountainhead, the characters seem to often have the ability to simply know what each other thinks. Thus Roark knows that Dominique wants him, despite any real evidence to the contrary. And Dominique wanted to be dominated by Roark. Yes, it’s fucked up, and in the real world would be rape, but if you accept that this is a bit of Rand’s fantasy world, where Roark can really and truly know what Dominique wants, and people really behave like this, it’s a bit less so.
Then again, I really wasn’t incredibly fond of The Fountainhead myself. Anthem or Atlas Shrugged would be far better reading, IMHO. Anthem especially, as it is really short, and doesn’t get as involved with long philosophical discussions. I’ll admit that I skipped over Galt’s 40 page speech in Atlas Shrugged when I first read it. It says the same thing as the other 1200 or so pages, but is slower reading.
Rand’s view of love involves a great deal of ownership, possession… near-worship of how much another person means to one when they’re in love. She didn’t want to have sex, she wanted to be taken. The scenes between Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged tell a much stronger tale in this way then The Fountainhead.
I found the whole scenario to be no different that some of the romance novels I’ve read, where characters feel a passion that consumes them and changes the way they see themselves and other people. Yes, Roark was Rand’s hero, second only to Galt (which I personally never understood, I always liked Fransisco better), and he could read her mind if you’d care to think of it that way. He knew exactly what she wanted, exactly what she needed. It was anticipatory action.
You’re talking about a woman who held physical force as a primary means to be the lowest form of action a person could take… think she really would advocate out-and-out rape? Wait, don’t answer that: I’m sure you’d say “yes.” :rolleyes:
Considering how she tended to force her own views on people and insulted and belittled anyone who disagreed with her as “evil?”
Calling someone “evil” doesn’t qualify as force, though. Neither does belittling and insulting them.
Intimidation-which she was very capable of using-is a type of force.
What I’m saying is that for someone so dedicated to “individualism”, she sure seemed to think everyone who wasn’t like her was inferior.
Certainly, especially later on, she convinced herself that whatever tastes she might happen to have were made on the basis of moral correctness. This is less apparent in her novels, where she seems to have tried to make her heroes more unique, but just sucked at doing so. Later on, however, she was surrounded by sycophants who took her every whim as a perfectly reasoned moral imperative, and I’d imagine it inflated her already oversized ego.
As for intimidation, she would not have considered that force, even if you do. Remember that she believed in the supremacy of reason, and that there is really no rational reason to fear being called evil by someone. She also seems to have believed something akin to Neizche’s Uebermensch theory, whereby she could get away with more than others, but again, this is less apparent in her novels than it would become later.
Face the facts. Atlas Shrugged is ridiculously repetitive. The notorious closing speech, for example, could easily be shortened to ten pages without losing anything. There are tons of occasions where the same idea or concept gets repeated over and over, like the scene where all the industrialists who have gone into hiding give lengthy explanations for their motivations. This makes the entire book incredibly tedious and boring. And that’s not just my opinion. Most critics and readers feel that way as well.
And AS does not offer a solution. It offers a fairy tale. A few industrial leaders going into hiding would not cause the entire world to come to a halt, thus forcing everybody to realize the wonders of total capitalism and the importance of government. Our economy doesn’t run because of a few geniuses who control everything; it runs because of millions of hardworking people all doing their jobs. Ayn Rand, of course, makes her feelings towards the working class pretty clear.
And what’s with all these nuts at amazon saying that because Mrs. Rand is explaining philosophy, her books shouldn’t be judged as novels? Wake up people. They are novels. They will be judged as novels, by the same standards as we judge other novels. Maybe if these cult members could stop slobbering over AS and The Fountainhead long enough to read a few other books, they would realize that all good literature is designed to explain all or part of the author’s philosophy. True, most great authors didn’t go for the same sledgehammer tactics that Rand used; that why they’re considered great authors.
In AS, none of the “good guys” act out of compassion, regardless of whether or not they have a reason. Thus, it seems reasonable to conclude that Rand didn’t support compassion in any circumstances, and that’s the attitude that I get anytime I talk to her fans. If you check the comments page at amazon, you’ll see that one guy has written a lovely explanation of why Habitat for Humanity is evil, and it’s fairly obvious that Rand would approve of such sentiments. Well, as it happens, I feel that compassion is good, and I do not need to present any reason before I exercise it. If I want to spend a week working for Habitat for Humanity, I will do exactly that, even though there clearly isn’t any logical reason to do so. As I’ve said before, Ayn Rand’s appeal is not linked to reason. She’s popular among pimpled, horny teenagers because she tells them to feel good about themselves. (Well, she also provides rape fantasies.)
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I didn’t care for Atlas Shrugged but I did get into her non-fiction books and essays.
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Some people are just strange. If that person had actually take time to read other things besides Atlas Shrugged he might have had a different attitude. Rand never said there was anything wrong with charity or goodwill towards the well being of your fellow man. It is true that she didn’t believe charity was much of a virtue. After all if you’re not a productive person then being charitable doesn’t do anyone much good. She specifically said that giving charity was ok so long as it didn’t constitute a sacrafice.
I think Objectivism is a good philosophy but I don’t worship Rand as a goddess. She said some things that I certain disagree with. As for Habitat for Humanity that is one of my all time favorite charities and from her other writings I personally think Rand would have approved. HfH is a helping hand for those people who are willing to put some effort into owning a home. They actually take part in the building of their own home as well as the homes of other people.
Marc
I honestly don’t think so. Each “repetition” is supposed to add another level of depth to the idea, until the very end when Galt’s Speech acts as a sumnation of all the points together. There is a constant, explicit motiff in the book excersized through speech; I didn’t find it ultimately repetative as each speech held new insight to the same ideas.
Well, perhaps we didn’t read the same book.
Does she really? When was that, when Dagny Taggart was trying like hell to hireand keep all these great workers, offering them larger and larger sums of money, more respectable positions, etc, in order to keep her railroad running? Was that when Ayn detailed the workers of Rearden Steel being the best of the best, taking pride in good work? Each character that accepted personal responsibility in that novel was written about with some bit of praise. Social or economic status itself had little, if nothing, to do with whether a person was “good” or “evil.” If you have read it, perhaps you remember the young man whistling Halley’s Fifth Concerto in the train car, wherein Dagny suddenly demands to know where he heard that from as Halley only wrote 4 (or something, and I may have the names wrong, but if you’ve read the story I’m sure you’ll remember). Obviously that “common” man had visited the Gulch and heard him play.
I disagree heartily and wholly. Dagny and Hank’s love affair; the bracelet of Rearden Steel; Ragnar’s reverse taxation; every character at the Gulch interacts that way. Their compassion takes the form of respect. Respect for another man’s labor; respect for another man’s valuation of production, advancement, and liesure. Their compassion does not take the form of charity. It is a different compassion than you may be used to.
Only if your understanding of compassion is as inflexible as you are accusing Ayn Rand of being.
I wrote one such comment some time ago. The people there treat those commentaries like debates, which makes me not read them with any degree of care.
What movie was it, Se7en?, where Morgan Freeman says to Brad Pitt’s character, (paraphrased), “Watching a man act from raw emotions is impressive” or somesuch, albeit not without a hint of (deserved) sarcasm.
You are free to act without internal justification. I would then ask that you not demand justification from others.
I continue to disagree with this statement.
Right on. Rand’s beliefs were that if you liked something, there had to be an objective philosophical reason for liking it, and since that reason was objective and held true for everybody, anyone who didn’t like that thing was being illogical, ergo immoral. Thus such sad absurdities as describing Bach’s music as evil.
The possibility that her reasons for liking something might be rooted in characteristics peculiar to herself as a unique individual, rather than solely in the characteristics of the object she liked, appears literally to have never occurred to her.
One of the most important things I learned from Rand is that reality is objective: facts are facts, regardless of whether I wish them to be otherwise. I might wish Rand to be perfect, but my observations tell me otherwise.
Philosophical dualism cum Manicheanism was not invented by Rand, and she wasn’t the last person to use it, and it is far more common a tactic in GD than some would care to admit.
If half of the people who arguied like Rand knew it, they may take a different opinion of her. 
I spent some time flipping through a few books of her’s at Borders today.
One was a copy of her writing notes in the margins of various articles. She calls someone a “bastard” because they stated that it was pretty damn disgusting (not in so many words) that the US is about 6 percent of the population, yet consumes 35 percent of the resources OUTSIDE the US (or something similar).
Yeah, nice woman. Despite her little, A is A, facts are facts that nothing is so black and white as she suggests.
I also accept it as fact that there is suffering in this world, and that greed and selfishness has much to do with that.
Maybe she was rational. Maybe she was reasonable. But whatever the hell she was, she sure as HELL didn’t have common sense.
When you link to a jerkcity panel in a discussion of Ayn Rand I suppose there is nothing more to be said. However I believe Deuce is correct in his qualitative analysis.