Ayn Rand - Opinion? (preferably informed?)

[SkepticOfMyOwnMind]

Unfortunately, this thread has devolved into a pissing contest.

Will the mods please close this thread?

Thank you.

While I appreciate the responses from several of the posters in this thread, I would like to leave this thread open for future comments.

The main issue just appears to be the unfriendly exchange between lumpymunk and Jmpty, both of whom have contributed a substantial number of posts on these forums.

@lumpymunk, @Jmpty: Please concern yourselves with the content of one another's posts rather than the style or attitude. When the style or attitude becomes an issue, please simply let the other know what the issue is, then move on. If the other person continues to be unfriendly or unhelpful, feel free to pretend they don't exist. If they are genuinely and consistently aggressive, feel free to report them.

I'm not a mod, and I don't expect control over your actions. However, I hope you both intend to remain civil.

[Brian37]

I've been an atheist for several years now, but I used to spend a lot of my time learning about different philosophies and religions. I'm pretty settled on atheism, but I still find several atheist philosophies interesting.

I would like to know, from those who read Ayn Rand's work, what you think of her philosophy. Here are some of my questions.

• Did she find something exceptional for her time?
• Does her work seem dated, or does it remain relevant?
• How much of her language suggests inherent problems with her ideas, and how much just fits with the times?
• What would you say are the key points of her philosophy?
• Is John Galt's speech worth reading?
• Should I read the entirety of Atlas Shrugged, We the Living, etc.?
• How similar are her opinions to those of more modern atheist authors like Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris?
• Does sexism taint her philosophy much, is it salvageable, or is it not really sexist? Why?
• Do her expressed views and reasons seem exceptionally natural or fantastic? Why?
• If you've watched Atlas Shrugged Parts 1 or 2, how do those compare to the book?
• Which of Ayn Rand's concerns turned out to be well-founded, and which turned out to be irrelevant or wrong? How and why?

Edit: Please post enough information to prove that you read at least some of her work.

Um don't ask questions and set up demands. If you want our opinions, let us answer.

Her problem is the same thing any religious or political ideology suffers from. We are a diverse species, and as such "my way is the best way" is a stupid position because what may work for one person, or may work at a moment in time, may not work all the time in all contexts. Ayn had a very simplistic "sink or swim" attitude. But evolution isn't about either/ or propositions. Economies are much more complex than "one size fits all". "Fuck you I got mine" may work for the individual, or those with money and power, but it can be very cruel to the less fortunate.

[lumpymunk]

Her problem is the same thing any religious or political ideology suffers from. We are a diverse species, and as such "my way is the best way" is a stupid position because what may work for one person, or may work at a moment in time, may not work all the time in all contexts.

You missed all of the content in Objectivism about individual value systems and how those can be unique for individuals and at the same time objectively arrived at from individual to individual.  Objectivism does not prescribe specific actions, like ceremonial rites, as "the way."  Objectivism identifies that human beings, by nature, have specific needs and can take actions that either prolong/promote their lives or shorten/destroy their lives.

Source material for you.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/values.html

Ayn had a very simplistic "sink or swim" attitude. But evolution isn't about either/ or propositions.

Survival of the Fittest is actually exactly a "sink or swim" situation... EITHER you run faster than the cheetah chasing you OR you die.

...although Objectivism holds that human beings are responsible for achieving their own values, and do not have the right to place claim on the lives of other individuals for achieving those values for them.  The complexity comes in the knowledge that human beings form complex relationships and can aid others without sacrificing ones own values (free from contradiction).

Example:  I go over to my grandmothers house and help her do some yard work because she's elderly.  I'm not sacrificing anything because I've placed an extremely high value (Love) for my grandmother.  Lets say I forgo hanging out with some friends who I also value (friendship), but I've prioritized my grandmother over my friends.  This is completely consistent with Objectivism.  I'm not "sacrificing" time with my friends, I'm preferring time with family.

Economies are much more complex than "one size fits all". "Fuck you I got mine" may work for the individual, or those with money and power, but it can be very cruel to the less fortunate.

It's also been proven to be the most effective means of raising the less fortunate out of the cruelty of poverty.

[Jmpty]

Confusing reason with "the reasonable"
 
I have said that Ayn Rand was a great champion of reason, a passionate champion of the human mind -- and a total adversary of any form of irrationalism or any form of what she called mysticism. I say "of what she called mysticism," because I do not really think she understood mysticism very well -- I know she never studied the subject -- and irrationalism and mysticism are not really synonymous, as they are treated in Atlas Shrugged. That gets me a little off my track, however. A discussion of mysticism outside the Randian framework will have to wait for some other occasion. I will only state for the record that I am not prepared to say, as Rand was, that anyone who might describe him- or herself as a "mystic" is to be dismissed as a crackpot or a charlatan.

Reason is at once a faculty and a process of identifying and integrating the data present or given in awareness. Reason means integration in accordance with the law of noncontradiction. If you think of it in these terms -- as a process of noncontradictory integration -- it's difficult to imagine how anyone could be opposed to it.

Here is the problem: There is a difference between reason as a process and what any person or any group of people, at any time in history, may regard as "the reasonable." This is a distinction that very few people are able to keep clear. We all exist in history, not just in some timeless vacuum, and probably none of us can entirely escape contemporary notions of "the reasonable." It's always important to remember that reason or rationality, on the one hand, and what people may regard as "the reasonable," on the other hand, don't mean the same thing.

The consequence of failing to make this distinction, and this is markedly apparent in the case of Ayn Rand, is that if someone disagrees with your notion of "the reasonable," it can feel very appropriate to accuse him or her of being "irrational" or "against reason."

If you read her books, or her essays in The Objectivist, or if you listen to her lectures, you will notice with what frequency and ease she branded any viewpoint she did not share as not merely mistaken but "irrational" or "mystical." In other words, anything that challenged her particular model of reality was not merely wrong but "irrational" and "mystical" -- to say nothing, of course, of its being "evil," another word she loved to use with extraordinary frequency.

No doubt every thinker has to be understood, at least in part, in terms of what the thinker is reacting against, that is, the historical context in which the thinker's work begins. Ayn Rand was born in Russia: a mystical country in the very worst sense of the word, a country that never really passed through the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment in the way that Western Europe did. Ayn Rand herself was not only a relentless rationalist, she was profoundly secular, profoundly in love with this world, in a way that I personally can only applaud. Yet the problem is that she became very quick on the draw in response to anything that even had the superficial appearance of irrationalism, by which I mean, of anything that did not fit her particular understanding of "the reasonable."

With regard to science, this led to an odd kind of scientific conservatism, a suspicion of novelty, an indifference -- this is only a slight exaggeration -- to anything more recent than the work of Sir Isaac Newton. I remember being astonished to hear her say one day, "After all, the theory of evolution is only a hypothesis." I asked her, "You mean you seriously doubt that more complex life forms -- including humans -- evolved from less complex life forms?" She shrugged and responded, "I'm really not prepared to say," or words to that effect. I do not mean to imply that she wanted to substitute for the theory of evolution the religious belief that we are all God's creation; but there was definitely something about the concept of evolution that made her uncomfortable.

Like many other people, she was enormously opposed to any consideration of the possible validity of telepathy, ESP, or other psi phenomenon. The evidence that was accumulating to suggest that there was something here at least worthy of serious scientific study did not interest her; she did not feel any obligation to look into the subject; she was convinced it was all a fraud. It did not fit her model of reality. When an astronaut attempted during a flight to the moon to conduct a telepathic experiment, she commented on the effort with scorn -- even the attempt to explore the subject was contemptible in her opinion. Now I have no wish to argue, in this context, for or against the reality of nonordinary forms of awareness or any other related phenomenon. That is not my point. My point is the extent to which she had a closed mind on the subject, with no interest in discovering for herself why so many distinguished scientists had become convinced that such matters are eminently worthy of study.

Another example -- less controversial -- involves hypnosis. I became interested in hypnosis in 1960. I began reading books on the subject and mastering the basic principles of the art. Now this generated a problem because on the one hand Ayn Rand knew, or believed she knew, that hypnosis was a fraud with no basis in reality; on the other hand, in 1960 Nathaniel Branden was the closest thing on earth to John Galt. And John Galt could hardly be dabbling in irrationalism. So this produced some very curious conversations between us. She was not yet prepared, as she was later, to announce that I was crazy, corrupt, and depraved. At the same time, she firmly believed that hypnosis was irrational nonsense. I persevered in my studies and learned that the human mind was capable of all kinds of processes beyond what I had previously believed. My efforts to reach Ayn on this subject were generally futile and I soon abandoned the attempt. And to tell the truth, during the time I was still with her, I lost some of my enthusiasm for hypnosis. I regained it after our break and that is when my serious experimenting in that field began and the real growth of my understanding of the possibilities of working with altered states of consciousness.

I could give many more examples of how Ayn Rand's particular view of "the reasonable" became intellectually restrictive. Instead, to those of you who are her admirers, I will simply say: Do not be in a hurry to dismiss observations or data as false, irrational, or "mystical," because they do not easily fit into your current model of reality. It may be the case that you need to expand your model. One of the functions of reason is to alert us to just such a possibility.

It would have been wonderful, given how much many of us respected and admired Ayn Rand, if she had encouraged us to develop a more open-minded attitude and to be less attached to a model of reality that might be in need of revision. But that was not her way. Quite the contrary. Other people's model of reality might be in need of revision. Never hers. Not in any fundamental sense. Reason, she was convinced, had established that for all time. In encouraging among her followers the belief that she enjoyed a monopoly on reason and the rational, she created for herself a very special kind of power, the power to fling anyone who disagreed with her about anything into the abyss of "the irrational" -- and that was a place we were all naturally eager to avoid.

 Encouraging repression
 Now let's turn to another very important issue in the Randian philosophy: the relationship between reason and emotion. Emotions, Rand said again and again, are not tools of cognition. True enough, they are not. Emotions, she said, proceed from value judgments, conscious or subconscious, which they do in the sense that I wrote about in The Psychology of Self-Esteem and The Disowned Self. Emotions always reflect assessments of one kind or another, as others besides Rand and myself have pointed out.
We must be guided by our conscious mind, Rand insisted; we must not follow our emotions blindly. Following our emotions blindly is undesirable and dangerous: Who can argue with that? Applying the advice to be guided by our mind isn't always as simple as it sounds. Such counsel does not adequately deal with the possibility that in a particular situation feelings might reflect a more correct assessment of reality than conscious beliefs or, to say the same thing another way, that the subconscious mind might be right while the conscious mind was mistaken. I can think of many occasions in my own life when I refused to listen to my feelings and followed instead my conscious beliefs -- which happened to be wrong -- with disastrous results. If I had listened to my emotions more carefully, and not been so willing to ignore and repress them, my thinking -- and my life -- would have advanced far more satisfactorily.

A clash between mind and emotions is a clash between two assessments, one of which is conscious, the other might not be. It is not invariably the case that the conscious assessment is superior to the subconscious one; that needs to be checked out. The point is not that we follow the voice of emotion or feeling blindly, it means only that we don't dismiss our feelings and emotions so quickly; we try to understand what they may be telling us; we don't simply repress, rather we try to resolve the conflict between reason and feeling. We strive for harmony, for integration. We don't simply slash away the pieces of ourselves that don't fit our notion of the good or the right or the rational.

The solution for people who seem over preoccupied with feelings is not the renunciation of feelings but rather greater respect for reason, thinking, and the intellect. What is needed is not a renunciation of emotion but a better balance between emotion and thinking. Thinking needs to be added to the situation, emotion does not need to be subtracted from the situation.

Admittedly there are times when we have to act on the best of our conscious knowledge, and children will pay more attention to our conscious knowledge and convictions, even when it's hard, even when it does violence to some of our feelings -- because there is not time to work the problem out. But those are, in effect, emergency situations. It's not a way of life.

I wrote The Disowned Self to address myself to this problem. In a way, that book is written in code. On one level, it's a book about the problem of self-alienation and a deeper discussion of the relationship of reason and emotion than I had offered in The Psychology of Self-Esteem. But on another level, it's a book written to my former students at Nathaniel Branden Institute, an attempt to get them to rethink the ideas about the relationship of mind and emotion they might have acquired from Ayn Rand or me, and thereby I hoped to undo some of the harm I might have done in the past when I shared and advocated Rand's views in this matter. If you read the book that I wrote with my wife Devers The Romantic Love Question and Answer Book, you will find that approach carried still further.

In the days of my association with Ayn Rand, we heard over and over again the accusation that we are against feelings, against emotions. And we would say in all good faith, "What are you talking about? We celebrate human passion. All the characters in the novels have powerful emotions, powerful passions. They feel far more deeply about things than does the average person. How can you possibly say that we are against feeling and emotion?"

The critics were right. Here is my evidence: When we counsel parents, we always tell them, in effect: "Remember, your children will pay more attention to what you do than what you say. No teaching is as powerful as the teaching of the example. It isn't the sermons you deliver that your children will remember, but the way you act and live." Now apply that same principle to fiction, because the analogy fits perfectly. On the one hand, there are Rand's abstract statements concerning the relationship of mind and emotion; on the other hand, there is the behavior of her characters, the way her characters deal with their feelings.

If, in page after page of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, you show someone being heroic by ruthlessly setting feelings aside, and if you show someone being rotten and depraved by, in effect, diving headlong into his feelings and emotions, and if that is one of your dominant methods of characterization, repeated again and again, then it doesn't matter what you profess, in abstract philosophy, about the relationship of reason and emotion. You have taught people: repress, repress, repress.

If you want to know the means by which they were taught, notwithstanding all the celebrations of passion in Ayn Rand's books, study the scenes in The Fountainhead that deal with Roark's way of responding to his own suffering, study the ruthlessness toward their own feelings and emotions exhibited by the heroes and heroine of Atlas Shrugged, and study also consistent way in which villains are characterized in terms of following their feelings. And understand the power of role models to shape beliefs.

When admirers of Ayn Rand seek my services professionally, they often come with the secret hope, rarely acknowledged in words, that with Nathaniel Branden they will at last become the masters of repression needed to fulfill the dream of becoming an ideal objectivist. When I tell them, usually fairly early in our relationship, that one of their chief problems is that they are out of touch with their feelings and emotions, cut off from them and oblivious, and that they need to learn how to listen more to their inner signals, to listen to their emotions, they often exhibit a glazed shock and disorientation. I guess I should admit that seeing their reaction is a real pleasure to me, one of the special treats of my profession you might say, and I do hope you will understand that I am acknowledging this with complete affection and good will and without any intention of sarcasm. The truth is, seeing their confusion and dismay, that it's hard to keep from smiling a little.

One of the first things I need to convey to them is that when they deny and disown their feelings and emotions, they really subvert and sabotage their ability to think clearly -- because they cut off access to too much vital information. This is one of my central themes in The Disowned Self. No one can be integrated, no one can function harmoniously, no one can think clearly and effectively about the deep issues of life who is oblivious to the internal signals, manifested as feelings and emotions, rising from within the organism. My formula for this is: "Feel deeply to think clearly." It seems, however, to take a long time -- for objectivists and nonobjectivists alike -- to understand that fully. Most of us have been encouraged to deny and repress who we are, to disown our feelings, to disown important aspects of the self, almost from the day we were born. The road back to selfhood usually entails a good deal of struggle and courage.

I know a lot of men and women who, in the name of idealism, in the name of lofty beliefs, crucify their bodies, crucify their feelings, and crucify their emotional life, in order to live up to that which they call their values. Just like the followers of one religion or another who, absorbed in some particular vision of what they think human beings can be or should be, leave the human beings they actually are in a very bad place: a place of neglect and even damnation. However, and this is a theme I shall return to later, no one ever grew or evolved by disowning and damning what he or she is. We can begin to grow only after we have accepted who we are and what we are and where we are right now. And no one was ever motivated to rise to glory by the pronouncement that he or she is rotten.

It's often been observed that the Bible says many contradictory things and so if anyone tries to argue that the Bible holds a particular position, it's very easy for someone who disagrees to quote conflicting evidence. It's been said that you can prove almost anything by quoting the Bible. The situation with Ayn Rand is not entirely different. Right now someone could quote passages from The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged that would clearly conflict with and contradict what I am saying about the messages contained in those works. They would not be wrong, given that the works contain contradictory messages. Nathaniel Branden of 1960 could quote lots of passages to dispute at least some of the points I am making here. He did, too. That doesn't change the fact that if you really study what the story is saying, if you pay attention to what the actions of the characters are saying, and if you pay attention to the characterizations, you will find abundant evidence to support my observation that the work encourages emotional repression and self-disowning.

Notice further -- and this is especially true of Atlas Shrugged -- how rarely you find the heroes and heroine talking to each other on a simple, human level without launching into philosophical sermons, so that personal experience always ends up being subordinated to philosophical abstractions. You can find this tendency even in the love scene between Galt and Dagny in the underground tunnels of Taggart Transcontinental, where we are given a brief moment of the intimately personal between them, and then, almost immediately after sexual intimacy, Galt is talking like a philosopher again. I have reason to believe that Galt has a great many imitators around the country and it's driving spouses and partners crazy!

The effect of Rand's approach in this area, then, is very often to deepen her readers' sense of self-alienation. That was obviously not Rand's intention; nonetheless it is easy enough to show how often it has been the effect of her work on her admirers -- not only self-alienation, but also alienation from the world around us. Now it is probably inevitable that any person who thinks independently will experience some sense of alienation relative to the modern world. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about alienation exalted to the status of a high-level virtue. And how might a reader draw that inference from Ayn Rand? I will answer in the following way.

In preparation for this presentation, I re-read the opening chapter of The Fountainhead. It really is a great book. I noticed something in the first chapter I never noticed before. Consider these facts: The hero has just been expelled from school, he is the victim of injustice, he is misunderstood by virtually everyone, and he himself tends to find other people puzzling and incomprehensible. He is alone; he has no friends. There is no one with whom he can share his inner life or values. So far, with the possible exception of being expelled from school, this could be a fairly accurate description of the state of the overwhelming majority of adolescents. There is one big difference: Howard Roark gives no indication of being bothered by any of it. He is serenely happy within himself. For average teenagers, this condition is agony. They read The Fountainhead and see this condition, not as a problem to be solved, but as a condition they must learn to be happy about -- as Roark is. All done without drugs! What a wish-fulfillment that would be! What a dream come true! Don't bother learning to understand anyone. Don't bother working at making yourself better understood. Don't try to see whether you can close the gap of your alienation from others, at least from some others, just struggle for Roark's serenity -- which Rand never tells you how to achieve. This is an example of how The Fountainhead could be at once a source of great inspiration and a source of great guilt, for all those who do not know how to reach Roark's state.

In Atlas Shrugged, admittedly, Rand does acknowledge that we are social beings with legitimate social needs. For many of us, our first introduction to Ayn Rand's philosophy was through The Fountainhead, and that book makes an impression not easily lost

 Encouraging moralizing
 
Another aspect of her philosophy that I would like to talk about -- one of the hazards -- is the appalling moralism that Ayn Rand herself practiced and that so many of her followers also practice. I don't know of anyone other than the Church fathers in the Dark Ages who used the word "evil" quite so often as Ayn Rand.

Of all the accusations of her critics, surely the most ludicrous is the accusation that Ayn Rand encourages people to do just what they please. If there's anything in this world Ayn did not do, it was to encourage people to do what they please. If there is anything she was not, it was an advocate of hedonism.

She may have taught that "Man's Life" is the standard of morality and your own life is its purpose, but the path she advocated to the fulfillment of your life was a severely disciplined one. She left many of her readers with the clear impression that life is a tightrope and that it is all too easy to fall off into moral depravity. In other words, on the one hand she preached a morality of joy, personal happiness, and individual fulfillment; on the other hand, she was a master at scaring the hell out of you if you respected and admired her and wanted to apply her philosophy to your own life.

She used to say to me, "I don't know anything about psychology, Nathaniel." I wish I had taken her more seriously. She was right; she knew next to nothing about psychology. What neither of us understood, however, was how disastrous an omission that is in a philosopher in general and a moralist in particular. The most devastating single omission in her system and the one that causes most of the trouble for her followers is the absence of any real appreciation of human psychology and, more specifically, of developmental psychology, of how human beings evolve and become what they are and of how they can change.

So, you are left with this sort of picture of your life. You either choose to be rational or you don't. You're honest or you're not. You choose the right values or you don't. You like the kind of art Rand admires or your soul is in big trouble. For evidence of this last point, read her essays on esthetics (Rand, 1970). Her followers are left in a dreadful position: If their responses aren't "the right ones," what are they to do? How are they to change? No answer from Ayn Rand. Here is the tragedy: Her followers' own love and admiration for her and her work become turned into the means of their self-repudiation and self-torture. I have seen a good deal of that, and it saddens me more than I can say.

Let's suppose a person has done something that he or she knows to be wrong, immoral, unjust, or unreasonable: instead of acknowledging the wrong, instead of simply regretting the action and then seeking, compassionately, to understand why the action was taken and asking where was I coming from? and what need was I trying in my own twisted way to satisfy? -- instead of asking such questions, the person is encouraged to brand the behavior as evil and is given no useful advice on where to go from there. You don't teach people to be moral by teaching them self-contempt as a virtue.

Enormous importance is attached in Rand's writings to the virtue of justice. I think one of the most important things she has to say about justice is that we shouldn't think of justice only in terms of punishing the guilty but also in terms of rewarding and appreciating the good. I think her emphasis on this point is enormously important.

To look on the dark side, however, part of her vision of justice is urging you to instant contempt for anyone who deviates from reason or morality or what is defined as reason or morality. Errors of knowledge may be forgiven, she says, but not errors of morality. Even if what people are doing is wrong, even if errors of morality are involved, even if what people are doing is irrational, you do not lead people to virtue by contempt. You do not make people better by telling them they are despicable. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work when religion tries it and it doesn't work when objectivism tries it.

If someone has done something so horrendous that you want to tell him or her that the action is despicable, go ahead. If you want to tell someone he is a rotten son-of-a-bitch, go ahead. If you want to call someone a scoundrel, go ahead. I don't deny that there are times when that is a thoroughly appropriate response. What I do deny is that it is an effective strategy for inspiring moral change or improvement.

The great, glaring gap in just about all ethical systems of which I have knowledge, even when many of the particular values and virtues they advocate may be laudable, is the absence of a technology to assist people in getting there, an effective means for acquiring these values and virtues, a realistic path people can follow. That is the great missing step in most religions and philosophies. And this is where psychology comes in: One of the tasks of psychology is to provide a technology for facilitating the process of becoming a rational, moral human being.

You can tell people that it's a virtue to be rational, productive, or just, but, if they have not already arrived at that stage of awareness and development on their own, objectivism does not tell them how to get there. It does tell you you're rotten if you fail to get there.

Ayn Rand admirers come to me and say, "All of her characters are so ambitious. I'm thirty years old and I don't know what to do with my life. I don't know what I want to make of myself. I earn a living, I know I could be better than I am, I know I could be more productive or creative, and I'm not. I'm rotten. What can I do?" I've heard some version of this quite often. I've heard it a lot from some very intelligent men and women who are properly concerned they they have many capacities they are not using, and who long for something more -- which is healthy and desirable, but the self-blame and self-hatred is not and it's very, very common.

The question for me is: How come you don't have the motivation to do more? How come so little seems worth doing? In what way, in what twisted way, perhaps, might you be trying to take care of yourself by your procrastination, by your inertia, by your lack of ambition? Let's try to understand what needs you're struggling to satisfy. Let's try to understand where you're coming from.

That is an approach I learned only after my break with Ayn Rand. It is very foreign to the approach I learned in my early years with her. And it's very foreign to just about every objectivist I've ever met. However, if we are to assist people to become more self-actualized, that approach is absolutely essential. We are all of us organisms trying to survive. We are all of us organisms trying in our own way to use our abilities and capacities to satisfy our needs. Sometimes the paths we choose are pretty terrible, and sometimes the consequences are pretty awful for ourselves and others. Until and unless we are willing to try to understand where people are coming from, what they are trying to accomplish, and what model of reality they're operating form -- such that they don't see themselves as having better alternatives, we cannot assist anyone to reach the moral vision that objectivism holds as a possibility for human beings.

It's not quite true to say that I didn't understand this until after my break with Rand. This approach is already present in The Psychology of Self-Esteem, most of which was written during my years with her. I will say instead that I learned to practice this approach far more competently only after the break, only after I disassociated myself from her obsessive moralism and moralizing.

So here in Ayn Rand's work is an ethical philosophy with a great vision of human possibilities, but no technology to help people get there, and a lot of messages encouraging self-condemnation when they fail to get there.

Her readers come to me and they say; "Boy, it was so great. I read her books and I got rid of the guilt that the Church laid on me. I got rid of the guilt over sex. Or wanting to make money." "Why have you come to see me?", I ask. "Well, now I'm guilty about something else. I'm not as good as John Galt. Sometimes I'm not even sure I'm as good as Eddie Willers," they respond.

Rand might respond, "But these people are guilty of pretentiousness and grandiosity!" Sure they are, at least some of the time. Although when you tell people, as Rand did, that one of the marks of virtue is to value the perfection of your soul above all things, not your happiness, not your enjoyment of life, not the joyful fulfillment of your positive possibilities, but the perfection of your soul, aren't you helping to set people up for just this kind of nonsense?

A man came to me a little while ago for psychotherapy. He was involved in a love affair with a woman. He was happy with her. She was happy with him. But he had a problem; he wasn't convinced she was worthy of him -- he wasn't convinced she was "enough." And why not? Because, although she worked for a living, her life was not organized around some activity comparable to building railroads. "She isn't a Dagny Taggart." The fact that he was happy with her seemed to matter less to him than the fact that she didn't live up to a certain notion of what the ideal woman was supposed to be like.

If he had said, "I'm worried about our future because, although I enjoy her right now, I don't know whether or not there's enough intellectual stimulation there," that would have been a different question entirely and a far more understandable one. What was bothering him was not his own misgivings but a voice inside him, a voice which he identified as the voice of Ayn Rand, saying "She's not Dagny Taggart." When I began by gently pointing out to him that he wasn't John Galt, it didn't make him feel any better -- it made him feel worse!

I recall a story I once read by a psychiatrist, a story about a tribe that has a rather unusual way of dealing with moral wrongdoers or lawbreakers. Such a person, when his or her infraction is discovered, is not reproached or condemned but is brought into the center of the village square -- and the whole tribe gathers around. Everyone who has ever known this person since the day he or she was born steps forward, one by one, and talks about anything and everything good this person has ever been known to have done. The speakers aren't allowed to exaggerate or make mountains out of molehills; they have to be realistic, truthful, factual. And the person just sits there, listening, as one by one people talk about all the good things this person has done in the course of his or her life. Sometimes, the process takes several days. When it's over, the person is released and everyone goes home and there is no discussion of the offense -- and there is almost no repetition of offenses (Zunin, 1970).

In the objectivist frame of reference there is the assumption, made explicit in John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged, and dramatized throughout the novel in any number of ways, that the most natural, reasonable, appropriate response to immoral or wrong behavior is contempt and moral condemnation. Psychologists know that that response tends to increase the probability that that kind of behavior will be repeated. This is an example of what I mean by the difference between a vision of desirable behavior and the development of an appropriate psychological technology that would inspire people to practice it.

 Conflating sacrifice and benevolence
 
Now let us move on to still another aspect of the Rand philosophy that entails a great contribution, on the one hand, and a serious omission, on the other. I have already stressed that in the objectivist ethics a human being is regarded as an end in him- or herself and exists properly for his or her own sake, neither sacrificing self to others nor sacrificing others to self. The practice of human sacrifice is wrong, said Rand, no matter by whom it is practiced. She was an advocate of what we may call enlightened selfishness or enlightened self-interest. Needless to say, this is a viewpoint that I support unreservedly.

I noted earlier that, when we want to understand a thinker, it's generally useful to understand what that person may be reacting against. I believe that in desire to expose the evil of the notion that self-sacrifice is a virtue and in her indignation at the very idea of treating human beings as objects of sacrifice, she presented her case for rational self-interest or rational selfishness in a way that neglected a very important part of human experience. To be precise, she didn't neglect it totally; but she did not deal with it adequately, did not give it the attention it deserves.

I am referring to the principle of benevolence, mutual helpfulness and mutual aid between human beings. I believe it is a virtue to support life. I believe it is a virtue to assist those who are struggling for life. I believe it is a virtue to seek to alleviate suffering. None of this entails the notion of self-sacrifice. I am not saying that we should place the interests of others above our own. I am not saying that our primary moral obligation is to alleviate the pain of others. I am not saying that we do not have the right to place our own interests first. I am saying that the principle of benevolence and mutual aid is entirely compatible with an ethic of self-interest and more: An ethic of self-interest logically must advocate the principle of benevolence and mutual aid.

Given that we live in society, and given that misfortune or tragedy can strike any one of us, it is clearly in our self-interest to live in a world in which human beings deal with one another in a spirit of mutual benevolence and helpfulness. Could anyone seriously argue that the principle of mutual aid does not have survival value?

I am not talking about "mutual aid" coercively orchestrated by a government. I am talking about the private, voluntary actions of individual men and women functioning on their own initiative and by their own standards. By treating the issue of help to others almost entirely in the context of self-sacrifice and/or in the context of government coercion, Rand largely neglects a vast area of human experience to which neither of these considerations apply. And the consequence for too many of her followers is an obliviousness to the simple virtues of kindness, generosity, and mutual aid, all of which clearly and demonstrably have biological utility, meaning: survival value.

There are too many immature, narcissistic individuals whose thinking stops at the point of hearing that they have no obligation to sacrifice themselves to others. True enough, they don't. Is there nothing else to be said on the subject of help to others? I think there is and I think so precisely on the basis of the objectivist standard of ethics: man's/woman's life and well-being.

Would you believe that sometimes in therapy clients speak to me with guilt of their desire to be helpful and kind to others? I am not talking about manipulative do-gooders. I am talking about persons genuinely motivated by benevolence and good will, but who wonder whether they are "good objectivists."

"Have I ever said that charity and help to others is wrong or undesirable?," Rand might demand. No, she hasn't; neither has she spoken very much about their value, beyond declaring that they are not the essence of life -- and of course they are not the essence of life. They are a part of life, however, and sometimes an important part of life, and it is misleading to allow for people to believe otherwise.

 Overemphasizing the role of philosophical premises
 
I have already mentioned that there is one great missing element in the objectivist system, namely, a theory of psychology, or, more precisely, an understanding of psychology. Rand held the view that human beings can be understood exclusively in terms of their premises, that is, in terms of their basic philosophical beliefs, along with their free will choices. This view is grossly inadequate to the complexity of the actual facts. It is, further, a view that flies totally in the face of so much that we know today about how the mind operates.

Many factors contribute to who we become as human beings: our genes, our maturation, our unique biological potentials and limitations, our life experiences and the conclusions we draw from them, the knowledge and information available to us, and, of course, our premises or philosophical beliefs, and the thinking we choose to do or not to do. And even this list is an oversimplification. The truth, is we are far from understanding everything that goes into shaping the persons we become, and it is arrogant and stupid to imagine that we do.

Among the many unfortunate consequences of believing that we are the product only of our premises and that our premises are chiefly the product of the thinking we have done or failed to do is a powerful inclination, on the one hand, to regard as immoral anyone who arrives at conclusions different from our own, and, on the other hand, an inclination to believe that people who voice the same beliefs as we do are people with whom we naturally have a lot in common. I remember, at Nathaniel Branden Institute, seeing people marry on the grounds of believing that a shared enthusiasm for objectivism was enough to make them compatible; I also remember the unhappiness that followed. Professing the same philosophical convictions is hardly enough to guarantee the success of a marriage and not even enough to guarantee the success of a friendship: Many other psychological factors are necessary.

Our souls are more than our philosophies -- and certainly more than our conscious philosophies. Just as we need to know more than a human being's philosophical beliefs in order to understand that human being; so, we need to know more than a society's or culture's philosophical beliefs to understand the events of a given historical period. Of course, the philosophical ideas of a society or a culture play a powerful role in determining the flow of events. Other factors, however, are always involved, which one would never guess from reading Ayn Rand. One factor that many thinkers beside Ayn Rand tend to ignore in their studies of history are the psychologies or personalities of the political and military leaders. Different people, with different psychologies or personalities, at the same moment in history might act differently -- with profoundly different historical consequences. There is no time here to explore this theme in detail, beyond saying that the objectivist method of historical interpretation is guilty of the same gross oversimplification that is manifest at the level of explaining individual behavior.

One of the unfortunate consequences of this over simplification is that most students of objectivism are pathetically helpless when faced with the task of carrying their ideas into the real world and seeking to implement them. They do not know what to do, most of the time. Objectivism has not prepared them. There is too much about the real world, about social and political institutions, and about human psychology, of which they have no knowledge.

 Encouraging dogmatism
 
Ayn always insisted that her philosophy was an integrated whole, that it was entirely self-consistent, and that one could not reasonably pick elements of her philosophy and discard others. In effect, she declared, "It's all or nothing." Now this is a rather curious view, if you think about it. What she was saying, translated into simple English, is: Everything I have to say in the field of philosophy is true, absolutely true, and therefore any departure necessarily leads you into error. Don't try to mix your irrational fantasies with my immutable truths. This insistence turned Ayn Rand's philosophy, for all practical purposes, into dogmatic religion, and many of her followers chose that path.

The true believers might respond by saying, "How can you call it dogmatic religion when we can prove every one of Ayn Rand's propositions?!" My answer to that is, "The hell you can!" Prior to our break, Ayn Rand credited me with understanding her philosophy better than any other person alive -- and not merely better, but far better. I know what we were in a position to prove, I know where the gaps are. And so can anyone else -- by careful, critical reading. It's not all that difficult or complicated.

This may sound like a trivial example of what I mean, but it's an example that has always annoyed me personally. I would love to hear some loyal follower of Ayn Rand try to argue logically and rationally for her belief that no woman should aspire to be president of the United States. This was one of Rand's more embarrassing lapses. If we are to champion the independent, critical mind, then the philosophy of objectivism can hardly be exempt from judgment. Ayn Rand made mistakes. That merely proves she was human. The job of her admirers, however, is to be willing to see them and to correct them.

Sometimes, when her admirers begin to grasp their mistakes, they become enraged. They turn against everything she had to say. They feel betrayed, like children who discover that their parents are not omnipotent and omniscient. That's another hazard to which I'd like to draw your attention.

Ayn Rand might turn over in her grave to hear me say it, but she really did have the right to be wrong sometimes. No need for us to become hysterical about it or to behave like petulant eight-year-olds. Growing up means being able to see our parents realistically. Growing up relative to Ayn Rand means being able to see her realistically -- to see the greatness and to see the shortcomings. If we see only the greatness and deny the shortcomings or if we see only the shortcomings and deny the greatness, we remain blind.

She has so much that is truly marvelous to offer us. So much wisdom, insight, and inspiration. So much clarification. Let us say "thank you" for that, acknowledge the errors and mistakes when we see them, and proceed on our own path -- realizing that, ultimately, each of us has to make the journey alone, anyway.

Nathaniel Branden, circa 1983

[Brian37]

Her problem is the same thing any religious or political ideology suffers from. We are a diverse species, and as such "my way is the best way" is a stupid position because what may work for one person, or may work at a moment in time, may not work all the time in all contexts.

You missed all of the content in Objectivism about individual value systems and how those can be unique for individuals and at the same time objectively arrived at from individual to individual.  Objectivism does not prescribe specific actions, like ceremonial rites, as "the way."  Objectivism identifies that human beings, by nature, have specific needs and can take actions that either prolong/promote their lives or shorten/destroy their lives.

Source material for you.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/values.html

Ayn had a very simplistic "sink or swim" attitude. But evolution isn't about either/ or propositions.

Survival of the Fittest is actually exactly a "sink or swim" situation... EITHER you run faster than the cheetah chasing you OR you die.

...although Objectivism holds that human beings are responsible for achieving their own values, and do not have the right to place claim on the lives of other individuals for achieving those values for them.  The complexity comes in the knowledge that human beings form complex relationships and can aid others without sacrificing ones own values (free from contradiction).

Example:  I go over to my grandmothers house and help her do some yard work because she's elderly.  I'm not sacrificing anything because I've placed an extremely high value (Love) for my grandmother.  Lets say I forgo hanging out with some friends who I also value (friendship), but I've prioritized my grandmother over my friends.  This is completely consistent with Objectivism.  I'm not "sacrificing" time with my friends, I'm preferring time with family.

Economies are much more complex than "one size fits all". "Fuck you I got mine" may work for the individual, or those with money and power, but it can be very cruel to the less fortunate.

It's also been proven to be the most effective means of raising the less fortunate out of the cruelty of poverty.

Fuck you. So if that is the case, then the fact that Gadaffi fucked his population for 40 years must be good because a revolution resulted.

I think you miss the difference between motivation(reasonable inequity) and "fuck you I got mine". Ayn Rand was "fuck you I got mine".

[Brian37]

Humans are part of an ecosystem, not above it. If you are going to argue that "cruel to be kind" works, then all you are arguing is might makes right. AND I agree that can work. But that does not equal morality.

So the real issue since both the top and bottom die, what do we appeal to as a species? When I ask this question, the answer I always get reflects the convenient narcissism of the person offering up their own utopia.

[Brian37]

Survival of the Fittest is actually exactly a "sink or swim" situation... EITHER you run faster than the cheetah chasing you OR you die.

How shallow a perspective.

Yes that does happen, but it is not the law of evolution, merely one aspect of it.

For example. Two guys meet at a bar. One of them is 250lb ripped and muscle bound. The other guy is frumpy and fat 140lb guy. The fat guy spills a beer on the fit guy. The fit guy takes offense and starts a fight with him. The fat guy prior to the conflict has fucked and had 3 kids. The fit guy doesn't have any. The fit guy tries to throw a punch, but the fat guy with kids, pulls out a gun and kills the fit guy who has not had kids.

Evolution IS NOT about "survival of the fittest", it is merely about getting to the point of reproduction.

[lumpymunk]

Jmpty, while the article you posted does give a great (probably the best) first-hand insight into Ayn Rand as a person from the viewpoint of someone she was romantically involved with at one time, it does nothing to speak to Objectivism as a philosophy.

Viewpoints like, "no woman should aspire to be president of the United States" is not contained anywhere in Peikoff's "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand."  Nor is it contained anywhere in the non-fiction she wrote in Op-Eds and Articles.  Really the article is valuable for people who want to understand Ayn Rand as a person, from a historical perspective as an influential figure.

Nowhere in the philosophy are you required to immediately slap labels like "irrational", "mystic", or "evil" on things that don't seem reasonable.  In "An Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" precision of identification through a deliberate process of focusing ones consciousness is described as the method for determining "the reasonable" and rational.

I don't believe the point of this thread is to pass judgment on Ayn Rand... although I think Nathaniel Brandon does so in possibly the most genuine and gentlest way.  I've also read a lot of Nathaniel's books and he's written a lot of great material that is consistent with Objectivism from the view point of a psychologist.

[lumpymunk]

Evolution IS NOT about "survival of the fittest", it is merely about getting to the point of reproduction.

I didn't say evolution is ABOUT survival of the fittest, I said it was easily an either/or situation.  Alternatives always exist... I didn't really consider the comment that controversial or profound.  Maybe a bit snarky on my part.

but it is not the law of evolution,

I didn't say it was the "law of evolution."  I didn't even imply it.  The "either/or" alternative is easily applicable though, which is why I disagreed with you.

Humans are part of an ecosystem, not above it.

I really don't understand what point I've made that you're offering this up as a counter argument for.  I agree with you.

If you are going to argue that "cruel to be kind" works

Again, what point have I made that you're offering this up as a counter for?

You'll have to be a little more detailed and a little less "fuck you"  [-X if you want an intelligent conversation.

[Brian37]

Jmpty, while the article you posted does give a great (probably the best) first-hand insight into Ayn Rand as a person from the viewpoint of someone she was romantically involved with at one time, it does nothing to speak to Objectivism as a philosophy.

Viewpoints like, "no woman should aspire to be president of the United States" is not contained anywhere in Peikoff's "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand."  Nor is it contained anywhere in the non-fiction she wrote in Op-Eds and Articles.  Really the article is valuable for people who want to understand Ayn Rand as a person, from a historical perspective as an influential figure.

Nowhere in the philosophy are you required to immediately slap labels like "irrational", "mystic", or "evil" on things that don't seem reasonable.  In "An Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" precision of identification through a deliberate process of focusing ones consciousness is described as the method for determining "the reasonable" and rational.

I don't believe the point of this thread is to pass judgment on Ayn Rand... although I think Nathaniel Brandon does so in possibly the most genuine and gentlest way.  I've also read a lot of Nathaniel's books and he's written a lot of great material that is consistent with Objectivism from the view point of a psychologist.

Ayn Rand appeals to the selfish side of all ideology. Once you think a pattern works for everyone else, and delude yourself that is a cure, you can lead other humans into the same delusion and stupidity you have swallowed.

[lumpymunk]

Ayn Rand appeals to the selfish side of all ideology.

I'd be willing to wager a significant sum that you don't even understand what the word "selfish" meant to Ayn Rand.

Also note the thread was looking for "preferably informed" opinions.

[Brian37]

Ayn Rand appeals to the selfish side of all ideology.

I'd be willing to wager a significant sum that you don't even understand what the word "selfish" meant to Ayn Rand.

Also note the thread was looking for "preferably informed" opinions.

How seriously should I take someone who thought social security was evil but didn't give up her own SS checks?

She knew quite well what selfishness was, and like any political hack, she was simply out to sell books and make money.

[Brian37]

Ayn Rand appeals to the selfish side of all ideology.

I'd be willing to wager a significant sum that you don't even understand what the word "selfish" meant to Ayn Rand.

Also note the thread was looking for "preferably informed" opinions.

Any argument that uses "this is the best way" doesn't know shit about evolution or even economies.

Evolution is diverse, and since human's are diverse as well, "one size fits all" does not work in economics.

"Preferably informed", translation "agree with me".

Fuck any person that thinks starvation is a good motivator. I find no morality in that attitude whatso ever. Ayn Rand was simply the atheist version of Ann Coulter. Political punditry sells books and makes the author rich, but that is all it does. It sucks money from the stupid people that swallow their bullshit.

[JamesTheUnjust]

lumpy seems to be missing that I was trying to illustrate.

Take Bill O'Reilly for example. He's always talking about how he doesn't want gays to be married in order to "save" the union of marriage. Now, do you think that's true? Probably not. You probably know like the rest of us that he's looking for an excuse to justify his bigoted attitude towards. He could give less than a fuck about marriage; he's been divorced twice.

Another example would be the War on Drugs. Do you think that conservatives really care about drug addiction? I'm sure you think that it's just a counter culture measure to go after young people that tend to not vote as right-wingers would want them to, and that the program is their way of "sticking it to the hippies!".

It's really no different with Ayn Rand. When she talks about how she doesn't want to pay for social programs because she thinks they are not beneficial, what she's really saying is, they are not beneficial because they had no value to her personally. She didn't like those programs not because she thought another way would be better, but because she didn't give a fuck about society, and only wanted more for herself. All she did was take her ideology and wrap it up in a nice little package with a bow on top, in order to sell her sociopathy to the public.

The books she wrote were about trying to make it out as though everybody was a scoundrel like she was, and that she wasn't alone in her selfish. That's why her books central theme is having narcissistic assholes that take and take and take as being heroes, and people that are struggling to survive as mere losers. She didn't care who's body you had to step over in order to make a buck, and needed a way to justify what we would otherwise label as narcissism and wreckless sociopathy.

[JamesTheUnjust]

Jmpty, while the article you posted does give a great (probably the best) first-hand insight into Ayn Rand as a person from the viewpoint of someone she was romantically involved with at one time, it does nothing to speak to Objectivism as a philosophy.

Viewpoints like, "no woman should aspire to be president of the United States" is not contained anywhere in Peikoff's "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand."  Nor is it contained anywhere in the non-fiction she wrote in Op-Eds and Articles.  Really the article is valuable for people who want to understand Ayn Rand as a person, from a historical perspective as an influential figure.

Nowhere in the philosophy are you required to immediately slap labels like "irrational", "mystic", or "evil" on things that don't seem reasonable.  In "An Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" precision of identification through a deliberate process of focusing ones consciousness is described as the method for determining "the reasonable" and rational.

I don't believe the point of this thread is to pass judgment on Ayn Rand... although I think Nathaniel Brandon does so in possibly the most genuine and gentlest way.  I've also read a lot of Nathaniel's books and he's written a lot of great material that is consistent with Objectivism from the view point of a psychologist.

Ayn Rand appeals to the selfish side of all ideology. Once you think a pattern works for everyone else, and delude yourself that is a cure, you can lead other humans into the same delusion and stupidity you have swallowed.

She appeals to the naive that see flaws in the current system but are not sure what to do about it. Her solution is to throw the baby out with the bath water and make everyone into simplistic fanatics like herself.