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New Explain Ayn Rand to me.
I've never read her stuff, but she's got a reputation as someone to be reviled, somebody that is seductive to people who aren't widely enough read. I've got a friend who is really into her stuff, and is curious about why many people find her controversial - any thoughts?
Odoru aho ni miru aho!
Onaji aho nara odoranya son son!
New me me me me me me me
That's Ayn Rand in a nutshell.
Individualism above all else.
Make libertarians look like a bunch of commies.

When reading Ayn Rand, you get a pat on the back for every selfish thing you've ever done or thought.

So some people love her, and other despise her. Where you stand depends on where you sit.
New My take.
crazy has it partly right, I think.

She's a very big fan of People Who Get Things Done(TM). She regarded people who simply live off the labors of others as the lowest form of life; such people should be reviled in her view. No doubt these beliefs were incubated by her early life under the Soviets. She would have liked [link|http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5291|Bill Gates] immensely and had no use for anti-trust laws.

She was very doctrinaire about her beliefs. Rather like Milton Friedman, if you catch my drift. She knew what she believed and those who disagreed were wrong.

A lot of people criticize the selfishness of her philosophy and her characters, and the flatness of the people. She addressed that in an interview (as I recall from a biography of her that I read) that the purpose of fiction is to tell a story about "what might and ought to be". Character development is secondary to the ideal she's trying to present. She makes a strong case for what she believes, but life isn't as black and white as her fiction, of course.

I greatly enjoyed The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. In Atlas Shrugged, Galt spends about 70 pages or so giving her philosophy in pretty clear terms. One could do worse than read one or both of these and make up your own mind.

HTH.

Cheers,
Scott.
(Who was a fan for a while, but grew out of it.)
New The extra bit of fun
is trying to identify the big name captains of industry. Rand wrote during the golden age of American industrialization and her heroes were the big name industrialists of the time. Enjoy them as period pieces.

Clue 1: Howard Rourke is Frank Lloyd Wright.




I4 NOW!


Impeach, Indict, Incarcerate, Inject
Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez, Rumsfeld, Rove, Rice
New Agree on the must read list
Atlas Shrugged should be required reading. Not because its right or wrong, but because the way it was written calls many aspects of society into question from a critical thinking perspective.

Mind you, she was wrong on many counts...but it forces you to think it through to make that determination.
Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry.Adrian Belew
New Re: Explain Ayn Rand to me.
Summary from [link|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_%28Ayn_Rand%29|Wikipedia]
Objectivism holds that there is a mind-independent reality; that individuals are in contact with this reality through sensory perception; that humans gain objective knowledge from perception by measurement, and by forming concepts that correspond to natural categories by measurement omission; that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or "rational self-interest;" that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual human rights, embodied in pure, consensual laissez-faire capitalism; and that the role of art in human life is to transform abstract knowledge, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form - a work of art - that one can apprehend and respond to with the whole of one's consciousness.

At it's core objectivism of Ayn Rand's style is not an entirely bad idea. But the application is hopelessly marred by a critical flaw.

The objectivists place far too much trust in their 'objective' observations and deductions. They feel that because they are using 'objective' knowledge and reason they can hold their beliefs with the kind of rigidity of mathematical reasoning. This is the underlying flaw that leads to most of the other problems.

This is what turned a lot of objectivism into a cult. Because Ayn Rand's deductions are obviously and objectively correct, if you don't agree then there must be a flaw in your thinking. A true believer can dismiss any objection or flaw with exactly the same kind of twisted logic that religious fanatics use. And this of course means that Ayn Rand's other mistakes are carved into stone as far as the followers are concerned.

In some ways, what I believe is fairly close to objectivism. But I have transplanted a healthy respect for human flaws and bias into the place where objectivists have blind faith in reason. Once you do that everything else falls into place.

Without the blind adherence to Rand's own statements, you can eject the sillier bits about objective art and such. And once you understand that humans don't always act in their own best interest and that the best interests of everybody can conflict with individual desire, the extreme libertarian posistion falls apart.

Jay
     Explain Ayn Rand to me. - (inthane-chan) - (5)
         me me me me me me me - (crazy)
         My take. - (Another Scott) - (2)
             The extra bit of fun - (tuberculosis)
             Agree on the must read list - (bepatient)
         Re: Explain Ayn Rand to me. - (JayMehaffey)

Just give me credit in the Garamonde-Flighty footnotes.
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