Ayn Rand

[HammerOfGod]

[quote name='Nous' post='1677244' date='Feb 6 2009, 16.32']Raidne,


It's not the feeling of pity that Rearden overcomes, and his intellectual development is more simulated by Francisco, rather than Dagny. Rearden is a puritan, in the sense that he's very strict about adhering to his moral code. But he's also initially altruistic in certain respects, willing to let his family take advantage of him, and not holding them to the same standard as he does himself, making excuses for them. He willingly accepts undeserved guilt and tells himself that his family must at the root have benevolent motives, even if he doesn't understand them. When he loses the idea that he is an immoral person with a duty to accept his family as they are, no matter how they treat him, he loses his pity for them, as well.


This is what she said on the rights of children, and on the rights of severely retarded people, in Q&A periods after two separate Ford Hall Forum lectures.[/quote]

I thought that Dagny's sexual ambiguity at the end of the book was rather modern...the whole question of who she would fuck or not fuck...although it seems that Gault had become her main squeeze...she gave her virginity to Francisco in the first part of the book...Rearden was her sexual center in central section and John Gault in the latter third...but she was with all three men in the closing sequence...and there had been some coded signals that Francisco and Rearden had given her up...but she had not hardwired herself into that position yet...so she could in all probability become the earth mother and have children by all three men to repopulate the new Objectivist world order with the proper type of males...

[TheKassi]

Thats a pretty fast and loose description of what Rand thinks about the care disabled people are entitled to. A Q&A is only a brief overview.

Rand might at time say things like “Retarded people and children have the right to be taken care off” but Rand defines force as denying a human being their rights. Rand might say that a child has the right to expect their parents to provide for them, but who is violating the rights of the disabled and children if they are neglected because their parents are dead?

The only legitimate forms of government in Rand's eyes were cops, courts, and the armed forces. You will notice that “Providing for children and the mentally disabled” is absent from the list. A parent can “deny a child their rights” by neglecting them and what not, and must provide for them until they are able to do so themselves. If a child can never provide for themselves, perhaps because of something like mental retardation, one could argue that Rand says their parents must always provide for them.

Other people are however exempt from this. You never see Rand argue that society has an obligation to provide for kids or disabled people in such situations. She argues quite to the contrary. According to The Ethics of Emergency Chapter in the Virtue of Selfishness, the only time a person should help a stranger is in an emergency situation. An emergency situation is something classified as out of the norm and very temporary. Picking up someone who stumbles while you both are fleeing a burning building is an example.

Rand specifically argues that things such as the inability to provide for yourself are not emergency situations. Poverty is an enduring condition, not an emergency.

Thusly it is fair to conclude that despite the fact that Ayn Rand said the severely retarded have the right to be taken care of, she would not only argue that society shouldn't be obligated, particularly by government, to assume the responsibilities of caring for a person with such disabilities in the event that they have no one to take care of them, but that individuals with a proper value set wouldn't choose to assume those responsibilities.

[The Kreb]

Rand's philosphy is fun. It asks some very interesting questions: Is the suffering of the many an important issue? Is it a given that the goal of our society be to end their suffering? Or is their suffering immaterial in the face of progress? Not the nicesest of questions, but they sure are fun to argue about.

[Nerdanel]

[quote name='Nous' post='1675219' date='Feb 5 2009, 20.52']Nerdanel,
I have no children either, but I think the reason the child cries is probably that he's feeling hungry, which is an unpleasant sensation, but not an emotion. I don't know any adults who become [i]sad[/i] when they're hungry, and I doubt babies do either. People in pain do not cry because the pain makes them sad; they cry because it hurts.[/quote]

Little children feel everything very strongly. When they scrape their knee and it bleeds it's like the end of the world. When they get taken to candy store they are in heaven. It's because a child who has been taken care of properly simply isn't very familiar with the extremes of the world yet. Scraping their knee might very well be the single worst thing that's happened to them [i]ever in their lives[/i]. Naturally, as children grow up their emotions gradually normalize to adult levels and they learn to take small hurts without crying or even really feeling sad.

Now, let's take a newborn baby. In the womb it fed though the umbilical cord, so after birth hunger is an all-new and unpleasant feeling to it. It soon learns that the hunger will go away by sucking milk. However, at this stage of development the baby doesn't yet understand the world very much at all. It has no power to take the milk. Sometimes the milk appears when needed and sometimes... it doesn't. For a newborn baby this is likely the worst thing that ever happened in their entire brief lives. For all it knows (which is very little), the sweet, mysterious milk isn't going to come to it ever again.

This can lead to things like the baby crying inconsolably and obviously sad when the mother isn't quick enough with the feeding. The baby doesn't yet understand that the mother will feed it as soon as she can which can be estimated to be in about two minutes. It only feels the pain and sadness of the milk not being there.

A little empirical research would have done wonders for Ayn Rand.

[Elrostar]

[quote name='The Kreb' post='1679706' date='Feb 9 2009, 05.06']Rand's philosphy is fun. It asks some very interesting questions: Is the suffering of the many an important issue? Is it a given that the goal of our society be to end their suffering? Or is their suffering immaterial in the face of progress? Not the nicesest of questions, but they sure are fun to argue about.[/quote]

Rand's philosophy is mostly fun when you're a rich, privileged, healthy teenager. It's not really surprising how her philosophy is only popular with such people, and finds incredibly little support among those with chronic diseases or disabilities.

Having a philosophy that says that you're rich and privileged because you [i]deserve[/i] it really does feel good, doesn't it? But most people grow out of that phase.

[sailor]

[quote name='Bruce Galactus' post='1669248' date='Jan 31 2009, 09.58']To be honest, even within the libertarian strain of thought you're more likely to see Nozick referenced than Rand.[/quote]

Objectivists are to Libertarians what Mormons are to Christians. A wacky off-shoot, you are more than a little embarassed about, but stil don`t like it when they get slagged off by commies for all the wrong reasons.

[Vrana]

I wasn't planning on reviving this thread but since I saw it on the front page again I thought I could point out that I read the Fountainhead about a week ago.

I tried to not let the opinions I read about in this thread influence me while reading it too much, because I have a friend who's supposedly a fan of Rand's (since reading up on the ideologies of Rand, me's started to think that my friend has little or no clue of what she's actually admiring; mostly beacuse my friend is a decent human being), but to be honest, if The Fountainhead is the more readable of her novels I'm not even touching Atlas Shrugged with pliers.

I made this face, :rolleyes: , when in the beginning every 'evil' character had jealous or spiteful thoughts towards Roark without any underlying reasons, this coming from the characters themselves. And I pretty much kept that face for the rest of the book. The dialogues and characterizations had me wonder if Rand had spent her entire life so far up her own ass that she had never spoken to anybody but her own figments of imagination. It was as if she had no idea how the human mind works, the only thing I could agree with was the way that sensationalist journalism can affect the public.
Howard Roark has been one of the most annoying portrayals and protagonists I've ever read about, only preceeded by Dominique Francon.

Besides the book was so overly didactic I could only read it in half-hours. There wasn't much I liked about the book, even though I got the impression that it was something that'd appeal to adolescents, more or less I felt very inclined to throw the book out the window throughout the entire ordeal. I have honestly not encountered a book I feel such a vehement dislike for in a long while, and I think that alot of it had to do with the fact that her ideologies strike me as completely absurd and they shined through so clearly in the book.

[The Kreb]

Elrostar, I don't quite understand your response to my post. I said the philosophy is fun because it creates so much debate. Rich, healthy teenagers have nothing to do with that. Besides, anyone who subscribes to a philosophy just because it caters to their specific demographic isn't much of a philosopher. Trust me, there is better debate pro and con Rand than "I likes it cuz I'm rich lolz" or "I hates it cuz I'm poorzies :( :( :("

[sailor]

[quote name='Vrana' post='1688040' date='Feb 16 2009, 02.55']The dialogues and characterizations had me wonder if Rand had spent her entire life so far up her own ass that she had never spoken to anybody but her own figments of imagination.[/quote]

Ayn Rand spent most of her life surronded by her followers. Already at the time people who knew her compared this setup to a full blown cult.

For example the famous libertarian Murray Rothbard: [url="http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html"]http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html[/url]

[Commodore]

[quote name='Elrostar' post='1681661' date='Feb 10 2009, 12.28']Having a philosophy that says that you're rich and privileged because you [i]deserve[/i] it really does feel good, doesn't it?[/quote]

Where has she ever said that?

[Vrana]

[quote name='sailor' post='1688243' date='Feb 16 2009, 15.42']Ayn Rand spent most of her life surronded by her followers. Already at the time people who knew her compared this setup to a full blown cult.

For example the famous libertarian Murray Rothbard: [url="http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html"]http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html[/url][/quote]

I read the essay, which was a bit too caustic for me to buy it all; but even if half of what was in it is true, it truly proves how far from her precious reason her followers are.

BTW, remeber reading in the foreword of [i]the fountainhead [/i]that publishers that had rejected it had done so because they according to AR found the book "too intelletual". Honestly.

[Elrostar]

[quote name='Commodore' post='1695082' date='Feb 21 2009, 14.00']Where has she ever said that?[/quote]

Because if you're intelligent, well-educated, brilliant and capable, you're completely entitled to everything you can get for yourself. If other people aren't able to get that, well too bad for them. They should be trying harder.

This is why I said that Objectivism is rather more popular with the healthy children of privilege than, for instance, disabled youth of inner cities who have limited access to decent public education and health care. The idea of no-one having to limit their personal freedom in order to assist anyone else tends to seem like better idea when you're on the side that would be giving, rather than receiving.

Incidentally, does Rand recommend just letting people die when they can no longer fend for themselves? I have to admit to being unclear on that point.

[Larry.]

I figure this might be a kick for some to read (I've already posted the copy/paste on [url="http://ofblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/nationalize-atlas-shrugged.html"]my blog[/url]):

[quote][b]Nationalize [i]Atlas Shrugged[/i][/b]

by va

Whether it is because they are stupid or they think we are, the U.S. Treasury refuses to take charge of failed financial institutions. The enormous losses of these institutions are being socialized, and the people responsible for those losses are not being held accountable. Recognizing that sad fact, I propose that we seek satisfaction where we can find it and nationalize Atlas Shrugged.

According to The Economist, sales of Atlas Shrugged have spiked recently; it is ranked #38 on Amazon, and sales hit an annual record 200,000 copies in 2008. It's basically the only product in sight for which demand is rising. We should therefore act quickly to capitalize on current public interest (plus there's going to be a movie in 2011?). Furthermore, since sales of Atlas Shrugged seem to increase when governments intervene in the market, we can project that they will skyrocket when the government intervenes in Atlas Shrugged, driving that much more money, paradoxically, into public coffers.

The nationalization of Atlas Shrugged may strike Americans as foreign, even Swedish or something. However, the nation is already subsidizing the book's dissemination. A banking company, BB&T Corp. of North Carolina, has given $30 million in grants in the last decade for various universities to teach the book. Most recently, in March, 2008, BB&T gave UT-Austin $2 million for a Chair in the Study of Objectivism. Then in October, BB&T took (wait for it) $3.1 billion in bailout money. It only seems fair for the nation to recoup some of its investment in future generations' Rand-inspired economic havoc by nationalizing Atlas Shrugged now.[/quote]

[unJon]

Don't waste your time with Ayn Rand. Seriously. Read Robert Nozick instead. Read Friedrich Hayek instead. Thank me later.

[VarysTheSpider]

[quote name='Elrostar' post='1696135' date='Feb 23 2009, 04.15']This is why I said that Objectivism is rather more popular with the healthy children of privilege than, for instance, disabled youth of inner cities who have limited access to decent public education and health care.[/quote]
That's true of every philosophy. The poor, sick, and ignorant get their solace and affirmation from religion.

It's sort of interesting, I suppose. I'm not sure where you go from there though. I guess you could say that confirmation-bias discredits the argument, but this seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[Nous]

From the article Dylanfanatic linked to:
[quote]The nationalization of Atlas Shrugged may strike Americans as foreign, even Swedish or something. However, the nation is already subsidizing the book's dissemination. A banking company, BB&T Corp. of North Carolina, has given $30 million in grants in the last decade for various universities to teach the book. Most recently, in March, 2008, BB&T gave UT-Austin $2 million for a Chair in the Study of Objectivism. Then in October, BB&T took (wait for it) $3.1 billion in bailout money. It only seems fair for the nation to recoup some of its investment in future generations' Rand-inspired economic havoc by nationalizing Atlas Shrugged now.[/quote]
[url="http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reg_ls_financial_crisis"]Here[/url] is a lecture by the BB&T Chairman and former CEO John Allison, on the causes of the financial crisis. There is no reason, by the way, to think Allison is a hypocrite for accepting bailout money (BB&T is a healthy bank, as far as I know, having steered clear of subprime). Allison gives two reasons for taking the money: 1) the government "very strongly encouraged" them to take it. 2) Not taking bail-out money while their competitors do would place them at competitive disadvantage, for more than one reason. Martyrdom is not an Objectivist virtue.

[kiko]

too bad. they could do with a virtue or two

[Nous]

There are seven virtues in Objectivism, actually.