Ayn Rand and objectivism versus altruism

[Michie]

This is what happens when you take Ayn Rand seriously

So what if people behaved according to Rand's philosophy of "objectivism"? What if we indeed allowed ourselves to be blinded to all but our own self-interest?

Continued below.
Column: This is what happens when you take Ayn Rand seriously

 

[Michie]

She was notoriously anti-religion. But I find some people’s admiration of her confusing and off-putting. But it seems the more we “progress” the more admirers she seems to garner. She was a queen in narcissism imo.

 

[GOD Shines Forth!]

She was notoriously anti-religion. But I find some people’s admiration of here confusing and off-putting. But it seems the more we “progress” the more admirers she seems to garner. She was a queen in narcissism imo.

I think the context of Ayn's protest against "collectivism" is crucial to understanding her philosophy and not taking it in the "wrong" way. Long before Ayn, William Blake wrote these Proverbs of Hell:

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.

The cut worm forgives the plow.

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

Where man is not nature is barren.
——————-

One can read his proverbs as almost satanic, but they are part of a polemic written against the repressive excesses of someone he admired (Emanuel Swedenborg). They were corrective in his mind.

That’s how I see Ayn's writings. Corrective of the phony "oneness" fantasy of collectivism (which ignores the glaring witness of the self-interest of governments that murdered millions of their own people).

 

[Ignatius the Kiwi]

I don't know much about Ayn Rand except from what I've heard Libertarians who lionize her say. I can understand her wanting a free market and capitalism within Soviet Russia, but where she loses me is her ideas of sex and the family. I believe she argued that parents have no obligation to look after their children which to me cuts against a core value of Christianity. Likewise she didn't regard relationships as permeant but constantly in flux, hence cheating for her was no real problem.

Her philosophy seems especially aimed at the individual above all other concerns. The problem with that philosophy is that society as a whole does matter more than the individual sometimes. Hence the need to care for children and to have marital bonds. So those aspects of her philosophy cannot be reconciled with Christianity.

 

[Halbhh]

This is what happens when you take Ayn Rand seriously

So what if people behaved according to Rand's philosophy of "objectivism"? What if we indeed allowed ourselves to be blinded to all but our own self-interest?

Continued below.
Column: This is what happens when you take Ayn Rand seriously

Good find, and a good article!

I would not have found it I expect if you hadn't posted it, since I don't usually think of going to PBS Newshour for print journalism, but instead only to watch some video segments of their Newshour according to topic. (I tend to seek out a dozen or more unalike news sources most weeks, and PBS is sometimes having some high-information reporting that can supplement other news sources)

Yes, Rand was...a tragic, underdeveloped person, though also mentally sharp (and that's often a bad combination). One can learn part of why by reading some biography details of her life. She took a few partly right ideas, and then make a lot of error overextending the ideas to create really harmful viewpoints.

 

[Halbhh]

I don't know much about Ayn Rand except from what I've heard Libertarians who lionize her say. I can understand her wanting a free market and capitalism within Soviet Russia, but where she loses me is her ideas of sex and the family. I believe she argued that parents have no obligation to look after their children which to me cuts against a core value of Christianity. Likewise she didn't regard relationships as permeant but constantly in flux, hence cheating for her was no real problem.

Her philosophy seems especially aimed at the individual above all other concerns. The problem with that philosophy is that society as a whole does matter more than the individual sometimes. Hence the need to care for children and to have marital bonds. So those aspects of her philosophy cannot be reconciled with Christianity.

I'd not even heard she was against caring for children(!?!)...such a wildly wrong idea. She got almost nothing correct finally, in the end, once you look back. I read her novels as a teen, because they were part of our huge bookshelf, and I was looking for something to read. On one level she is about capturing some thoughts of the rebellious teenager, about age 13 or so. In her novel "We the Living" you can read about a character, 'Kira', escaping from Soviet Russia -- that's Ayn. That's her.

The story is a tragedy. In a way, it's the most (or really, the only) true thing she wrote, of her novels. Looking back, that is her best work, imo, though it's far from her most popular. Probably relatively few read it through (just a speculation. though it sold about 3 million apparently). In We the Living, Ayn is telling what truth she has. It was tragically far from enough truth to proceed in life on.