Intellectual Ammunition

Oh, it's ammunition all right - of an unstable and destructive sort. Hers is the only philosophy that encourages the dying to declare "D@mn, I wish I spent more time at the office".

The protestant work ethic without Christianity, a veritable striving after wind. Social Darwinism disdaining society and worshipping chaos.

This is the reed upon which to rest the revival of a conservative movement?

Have you actually read anything by Rand? I don't ask that in sarcasm, it's just that I have, and didn't come away with that conclusion at all.

For anyone who isn't sure what Rand's Objectivism is, I invite you to view this lecture by her successor. It is in classroom setting and very interesting.
What is Objectivism

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Rand is a superb defender of capitalism and individual rights so for sure her ammunition would be of great help.

Is it a better reed to lean on to say our lives are only of value when we serve others? I say this as someone who devotes a good deal of her time as a volunteer.

Tenebris, it doesn't sound like you understand Ayn Rand's viewpoint at all.

In order to defeat a philosophy based on mysticism - that is, Marxism and its offshoots - you need a philosophy based on reason, and Ayn Rand provided that. Religion is just another form of mysticism; it is not up to the task.

I regard many of my comments here as being of the "intellectual ammunition" variety. I'm not affiliated with the official Ayn Rand organizations, but I recognize a true philosophy when I see one.

Kate - I think I rather provocatively restated* the essentials of her philosophy...
personal happiness as life's moral purpose, productivity as the noblest activity, reason as the only absolute. (OK, I didn't work reason in very well). And while I will admit a temptation toward the view of man as the heroic individual, the difference is that I realize I am being arrogant, but she did not.

It's been decades since I've read her books, few and only in cursory fashion. I found them tedious. Yes, she advocated much that was, and is, admirable. But her foundation is still rotten. A society without transcendent purpose swiftly dies.

*I feel like running around with a pin and puncturing balloons today.

Tenebris: I appreciate the lack of purpose argument.

Per arrogance: Rand consistently stated she did not understand the Western idea that the individual - particularly males - should not display any emotion. The leader as strong, powerful and imposing but both cold and robotic. Further, that he is overly humble and does not take credit for his success and accomplishments. Instead, he bows his head, red-faced, and dismisses any praise, marching forward with a stiff upper lip.

What appears as arrogance to us, for Rand - at least in my opinion - was simply acknowledgment of her significant accomplishments.

Also, if you watch her during television interviews, particularly later in her life, she often did so with some tongue-in-cheek humour. However, there is no doubt she was proud and firmly believed she had done many great things. What made her unique to our society is that she wasn't afraid to say so.

In my capacity as a refugee from academia in the '60s----Rachel Carson, Ayn Rand were required reading. Most were incapable of rands philosophy and took the default interpretations of the Marxist educators as gospel.
Sorta like the Islamists interpretation of Islam.
I personally found Tsun Tsu and Machiaveli much more instructive.

Well, Tennebris, the eternal question is:
WHO decides what is the "transcendent" purpose?

You're a professor, I think.
I'm guessing, the professoriate will decide this for us, right?
The clergy?
Tennebris?

Very interesting and instructive videos. Thank-you for the link, Kate.

I have read all of Ayn Rands books, I found them exciting because they gave me hope. The grim, grey idealism of Thomas Aquinas, Freud, Dr Spock, Jung and the icons of the hippies left me cold. I began reading Ayn Rand with her first book; a novel called "We the Living". I recommend reading that book before reading any other because that book lays out, in black and white, the grey world that Communism imposes on people who want to live (not just exist). Communism robs people of their spirits and their souls leaving an automated shell without direction or purpose.

Observe, if you dare, the daycare child verses the home grown child - especially a country kid- who is expected to learn things so he/she can be independent. Meeting a child who dreams of doing something and outlines the plans he/she has for attaining that dream is the most uplifting experience a person can enjoy. My nephew once told me he was going to build himself a house with a shop in it, I asked him how he was going to do it and he told me he could work for a carpenter and do jobs for his grandad (who owns a parcel of forest land) to earn money to buy tools and at the same time learn how to use them. This child did not go to daycare.

Communism is cradle to grave daycare but there are no protections for the daycare attendee because the daycare workers are of the same age as the attendee. Imagine a typical self serving peer in charge of a persons life! When people find themselves at the mercy of peers with agendas the constant tension and fear of irrational reprisal makes their lives a living hell. I do not think, therefore, that Ayn Rand lacks spirit, she just hates agenda driven fools who think that 'we' must do this or that to save (enrich) the minions who follow the creed of the driven or the opportunist.

Another author, Taylor Caldwell, wrote in much the same vein as Ayn Rand but she personalized her philosophy with people like us. You see your thoughts coming and going from the pages of her novels; often not liking what you see! "Captains and Kings" is Taylor Caldwell's best known novel but "Anthem" and "Growing up Tough" are, in my opinion, more instructive for the person looking for a philosophy for life.

Ayn Rand always brings to my mind the line "having the form, denying the power". Or else "All how, no Why". She is somewhat like the engineer who gives you the answer without showing how she got the answer.

'WHO decides what is the "transcendent" purpose?'

I'm not being philosophical here, Me No Dhimmi. My cant avoids Kant, and is purely objective...
A life lived purely for personal pleasure and happiness tends not to further societal stability and growth.

"I'm guessing, the professoriate will decide this for us, right?"

Are you mad? I wouldn't even trust the engineers, and I are one.

Joe - the logic you discribe is inductive,

Ayn Rand is specifically anti-Christian.

Well, all I can say is that when I first started reading the Fountainhead, I couldn't believe I'd found someone else who thought just like me.

I recognize that her philosophy leaves some real world problems unresolved - that doesn't bother me. The purity of objectivism and the uncompromising way in which she champions the individual it is valuable in and of itself. We don't get nearly enough of that these days of state enforced "altruism".

Unlike extremes on the other end of the political spectrum, hers is a philosophy that by its very nature, can never be imposed on others by force, so any criticism of how it would fare if applied remains hypothetical.

I wish one could say the same of Marxism.

Say what you want about Ayn Rand, but she left no body count.

Tenebris: "A society without transcendent purpose swiftly dies"

Nonsense. Societies don't have purposes, only individuals do. People should desire to live in freedom; that is the only thing that could possibly be regarded as a societal ideal. And that precludes purposes, transcendent or otherwise, being imposed on societies by self-appointed eggheads with ulterior motives.

Me No Dhimmi: "WHO decides what is the 'transcendent' purpose?"

Exactly, you nailed it. That's what makes idiots like Ken Dryden so appalling, what with all his vague talk about "big"-ness.

bleet: "Ayn Rand is specifically anti-Christian.
"

Yup. She said she was challenging 2,000 years of tradition, and she did exactly that. Somebody had to.

Say what you want about Ayn Rand, but she left no body count.

Maybe not in this world. The death of the flesh isn't the worst thing that can happen.

Worshipping "reason", as a product of an imperfect mind, is not reasonable. No different than the leftist utopia.

"A society without transcendent purpose swiftly dies"

Nonsense. Societies don't have purposes, only individuals do."

Wow that's deep. Parking lot puddle deep that is.

Obama, Soros, sub-prime mortgages, AGW, Madoff, Adscam, Enron need I go on?

Hey just individuals pursuing their purposes.

I read Ayn Rand back in the early 70's. I was already disillusioned with Trudeau and could barely believe what he was doing.

I was searching for a philosophy that I could live with. I was about 30 years old without much formal education. Rand fit just fine. Still does.

However, at that time I also stumbled upon another philosopher of sorts. Harry Browne. I read his "How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World" and that was a life changer for me.

He was concentrating a bit more on the individual from a social point of view. How we fit or don't fit in our society. How it controls us and how we can take control of own live.

I suggest that if you feel trapped in any way, this guy will explain it to you. He also deals with the rampant altruistic egoism that pervades the do-gooder world we are in right now.

check it out here

Browne makes a lot of the same points as Rand, but is much easier reading for those with short attention spans.

"Obama, Soros, sub-prime mortgages, AGW, Madoff, Adscam, Enron need I go on?
Hey just individuals pursuing their purposes."

I don't have time to dissect it at the moment, but I would suggest you study Rand more closely and you'll discover that your list is nothing less than a series of examples that reinforce her argument.

I've never read Ayn Rand. I was introduced to her philosophy by L. Neil Smith the science fiction writer. His first novel I know of was The Probability Broach. I recommend it. Not deathless prose by any means, but certainly a welcome change from the "liberals in space" we see so much of out there.

The thing I find refreshing about Rand's philosophy is that it fits the observed reality so well. Leftists can't refute it, so they just lie about it.

One objection I have to some comments above is that Rand does not exclude family or community. Family and community are part of human nature, but the first reality of those structures is that they are made of individuals. She objects to the sacrifice of the individual to the collective, she does not deny the existence and need for families, for cooperative behavior, etc.

That she decreed the stone cold primacy of the almighty "I" is just another one of those convenient Lefty sourced bits of disinformation.

Intellectually, among mature thinking individuals, Ayn Rand is a joke. It's the thinking of an arrested adolescent, embarrassing immature, the metnal equivalent of playing 'Dungeons and Dragons'.

It's sort of like: yeah, I was into Ayn Rand, thought her stuff was real profound - for three minutes in Grade Seven.

Hence it's no surprise that she's Kate's favourite philosopher.

And along with this this, since Ayn Rand is specifically against the principles espoused by Jesus Christ, we can say that this is an anti-Christian blog.

Well bleet, you sure seem to spend a lot of time here. What does this say about you?

"Worshipping 'reason', as a product of an imperfect mind, is not reasonable. No different than the leftist utopia."

Nonsense. Even if we accept your "imperfect mind" premise, whats the alternative? Accepting the words of any random individual who claims that god talks to him? If you're going to toss reason out the window, what basis do you have for making ANY decisions?

You're like a mechanic who, upon finding that his wrench is slightly warped, attempts to secure a bolt by using a hammer. A more sane individual would realize that even an imperfect tool is better than the wrong tool, or no tool at all.

"Obama, Soros, sub-prime mortgages, AGW, Madoff, Adscam, Enron need I go on?
Hey just individuals pursuing their purposes."

First of all, it's useful to note that all of the individuals mentioned are liberals, not conservatives and certainly not Objectivists. Secondly, they were pursuing what an earlier poster referred to as "transcendent purposes"; i.e. the kinds of purposes favored by social engineers the world over. Enron promoted "green" energy, sub-prime mortgages were promoted by the state as spreading home ownership to the unwashed masses and so on. These "transcendent purposes", unconnected to financial reality in any way, contained within them the seeds of their own destruction.

Why employ market mechanisms to finance your pet projects when you can simply steal the money via the taxpayer or an accommodating Federal Reserve? For the simple reason that market mechanisms tend to view "transcendent purposes" with skepticism and are much less likely to fund them. And rightly so.

But the political classes, on the other hand, dominated by liberals and their fellow-travelers, are more easily swayed by visions of a collectivist utopia and have no problem with using the coercive power of the state to force the handover of capital to those who arguably don't deserve it.

For Dennis and Kate let me point out that my Obama, Soros etc response was to nv53's assertion that only individuals have purposes.

However the point remains that when you fix your navigation on moving objects you rarely get to the same place twice. By elevating the individual to primacy the individual with his ever changing moods, philosophy, morals and external pressures will inevitably lead others in the wrong direction. Even the lofty 'Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness" leads to nihilistic orgies whether political, financial or the baser urges. Human society must have a higher cause than the individual. Were it not so the Islamists would never be attacking the West. Were it not so the West would never be bowing before the Islamists.

That's nonsense, Joe. "Islamists" aren't attacking us because we have a "higher cause" - they're attacking us because they think they have a higher cause. One thing that all oppressive societies have in common is that they strive to fulfill some "higher purpose", whether it be religious (eg. Islamic states) or ideological (eg. communism). The only purpose that our society should have is to provide the maximum amount of freedom for all the individuals who compose it. Every person deserves the right to decide his or her own purpose in life.

"By elevating the individual to primacy the individual with his ever changing moods, philosophy, morals and external pressures will inevitably lead others in the wrong direction."

Let's revise this statement to something that more closely corresponds to today's intellectual climate:

"By elevating the collective to primacy the collective, with its ever changing moods, philosophy, morals and external pressures, will inevitably force individuals to go in the wrong direction."

By allowing individuals the facility of freedom, individuals have the capacity to avoid going down self-destructive and idiotic paths in the first place. Granted, many individuals swallowed Bernie Madoff's snake oil eagerly. Most, however, had the presence of mind to ignore him. Should those who exercised good judgment now be taxed to support those who did not?

An examination of the financial history of state-owned enterprises ought to lay to rest the notion that the collective makes better investment decisions than individuals.

Re: "Worshipping 'reason', as a product of an imperfect mind, is not reasonable. No different than the leftist utopia."

You don't "worship" reason, you merely recognize that it is your tool of survival. It's what enables you to perceive the world around you and organize it into concepts. Not to mention to distinguish fantasy from reality, which is where Kant his philosophical descendants went off the rails. Very badly.

bleet: "Intellectually, among mature thinking individuals, Ayn Rand is a joke."

So they have no answer to her arguments except ad hominems? Ayn Rand's philosophy is consistent and describes reality. Bleet's alleged "mature thinking individuals" follow the likes of the fiction writer Hegel and the cynical black-is-white garbage of Marcuse. And 100 million dead under communism was the result.

...

Meanwhile, I'm pleased to see Dennis and Alex mopping the floor with the critics ...

You don't "worship" reason, you merely recognize that it is your tool of survival.

Whatever you see as most important in your life, that is what you worship.

Nothing wrong with using reason while recognizing that "tool" isn't infallible.

"Dennis and Alex mopping the floor with the critics"

Yeah right Alex couldn't even understand what I had written. He thought my negative was a positive.