My brother was reading one of her books this summer and he liked it.

He is really big into being responsible for your own decisions. I do agree a lot of our life is our choices, and being in a position to take advantage of opportunities that can come our way.

But he and his wife (they are NEVER mo!) have the attitude "we are good people and we make good decisions, so we have a good life."

They also look at some poor schmucks life and think, well they made bad decisions so they harvest what they did and they deserve it. They were dumb and they deserve it.

We were smart and made smart decisions so we deserve what we enjoy.

Well, the problem with some of that thinking is: some smart people get deceived! So with deception comes bad decisions and a bad outcome in life!

So is Ann Rand about making your own way over the backs of others?
I do understand as we all leave the dictatorship of the TSCC many of us struggle to be responsible and not sit on our butts thinking Jaysus is coming and will rescue us. But many of us are cleaning up a lifetime of bad decisions made under the influence of TSCC.

I do own up to my making bad decisions was based on faulty knowledge... and a lot of my harvest is my own fault... but where does the "cult of Ann Rand" come in?

Check this out:
She started her own philosophy (or religion) called "Objectivism"

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_intro

Here's the other problem.

Not only can smart people be deceived, but often circumstances are simply beyond their control.

For example, my good friend decided to become a teacher. He went and got a masters degree from one of the most prestigious programs in the nation, which he added to a very respectable resume that reflected a lifetime of intelligence and good decision making. He finished his program just as the housing market collapsed, which resulted in school districts losing funding. He is now struggling because he chose to invest in a career which is no longer an option. 60,000 teachers were laid off last year. He's not stupid, he didn't make a bad decision, he is genuinely a victim of circumstances beyond his control.

Millions and millions of people are born into circumstances where they will simply never have the opportunities of which your brother and his wife were able to avail themselves. The child born into abject poverty in Africa is no more a dumb schmuck than he was unrighteous in the pre-existence.

Your brother and his wife claim their intelligence as though it were some sort of good choice on their part. Many people lose the genetic lottery. Does that mean someone with a learning disability should be written off as worthless?

Rand had some really brilliant ideas, but to apply her philosophy in the way you describe just reeks of arrogance and a willful ignorance of the world. If you brother (god forbid) were to discover he had cancer, I wonder if he would be so quick to attribute the circumstances of his life to his own good judgment.

"every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life."

I do get this from her web site posted by anybody.

It shows us how to be our own reality.
An example would be for a member being told by the BP you must have children right now! And the couple having the good sense to postpone it for a little bit.

I knew a couple who did that back in the 70s. They felt they should not just start their family right off the bat. About ten months after they were married the wife came down with a life threatening illness and nearly lost all use of her kidneys. If she had been pregnant she would have certainly lost her baby, and in those days very likely her life. The couple chose their best and highest reality for themselves.

As to my dear Brother, it was a lot of his wife who felt that they deserve good things. When one of their children was struck down with a life threatening illness she turned to my Brother and asked "Why is this happening to us??? We're good people!!" He was shocked.

He gets that bad things happen to good people in the way of health. But in the way of finances and life partner picking he seems to think you make a bad decision and it's always your fault. Never mind my sister and I had very limited understanding of what we were marrying into and we have paid for it all of our lives. So instead of a comfortable retirement after living a lovely full life of nice housing and great family activities and children who make it through college; we're looking forward to "retirement" living in a one bedroom studio apt somewhere before we end up on medicare..... that is if we don't manage to get the next ten years in line so we have a better retirement option.

We have been told over and over it is all our fault that we don't have what we wanted in life.
My dear bro has never had to start over again from the bottom like my sister and BIL did. I've had to start over from the bottom four times at least and I lost the use of my fully paid for manufactured home because I was forced to move out due to the poor choices of others!!!! Mainly Morons by the way....but dear Brother implies it was my fault.... I married the Mormon boys and went to the mormon church..... being deceived was all my fault.

now that part can be tricky.

Conservative thinking through and through. It's a good thing liberals exist to balance it out.

I won't make that mistake again.

You can be told by others what to do and do it-you enjoy taking orders....OR you can be told by others to do something and then analyze the pros and cons on yourself and other people and choose not to do it. The sad fact is, if you are born into Mormonism you have no choice in "do or don't do". But once you are enlightened you have YOUR OWN voice. Make your own reality as stated earlier. I think doing what is right and what will benefit YOU(in financial matters especially) always takes presidence over doing what you are told or following "your so called leader". No one cares about you like YOU do when you are free. It would save a ton in taxes if people cared about themselves- paying for criminals in jail, etc.

Don't know if you agree with that or not, but I totally disagree with that. There are many stupid people that succeed simply because of circumstances, likewise there are many intelligent people who are unable to succeed due to circumstances. Slavery being one of them that has occurred (and occurs to this day).

So, I read the Fountainhead and Anthem in junior high school, before I was ever old enough to pluck out the philosophies behind it. I had no idea about the cult of Ayn Rand, and I certainly didn't initially apply the principles to these political issues.

For me, the Fountainhead and Anthem were about self-commitment to your dreams, about self-improvement, self-integrity, and self-conviction. All of those are good principles to me. I can see how the conservatives love to twist her philosophies to fit their political interests.

I didn't care for Atlas Shrugged one bit, because it was a bit like Ayn Rand hitting me over the head with her principles without a good story to back it up. I love the story of the Fountainhead, love the characters, love the passages.

It's funny, because I can't think of anything less conservative than being a strong individual with an unshakable purpose, which to me was the theme of Ayn Rand's works... Yet they parade her ideals because it somehow justifies their "moralistic self-interest."

I dunno. I feel funny defending Ayn Rand's work when I know she is touted as the conservative's rally-er.... But I swear, I just read those books as novels, and loved them!

I agree with the philosophy in general that you can choose your reality, and make the things you desire become real through vision and continual decisions and actions that support that outcome.

The problem is when people prematurely judge and assume that someone else's current condition is 100% because of their own good or bad choices, or that "Because they do/aren't doing X, they are not getting Y result" when really no one freaking knows so shut your mouth and just love people.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2012 11:33AM by athreehourbore.

The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

They were vigorously resisting government oversight.

Rand was right about a lot of things but she wasn't perfect and some of her ideas were flawed.

What always bothered me about Ayn Rand was the lack of empathy for the less fortunate, either by birth, health or circumstance.

There are always going to be people who can't take care of themselves, but I couldn't see where they fit in.

Sounds like a bunch of rubbish to me. Too many people think they can simply rise to the top with "hard work" and good decisions. As others have pointed out.. circumstances dictate a lot of our decisions regardless of our intentions. Ayn Rand's philosophy was one of the causes of the 2008 financial crisis. Years and years of deregulation by laissez-faire capitalists on Wall Street led to the mess we are still trying to recover from.

I also disagree with Rand's "wealth is the product of man's capacity to think."- not completely accurate. There is always an element of being in the right place at the right time. How much wealth is a North Korean going to amass because of intellect? He is dominated by circumstances beyond is control. The State controls all the resources and dictates everything in his life.

I'm trying to find out if thi is accurate, but supposedly she said that Jesus Christ was one of the most evil people to ever live.

Not sure where you're getting your info.

I know they do. I was talking about religious conservatives and I was referring to some religious aquaintances who adore Ayn Rand. It strikes me as odd.

Wow..a co-worker gave me Fountainhead as a Christmas present last year and worships Ayn Rand. He thinks people who make poor decisions about their life and finances are just losers. Now I understand better where he is coming from. Frightening!

First of all, I owe a lot to her because her work influenced me in a lot of positive ways. She opened my eyes to thinking as an individual instead of being in a collectivist mentality. She was a strong female independent role model for me. She helped me recognize that I needed to pull my weight and be responsible for my own outcome and goals.

Over time though I've seen that there are flaws and things I don't agree with at all in her work. For starters, it turns out the John Galts are not necessarily benevolent. For example, when the banks got in charge they didn't play fair and became more and more selfish and dishonest (IMO). Without regulations, the John Galts completely disappointed me with their actions of greed and screwing over the customers. In her "philosophy" she obviously expected them to play fair. Well, they don't.

The next thing that I've come to disagree with her about is the differences between the haves and have nots. She implies that anyone who isn't rich simply isn't trying and is some kind of leach. True, there are a lot of people who don't carry their weight, but there is a grey area that includes people with no oppourunity or some other disadvantage. She has no empathy for the ones who are not lazy parasites who happen to be in circumstances where they can't get ahead.

She didn't seem to care about children, elderly, animals, or the environment. Her willfull independence is fine to talk about but in practice it isn't practial to run a society that way.

I actually liked the movie that was out last year about Atlas Shrugged. I think it showed the benefits and the pitfalls of her views. It shows the complete lack of empathy that results when her views are carried to their logical conclusions.

I learned a lot from her books and value the example she gave to me. It helped me move from a clueless obedient Mormon to an existentialist individual. It impacted me enough that I still use her character's name for my moniker. It was a transition for me to go from a herd LDS conservative to a libertarian Randian to a social liberal. I still don't fit with any political classification but her work has made me think more about my own values. I try to think about every issue independently.

I think the following she had that became cult-like was unfortunate. It just shows that sometimes things backfire and end up in the opposite direction from what she intended.

I have a DVD of her being interviewed. What struck me about her was her eyes. She looked like she had so many things going on in her mind. It was a look of intelligence. But no one is a perfect guru and she certainly had a lot of screwy ideas.

I liked Dagny very much as well but Ayn Rand's experiences in Soviet Russia polarised her thinking too much and this comes out in "Atlas Shrugged." I do hope they make the next movie sequel though.

See, I wish people could have read the Fountainhead without all the Objectivist bullshit. It's such a good story.

... she makes lots of good points in hers. I don't think her philosophy is that extreme, though fanatics can take anything out of context to support their own view. I think she is more a libertarian than right-wing conservative... Though I could be wrong, of course.

A favorite Rand quote for me: 'A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.' (Atlas Shrugged)

She and Greenspan were supposedly lovers. If that's true or not, don't know, but they were in bed together in other ways.

That alone should tell you all you need to know - greed and selfishness.

"The best line I’ve ever heard about Ayn Rand’s influence:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

The best way to find out about Ayn Rand is to read her biography "The Passion of Ayn Rand," written by the wife of a man Ayn had an affair with for about 20 years or so (man was WAY younger than Ayn.)

Nathaniel Brandon. That was his name. Or the name he changed his original name to. Of course Ayn wasn't always Ayn. She was Anya from Russia. And "Rand" wasn't her last name. The "Rand" part came from a Rand typewriter. She always knew she would be a writer, and by golly the woman wrote and got published. She was nothing if not persistent.

You will find Ayn's story riveting, and you will see where she came up with her philosophy (her father a successful pharmacist lost everything to the communist.) She grew up in a Russia where mediocrity was celebrated and genius and hard work trashed. Where the proles rule, medicrity often rules too.

YES!!! She started a real cult that met regularly, though she never took financial advantage of anyone. The cult definitely centered around Ayn though, and it didn't sound like a happy cult.

She was however, the victim of deception as her married lover (she was married too) was having an affair with someone else, whom he truly loved and who became his second wife, and poor Ayn was devastated, when she finally found but when a woman in her fifties has an affair with a man in his twenties what can you expect???

Oh, well. Poor Ayn. She thought she was his "highest good," and that was all that mattered. It turned out not to be the case. Or maybe the younger woman was her lover's "highest good" after all. Or something.

Her lover's ex-wife tells Ayn's story astonishingly well, considering that she was the cheated-on spouse for so many years, and felt compelled to keep the whole thing a secret. Even the other cult members didn't know.

The author even went to Russia to find out what she could about Ayn's Jewish background. I think the Jewishness played a big role in Ayn's life, tho Ayn herself seemed to think that her jewishness was totally irrelevant to just about anything.

I have to admit that this biography was more riveting than any of Ayn's novels, though I did relish them when I read them in high school, especially the "passionate" parts, which fed my girlish imagination.

Lois

Of course Mormons wouldn't fit into this - but in the 1950's in the 'Christian' community view Rand thinking was selfish.

Mike Wallace interview with Ayn Rand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ukJiBZ8_4k

I can understand how Rand appeals to people like Cleon Skousen and Mormons because she is about no loyalty to family and all me, me, me... goes along with becoming your own God. Dump you wife - get a new one that you can use as a stepping stone - sounds Mormon to me.

I couldn't believe it when I heard a very contemplative Alan Greenspan, who once was among Ayn Rand's closest circle of friends, say that the housing market crash had shown his approach to the economy to be flawed.

Like the Mormon Church, Ayn Rand developed a philosophy that was idealistic in the extreme and very poorly connected to reality. Her affair with Nathaniel Brandon (discussed above by Lois Lane) makes it clear that she herself couldn't live up to her own professed moral standards.

I too saw Greenspan express disillusionment about the economic system he had supported all those years. I think he was surprised at the lack of ethics coming from those at the top. I think it involved seeing that acting for your own interest ended up destroying the system. We saw the ones at the top take the money and run (think Enron) because they could. That wasn't exactly the way he (and Rand) thought their ideals would work.

As for her personal life, I don't remember her professing "moral standards" about things like affairs. Her female characters were women who did what they wanted sexually. They were too strong and independent to be some man's pet. I don't think on that point she "couldn't live up to her own moral standards." Her standards were more about self interest when it came to personal choices. She smoked. She picked her lovers. She didn't bow to a god.

I think her higher ethics (which failed ultimately) involved thinking that acting on your own behalf would somehow not be abused. She didn't think people should have regulations which she seemed to think were mostly bureaucratic parasites trying to keep the motivated self starters down. Unfortunately, as Greenspan ultimately saw, the lack of regulations allowed the selfish to display what happens without enough regulations.

I don't know if she actually had an affair with Greenspan. I read an article he wrote once in a magazine that described his interest and involvement in her study group. She would read and discuss the books she was writing. He said it eventually became too cult-like. I think she had it going on with someone else then. I wouldn't guess she was screwing everyone in her group, but if she was, kudos to Ayn! She's not a hypocrite on that issue in my view.

ahteist&happy: You make excellent points with regard to Ayn Rand's morality. After thinking about it, I'm not so much put off by her multi-year sexual affair with Brandon. What bothers me are: 1) Her apparent initial idealization of Brandon; she had him right up there with the heroes in her novels, and from personal experience, I can tell you that Brandon had a real mean nasty streak; 2) I don't recall that Brandon and Rand had a clear "open marriage" agreement with their respective spouses; 3) Brandon had a horrible reputation because of the way he treated people -- as did Rand -- but it never seemed to bother either of them; and 4) Rand went ballistic when Brandon broke up with her. She literally banished him from any further contact with her or her followers.

My point is that Rand behaved like a typical star-crossed lover rather than as a person who had developed a mature and respectful philosophy about life.

by Michael Prescott

"This essay is adapted from two posts I first published on my blog (www.michaelprescott.typepad.com). After writing this essay, I wrote a series of further posts on this topic, which can be read here, here, here, and here - or just go to the June page of my blog, where you can find all of these additional posts in one place. Some Ayn Rand fans discussed my thoughts regarding the Rand-Hickman matter on their message board; this discussion may be read here.


Part One: Ayn Rand's "real man"

Recently I was rereading Scott Ryan's fascinating, albeit highly technical, critique of Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality, and getting a lot more out of it the second time, when I came across a fact culled from a posthumous collection of Rand's journal entries.

In her journal circa 1928 Rand quoted the statement, "What is good for me is right," a credo attributed to a prominent figure of the day, William Edward Hickman. Her response was enthusiastic. "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard," she exulted. (Quoted in Ryan, citing Journals of Ayn Rand, pp. 21-22.)

At the time, she was planning a novel that was to be titled The Little Street, the projected hero of which was named Danny Renahan. According to Rand scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra, she deliberately modeled Renahan - intended to be her first sketch of her ideal man - after this same William Edward Hickman. Renahan, she enthuses in another journal entry, "is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should." (Journals, pp. 27, 21-22; emphasis hers.)

"A wonderful, free, light consciousness" born of the utter absence of any understanding of "the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people." Obviously, Ayn Rand was most favorably impressed with Mr. Hickman. He was, at least at that stage of Rand's life, her kind of man.

So the question is, who exactly was he?

William Edward Hickman was one of the most famous men in America in 1928. But he came by his fame in a way that perhaps should have given pause to Ayn Rand before she decided that he was a "real man" worthy of enshrinement in her pantheon of fictional heroes.

You see, Hickman was a forger, an armed robber, a child kidnapper, and a multiple murderer.

Other than that, he was probably a swell guy.

In December of 1927, Hickman, nineteen years old, showed up at a Los Angeles public school and managed to get custody of a twelve-year-old girl, Marian (sometimes Marion) Parker. He was able to convince Marian's teacher that the girl's father, a well-known banker, had been seriously injured in a car accident and that the girl had to go to the hospital immediately. The story was a lie. Hickman disappeared with Marian, and over the next few days Mr. and Mrs. Parker received a series of ransom notes. The notes were cruel and taunting and were sometimes signed "Death" or "Fate." The sum of $1,500 was demanded for the child's safe release. (Hickman needed this sum, he later claimed, because he wanted to go to Bible college!) The father raised the payment in gold certificates and delivered it to Hickman. As told by the article "Fate, Death and the Fox" in crimelibrary.com,

"At the rendezvous, Mr. Parker handed over the money to a young man who was waiting for him in a parked car. When Mr. Parker paid the ransom, he could see his daughter, Marion, sitting in the passenger seat next to the suspect. As soon as the money was exchanged, the suspect drove off with the victim still in the car. At the end of the street, Marion's corpse was dumped onto the pavement. She was dead. Her legs had been chopped off and her eyes had been wired open to appear as if she was still alive. Her internal organs had been cut out and pieces of her body were later found strewn all over the Los Angeles area."

Quite a hero, eh? One might question whether Hickman had "a wonderful, free, light consciousness," but surely he did have "no organ for understanding ... the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people."

The mutilations Hickman inflicted on little Marian were worse than reported in the excerpt above. He cut the girl's body in half, and severed her hands (or arms, depending on the source). He drained her torso of blood and stuffed it with bath towels. There were persistent rumors that he molested the girl before killing her, though this claim was officially denied. Overall, the crime is somewhat reminiscent of the 1947 Black Dahlia case, one of the most gruesome homicides in L.A. history.

But Hickman's heroism doesn't end there. He heroically amscrayed to the small town of Echo, Oregon, where he heroically holed up, no doubt believing he had perpetrated the perfect crime. Sadly for him, fingerprints he'd left on one of the ransom notes matched prints on file from his previous conviction for forgery. With his face on Wanted posters everywhere, Hickman was quickly tracked down and arrested. The article continues:

"He was conveyed back to Los Angeles where he promptly confessed to another murder he committed during a drug store hold-up. Eventually, Hickman confessed to a dozen armed robberies. 'This is going to get interesting before it's over,' he told investigators. 'Marion and I were good friends,' he said, 'and we really had a good time when we were together and I really liked her. I'm sorry that she was killed.' Hickman never said why he had killed the girl and cut off her legs."

It seems to me that Ayn Rand's uncritical admiration of a personality this twisted does not speak particularly well for her ability to judge and evaluate the heroic qualities in people. One might go so far as to say that anyone who sees William Edward Hickman as the epitome of a "real man" has some serious issues to work on, and perhaps should be less concerned with trying to convert the world to her point of view than in trying to repair her own damaged psyche. One might also point out that a person who "has no organ for understanding ... the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people" is what we today would call a sociopath.

Was Rand's ideal man a sociopath? The suggestion seems shockingly unfair - until you read her very own words."

Continued at.... http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/29/2012 01:31AM by atheist&happy:-).

"In her 70s Rand found herself dying of lung cancer, after insisting that her followers smoke because it symbolized "man's victory over fire" and the studies showing it caused lung cancer were Communist propaganda."

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2009/11/how_ayn_rand_became_an_american_icon.single.html

A paragraph from an interesting article:

The Ayn Rand Makeover
By Danny Duncan Collum

"What’s new in today's Randophilia is the claim that her philosophy constitutes a serious intellectual contribution to the history of Western thought. This mainstreaming of Rand is, in large part, the work of one man, John Allison IV, recently retired CEO of the giant national bank BB&T. Allison is a dyed-in-the-wool Objectivist who required his top managers to read Atlas Shrugged as a condition of employment. Now, through the BB&T Foundation, he has rained down millions in grant money upon 25 colleges and universities with the condition that money be used to support business courses in which works by Ayn Rand are required reading. Schools ranging from Marshall University and the University of Louisville to the University of Texas-Austin, Duke, and even Quaker-founded Guilford College have gladly taken the money and drunk the Objectivist Kool-Aid."

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xPtvRQ7T7EAJ:archive.sojo.net/index.cfm%3Faction%3Dmagazine.article%26issue%3Dsoj1107%26article%3Dthe-ayn-rand-makeover+%22the+ayn+rand+makeover%22&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari

http://sojo.net/magazine/2011/07/ayn-rand-makeover