Ayn Rand

[Chase]

Ayn Rand...



So, I've long been done with getting a briefing on an entire worlview/philosophy/religion/anything from Wikipedia. So, I have decided to take it upon myself to learn about any particular philosophy that either interest me or has had significant impact on history. This Ayn Rand, I have just GOT to know more about this lady.
I saw the BusinessInsider website saying she is ruining the economy, Bill Maher making cracks about her, one person on here whom I shan't name calling her a cult leader ... and seeing what some of the Christian websites have to say about Ayn Rand, oh, my goodness, I have GOT to learn more about this lady!
Based on some of the websites I've visited that discuss this woman who lived before my birth, I get the impression some of her critics would tell me if I so much as open one of her books, it would instantly brainwash my little 21 year old mind into being some sort of selfish, I don't know what.
So in this thread I would like a discussion on Ayn Rand's literature and philosophy ("objectivism"), and suggestions on what to start reading. I've been thinking of starting off with The Fountainhead. No spoilers, but if anyone read it I'd like to know if it is a good story or mostly about her philosophy, because it's the architecture theme that interests me mostly.

[Pix]

As for me personally, I couldn't stand her fiction. I sincerely tried because I had libertarian friends whom I liked and agreed with who seemed to worship her but I just could not do it. I finally got Atlas Shrugged as a book on tape from the library to listen to while doing housework and I STILL could not stand it (which means it was over the top bad).

Reflecting on why I think it's not just her very dry style (and I got the impression she felt being a woman was something to be overcome which annoyed me) but her fictional characters are REALLY over the top in being epically heroic or dastardly villains, with minds and bodies as beautiful or ugly as their ideals (in AR's way of seeing things). It sounds like she appeals to wannabe elitists overcoming their unwashed dirty hippie enemies (who if they were really that stupid and worse then they shouldn't have been so powerful), and I've always had a problem with stories like that as they're just so hard for me to believe (and I can suspend my disbelief for wizards and dragons!) Heck, even when I was a child I took a more complex view of my fictional characters (I think I was 10 when I had the good witch as ugly and the really wicked witch as beautiful, which is very much against Ayn Rand's style).

And I say that in part because I was able to read her nonfiction...it was still very dry but that's ok when talking of ideas rather than sharing a story, and it's free of that ridiculous black/ugly vs. white/beautiful thing (even if her views held little to no room for shades of gray). Having been exposed to many philosophers she was just one more and I felt fairly neutral about her beliefs overall.

And everything I ever read by or about her always made me think of her as a joyless, even bitter, person who was always disappointed with the world (if anything made her happy then it was architecture), and I think she was even disappointed in her followers (either they didn't fully buy into her views which was unforgivable, or they were total sycophants which also displeased her, at least that's the impression I get). This has nothing to do with how right or wrong her views may be, but it does make me feel justified in how I sometimes sardonically quipped to libertarians (whenever something was good and awesome), "even Ayn Rand might smile." :tongue: (ETA: btw, nice pic of her smiling, that's the nicest pic I've ever seen of her.)

Though I don't care if you read her. If she's your cup of tea then have fun.

[Genersis]

I don't like her views or the politics that came from them.
While I don't want to judge her as a person based on the political views she promoted both in life and in her works; from those I don't think it likely she was remotely what I would consider a kind person.

[Miles]

The only time in my life I've felt the simultaneous urge to vomit uncontrollably and to crash into sleep was when I read Anthem.

I shat right out of my dick.

[Chase]

And everything I ever read by or about her always made me think of her as a joyless, even bitter, person who was always disappointed with the world

lol

Yeah, I watched a short clip of her on YouTube on some old Talk Show where she was answering questions. A person in the audience asked her about the then situation in Israel, and she actually got upset because he or she asked her opinion on what was happening "now" and she turned into this ultra-literalness curmudgeon on how she can't possibly know the news at the present moment. But in her defense before that she was answering questions about why she isn't religious, I'm presuming she was being asked to "justify" it, so I guess I can't blame her for being so crabby to the audience.

Thanks everyone!

[Pix]

I thought a lot of these "least successful Holiday Specials" were hilarious but I'm just sharing the Ayn Rand one here...

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2004/12/01/th...-all-time/

Ayn Rand’s A Selfish Christmas (1951)

In this hour-long radio drama, Santa struggles with the increasing demands of providing gifts for millions of spoiled, ungrateful brats across the world, until a single elf, in the engineering department of his workshop, convinces Santa to go on strike. The special ends with the entropic collapse of the civilization of takers and the spectacle of children trudging across the bitterly cold, dark tundra to offer Santa cash for his services, acknowledging at last that his genius makes the gifts — and therefore Christmas — possible. Prior to broadcast, Mutual Broadcast System executives raised objections to the radio play, noting that 56 minutes of the hour-long broadcast went to a philosophical manifesto by the elf and of the four remaining minutes, three went to a love scene between Santa and the cold, practical Mrs. Claus that was rendered into radio through the use of grunts and the shattering of several dozen whiskey tumblers. In later letters, Rand sneeringly described these executives as “anti-life.”