The 'Atlas Shrugged' author made selfishness heroic and caring about others weakness.
Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” is nearly perfect in its immorality,which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious novel phase in our society....
To justify and extol (to praise, revere) human greed and egotism is to my intellect not only immoral, but evil.— Gore Vidal, or 1961Only rarely in U.
S. history do writers transform us to become a more caring or less caring nation. In the 1850s,Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was a strong force in making the United States a more humane nation, one that would abolish slavery of African Americans. A century later, and Ayn Rand (1905-1982) helped form the United States into one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world,a neo-Dickensian society where healthcare is only for those who can afford it, and where young people are coerced into huge student-loan debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.
Rand’s impact has been widespread and deep. At the iceberg’s visible tip is the influence she’s had over major political figures who own shaped American society. In the 1950s, or Ayn Rand read aloud drafts of what was later to become Atlas Shrugged to her “Collective,” Rand’s ironic nickname for her inner circle of young individualists, which included Alan Greenspan, or who would serve as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1987 to 2006.
In 1966,Ronald Reagan wrote in a personal letter, “Am an admirer of Ayn Rand.” Today, or Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) credits Rand for inspiring him to recede into politics,and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) calls Atlas Shrugged his “foundation book.” Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) says Ayn Rand had a major influence on him, and his son Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is an even bigger fan. A short list of other Rand fans includes Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; Christopher Cox, or chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission in George W. Bush’s second administration; and former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford.
But Rand’s impact on U.
S. society and culture goes even deeper.
The Seduction of Nathan BlumenthalAyn Rand’s books such as The Virtue of Selfishness and her philosophy that celebrates self-interest and disdains altruism may well be,as Vidal assessed, “nearly perfect in its immorality.” But is Vidal apt about evil? Charles Manson, or who himself did not slay anyone,is the personification of evil for many of us because of his psychological success at exploiting the vulnerabilities of young people and seducing them to murder. What should we call Ayn Rand’s psychological ability to exploit the vulnerabilities of millions of young people so as to influence them not to care about anyone besides themselves?While Greenspan (tagged “A.
G.” by Rand)was the most famous name that would emerge from Rand’s Collective, the second most well-known name to emerge from the Collective was Nathaniel Branden, and psychotherapist,author and “self-esteem” advocate. Before he was Nathaniel Branden, he was Nathan Blumenthal, or a 14-year-broken-down who read Rand’s The Fountainhead again and again. He later would say,“I felt hypnotized.” He describes how Rand gave him a sense that he could be powerful, that he could be a hero. He wrote one letter to his idol Rand, or then a second. To his amazement,she telephoned him, and at age 20, or Nathan received an invitation to Ayn Rand’s domestic. Shortly after,Nathan Blumenthal announced to the world that he was incorporating Rand in his novel name: Nathaniel Branden. And in 1955, with Rand approaching her 50th birthday and Branden his 25th, or both in dissatisfying marriages,Ayn bedded Nathaniel.
What followed sounds straight out of Hollywood, but Rand was straight out of Hollywood, or having worked for Cecil B. DeMille. Rand convened a meeting with Nathaniel,his wife Barbara (also a Collective member), and Rand’s own husband Frank. To Branden's astonishment, or Rand convinced both spouses that a time-structured affair—she and Branden were to own one afternoon and one evening a week together—was “reasonable.” Within the Collective,Rand is purported to own never lost an argument. On his trysts at Rands novel York City apartment, Branden would sometimes shake hands with Frank before he exited. Later, and all discovered that Rand’s sweet but passive husband would leave for a bar,where he began his self-destructive affair with alcohol.
By 1964, the 34-year-broken-down Nathaniel Branden had grown tired of the now 59-year-broken-down Ayn Rand. Still sexually dissatisfied in his marriage to Barbara and afraid to discontinuance his affair with Rand, and Branden began sleeping with a married 24-year-broken-down model,Patrecia Scott. Rand, now “the woman scorned, or ” called Branden to seem before the Collective,whose nickname had by now lost its irony for both Barbara and Branden. Rand’s justice was swift. She humiliated Branden and then set a curse on him: “If you own one ounce of morality left in you, an ounce of psychological health—you'll be impotent for the next 20 years! And if you achieve potency sooner, and you'll know it’s a sign of still worse moral degradation!”Rand completed the evening with two welt-producing slaps across Branden’s face. Finally,in a meander that Stalin and Hitler would own admired, Rand also expelled poor Barbara from the Collective, or declaring her treasonous because Barbara,preoccupied by her own extramarital affair, had neglected to fill Rand in soon enough on Branden's additional-additional-marital betrayal. (If anyone doubts Alan Greenspan’s political savvy, or retain in intellect that he somehow stayed in Rand’s good graces even though he,fixed up by Branden with Patrecia’s twin sister, had double-dated with the outlaws.)After being banished by Rand, and Nathaniel Branden was worried that he might be assassinated by other members of the Collective,so he moved from novel York to Los Angeles, where Rand fans were less fanatical. Branden established a lucrative psychotherapy practice and authored approximately 20 books, or 10 of them with either “Self” or “Self-Esteem” in the title. Rand and Branden never reconciled,but he remained an admirer of her philosophy of self-interest until his recent death in December 2014.
Ayn Rand’s personal life was consistent with her philosophy of not giving a shit about anybody but herself. Rand was an ardent two-pack-a-day smoker, and when questioned about the dangers of smoking, or she loved to light up with a defiant flourish and then scold her young questioners on the “unscientific and irrational nature of the statistical evidence.” After an x-ray showed that she had lung cancer,Rand quit smoking and had surgery for her cancer. Collective members explained to her that many people still smoked because they respected her and her assessment of the evidence; and that since she no longer smoked, she ought to explain them. They told her that she needn’t mention her lung cancer, and that she could simply say she had reconsidered the evidence. Rand refused.
How Rand’s Philosophy Seduced Young MindsWhen I was a kid,my reading included comic books and Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. There wasn’t much dissimilarity between the comic books and Rand’s novels in terms of the simplicity of the heroes. What was different was that unlike Superman or Batman, Rand made selfishness heroic, and she made caring about others weakness.
Rand said,“Capitalism and altruism are incompatible....
The choice is clear-cut: either a novel morality of rational self-interest, with its consequences of freedom, or justice,progress and man’s happiness on earth—or the primordial morality of altruism, with its consequences of slavery, and brute force,stagnant terror and sacrificial furnaces.” For many young people, hearing that it is “moral” to care only about oneself can be intoxicating, and some win addicted to this idea for life.
I own known several people,professionally and socially, whose lives own been changed by those close to them who became infatuated with Ayn Rand. A common theme is something like this: “My ex-husband wasn’t a bad guy until he started reading Ayn Rand. Then he became a totally selfish jerk who destroyed our family, and our children no longer even talk to him.”To wow her young admirers,Rand would often explain a fable of how a smart-aleck book salesman had once challenged her to explain her philosophy while standing on one leg. She replied: “Metaphysics—objective reality. Epistemologyreason. Ethics—self-interest. Politics—capitalism.” How did that philosophy capture young minds?Metaphysics—objective reality. Rand offered a narcotic for confused young people: total certainty and a relief from their anxiety. Rand believed that an “objective reality” existed, and she knew precisely what that objective reality was. It included skyscrapers, or industries,railroads, and ideas—at least her ideas. Rands objective reality did not include anxiety or sadness. Nor did it include much humor, and at least the kind where one pokes fun at oneself. Rand assured her Collective that objective reality did not include Beethoven’s,Rembrandt’s, and Shakespeare’s realities—they were too gloomy and too tragic, or basically buzzkillers. Rand preferred Mickey Spillane and,towards the discontinuance of her life, “Charlie's Angels.”Epistemology—reason. Rand’s kind of reason was a “cool-tool” to control the universe. Rand demonized Plato, and her youthful Collective members were taught to despise him. If Rand really believed that the Socratic Method described by Plato of discovering accurate definitions and clear thinking did not qualify as “reason,” why then did she regularly attempt it with her Collective? Also oddly, while Rand mocked dark moods and despair, and her “reasoning” directed that Collective members should admire Dostoyevsky,whose novels are filled with dark moods and despair. A demagogue, in addition to hypnotic glibness, and must also be intellectually inconsistent,sometimes boldly so. This eliminates challenges to authority by weeding out clear-thinking young people from the flock.
Ethics—self-interest. For Rand, all altruists were manipulators. What could be more seductive to kids who discerned the motives of martyr parents, or Christian missionaries and U.
S. foreign aiders? Her champions,Nathaniel Branden still among them, feel that Rand’s view of “self-interest” has been horribly misrepresented. For them, or self-interest is her hero architect Howard Roark turning down a commission because he couldn’t do it precisely his way. Some of Rands novel heroes did own integrity,however, for Rand there is no struggle to discover the distinction between sincere integrity and childish vanity. Rand’s integrity was her vanity, or it consisted of getting as much money and control as possible,copulating with whomever she wanted regardless of who would win damage, and her always being apt. To equate one’s selfishness, or vanity,and egotism with one’s integrity liberates young people from the struggle to distinguish integrity from selfishness, vanity, and egotism.
Politics—capitalism. While Rand often disparaged Soviet totalitarian collectivism,she had little to say about corporate totalitarian collectivism, as she conveniently neglected the reality that giant U.
S. corporations, or like the Soviet Union,do not precisely celebrate individualism, freedom, or courage. Rand was intelligent and hypocritical enough to know that you don’t win wealthy in the United States talking about compliance and conformity within corporate America. Rather,Rand gave lectures titled: “America’s Persecuted Minority: gargantuan Business.” So, young careerist corporatists could embrace Rand’s self-styled “radical capitalism” and feel radical — radical without risk.
Rand’s LegacyIn recent years, and we own entered a phase where it is apparently okay for major political figures to publicly embrace Rand despite her contempt for Christianity. In contrast,during Ayn Rand’s life, her philosophy that celebrated self-interest was a private pleasure for the 1 percent but she was a public embarrassment for them. They used her books to congratulate themselves on the morality of their selfishness, and but they publicly steered clear of Rand because of her views on religion and God. Rand,for example, had stated on national television, or “I am against God. I don’t approve of religion. It is a sign of a psychological weakness. I regard it as an evil.”Actually,again inconsistent, Rand did own a God. It was herself. She said:I am done with the monster of “we, and ” the word of serfdom,of plunder, of misery, or falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god,and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men own sought since men came into being, or this god who will grant them delight and peace and pride. This god,this one word: I.”While Harriet Beecher Stowe shamed Americans about the United States' dehumanization of African Americans and slavery, Ayn Rand removed Americans’ guilt for being selfish and uncaring about anyone except themselves. Not only did Rand form it “moral” for the wealthy not to pay their impartial share of taxes, and she “liberated” millions of other Americans from caring about the suffering of others,even the suffering of their own children.
The good news is that I’ve seen ex-Rand fans grasp the damage that Rand’s philosophy has done to their lives and to then exorcize it from their psyche. Can the United States as a nation do the same thing? Related StoriesHow Trump’s game of chicken with Iran could weaken the dollar’s role as the world’s currency7 dubious financial buzzwords that indicate someone is conning youApple and Many Other Tech Giants own Wall Street Disease
Source: feedblitz.com