6 ms·

I am no Rand fan and I think she is an awful writer, technically speaking. Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead could both be about 1/10 as long. ...and yet, th

I am no Rand fan and I think she is an awful writer, technically speaking. Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead could both be about 1/10 as long. ...and yet, there is something inspiring (?) about the characters in her work. I don't know how to describe the feeling. Perhaps someone here knows what I'm talking about. They are brief glimpses of people with true character that don't sacrifice their values for anything. Roark in particular is (mostly) a very sympathetic character. Ultimately, I think her mistake was in transporting her philosophy from art (Roark) to business (Galt). The rebel artist that never gives in to the market and the mob is inspiring. But the businessman and financier? Not so much. That all aside, the sheer amount of angst and hatred thrown toward Rand is interesting in itself. As MLK said, the opposite of love isn't hate, it is indifference, and boy do people love to hate Rand.

tryptophan 6y ago
>That all aside, the sheer amount of angst and hatred thrown toward Rand is interesting in itself. As MLK said, the opposite of love isn't hate, it is indifference, and boy do people love to hate Rand. Yeah it's quite interesting. I don't think I have ever seen another book or people who like it get so much hate, completely unprovoked. Being honest, her books are not that good. The writing is bad to put it kindly; it is obvious the whole story is just a canvas used to paint her ideas onto. However, the ideas they present are really unique, which makes the works very memorable.
- hootbootscoot 6y ago
  Indeed, monochromatic moralizing with a baseball bat. I would characterize Ayn Rands writings as obtuse. What sort of non-self-aware person terms their personal philosophy "objectivism"? AS-IF you were "objective", Ayn. In my mind, Ayd Rands philosophies are immoral. Most of the problems life on earth faces at this junction in time are caused by human selfishness on the part of individual actors who actively seek to undermine humanities necessary collective corrections 1) environmental catastrophes of all sorts, including climate change 2) extreme poverty, folks without basic health-care, drinking-water, food, shelter, etc. I see Ayn claiming that big bosses "earned it" but I question the extent to which Bezos, Musk, Gates, etc, "earned it"... certainly 6 figure salaries, but the equivalent of entire continents full of nations GDP? It seems like a broken system, bare-minimum. The idea that one could propose the harshness of our economic failed-systems as the exclusive solution to every human issue = implausible at best. "Standing on the shoulders of giants" - is this only true when you want to acknowledge our computing forebears, or does not society provide individuals with tools and materials they would never be able to individually obtain etc? From arms-makers who push for specific foreign policies to oil companies who fund right-wing astroturf movements, the problem has the same origin: The economy and markets are what rule human activities on planet earth. Governments must cater to them, at their peril. The economy and markets treat environmental catastrophes like "the tragedy of the commons" like externalities. Radical Individualism is not a philosophy, it's a religious conviction, and cannot allow any alternative ideas to exist, witness the discourse here and the dismissive manner folks treat a rather decent author (whatever your point of view on their conclusions), versus putting a rather technically-poor writer on a pedestal. Her characters never develop or think a different thought from beginning to end, as the authors moralizing overpowers the frail thread of an attempt at disguising her viewpoint as a story, etc. I can't see how anyone can seriously pick on this Nautilus writer while giving Ayn Rand a free pass. There was a brick factory in the old town I used to live in. The owner died and his son didn't want to run it. They liquidated it. They liquidated 500+ jobs and those 500+ folks went on the unemployment rolls and starting being a social drain in lieu of a social boon. Does society not have an interest in keeping this brick factory running, for the sake of the local economy etc? Could the Camera Municipal simply have insisted that they will find buyers for the factory but that liquidation is not an option? Does society have no rights? Ayn Rand grants society nothing. zero. zilch. Clearly society exists. I have a real issue with the English-speaking worlds lack of reflection on etymology and the actual meaning of words. Thatcher "given A, A does not exist" Teresa May "Diogenes coined a word I don't like" (never mind that cosmopolitan literally means citizen of everywhere, thus contradicting the notion that a cosmopolitan could ever be a citizen of nowhere. hello "words" and "meanings" for 10 points...)
samsolomon 6y ago
I also think the amount of hate Rand gets is interesting. I'd also be curious to to how many of those that hate her have actually read The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged? The books are long and unreasonably wordy. But the hate is mostly for the ideas, not the writing. The worlds are certainly fictional. Things are not as black and white as she paints them. The heroes are small minority of supremely talented, hard-working people battling bureaucracy and incompetence. Rand assumes everyone is born on a level playing field and the choices people may determine where they land. My advice is that anyone Atlas Shrugged is a must read for anyone with an ounce of entrepreneurial spirit. Take it with a grain of salt though.
- andrepd 6y ago
  I think that people bash the ideas and the writing. The writing is terrible: too wordy (too up-its-own-ass to put it rudely), and the characters too unbelievable: everyone she wants to be a hero is a shining paragon of virtue in all aspects without so much as a single flaw, and whomever she wants to be the bad guys are similarly extreme caricatures of lazy, cheating, and stealing bastards. I'll pass. Separate to that, her ideas are disliked with good reason.
  - perilunar 6y ago
    Well her heroes are heroic and her bad guys are evil or weak — much like superhero films and comics, which are extremely popular and not criticised for the same thing. But there are interesting characters in her novels that are heroic but undone by their flaws. E.g. Leo Kovalensky and Andrei Taganov in We The Living, Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead, Dr. Robert Stadler and perhaps Eddie Willers in Atlas Shrugged.
- LanceH 6y ago
  The hate is generally thrown around by people who simultaneously think people should be good, but can't be trusted to be good. So we need a large government to enforce good behavior in all manner of activities. This government will, of course, be entirely benevolent. The members of government will all known better and act accordingly. The left may espouse noble causes, but it is authoritarian in its execution and intolerant of disagreement. Rand threatens that. The right is religious and more immediately rejects Rand at a surface level -- same thing, different authority.

tryptophan 6y ago

>That all aside, the sheer amount of angst and hatred thrown toward Rand is interesting in itself. As MLK said, the opposite of love isn't hate, it is indifference, and boy do people love to hate Rand. Yeah it's quite interesting. I don't think I have ever seen another book or people who like it get so much hate, completely unprovoked. Being honest, her books are not that good. The writing is bad to put it kindly; it is obvious the whole story is just a canvas used to paint her ideas onto. However, the ideas they present are really unique, which makes the works very memorable.

hootbootscoot 6y ago
Indeed, monochromatic moralizing with a baseball bat. I would characterize Ayn Rands writings as obtuse. What sort of non-self-aware person terms their personal philosophy "objectivism"? AS-IF you were "objective", Ayn. In my mind, Ayd Rands philosophies are immoral. Most of the problems life on earth faces at this junction in time are caused by human selfishness on the part of individual actors who actively seek to undermine humanities necessary collective corrections 1) environmental catastrophes of all sorts, including climate change 2) extreme poverty, folks without basic health-care, drinking-water, food, shelter, etc. I see Ayn claiming that big bosses "earned it" but I question the extent to which Bezos, Musk, Gates, etc, "earned it"... certainly 6 figure salaries, but the equivalent of entire continents full of nations GDP? It seems like a broken system, bare-minimum. The idea that one could propose the harshness of our economic failed-systems as the exclusive solution to every human issue = implausible at best. "Standing on the shoulders of giants" - is this only true when you want to acknowledge our computing forebears, or does not society provide individuals with tools and materials they would never be able to individually obtain etc? From arms-makers who push for specific foreign policies to oil companies who fund right-wing astroturf movements, the problem has the same origin: The economy and markets are what rule human activities on planet earth. Governments must cater to them, at their peril. The economy and markets treat environmental catastrophes like "the tragedy of the commons" like externalities. Radical Individualism is not a philosophy, it's a religious conviction, and cannot allow any alternative ideas to exist, witness the discourse here and the dismissive manner folks treat a rather decent author (whatever your point of view on their conclusions), versus putting a rather technically-poor writer on a pedestal. Her characters never develop or think a different thought from beginning to end, as the authors moralizing overpowers the frail thread of an attempt at disguising her viewpoint as a story, etc. I can't see how anyone can seriously pick on this Nautilus writer while giving Ayn Rand a free pass. There was a brick factory in the old town I used to live in. The owner died and his son didn't want to run it. They liquidated it. They liquidated 500+ jobs and those 500+ folks went on the unemployment rolls and starting being a social drain in lieu of a social boon. Does society not have an interest in keeping this brick factory running, for the sake of the local economy etc? Could the Camera Municipal simply have insisted that they will find buyers for the factory but that liquidation is not an option? Does society have no rights? Ayn Rand grants society nothing. zero. zilch. Clearly society exists. I have a real issue with the English-speaking worlds lack of reflection on etymology and the actual meaning of words. Thatcher "given A, A does not exist" Teresa May "Diogenes coined a word I don't like" (never mind that cosmopolitan literally means citizen of everywhere, thus contradicting the notion that a cosmopolitan could ever be a citizen of nowhere. hello "words" and "meanings" for 10 points...)

samsolomon 6y ago

I also think the amount of hate Rand gets is interesting. I'd also be curious to to how many of those that hate her have actually read The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged? The books are long and unreasonably wordy. But the hate is mostly for the ideas, not the writing. The worlds are certainly fictional. Things are not as black and white as she paints them. The heroes are small minority of supremely talented, hard-working people battling bureaucracy and incompetence. Rand assumes everyone is born on a level playing field and the choices people may determine where they land. My advice is that anyone Atlas Shrugged is a must read for anyone with an ounce of entrepreneurial spirit. Take it with a grain of salt though.

andrepd 6y ago
I think that people bash the ideas and the writing. The writing is terrible: too wordy (too up-its-own-ass to put it rudely), and the characters too unbelievable: everyone she wants to be a hero is a shining paragon of virtue in all aspects without so much as a single flaw, and whomever she wants to be the bad guys are similarly extreme caricatures of lazy, cheating, and stealing bastards. I'll pass. Separate to that, her ideas are disliked with good reason.
- perilunar 6y ago
  Well her heroes are heroic and her bad guys are evil or weak — much like superhero films and comics, which are extremely popular and not criticised for the same thing. But there are interesting characters in her novels that are heroic but undone by their flaws. E.g. Leo Kovalensky and Andrei Taganov in We The Living, Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead, Dr. Robert Stadler and perhaps Eddie Willers in Atlas Shrugged.
LanceH 6y ago
The hate is generally thrown around by people who simultaneously think people should be good, but can't be trusted to be good. So we need a large government to enforce good behavior in all manner of activities. This government will, of course, be entirely benevolent. The members of government will all known better and act accordingly. The left may espouse noble causes, but it is authoritarian in its execution and intolerant of disagreement. Rand threatens that. The right is religious and more immediately rejects Rand at a surface level -- same thing, different authority.