4 ms·

Controversial views aside, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged really nailed the victimhood as cover for corruption narrative. The villains are that much more detestable

Controversial views aside, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged really nailed the victimhood as cover for corruption narrative. The villains are that much more detestable because they're not competent people, they simply prevent others from out competing them through backroom deals, while claiming that it's to help the poor and downtrodden.

groby_b 4y ago
I'd suggest that anybody over 16 who uses Ayn Rand as an explanation (or model) for human behavior should spend a while exploring the humanities.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  Ayn Rand is a great critic of Stalinism, which was her formative experience. The current woke culture in the West is somewhere between the Stalinist show trials and the Maoist struggle sessions. That the majority of people don't see that insanity outside of twitter and their local HR department doesn't mean it's not a problem. Especially since 10 years ago it was just something that happened in humanities departments in universities.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    > The current woke culture in the West is somewhere between the Stalinist show trials and the Maoist struggle sessions. Not yet. There's not as much murder yet. There are certianly parallels though. Kafka-trapping is mainstream; if you deny a political charge brought against you, that denial is seen as further evidence of your guilt. If you deny you're an -ist, that 'proves' you're so thoroughly -ist that you can't even perceive it about yourself. Remember, HR has never been your friend. Even in the purest form of HR uninfected with politics, HR exist to protect the company from the workers. But as you have observed, HR are now becoming political officers charged with enforcing correct political thought.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
- MockObject 4y ago
  I would have liked to see a substantive criticism or two, instead of this somewhat trite and really quite overused cliche.
  - andrewclunn 4y ago
    There's plenty of areas to criticize Rand over (the fact that her rationality based / think for yourself movement became a cult of personality centered around her for example). That's why I tried the "Controversial views aside." In many ways Rand pioneered an effect that Trump would later turn into a strategy: have opponents who are so single-mindedly hateful and spiteful that they make you look better every time they attack you. It makes it so very tough when Rand's writing could inform or elevate a topic. There's just no way to do so that won't inspire an attempt at a flame war. That said, this particular portion of Atlas Shrugged is perhaps the best illustration of what I referenced in my earlier post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCmJUobwKQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCmJUobwKQk
lo_zamoyski 4y ago
Much better resources than Rand are Nietzsche and Scheler (I know Rand draws from the former, per her own admission, but she doesn't have the penetrating intellect of the others). The "slave morality" Nietzsche discusses is precisely this inverted morality founded on ressentiment[0] toward the strong. From the "Genealogy of Morals": "There is nothing very odd about lambs disliking birds of prey, but this is no reason for holding it against large birds of prey that they carry off lambs. And when the lambs whisper among themselves, 'These birds of prey are evil, and does this not give us a right to say that whatever of the opposite of a bird of prey must be good?', there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such an argument - though the birds of prey will look somewhat quizzically and say, 'We have nothing against these good lambs; in fact, we love them; nothing tastes better than a tender lamb." This particular quote is a bit facetious, I think, because elsewhere Nietzsche is rather disgusted with slave morality as life-denying instead of life-affirming. But even if we disagree with some of Nietzsche's conclusions and characterizations (as fun as he can be to read and as insightful as some of his writings are, he was a bit nuts and some of his criticisms misplaced), we can certainly observe that ressentiment and envy cause people to invert the moral order within themselves, thus paving the way for their own self-destruction. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ressentiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ressentiment

groby_b 4y ago

I'd suggest that anybody over 16 who uses Ayn Rand as an explanation (or model) for human behavior should spend a while exploring the humanities.

thrown_22 4y ago
Ayn Rand is a great critic of Stalinism, which was her formative experience. The current woke culture in the West is somewhere between the Stalinist show trials and the Maoist struggle sessions. That the majority of people don't see that insanity outside of twitter and their local HR department doesn't mean it's not a problem. Especially since 10 years ago it was just something that happened in humanities departments in universities.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > The current woke culture in the West is somewhere between the Stalinist show trials and the Maoist struggle sessions. Not yet. There's not as much murder yet. There are certianly parallels though. Kafka-trapping is mainstream; if you deny a political charge brought against you, that denial is seen as further evidence of your guilt. If you deny you're an -ist, that 'proves' you're so thoroughly -ist that you can't even perceive it about yourself. Remember, HR has never been your friend. Even in the purest form of HR uninfected with politics, HR exist to protect the company from the workers. But as you have observed, HR are now becoming political officers charged with enforcing correct political thought.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
MockObject 4y ago
I would have liked to see a substantive criticism or two, instead of this somewhat trite and really quite overused cliche.
- andrewclunn 4y ago
  There's plenty of areas to criticize Rand over (the fact that her rationality based / think for yourself movement became a cult of personality centered around her for example). That's why I tried the "Controversial views aside." In many ways Rand pioneered an effect that Trump would later turn into a strategy: have opponents who are so single-mindedly hateful and spiteful that they make you look better every time they attack you. It makes it so very tough when Rand's writing could inform or elevate a topic. There's just no way to do so that won't inspire an attempt at a flame war. That said, this particular portion of Atlas Shrugged is perhaps the best illustration of what I referenced in my earlier post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCmJUobwKQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCmJUobwKQk

lo_zamoyski 4y ago

Much better resources than Rand are Nietzsche and Scheler (I know Rand draws from the former, per her own admission, but she doesn't have the penetrating intellect of the others). The "slave morality" Nietzsche discusses is precisely this inverted morality founded on ressentiment[0] toward the strong. From the "Genealogy of Morals": "There is nothing very odd about lambs disliking birds of prey, but this is no reason for holding it against large birds of prey that they carry off lambs. And when the lambs whisper among themselves, 'These birds of prey are evil, and does this not give us a right to say that whatever of the opposite of a bird of prey must be good?', there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such an argument - though the birds of prey will look somewhat quizzically and say, 'We have nothing against these good lambs; in fact, we love them; nothing tastes better than a tender lamb." This particular quote is a bit facetious, I think, because elsewhere Nietzsche is rather disgusted with slave morality as life-denying instead of life-affirming. But even if we disagree with some of Nietzsche's conclusions and characterizations (as fun as he can be to read and as insightful as some of his writings are, he was a bit nuts and some of his criticisms misplaced), we can certainly observe that ressentiment and envy cause people to invert the moral order within themselves, thus paving the way for their own self-destruction. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ressentiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ressentiment