4 ms·

Can someone explain to me why Ayn Rand and a work of fiction is held in such high regard? (I'm not trying to be facetious). As a foreigner living in the US for

by fourmii 14y ago

Can someone explain to me why Ayn Rand and a work of fiction is held in such high regard? (I'm not trying to be facetious). As a foreigner living in the US for the past almost 7 years, I find it interesting that so many people (some with important jobs like our politician friends in the far right) base so much of their ideals on fiction. One could draw a comparison with Scientology where a whole religion was started by a science-fiction writer...

digitalengineer 14y ago
As a non-American I found I understood (the motives of some) American people better after I read it. Growing up in a (poorer and thus leftist part) of a socialist country the book gave me some well needed anti-dote.
RyanMcGreal 14y ago
There will always be some people who will take solace and even delight in the argument that they are not only allowed but indeed morally obliged to be wholly self-interested.
- nirvana 14y ago
  That is a derogatory characterization and it is false. The best outcome for society is for government to adhere to the principles laid out in Atlas Shrugged. Collectivism has given us poverty, illiteracy, the 2008 financial crisis, etc. Worse, whenever they screw things up really bad, they use the fact that things are screwed up to claim that they need even more power to exploit poor people and violate the rights of everybody, and they wrap themselves in the flag of "serving the poor" to sell it. These people pretend like Rand was advocating self centeredness, and that they are advocating altruism, when the reverse is more accurate. Rand is advocating freedom and liberty and they are advocating a form of slavery.
  - Ygg2 14y ago
    Please do show how does collectivism (and not a bad application of collectivistic principles) has given poverty, illiteracy and the 2008 financial crisis (last one I can kinda understand).
  - RyanMcGreal 14y ago
    > That is a derogatory characterization and it is false. It may be derogatory but it's not false. Rational self-interest was the centrepiece of Rand's moral philosophy. > The best outcome for society is for government to adhere to the principles laid out in Atlas Shrugged. The most successful societies, by a wide variety of measures, manage to balance individual freedom, agency and entrepreneurialism with a foundation of civil liberty and social equity that provides the best opportunities for everyone to succeed. > Collectivism has given us poverty, illiteracy, the 2008 financial crisis, etc. Labelling the whole gamut of different forms of government under a pejorative ism has given us a legacy of dogmatic, wooly-minded incoherent political discourse. > Worse, whenever they screw things up really bad, they use the fact that things are screwed up to claim that they need even more power to exploit poor people and violate the rights of everybody, and they wrap themselves in the flag of "serving the poor" to sell it. Some of them do that some of the time, and one solution is to eliminate government, but that has not worked anywhere ever. What has worked - what is working today in many places - is to press for a better, more responsive government that forms policies based on evidence and respects human rights. > These people pretend like Rand was advocating self centeredness, and that they are advocating altruism, when the reverse is more accurate. The 2008 economic crisis, incidentally, was made possible in large party through deliberate state deregulation of the financial industry in the late 1990s, a catastrophic outcome that was predicted at the time but ignored by those people who were most loudly touting libertarian governing doctrines.
  - yzhengyu 14y ago
    From what I have observed, Objectivism's problems lie in the fact that its "me" message is inherently attractive to people who probably need psychiatric treatment for their tendencies which trend towards sociopathy. Most people who buy into Rand's philosophy essentially buy into this message, it is rather pointless to try to debate the more subtle points of her philosophy with them. IMHO, human society is neither about collectivism or individualism but a dynamic balance of the two.
nirvana 14y ago
Fiction is the delivery mechanism for a philosophy. The book argues that philosophy logically. The fact that it is delivered as a fictional account is merely a method that makes it less dry and more comprehensible than a straight up non-fiction philosophy book. Fiction allows her to illustrate abstract concepts concretely. Making the comparison to Scientology would be silly, since Scientology is a religion, not a philosophy. By the way, I can assure you the author of this article (and every anti-Rand article I've ever seen from leftist publications) has not read Atlas Shrugged. If you had read it you wouldn't ask the question, because the use of fiction to deliver the philosophy is extremely effective. That and the fact that in the last 50 years so many of the types of events that seemed outrageous at the time have actually occurred in reality.

by fourmii 14y ago

digitalengineer 14y ago

As a non-American I found I understood (the motives of some) American people better after I read it. Growing up in a (poorer and thus leftist part) of a socialist country the book gave me some well needed anti-dote.

RyanMcGreal 14y ago

There will always be some people who will take solace and even delight in the argument that they are not only allowed but indeed morally obliged to be wholly self-interested.

nirvana 14y ago
That is a derogatory characterization and it is false. The best outcome for society is for government to adhere to the principles laid out in Atlas Shrugged. Collectivism has given us poverty, illiteracy, the 2008 financial crisis, etc. Worse, whenever they screw things up really bad, they use the fact that things are screwed up to claim that they need even more power to exploit poor people and violate the rights of everybody, and they wrap themselves in the flag of "serving the poor" to sell it. These people pretend like Rand was advocating self centeredness, and that they are advocating altruism, when the reverse is more accurate. Rand is advocating freedom and liberty and they are advocating a form of slavery.
- Ygg2 14y ago
  Please do show how does collectivism (and not a bad application of collectivistic principles) has given poverty, illiteracy and the 2008 financial crisis (last one I can kinda understand).
- RyanMcGreal 14y ago
  > That is a derogatory characterization and it is false. It may be derogatory but it's not false. Rational self-interest was the centrepiece of Rand's moral philosophy. > The best outcome for society is for government to adhere to the principles laid out in Atlas Shrugged. The most successful societies, by a wide variety of measures, manage to balance individual freedom, agency and entrepreneurialism with a foundation of civil liberty and social equity that provides the best opportunities for everyone to succeed. > Collectivism has given us poverty, illiteracy, the 2008 financial crisis, etc. Labelling the whole gamut of different forms of government under a pejorative ism has given us a legacy of dogmatic, wooly-minded incoherent political discourse. > Worse, whenever they screw things up really bad, they use the fact that things are screwed up to claim that they need even more power to exploit poor people and violate the rights of everybody, and they wrap themselves in the flag of "serving the poor" to sell it. Some of them do that some of the time, and one solution is to eliminate government, but that has not worked anywhere ever. What has worked - what is working today in many places - is to press for a better, more responsive government that forms policies based on evidence and respects human rights. > These people pretend like Rand was advocating self centeredness, and that they are advocating altruism, when the reverse is more accurate. The 2008 economic crisis, incidentally, was made possible in large party through deliberate state deregulation of the financial industry in the late 1990s, a catastrophic outcome that was predicted at the time but ignored by those people who were most loudly touting libertarian governing doctrines.
- yzhengyu 14y ago
  From what I have observed, Objectivism's problems lie in the fact that its "me" message is inherently attractive to people who probably need psychiatric treatment for their tendencies which trend towards sociopathy. Most people who buy into Rand's philosophy essentially buy into this message, it is rather pointless to try to debate the more subtle points of her philosophy with them. IMHO, human society is neither about collectivism or individualism but a dynamic balance of the two.

nirvana 14y ago

Fiction is the delivery mechanism for a philosophy. The book argues that philosophy logically. The fact that it is delivered as a fictional account is merely a method that makes it less dry and more comprehensible than a straight up non-fiction philosophy book. Fiction allows her to illustrate abstract concepts concretely. Making the comparison to Scientology would be silly, since Scientology is a religion, not a philosophy. By the way, I can assure you the author of this article (and every anti-Rand article I've ever seen from leftist publications) has not read Atlas Shrugged. If you had read it you wouldn't ask the question, because the use of fiction to deliver the philosophy is extremely effective. That and the fact that in the last 50 years so many of the types of events that seemed outrageous at the time have actually occurred in reality.