August 12, 2010
For Deron
Since I’ve already rubbed citrus dessert into his wounds, why not go whole hog:
The thing is, in this family we take the philosophies of Ayn Rand seriously. We conspicuously reward ourselves for our own hard work, we never give to charity, and we only pay our taxes very, very begrudgingly.
comments
Leave a Reply
oh, but see, actually that makes me very very happy. like a good dessert.
I secretly thought it would.
The awkward thing about discussing Rand is that you really need to separate the stuff she was actually writing from the people who read a couple paragraphs and then decided to act like utter douches.
For instance, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t against voluntary philanthropy; she just didn’t feel it was inherently praiseworthy.
I haven’t read any Rand but I’ve met some Randroids and have decided against reading her books based on my impressions of the people who espouse her philosophies. Is that wrong? Tra la!
Not entirely, andrea. While Joel is right that you do need to separate those who follow Rand from Rand herself (this is my argument for Christianity, incidentally), those who follow an ideology are an expression of that ideology (that is what makes me uncomfortable with Christianity, incidentally).
Honestly, I’m ok with that. There are a lot of philosophers (of varying quality) whose work I haven’t read, and will never read. Rand has some interesting things to say, but wasn’t a terribly good writer, and a little bit too convinced of her own absolute correctness for my taste.
“…you do need to separate those who follow Rand from Rand herself (this is my argument for Christianity, incidentally)”
Amen, Brother Simone. Amen.
I’m one of the apparently headed-for-extinction mainline denomination Protestants that is pretty much fed up with being tarred and feathered by the thoughts and actions of… you know who.
I remember reading Rand when I was about twelve and even then I was immediately suspicious of the way she constantly begged the question at hand by way of example while claiming the authority of formal logic (she was a fiction writer when she thought she was doing philosophy and a weak philosopher when she thought she was writing fiction). Later, when I read more about how her life gave rise to these examples while also often belying them, I had had enough. For me her whole effort never rises above the cult of her personality. It’s no wonder that she is so often popular among young people, since they tend to love the way Rand’s call to self sufficiency sanctions a freedom that doesn’t require tearing up the checks that keep coming from Mom and Dad.
I read Rand in my late twenties. At the time, I liked the otherworldliness of the writing. Meaning, it seemed I couldn’t necessarily ascribe a place or “real” time to it. (This before I encountered Lish.) I finished “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged.” It was a time in my life when I was searching for a philosophy to ascribe to that wasn’t Christian. Because “how could I be Christian and an out homosexual?” Though, at the time, I don’t remember reading Rand as philosopher. It was her otherworldly presentation that kept me reading. (Maybe among my first exposures to post-modern language? What did I know? I’m just a stranger here.)
(I’m completely free-wheeling. Will I find big air? I doubt it.)
She didn’t hold water in the long run. Neither did my readings of J.Z. Knight. (God, help me.) I suppose I could count my stars lucky I’ve never read a word of L. Ron Hubbard, or I would be confessing something so much more awful than an early affinity to Rand. (And saying that I haven’t read Hubbard, how could I be sure?)
I’m older, now. Seems I can’t find a philosophy to ascribe (there’s that word again) to. (If there’s one I should.) More and more I find myself bereft of any ascribation, though I might consider Derrida, I’ve read a little. Too little. Perhaps.
If I won the lottery and didn’t have to spend my days answering customer complaints, I would go back to school, late in life, and study philosophy, or mathematics, I think. While in school, I didn’t think I was good at math, but now, sometimes, I think I might not have been as bad at it as I thought. I don’t know. I don’t know.
The rhythm of the Cicada’s song (so loudly coming to me this instant, this evening), the metronomic meter of a Bach invention or fugue seem so much more logical to me than the soft logic of human divination.
How can it be put in words?
“the soft logic of human divination.” I love that phrase, Rick. And your walk through time and possibilities strikes a cord with me. I shudder to think of the way things might have been in my own life. What can we ever really look back upon and call a plan? My only sense of something consistent in the process is a faith in the power of love–of a willingness to risk an outright assertion of its power, even when it might be snatched away with laughter. You have that faith, Rick, and goodness and right judgment will always follow you because of it.
I love philosophy, and my actual love of it will never allow me to proclaim mastery of any part of it. I’m intrigued by systems of thought that are vastly elegant but also deeply flawed. I often see an unaccountable connection between what I admire and what I find untenable. For instance, I love many of the works of Plato–but I seriously dislike the trouble caused by the unexamined popularity of Plato’s ideas. When I first read the dialogues, at age ten or eleven, I longed to have been the son of Socrates–and this longing didn’t come with a sense of the stupidity it represented. Now I find myself wondering what may be said of anything that will save a reader some pain, or trouble, or that will please in a way that offsets some daily disappointment. My answer? It’s good to hear from you, my friends.
I’m gonna go the easy route and point out that children are sociopaths, and the task of parenting is to make them otherwise.
I read just ‘Fountainhead’ and then only because it was required for a hs enlish lit class. The class reading list included ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, ‘The Stars My Destination’ (still my fave from the early ‘glory’ days of sci-fi), ‘Hamlet’, ‘Frankenstein’, ‘The Scarlet Letter’ (it WAS the 60s after all…), ‘Heart of Darkness’ and ‘Invisible Man’as well as others that escape my memory. All of which I enjoyed and admired except the Rand. Though I seem to recall that I had a hard time understanding women as ‘the other’ in Frankenstein…
Regardless Rand struck me as strident in her own fashion as Marx and I had no use for either.
Dave! In a nutshell, yes, that’s it exactly!
Long story short (for now), I made that exact comparison, Doc, tonight. The Randian perspective is, push to its limit, Marxism. She would not like that perspective, FYI.
[...] Rick Neece: The rhythm of the Cicada’s song (so loudly coming to me this instant, this evening), the metronomic meter of a Bach invention or fugue seem so much more logical to me than the soft logic of human divination. posted by Deron Bauman in beauty, from the comments, music, philosophy, psychology | * | comment [...]