Ignoring Ayn Rand won’t make her go away (persistently selling thought styles)

[C C]

https://aeon.co/ideas/philosophy-shrugge...er-go-away

EXCERPT: Philosophers love to hate Ayn Rand. It’s trendy to scoff at any mention of her. One philosopher told me that: ‘No one needs to be exposed to that monster.’ Many propose that she’s not a philosopher at all and should not be taken seriously. The problem is that people are taking her seriously. In some cases, very seriously. [...] Rand’s books are becoming increasingly popular. The Amazon Author Rank lists her alongside William Shakespeare and J D Salinger. While these rankings fluctuate and don’t reflect all sales, the company her name keeps is telling enough.

It’s easy to criticise Rand’s ideas. They’re so extreme that to many they read as parody. For example, Rand victim-blames: if someone doesn’t have money or power, it’s her own fault. Howard Roark, the ‘hero’ of *The Fountainhead*, rapes the heroine Dominique Francon. [...] Rand champions self-sufficiency, attacks altruism, demonises public servants, and vilifies government regulations because they hinder individual freedom. Yet, she conveniently ignores the fact that many laws and government regulations promote freedom and flourishing.

[...] Some libertarian philosophers, such as William Irwin in *The Free Market Existentialist* (2015), have proposed variations of Rand’s ideology that introduce some state control to protect people and their property from harm, force, fraud and theft (although he doesn’t specifically support an environmental protection agency). However, for Rand, writing in her essay collection *The Virtue of Selfishness* (1964), ‘There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls,’ and to accept any form of government control is ‘delivering oneself into gradual enslavement’. Still, Rand didn’t always live by her own philosophy: in a stellar display of hypocrisy, she collected social security payments and Medicare later in her life. [...]

Vilifying Rand without reading the detail, or demonising her without taking the trouble to refute her, is clearly the wrong approach. Making her work taboo is not going to help anyone to think critically about her ideas either. [...]

Rand is dangerous precisely because she appeals to the innocent and the ignorant using the trappings of philosophical argument as a rhetorical cloak under which she smuggles in her rather cruel prejudices. Her writing is persuasive to the vulnerable and the uncritical, and, apart from the overextended set-piece monologues, she tells a good story. It’s her novels that are the bestsellers, remember. [...] People seem to be buying it for the story, and finding a convincing philosophy neatly packaged within, which they absorb almost without thinking. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine what people find admirable in her characters: Rand’s heroes are self-interested and uncaring, but they’re also great at what they choose to do [...] Hoping that Rand’s ideas will, in time, just go away is not a good solution to the problem....

MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/philosophy-shrugge...er-go-away

[Syne]

Since when is your life being your own responsibility cruel?

[Magical Realist]

In memoriam for Smokey Jack...

[C C]

In memoriam for Smokey Jack...

Smokey John? Hard to believe that was 14 years ago when he died of a heart attack, beside his computer. And what a streak in the months before that -- suddenly became a friend slash ally of what was once his religious arch-foe Marksman (MM), and politically alienated himself from many of the other atheists / agnostics, pagans, etc in A&A. I guess he was one example of a migrated New Yorker fully adapting to Texas over time. [EDIT: Finally realized I was experiencing time-travel dissonance when I said "14 years". This is 2018, not 2019. Less than 13 years.]

At least he missed out on that crazy "moon debate" that initially started between Ken Dine and MM two or three years later. And engulfed a horde of other members in a donnybrook that spilled into other clubs / groups (Pasture Timmy and Ken took it to SciForums, even).

I can't quite recall what Smokey's profession was: A psychologist? -- a statistician? -- or he taught those? In terms of philosophical orientation, and in addition to Rand's Objectivism, I do remember him being a surviving advocate of positivism or the overall "empirical consensus" ("surviving" with respect to it merely crashing in dominance back in the '60s).

~

[Yazata]

Philosophers love to hate Ayn Rand.

I've never paid much attention to Ayn Rand and haven't read any of her writings. But just from encountering discussions of her at second-hand, I'd say that there are two different issues at play there.

First her extreme libertarian political idealism, which is anathema to today's academic left.

And second, the fact that she seems to have invented a whole philosophy of her own, 'Objectivism' I think she called it, complete with its own metaphysics and epistemology. Some of her followers seemed to me to treat it like Langan-style divine revelation. I'm not particularly interested in studying it further.

It’s trendy to scoff at any mention of her. One philosopher told me that: ‘No one needs to be exposed to that monster.’

The last two words kind of expose this ostensible "philosopher's" own prejudices. They reveal a moral judgement, not a philosophical judgement.

And part of the creepiness of the present age is due to the fact that historically it's becoming yet another age of militant mass-moralizing. (That's never been good for free-thinking.)

Many propose that she’s not a philosopher at all and should not be taken seriously. The problem is that people are taking her seriously. In some cases, very seriously. [...] Rand’s books are becoming increasingly popular. The Amazon Author Rank lists her alongside William Shakespeare and J D Salinger. While these rankings fluctuate and don’t reflect all sales, the company her name keeps is telling enough.

She's similar in that regard to Nietzsche back in the 1970's when I was a university philosophy student. All of the philosophers that I knew then (many of them of the World War II generation and all of them of the 'analytic' persuasion) dismissed Nietzsche as an essayist, a writer of aphorisms, and not a real philosopher. Nietzsche was said to be a man with serious psychiatric problems whose ethical views were both bizarre and dangerous. But his books spoke to something in the 1960's Zeitgeist and still sold well, mostly to English majors it seemed. (That was when literary theory departments were setting themselves up as alternative philosophy departments.)

Today Nietzsche seems to have been rehabilitated as a philosopher and seems to be beloved by virtually everyone, now that the radical baby-boomers of the "student movement" have taken over academia. Nietzsche's rehabilitation comes despite his being Hitler's muse, a crypto-Nazi before his time and similar in some interesting ways to Ayn Rand who seems to have been drinking similar juices and channeling similar spirits. (Humanity divided between super-men and the herd, with the super-men justified in ignoring herd-morality.)

Ayn Rand might make a similar comeback too. I hope not, though she would probably serve as a valuable corrective to today's intellectual collectivism.
 

Rand is dangerous precisely because she appeals to the innocent and the ignorant using the trappings of philosophical argument as a rhetorical cloak under which she smuggles in her rather cruel prejudices.

I snipped out the rest of the whiney little rant. It was written by a university professor, I'm guessing. (Yes, apparently she teaches at Columbia, no less.)

What does she suppose that university professors like herself spend all their time doing??? Indoctrinating classrooms full of alienated and gullible 18 year olds.

---

In memoriam for Smokey Jack...

We used to argue all the time, but I liked him and miss him.

[Yazata]

In memoriam for Smokey Jack...

Smokey John? Hard to believe that was 14 years ago when he died of a heart attack, beside his computer. And what a streak in the months before that -- suddenly became a friend slash ally of what was once his religious arch-foe Marksman (MM)

I liked Marksman too. As you recall, I used to defend him when the atheists ganged up on him, very much as I defend MR over on Sciforums now. (Maybe it's psychological. I don't like what I perceive as bullies and bullying, and like to take them on and challenge them .)

and politically alienated himself from many of the other atheists / agnostics, pagans, etc in A&A. I guess he was one example of a migrated New Yorker fully adapting to Texas over time.

Madelyne Murray O'Hair used to live in TX and founded American Atheists there, I believe. And not everyone in NY is an atheist. (The place is positively crawling with Orthodox Jews.)

At least he missed out on that crazy "moon debate" that initially started between Ken Dine and MM two or three years later.

Don't forget me! I was a lunatic too. (Ken was the world's most stubborn man, wasn't he?)

I loved that Moon argument. I learned more about Coriolis 'force', angular momentum, libration, nutation and whatnot from that exceedingly crazy argument than I ever learned in freshman physics. It really helped me get a handle on that rotation aspect of classical mechanics.      

And engulfed a horde of other members in a donnybrook that spilled into other clubs / groups (Pasture Timmy and Ken took it to SciForums, even).

Following them was how I first learned about Sciforums. The rest is (rather sordid) history.  

I can't quite recall what Smokey's profession was: A psychologist? -- a statistician? -- or he taught those?

He was a community college instructor as I recall. Something like that. Psychology I think.

[C C]

and politically alienated himself from many of the other atheists / agnostics, pagans, etc in A&A. I guess he was one example of a migrated New Yorker fully adapting to Texas over time.

Madelyne Murray O'Hair used to live in TX and founded American Atheists there, I believe. And not everyone in NY is an atheist. (The place is positively crawling with Orthodox Jews.)

With the last part I was thinking more of him adapting to Texas in a political and cultural context, since the turnaround with MM seemed to happen in the course of both of them defending Dubya and the Iraq War.

But that was arguably a recent flavor of Lone Star land itself even in 2005, since it probably wasn't until the '90s that the Southwestern states significantly gave up loyalty to the Donkey, as far as local elections. About when Limbaugh jumped out of the radio-box, I guess, as part of the final influential nails in the coffin.

Facetiously, I doubt that Barry Switzer brought the viral change down to Texas when he became coach of the Dallas Cowboys for those few years. The transformation to the Elephant was already well underway by then, and Longhorns of course hated anything from that place on the other side of the Red River anyway. (Especially Switzer, and compounded by his originally being from Arkansas and playing for the Hawgs).

At least he missed out on that crazy "moon debate" that initially started between Ken Dine and MM two or three years later.

Don't forget me! I was a lunatic too. (Ken was the world's most stubborn man, wasn't he?)

I loved that Moon argument. I learned more about Coriolis 'force', angular momentum, libration, nutation and whatnot from that exceedingly crazy argument than I ever learned in freshman physics. It really helped me get a handle on that rotation aspect of classical mechanics.

Yah, probably the better way to have put it is that it was both interesting and virally disturbing (in the way it rapidly replicated everywhere).

And engulfed a horde of other members in a donnybrook that spilled into other clubs / groups (Pasture Timmy and Ken took it to SciForums, even).

Following them was how I first learned about Sciforums. The rest is (rather sordid) history.

Same here.

I can't quite recall what Smokey's profession was: A psychologist? -- a statistician? -- or he taught those?

He was a community college instructor as I recall. Something like that. Psychology I think.

I remembered him getting upset over Asperger's syndrome either being affiliated with or conflated with autism in a science news article. That was circa a decade before DSM-5 came out, but there was probably already rumblings or early tidings in the background that Asperger's would be re-conceived "from a distinct disorder to an autism spectrum disorder" in the next edition.

- - -

Belatedly adding what I snipped off at the start, too, since in addition to the correction edit there I need to likewise do the same here: It hasn't been 14 years, but less than 13. Smokey passed away in August of 2005, I believe.

In memoriam for Smokey Jack...

Smokey John? Hard to believe that was 14 years ago when he died of a heart attack, beside his computer. And what a streak in the months before that -- suddenly became a friend slash ally of what was once his religious arch-foe Marksman (MM)

I liked Marksman too. As you recall, I used to defend him when the atheists ganged up on him, very much as I defend MR over on Sciforums now. (Maybe it's psychological. I don't like what I perceive as bullies and bullying, and like to take them on and challenge them .)

~