My last anti-Ayn Rand rant

I never wanted to turn my blog into an Ayn-Rand-bashing site, but it seems to have worked out that way. Today I decided to get it all out of my system and then move on to other, more constructive topics.

The inspiration for this post was some email correspondence I've been having with a friend of mine who seems to still accept a good deal of Rand's Objectivist philosophy. In this debate I found myself getting a little frustrated, and finally figured out why. It wasn't just the specific questions under discussion; it was the whole idea of having to take Ayn Rand seriously again.

I then unloaded on Rand, her philosophy, and her movement in a perhaps ill-advised but nonetheless immensely satisfying blast of emailed invective. And having inflicted this tirade on my pal, I opt now to share it (slightly edited for clarity and brevity) with the world, or whatever small portion of it happens to drop by this blog.

After this, I promise to desist in all things anti-Rand, and think only happy thoughts.  : )

My friend had asked why I insisted on bringing the discussion back to Rand when we ought to focus on the specifics of our intellectual disagreement. This was a perfectly valid question, and in considering it, I came up with this answer:

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Here is one reason why I tend to revert to talking about Rand. Somehow our whole discussion puts me back into the world of the Ayn Rand discussion group we both belonged to in the 1980s. At the time, as I began to have doubts about Objectivism (Rand's philosophy and movement), I thought of myself as somewhat "peculiar" because I wasn't accepting the ideas that were being put forward so self-confidently all around me.

But when I look back on those ideas, here is what I see:

Atlas Shrugged is great literature. Selfishness is good, altruism and self-sacrifice are evil. There is no God or anything miraculous or supernatural. Unregulated capitalism is the ideal. Ayn Rand was the greatest thinker since Aristotle. The heroes of Rand's novels are realistic role models. A person should never have an irrational emotion. Faith is evil. America is headed toward a Nazi-style dictatorship. Kant is the most evil man in history. Popular culture is uniformly without merit. A couple should have children only if they have the proper, rational reasons to do so. The environmental movement is anti-life. Ronald Reagan was a terrible president because he was religious. We should drop nuclear bombs preemptively on our enemies (a position reiterated a year or two ago by Rand's heir, Leonard Peikoff, on The O'Reilly Factor, prompting O'Reilly, no pacifist, to blurt out, "Who are you - Dr. Strangelove?!"), the 19th century was a Golden Age, all drugs should be legalized, all roads should be privately owned, Social Security and Medicare should be abolished, the FDA is immoral, taxation should be ended and the government should rely on voluntary contributions, health inspections at restaurants are a violation of individual rights ...

This was the intellectual atmosphere I breathed, back in the '80s. And unlike Bill Clinton, I inhaled!

There's not a single one of the above ideas that strikes me as valid today, and most strike me as downright perverse. And I think the great majority of my fellow humans would agree in finding most or all of the above notions perverse and wrong. Of course, truth is not a matter of opinion surveys, but when I look back, I wonder how I could possibly have regarded myself as "strange" or "weird" for finding fault with doctrines that would be rejected by 90% of  my fellow men and women.

And the answer is: Objectivism is a cult. And when a person is in a cult, the cult's dogmas start to seem self-evident and obvious, because the dogmas are perpetually reinforced. It becomes nearly impossible to break out. And when a member does start to break free, he feels guilty - because he is abandoning the only worldview he knows.

I've done some reading on cults since I left Objectivism, and the shoe fits. Indeed, how could any well-educated person believe all or most of the above ideas, and others like them, without being psychologically manipulated to some degree?

So this is my roundabout way of saying that if I keep referring to Rand and her ideas, it's because this conversation tends to provoke "flashbacks" in me - flashbacks to those days when Rand's ideas were my intellectual environment.

And I must admit, I grow weary of reliving my years as an Objectivist. Those were, I think, largely wasted years, as any years in a cult must be. The reason I attack Rand in my blog and on my Web site, even though it is probably not in my economic interest to do so, is that I would like to prevent at least a few people from making the mistakes I made. Like those who have gotten out of Scientology and then create Web sites to criticize it, I'm trying to get across the message (in my own small way) that Ayn Rand can be hazardous to one's health - or at least to one's intellectual, emotional, and personal growth.

No doubt there are some Objectivist propositions that can be defended, just as there are probably some propositions advanced by Scientology or est or the Unification Church that can be defended. But I look at the total package, not isolated tidbits. And I look at what this movement does to people - mostly young people. People like Ellen Plasil, sexually abused by her Objectivist psychiatrist (she wrote about it in her book Therapist). People like a young Objectivist I knew who had a college education and an obviously high IQ and was working as a dishwasher in a diner because, well, what could he hope to accomplish in this "irrational society"? People who were put "on trial" in Ayn Rand's apartment back in the '60s, or who broke with their familes because Objectivism convinced them that their relatives were "evil."

I remember once arguing with a devout Objectivist and being highly critical of Leonard Peikoff. The Objectivist became very upset and sputtered that I had to stop saying bad things about Peikoff because ... because ... "It's just bad stuff!"

That's how I view Objectivism now. It's just bad stuff.

I wish I could be more dispassionate about it, but at some point I think of Ayn Rand reducing a young girl to tears because of some alleged "irrationality" she had commited, and the next day the girl, a promising ballerina, gave up her career in shame (a story recounted in Jeff Walker's The Ayn Rand Cult) ... and whoops, there goes my dispasionate analysis, and I am back to thinking of Ayn Rand as a sociopath or a sadist or a borderline personality (the kindest diagnosis), and her megalomaniacal pseudo-philosophy as a patchwork of rationalizations constructed to con the young by using their own idealism against them.

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Okay. That's what I wrote. And that, my friends, is that.

Time to come up with new and pleasant posts about, oh, I don't know, kittens and puppies and rainbows.

Comments

[Crawford Kilian]

If it's any consolation, the American communists of the 1930s and 40s were a cult too. Some of them were really bright, talented people (Dalton Trumbo set me on my path as a writer), but their capacity to believe codswallop was astounding.

Then again, given your experience with the Objectivists, perhaps that kind of credulity is built into our genes.

[Michael Prescott]

Crawford,

You're absolutely right about the American communists. It amazes me how they would follow the Soviet line unthinkingly. When the USSR's archives were opened to the West, it was learned that many of these people had accepted regular payments from the Soviet government - among them, apparently, the late I.F. Stone, the famous and much-admired journalist (whose last book, The Trial of Socrates, makes excellent reading).

[a4g]

Although never so heavily into objectivism that I encountered the situations you describe, I have always seen an incredible connection between objectivism (at least that which is expoused in the books) and Catholicism. Philosophically, both take premises and try to apply them to their logical extensions through the use of reason. Both have underlying them faith. Catholicism the obvious sort, and objectivism, the deification of Man. I suppose I 'fell away' from objectivism because of that single unsupported pillar-- a magnificent building, but the foundation was poured in mid-air. It is fine to posit morality from pure reason, but some grounding in the soil of human nature is helpful. I suppose like communism - it would actually work, if it would actually work.
Unlike communism, though, I find objectivism, within the confines of its capabilities, ennobling of Man, and at least strict in its use of logic if the basic premises are stipulated. The same cannot be said for sloppier philosophies that don't even offer a modicum of internal consistency, e.g. Christian fundamentalism, which denies (or at least ignores) the concept of arriving at natural law through reason.
On the hierarchies of wrongness, I would rather have a philosophy that is life-affirming, than one that is life-destroying (I would place communism, for example, in that box), even though one cannot expect ultimately perfect results from a disordered system of belief.
Perhaps your critique of the imperfect players in the objectivism story is a bit like condemning Catholicism for the sins of the American priests. It is either that or the sun's final judgement on Icarus -- wax melts.

[a4g]

BTW - Great site. I'll be back.
Atheist 4 God - http://www.a4g.blogspot.com - Serious stuff
Point Five - http://www.pointfivestep.blogspot.com - Goofin' Around

[Lestat de Lioncourt]

A personal comment on your last Anti-Ayn Rand rant:

I think that when one try to follow a philosophy, idea, movement, or whatever you wold call it, and try to live exactly as that idea says, one is "transforming" that idea in a CULT.

The person that create that idea, even when trying to think it ALL, is bound to his or her circumstances and education and environment, etc...

If I where an Objectivist, by objectivist's premises, I would not let even Ayn Rand to tell me what to do on this or that issue, because a must use my reason and no other's to think my way... (so so)

For every person there is only one cult: inside his or her mind. And that cult has only one rule: you can do what you want in your mind; if you want to believe in God fine; if you don't fine; if .....

I take from Objevtivism, exactly what I want (no what is good or right), because serves my own personal pourpose, and if you look closely, you'll see that evrey single one has a little hypocrit inside, because no one can and will do as other's say just because that other says is right or good or whatever.

And some issues in Objectivism can be defended, and others no, so what? is the same for every other philosophy or idea, no one is absolutely ok (for me).

The only philosophy is one's mind philosophy for every one, and call it what you want...

In my opinion, Ms. Ayn Rand, wrote a couple of books and gave her ideas there. For me they are good books and that's it. Some ideas are good, some great, and some are bullsh... but, in her own words, she only wants to be a fiction writer, well, that's all, her ideal world and man are just that: fiction. There's not two equal persons, so leave it there...

If you read this, thanks for your time.

P.D. Sorry for the language, I'm from Mexico and don't speak or write the english very good, sorry...

[Michael Prescott]

a4q,

I would certainly prefer Objectivism over Communism - no doubt of that. But I'm not so sure that Objectivism really does glorify human beings, though it certainly claims to do so. Rand's portrait of "all that is best in the common man" is Eddie Willers in Atlas Shrugged. Poor Eddie, a proudly self-proclaimed "serf" of the company he works for, cuts a less-than-glorious figure. Rand divided the world into the great, the evil, and the average - or we might say the good, the bad, and the ugly. She did exalt the few people who match her standard of greatness, but she radiated contempt (or, at best, a rather patronizing pity) for nearly everyone else. At least that's how I read her. Your mileage may vary.

Lestat,

I understand your English just fine! And I think you are quite right when you say:

"If I were an Objectivist, by objectivist's premises, I would not let even Ayn Rand to tell me what to do on this or that issue, because I must use my reason and no other's to think my way ..."

This is a good point, but my point is that Objectivism, as a movement, does not encourage this kind of independent thinking. The movement would be much, much better if it did - and perhaps some of Rand's mistakes would even be corrected.

And yes, Objectivism would be better off if its followers accepted that fact that Rand's books are just fiction ... but Rand insisted that her ideal man could be actualized on earth, and that her ideal society was realistic and practical. She believed in human perfectibility. I don't.

[a4g]

You've cut to the quick. The ideal as presented is beautiful (conceded, only if you're Roark, Taggart, Galt, et al) in a museum piece sort of way. But in the glorious, dirty work of living, believing in human perfectibility starts with trying to force people into a mold, then into a prison, and then into an oven.

[Michael Prescott]

Wow. You expressed that thought very powerfully. And I'm afraid the history of utopian "experiments" like Stalin's Russia and Mao's China only proves your point. Or as Whittaker Chambers put it in a blistering review of Atlas Shrugged back in 1957:

"[R]esistance to the Message [of the novel] cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chamber — go!'"

Objectivists have never forgiven National Review for running that piece. The full review may be read at:
http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback200501050715.asp