Later On

Ayn Rand and her effect on people

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1. First, about True Believers: They will not listen to reason. Trying to have a serious give-and-take discussion with one is an exercise in futility, as I have learned through experience. Objectivists are certainly among the hardest-headed I’ve encountered.

   Perhaps people who become “true believers” in something – religion, a philosophy, whatever – have an identity issue. Maybe they need something with which they can identify in order to tell themselves who and what they are.

   Second, Ayn Rand’s “philosophy”: I have read her magnum opus, “Atlas Shrugged”, and some of her essays, as well as some of the writings of her former follower, Nathaniel Brandon. “Atlas Shrugged” is a turgid tome, poorly written, with one-dimensional characters and “love” scenes not worthy of a Harlequin Romance. Her ideas about government, economics, business and society are simplistic, even naive, to the point of being absurd. She didn’t know what she was writing about. The speeches her characters make to one another, in which Ayn Rand supposedly expounds on her “philosophy”, are ludicrous. Read some of the pages-long ramblings aloud to someone, or have another person read them aloud to you, and see if they make any sense at all.

   In “Animal Farm”, George Orwell said far more in just over a hundred pages, and said it better, than Ayn Rand did in the more than one thousand pages of “Atlas Shrugged”. That’s the difference between a serious analytical thinker and an impulsive, energetic sciolist.

   As to the question of why Ayn Rand has been so influential, I’m not sure. I became aware of her existence in the middle 1960s, but did not start reading her writings until about ten years ago. I was not favorably impressed, but by then I had been reading and thinking for more than half a century. Perhaps that makes the difference.

   

   Jack

   17 January 2010 at 2:43 pm
2. I think most fall into it in adolescence. I read Fountainhead around my junior year of high school and was terribly impressed. The more I read and thought, the less impressed I became.

   

   LeisureGuy

   17 January 2010 at 2:56 pm

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