Ayn Rand wrote a great piece contrasting the moon landing with Woodstock. It's in "The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution."
I've always had a problem with that one. I admire Rand tremendously, but also relate strongly to what Woodstock symbolized for many of my generation.
I'm sure that the number of "hippies against property rights and capitalism" was a minority. Mostly it was about a sense of freedom, manifesting in the music, dress and style of the time.
Rand's inability to see that reason and emotion are not necessarily contradictory, and both her overt and implied hostility to emotional expression was her biggest failure, IMO.
But at the same time, on a deep level, she couldn't have accomplished what she did if she wasn't who she was (if that makes any sense).. :)
The hippies were against any "inhibitions" -- or standards -- concerning sex; many acted on these views,
A bit of the pot calling the kettle black here. Rand's affair with Branden, carried on right in the face of her husband and Branden's wife, is a well known fact.
They were against moral responsibility -- their crude motto was: "if it feels good, do it."
There's an unfortunate example of that reason/emotion dichotomy again. One could say that the Objectivist's motto was "if it feels good, repress it".
Again, I have an enormous amount of respect for what Rand accomplished. In many ways, her intellectual acuity and the way she skewered statist nonsense was devastatingly accurate, and Atlas remains the most important novel I have ever read (and reread on several occasions).
At the same time, I'll always have a soft spot for what Woodstock symbolized for me, back in my long haired, tie dyed youth.. |
