Ayn Rand's "Forest"
by Gand
"Intellectuals" love to denigrate the work of Ayn Rand, indeed the person as well. Greatness always elicits this response from smaller minds.
Mostly it (the denigration) is either personal attack or taking a microscope to each "tree" in the Rand forest of work; the structure of the fiction, the mechanics of her philosophy, the "social" aspects, etc. Few bother to observe the forest itself. I'll talk more about this in a moment, but first . . . .
To me, Rand was a spiritualist. That's right, this avowed atheist wrote about spirituality!
I don't know if you saw the movie "A Beautiful Mind." It was a fair movie, as modern movies go. One scene that I like is when Nash looks at a board filled with numbers and text and certain sections highlight and step out of the background. It was a way of illustrating the identification of patterns in Nash's mind. Patterns others didn't see.
When I first read "Atlas Shrugged," a similar experience happened to me. Certain phrases congealed, were back lit, and stepped foreword out of the text. I don't recall all of them and I can't quote them verbatim, but here is a small list:
"Who is John Galt?" (but of course!)
"We never did have to take it seriously, did we?"
and most importantly . . . .
"A face without Pain, Fear or Guilt"
The last first; it is the one that really hit me and especially within the context of an epic mythology (which is what the book was). I immediately saw the following pattern in those words:
Guilt relates to the Past,
Pain relates to the Present,
and Fear relates to the Future.
Past, Present, Future; pretty well covers things doesn't it? You see, the secret to controlling people is to induce self-hate, and if you can apply it to the entire time perspective, you have complete control of that perspective.
All authoritarian "institutions," whether religious, cultural, educational, financial, commercial, governmental attempt (indeed their survival depends upon) to illicit self-hate in individuals for all that has happened, all that is happening, and all that may happen. If you can do this, you totally disarm the individual. You can then control them, all the other tools in the authoritarian tool kit will work.
"Who was John Galt?" He represented an idealized . . . fully realized or actualized . . . human being. One who could look in the mirror and not feel guilt about the past, pain in the present, or fear about the future.
You see, unless you love and honor your "Self," you have no basis for loving others or for loving life. It is the foundation that gives life meaning, that allows each to realize and recognize truth, beauty, achievement, honor, spirituality, honesty, creativity, production. Without it (self-love) you are adrift as a individual. Subject to finding meaning as it may be dictated to you, but never finding or formulating that meaning yourself, based on your experience, through your own mind, your own judgment.
Real personal happiness becomes impossible. Fear, pain, and guilt become all too real.
"We never did have to take it seriously, did we?"
No, we didn't. Once you "allow" yourself to love yourself, once you discover that true self, then all the noise, all the hate, fear, stress, loathing, guilt, rules, laws, "beliefs" and propaganda you are subject to melts away and becomes just what it is . . . meaningless noise.
This is why Rand is hated. This is why intellectuals must focus on "a tree," or the author . . . . One can always find imperfection in another or when they fracture and break the context of the work. Focus on anything but the message. Never, never look at the forest.
Rand also had the "nerve" to do two things intellectuals cannot stand . . . . She not only wrote fiction (gasp), but she wrote it in its most powerful and enduring form . . . as mythology. Name one (so called) modern intellectual who would even attempt this? You can't because they can't.
She wrote about people as "ideals," as "heroic." In other words, people who loved themselves, loved life, loved others, and loved truth. People not subject to control, self-realized people. Rand then had the nerve to actually author a epistemology to back up her fiction, to give it intellectual structure. Unforgivable!
Rand pulled the pants down on all those who teach self-hate, and she is despised for it. She exposed intellectuals for what they really are . . . ignorant and inferior. Incapable of creative thought of their own. Incapable of real love of as an individual. Unable to identify truth if it is not politically acceptable by some organization (which ironically puts the food on their table or the title on their door).
The next time you look in the mirror, see if you can find "A face without Pain, Fear or Guilt."
And take a walk in the forest.
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