Do you realize everything you've said about her you could say about Hitler? Or Mao?
And I refuse to call them great thinkers either.
Hitler came from nothing. His ideas have stood the test of time- with those who are captivated by them. I could say the same of Sade. In fact there are lots of pretty nasty people who've written a lot about their nasty new, or nominally new, ideas. I'd say Ayn is pretty much the same. She's a nasty piece of work- her life was a mess, her death was sad and lonely, and she ended up a mealy mouthed hypocrite.
Although I'm not hot on religion- because of the more fanatical aspects- I'll take a do-good religious follower over a sociopathic Randian any day of the week. And I'll tell you why for free. Objectivism is utter crap and a recipe for suicide for a social animal- especially an animal that seems able to create its own reality both individually and socially (how else to explain group perceptions that are so obvious in different groups of humans?). Humans are social animals. We always have been and we always will be- and there are far too many of us for it to be any other way, even if we could bend our social evolution to make Ayn's lonely vision a reality. Humans need collectivism- they always have and they always will. Like technology- it's a double edged sword, but it's the sword we have. Collectivism is one of the best things about humans (and it can be one of the worst as well). But Ayn's vision? the ravings of a childless, bitter woman who couldn't understand the human condition, and who never fit in - because something scarred her too much to ever participate fully in being human. Being fully human involves the development of a family- either a blood family, a religious family, or some other substitute for that, and the participation in a community, a real community, not a worshipful group of hopeless acolytes- and poor Ayn just couldn't create a family, or be in a real community- and she's not alone, there are a lot of unsociable loners- no doubt many of them reading Ayn Rand. Like many damaged people she decided to build a belief system to justify her damage, rather than healing herself. The odd thing is that anyone paid any attention to her and her relativistic ravings (oddly called "objectivism")- but there are many damaged people in the world looking for "help", and my guess is a lot of them find it easier to read Ayn than to work on their own problems. |
