Weekend Wars: Objectivism vs. Objectivity
We all do little itty bitty things to get our point across. If you are a very pretty girl or the stereotypical cap'n of the football team you can spread a lot of ideas across the field with a smile or a smirk. If you're the typical wannabe Wall Street baller, you dream of the day when your millions buy power and influence. At what point, however, does your personal agenda start to stink like six week old milk?
Do you have the guts to look yourself in the eye at the point that your team starts using the tactics you so heavily criticized to achieve the results you so long desired? That is sort of where I am today after reading the following. Even though I spend so much energy commenting, criticizing and cajoling towards the laissez faire ideas of capitalism...sometimes I can't help but to feel that I play for the team of good guys that is using too many dirty tactics to win.
Yes, we want everyone to embrace the ideas of the original capitalists. But do we really want to make the educational system a contest between who will subsidize more and give more free lunches to those who create, shape and form the educational agenda? After all, the classroom drones of today are the policy makers of tomorrow.
As we finally move out of the cold weathered, $6 gassed, hyperinflationary dogma and drama into sun, warmth and the first positive employment month in as long as I can remember...is this really the message we want to be sending along? How many millions does the next generation's economic agenda cost? Is it worth pimping for a good enough cause? I really don't know... you tell me.
Our educational system has become so vapid and worthless beyond the creme-de-la-creme of academia that I am daily asking myself whether anything beyond the 12th grade is worth it. Now on top of that noise, we are attaching strings of idealism in teaching economics/finance/business classes...
I would be much more comfortable if the moneyed ideas being forcefully pushed through were those of globalist, positively discriminating liberalism... but they are not. They are now the notions I believe in and they are starting to look a lot less pleasing as I see them backed by dollars and sense.
Like so many new age neo cons I am starting to slow down and look at the big picture in small fragments. I can't say that I am very much satisfied. Even though ideas like Rand's objectivism are dear to my heart I fear that many of today's bright young minds don't get them at all. I fear that as soon as we move away from one potential disaster we start moving closer to the next one. I fear that more and more so...the Henry Kravis Buildings and the Renaissance Tech Geometry and Physics edifices are building nothing more than bullshit and vapid idolatry. The blind view that one perspective can build a better, bigger future...without everyone else putting down the requisite blood, sweat and years... is plain wrong.
It really does suckwhen you realize that being on the right side of the argument can still... make you completely wrong.
Ayn Rand was a history major at Petrograd State University. Her education was severely lacking and the fact that people view her as anything more than a writer of fiction is baffling. In no way was she a trained or educated economist, and nowhere did she do the complex case studies necessary to back up her assertions. On top of this, she was a dreadful writer from a basic standpoint.
Nothing upsets me more when people use Rand instead of Friedman or Hayek to argue the merits of capitalism.
Rand's book are truly some of the worst written books of all time. They read like they were unedited and are almost impenetrable.
Rand is watered down pseudo philosophy(if even that). It gives great insights into female sexual phantasies and general mate preference, but other than that it is an utterly useless book.
All that said whenever I see some PC policy implemented I can't help but summon up images from Atlas Shrugged, its prty horrible tbh.
I am curious, what's your general criteria for determining whether a particular book is quite useful or utterly useless?
Oh, since she doesn't have a great education (by your standards) she's not incredibly bright? She makes a moral case for capitalism, which Friedman and Hayek are fond of doing, as well. (By the way, I'm pretty sure she was a history and philosophy major.)
The point is: why are we trusting someone who is generally less educated in matters of economics than most people on this board to start an entire philosophy and economic practice? Per wikipedia she majored in history. If some random person from an unheard of University in Russia walked into your office and started telling you about their revolutionary economic and moral philosophy, you would probably dismiss them, but for some reason Ayn Rand has a following.
Also, literary critics are not in disagreement, Ayn Rand was not a strong writer. Maybe you agree with her philosophy (which is something people more versed in the subject can deconstruct), but as a pure writer she is awful.
According to the "about the author" section of Atlas Shrugged, she also majored in philosophy.
Honestly, I've been studying economics for the past 8 years, and I was impressed by her understanding of real-world economics. Sure, she doesn't understand abstract, mathematical, technical economics, but she does have a solid knack (in my opinion) for the dynamism of real world economics. While reading Atlas Shrugged, I was impressed with the way she would talk about the economic effects of certain things, because they were often what I would expect as results.
Look, you didn't even lay out any solid arguments against her views. Basically, all you said was, "she's not educated enough" and "literary critics don't like her work." This is basically an appeal to authority argument which challenges nothing that she actually argued.
I'm no literary critic (nor am I even that solid of a reader) and I found her writing style very easy to digest, follow, and understand (and entertaining). Not to mention, many people must agree, since it's sold a ridiculous number of copies and was actually voted to be the 2nd most influential book after the bible (this was a poll of actual readers). So, who gives a shit what literary critics say? We don't tend to take movie, music, and sports critics that seriously, so why literary critics. Literary critics represent a small subset of readers.
Frankly, truly educated/enlightened people never automatically dismiss anyone regardless of their background. If fact, truly educated people will tell you much of the problems we face today are a direct consequence of our governing class that were instructed at the highest and most succinct tier of our education edifice, yet suffer from the "The Fatal Conceit" - the belief they know better because their school insignia ranks higher in U.S. News and World Report.
Although my comment above stands on its own merits, I will have you know I did go a high-ranking school and what I saw made me wholeheartedly believe what William Buckley believed: that "I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard."
Howard Roarke is one of my favorite literary characters of all-time and I enjoy her work despite my disagreement with some aspects of objectivism. Worst written books of all time? Impenetrable? Maybe you should just stick to Dr. Seuss and Oprah's book club.
I'm all for capitalism but this is really just a disgrace.
I would much rather have our next generation drinking the Randian Kool-Aid rather than the current politically correct leftist dogma that gets shoved down their throats.
The "tolerance" of those who claim to be tolerant is evident in the hatred they feel towards the single widely read book in existence that paints a marginally realistically portrayed social-democratic government as evil, in the face of a million books that paint a corporation as evil and they tolerate with great aplomb. That is the tolerance they really want to subject you to if you are a deviant in their society.
I would comment, but I see the left currently conducting the equivalent of a war for education, norms and the media, and when you are made the target of a war by someone, you don't criticize those who fight them.
I think in criticizing Atlas, almost in the same breath one really has to give voice to, what for me is really empathy for the environment in which she grew up which served as the major contrast to her philosophy / belief system, as a logical response to that very societal structure she was apart. Its as if to say, OK I find the product seriously flawed when set against widely accepted standards used to judge literary works, (that is you must a) state a hypothesis b) provide accurate data and c) provide explanations of why the data shows one thing or another and d) reach your conclusion by a methodology that demonstrates the robustness of your data)
I can understand why she would have made the assumptions she did and therefore appreciate the fact it was written. I think that is a more tolerant criticism.
And if the "left" as you say, is indeed waging a "war for education, norms etc" then my contention is if that is true, it seems to be a war that demands sufficient evidence, accurate data collection, peer review, and any conclusion to be first supported by a legitimate hypothesis (in which case Rand never makes, and thus is unable to actually "conclude" anything) And anyway, I don't see anyone saying we should ban Atlas Shrugged, or remove it from curricula.
Rather, the concern I hear is more that like you allude to, that it is so quickly swallowed as theological truth by the masses, who in turn attempt to apply its foundations in an absolute manner which would (just as any "fundamentalist" approach of XYZ theory) cause irrevocable damage in its application to a pliant and dynamic reality.
That depends on your objective function. Mine was to read good philosophy. Rand did not deliver. For certain objective functions Atlas Shrugged surely is a great book.
We're living in a time when one can take a university course focusing on the subtle intricacies of Lil Kim's lyrics (I'm not making this up). If she can have her own course, why can't Ayn Rand? College is supposed to teach you HOW to think, not WHAT to think.
Within that context, I would have zero issue with having a course dealing with one of Rand's books as part of a complete econ package incorporating the major philosophies. That way you force people to make up their own minds by exposing them to different ideas.
Haha! Good point...
While I can appreciate the sentiment of wanting schools to teach the inherent virtues of capitalism, the job is likely to be ill-done through atlas shrugged in a classroom setting. I'm just imagining some half-hearted instructor reducing the self-interest argument down to simple "greed is good" mantras without provoking the debate or thought needed to understand what Rand and others meant. For me, nothing soils Rand's message like a bunch of objectivists treating Atlas Shrugged as a religious text and its author as a god.
I guess I see plenty of people who claim various things to be morally right or wrong from an objective standpoint without discussing their views in the context of historical philosophers, and they are rarely if ever criticised for that serious deficiency.
i'm largely indifferent to Rand, but it should be noted that her alma mater is top 2 in Russia and is considered very prestigious in the area. Putin/Medvedev both did their law degrees there.
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