"Man's rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only by means of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment." - Ayn Rand.
Oh! Well, thank you for enlightening us! That makes a lot of sense, because classes don't exist and have absolutely no bearing on how someone's life turns out; there is no such thing as privilege whether it's in the form of race, gender or wealth, and if there is it's not primarily an inherited thing its recipients did nothing to earn one way or another. Right?
Because everyone is born equal with exactly the same opportunities for education and training. Right?
Because the wealthy and powerful are only wealthy and powerful because they're the smartest, hardest working and most talented people in society -- again, wealth and power are not primarily inherited or gifted things; they're only ever the result of mind-blowingly clever ideas and jaw-droppingly hard work, and therefore taxation is theft, and the use of public schooling is a drain on society. Right?
Because the poor and middle classes are only stuck at the bottom of the pyramid through their own despicable laziness and because they're just so damned average. Because all wages are sufficient to cover the costs of any necessary service if one simply budgets correctly. Because women are only treated as second-class citizens due to their insistence on acting inferior and submissive. Because every Westerner who isn't white chose to be subjugated, dismissed, abused and treated as foreign in their own country. Right?
Ayn Rand had absolutely no idea what she was waffling on about, and it shows: the people who subscribe to her views are either picking and choosing which parts of her views they like, or they're adolescents. As far as I can tell, most people are exposed to Rand -- usually in the form of her fiction, not her frankly ridiculous essays -- when they're quite young, say ages 12 - 22. Her ideas are extremely appealing at this age, because their black-and-white idealism suits the overly simiplistic world view most children have. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority tend to follow a pattern of thinking Rand is brilliant and amazing, growing up a little, and realizing how redundant and short-sighted most of her ideas actually are. Amazingly, her ideas seem to be making a resurgence of late -- I can only assume this has something to do with the state of the economy, and the fact that Ayn Rand was a little like Oprah in the fact that she could sound extremely knowledgeable and right without actually having any idea what she was talking about.
That isn't to say there aren't parts of Rand's "philosophy" that I agree with. I can't disagree with her views on bodily autonomy: she was loudly and resolutely for the rights of all individuals to do whatever they like with their own bodies. I am, too, and there are plenty of other extremely intelligent people who share this conviction and who can actually back it up with sound reasoning, which I wouldn't depend on Rand for. Rand was also firmly against racism, as demonstrated here:
"They (Native Americans) didn't have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using. What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their 'right' to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent."
Thank you for that absolutely sickening piece of colonialist propaganda. Even Disney managed a less racist take on thegenocide of those primitive animals who totally deserved it for trying to keep the poor little white man from spreading his wonderful civilization.
"The worst evil that you can do, psychologically, is to laugh at yourself. That means spitting in your own face."
Really? Come on, now we have to take ourselves seriously all the time? I seem to remember a period in my life when I found it extremely difficult to laugh at myself. Predictably, it was when I was a raging ego on legs, otherwise known as a 'teenager'. I suppose my hormone-fuelled teenage hubris should be reminiscent of the world view of a woman who wrote an essay entitled The Virtue of Selfishness -- I'm not making this up. Ayn Rand literally believed altruism is holding back humanity's progress. I am growing steadily more and more embarrassed for anyone who takes her seriously.
"Evil requires the sanction of the victim."
I find this quote intensely disturbing in the light of Rand's original model for her "ideal man", the fictional hero she sought to immortalise on paper; his characteristics are evident in the lead male characters of both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. These are some of Rand's notes on the heroic, perfect character she was inspired to write based on a man named William Edward Hickman: "[he] is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should." (Journals, pp. 27, 21-22; emphasis hers.)
This model -- Rand's highest ideal, her pinnacle of human achievement -- was a forger, an armed robber, a child kidnapper, and a multiple murderer. In December of 1927 he kidnapped a 12-year-old girl named Marian Parker. He proceeded to send her parents cruel, taunting ransom notes demanding the sum of $1500 for the girl's safe release. Her parents raised the money and delivered it to Hickman, who proceeded to dump Marian's corpse in front of her horrified father and flee. Her legs had been cut off and her eyes had been wired open to appear as if she was still alive. Her internal organs had been cut out and pieces of her body were later found strewn all over the Los Angeles area.
Hickman was apprehended, despite his best attempts to hide (seems odd, considering Rand's vehement denouncement of "cowards"), tried for not only Marian Parker's murder but also an assortment of other murders, robberies and forgeries, and eventually he was sentenced to death.
This man was Rand's basis for her literary hero. There is a word for the type of person she aspires to so ardently:sociopath. Although, as far as Rand was concerned, Hickman was the victim in all this; where he should have been praised for his "courage" in defying society's expectations, the degenerate, stupid mob had the gall to turn on him!
"The first thing that impresses me about the case is the ferocious rage of a whole society against one man. No matter what the man did, there is always something loathsome in the 'virtuous' indignation and mass-hatred of the 'majority.'... It is repulsive to see all these beings with worse sins and crimes in their own lives, virtuously condemning a criminal...
"This is not just the case of a terrible crime. It is not the crime alone that has raised the fury of public hatred. It is the case of a daring challenge to society. It is the fact that a crime has been committed by one man, alone; that this man knew it was against all laws of humanity and intended that way; that he does not want to recognize it as a crime and that he feels superior to all. It is the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul."
Yes, Ayn. Clearly the problem everybody had with Hickman was his daring individuality. Not his brutal murder and dismemberment of a 12-year-old child. Clearly the real villain here is the public. You are so very, very switched on and clever. What a unique and special snowflake you are, Ayn, for seeing this man for who he really is: a beautiful, bold and romantic soul. Maybe you should spend the next 7 years writing a novel
about these misunderstood virtues that only you are clever enough to see, you special snowflake, you.
No comments:
Post a Comment