Ayn Rand: Pseudo-Intellectualism At Its Finest

"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.

Music is a litmus test for cool.

Sometimes I think about music, and what it means to me, and contrast it with what it seems to mean to other people.

I have a reasonably wide variety of music on any given playlist. Acapella, ambient, post rock, post metal, big band, jazz, blues-rock, bossa nova, dream pop, alt rock, pop punk, Christian rock, ska, drum and bass, dubstep, industrial, doom jazz, screamo, showtunes, sludge metal, swamp rock, symphonic metal, synthpop, trip-hop, New Romantic, psychobilly, folk, post-hardcore, prog rock, goth rock, gospel, grunge, gypsy punk, hard trance, indie pop, indie rock, J-Pop, jazz metal, minimalist pop, the list goes on.

I’ve had plenty of people express surprise or even disgust at the fact that I can and frequently do swing from Copeland to Pelican to Glenn Miller to Fall Out Boy to Regina Spektor. I don’t quite follow the logic behind it; don’t most people find themselves listening to things they ‘shouldn’t’ like at some point? And beyond the age of 16, don’t most people find themselves maturing past the point of moralizing something as open to interpretation and completely subjective as music? I still feel a strong urge to smack anyone who asks, “What’s your guilty-pleasure music?” Are you fucking serious? Are you still in high school? Are you gearing up to make a call about my personality based on whether I listen to Tool or not?

And the stupidest part is, they usually are. Maybe I'm just lucky, but most of the people I seem to bump into in a social setting seem to have quite a lot invested in the idea that everyone they're friends with must have similar or exactly the same taste in music, and more importantly, we must all dislike the same music. I’ve started intentionally throwing out the most widely hated bands in my repertoire whenever people ask what music I’m into, just to watch them pull faces and make disapproving or disappointed sounds over something so petty. “My Chemical Romance.” It’s always followed up by a silent fuck you.

On people with opinions they really haven't thought about at all.

I can't help but laugh at people who seem convinced that music from the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s...well, okay, anything that wasn't released in the last decade, is automatically the pinnacle of musicianship, and all modern music "sounds the same" and "isn't up to the same standard".

Come on now. You'd have to be really, really stupid not to realize that the only reason you know those songs you adore from your parents' era is because they were the absolute best the period had to offer. As shocking as it may seem, music back then was generally pretty cookie-cutter, mass-produced, unremarkable or straight up irritating -- all the things these morons like to whine about in Youtube comments. (By the way -- is there a reason stupid people are completely obsessed with Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber? It's like they can't go five seconds on any music video without Christ compelling them to type out something along the lines of "THUMBS UP IF THIS IS BETTER THAN LADY GAGA" or "SO MUCH BETTER THAN JUSTIN BIEBER").

Now, I know Youtube comments are hardly a good place to find an outstanding sample of humanity, but I think they offer an insight -- of dubious value, admittedly -- into the mind of the average, not-too-smart, completely uninformed citizen of the Western world. And according to this proverbial citizen -- who was probably dropped on their head as a baby...repeatedly -- music has mysteriously gotten awful over the last ten years. Because that makes sense.

So please, dumbasses of the internet, I know you love Nirvana with all your alternative little heart, but the next time you feel like blaring your nonsensical opinion that "MUSIC THESE DAYS IS SHIT, KURT WROTE SONGS THAT WERE SO REAL, FUCK OFF JUSTIN BIEBER/LADY GAGA", don't. Just...don't.

On Maynardism and why you can tell people you don't like how they look, but they'll think you're an asshole.

I have a friend who is simultaneously quiet and brash. He has a pronounced tendency not to bother with such things as social niceties, and I accepted this long ago as a personality quirk rather than genuine vitriol. Tonight I was introduced to the idea that not everyone is willing to overlook it as such, in the form of another friend of mine becoming heartily offended over an unflattering comment he made on her appearance.
It was the kind of comment that was terribly worded, and knowing him as long as I have I could see immediately that he did not mean it in the way it came out, but by then it was too late. It had been said, the proverbial damage dealt.
And that, children, is why it's best to consider who we are talking to before we say anything that could possibly (definitely) be seen as rude or hostile.

I also spent some time in the company of the kind of people who drink until they vomit and then continue drinking/are pretty sure there's absolutely nothing undesirable about living in a constant cloud of pot smoke/declare poorly edited cartoons with little or no coherency to be 'exactly like a bad acid trip', which makes no fucking sense because modern acid rarely if ever causes visual hallucinations. Inevitably, Bill Hicks was mentioned and adoration heaped upon His Holy Name from all sides. I left before someone could bust out the Tool albums and begin pointing out the Bill Hicks references in the Tool songs. My only response to anything along these lines will forever be best summed up in this video:

Afterwards, I came to the conclusion that these pseudo-intellectual/edgy/whateverthefuck morons have made one very basic mistake.
Say a layman strikes up a conversation about quantum physics with a physicist. There's a good chance the layman will not understand a single thing the physicist is talking about, because the physicist is extremely intelligent and knows a lot more about the subject than the layman does.
Say a useless stoner pseud strikes up a conversation about who-the-fuck-can-tell-what with an average non-idiot person. There's a good chance the non-idiot will not understand a single thing the pretentious Messiah-complex-bearer is talking about, and sadly, they seem to think that this is because - like the physicist - they are just too clever for the poor layman to follow.

It's not because they're talking utter bullshit that has no intellectual or philosophical merit whatsoever. It's just that you don't get it, man.

May the days be aimless. Do not advance action according to a plan.

I have been feeling rather...wayward lately, and not necessarily in a negative way, but I hear tell that this is indeed a Bad Thing. I have friends who would argue for and against this notion, although I don't suppose any of them is really any more correct than the other.

I wonder if my problem is that I am becoming intellectually lazy. Not to the extent of The Common Person, of course - far be it from me to redirect my line of thinking so far from the hazy and unequivocally unimportant as to believe in fundamentally wrong concepts like Foreign Equals Bad, or Drugs Will Inevitably Make You Crazy, or for that matter Drugs Can Never Ever Make You Crazy. Lazy! Pure laziness. In this day and age there is no reason to automatically believe as one is told. Did I say reason? I meant excuse. At any rate, there is none of whatever it is, and that is that.

Of course, only an idiot believes in absolutes.