AYN RAND AND HER FOLLOWERS: The Original Fountainhead and her carbon-copy caricatures.

AYN RAND AND HER FOLLOWERS: The Original Fountainhead and her carbon-copy caricatures.


I admire Ayn Rand, but I don't accept her philosophy wholesale. That's right, I have an open and critical mind. This wasn't always so. There was a time when I accepted Rand lock, stock and barrel but now I have a much more active mind. I awoke from my dogmatic slumbers.

In the cold light of day nowadays, a distant place from my adolescence, I can see Ayn Rand more clearly having read much about her. That is, I can see Rand much more clearly if one is able to trust her foremost biographer Barbara Branden---whose legacy is exemplified by her admitted eight year deception of Rand.


But it is not so much Rand herself as it is her blasted followers that get under my skin. Rand's followers tend to share certain unattractive traits that string them all together like paper cut-outs seen in kindergarten, and this reeks of a carbon-copy caricature quality. For a philosophy that speaks so greatly of exaltation, they make it seem more like a dirge.


Just as one can see "Christians" striving to imitate (not emulate) their Jesus Christ, one can see the Rand caricatures attempting to imitate their idol to equally hilarious results. One sees in the Randite caricatures a silly pawning of the Rand paradigm by rejecting Beethoven's music or by simply taking on a self-announced hyper super rationality and all the other aped traits of Rand. (For a philosophy that espouses individuality, the irony is truly astounding when witnessing the total lack of originally among Rand's followers. For this very reason, I call them caricatures of Rand.)

To capsulate those traits, I will identify them in the following categories:


REASON AND EMOTION:

Rand's more devout followers tend to hold their emotions as suspect, as a possible scourge upon the purity of their "rationality" since they hold that reason and emotion are at opposite poles. (This is rather peculiar, considering that Rand herself spoke greatly of integration and her philosophy is not comprised of dichotomies. Sadly, the Rand caricatures share the trait of being alienated from their emotions.)

The carbon caricatures see themselves as containers of pure and untainted rationality, virtual paragons of reason. They prize themselves of acting in the world without a single speck of emotion affecting their outlook or perspective on people, situations and things --and they claim only "reason" directs their actions in regards to those people, situations and things. Their reasoning processes, as they would claim, is purified by only 100% of unaided, untainted REASON.

Now, the reader will forgive me for not putting too fine a point on my response to such claims: this stance is clearly 100% pure and stupendous bullshit. I think that any reasonable person (how do you like the irony?) knows that such a state is neither possible nor desirable.

The caricatures of Rand like to speak of the happiest moments of their life is when they are rational and they do so ignoring the fact that happiness is also an emotional state. They are unable to conceive of speaking favorably of emotion with equal zeal as they do reason---as I proudly do---and that is because I do not see reason and emotion as conflicting, but rather as sometimes parallel.

A happy life consists of emotional rewards and you will note that I used the words 'emotional' and 'rewards' harmoniously.


LACK OF EMPATHY:

Another distinctive trait among the carbon-copy Rand caricatures is a lack of empathy for others. This can be considered the inevitable consequences of an overwrought steroid like intellect that is devoid of emotion---considering that empathy is, in fact, an emotional quality. When these caricatures experience empathy, it is rarely admitted to. It is seen by them as a guilty secret, a personal weakness that is to be repressed or ignored.

It is not just me who has made the observation that serial killers and ideological zealots of all flavors lack the distinctive human quality known as EMPATHY?

Bertrand Russell said it best when he wrote, "the inflection of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists--that is why they invented hell".

The lack of empathy for others is closely allied to the Rand caricature's characteristic trait of passing moral judgments with a bitter alacrity. Let's turn to that now.

PARAGONS OF RATIONALITY AND THE GRAND MORALISTS:

Rand's admirers tend to pounce on the word "reason" with the same kind of devout fervor as Christians do with the word Christ. They are forever touting not 'rationality' per se, but their own self-aggrandizement of being steadily "rational" with a ballyhoo that is embarrassing to witness. And they are forever bitching about "irrational" this and "irrational" that with the same acidity that Christians have when they speak of 'sin' except when it comes to caricature-like Objectivists, their flagellations of others is usually nothing more than an expression of their own subjective disapproval. (Irony abounds).

Deeply allied to the paragons of rationality are the grand moralists. The distinctive trait of the Randian caricatures is not a wish to "look up" but to look down, for it is this last one that fills their own exaggerated and inflated self-esteem with a smug rancor, which are really their true colors.

Pronouncing a negative moral estimate is always a regrettable thing, which should be done (if done at all) with deep regret and a genuine wish to see a greater goodness, but the Rand caricatures pronounce moral judgments with a gleeful self-righteous rancor that is akin to the malicious child who pulls the wings of flies that had annoyed him. The Rand caricatures use morality as a whip, as a tool of damnation -- and they do so with sanctimonious pleasure.

Barbara Branden wrote this of Rand: "To Ayn, other people were not fully real; they were moving and breathing abstractions, they were, for good or for ill, the embodiments of moral and psychological principles. They were not formed of flesh and blood and bone and sinew; they were formed of the ideas that moved them."

This caricature-ization fits the Rand carbon copies very well. For them, people are simple black and white cut-outs, each wearing either a black or white hat that strips away the actual complexity that is the human state. It is easy for them to do so, for it saves them the troubling necessity to actually think, which they are very insistent they are doing.

I admire the works of Any Rand. I feel like I truly am entering a world were people are efficacious, benevolent and where achievement and happiness is possible. But it is the Rand caricatures that make me feel as if I have entered a chamber of horrors filled with funhouse mirrors submerged somewhere in Alice's Wonderland.


Let me sum this all up with a quote from Bertrand Russell: "Remember your humanity, and forget the rest."

I suppose you could say that Objectivists are really second-handers...but with a grandiloquence.


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"I suppose you could say that Objectivists are really second-handers...but with a grandiloquence."

I think you broke my ironometer.

Yet one more caricature mimicking her viciousness as if it's the primary Objectivist virtue?

Vicious? I was merely trying to have a sense of humor about all of this. I mean, gosh, you can't copyright ones personality in the way you can copyright a blog entry expressing such.

I had this statement in mind when I wrote the above, and it just seemed right to place it here. I could be wrong.

There's a certain air of significance in being the first one to recognize such a phenomenom. Fortunate for all of us, you will never have the burden of being so significant.