Structural flaw in The Fountainhead


Mike11

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I don't think you found "the lowest of the low" in The Fountainhead. I did a global search of the text of The Fountainhead. The word "lowest" occurs three times - none of them directly related to the Stoddart affair.

I didn't quote it, in case you didn't notice.

The Stoddard Temple is a symbol of the highest tribute Rand can pay to the human spirit. She then defiles it by putting inside it what she considers to be the lowest form of the human spirit, mocking both their creative efforts and the altruistic efforts of their caregivers.

I know you didn't put it into quotation marks. What you did was to put it into italics, and to complain about an action of:

"calling someone the lowest of the low"

So, who called someone the lowest of the low? I presumed you are asserting this happened, based on your wording.

Bill

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It would have been much better if Ayn Rand would have added another hero to the story, a scientist of some sort, who could have cured those retarded children and give them sanity.

I have to say that this is one of the worst suggestions I've ever heard. Heroism is not pulling children out of house fires or floods or mental retardation. It does not consist in feeding African refugees or saving polar bears or sequestering 'carbon sinks' in upstate Wisconsin. Heroism is living for your own sake, without reference to others or their plight. Heroism is blazing a path through the Forbidden, the Unknown, the Untested and Unscripted. "Frankly, Fanny, it looks like something phony."

Jeez. Ayn Rand curing the lame and the halt. Gimme a break.

:P

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Rand knew what she was writing.

The point of the passage: Roark gave them a tribute to the human spirit, to, in the words spoken by Hopton Stoddard, after being prepped by Toohey:

"The great aspiration of the human spirit toward the highest, the noblest, the best. The human spirit as the creator and the conqueror of the ideal. The great life-giving force of the universe. The heroic human spirit."

That was rejected. For what? What is the symbol of the ideal of those who reject what Roark provides? "The Hopton Stoddard Home for Subnormal Children."

It is not CONTEMPT for the children at all. But horror at the notion that this home would be what is accepted (presumably - see Toohey - as the highest thing), after what Roark offered and built was rejected.

Bill

Right on. Thanks.

W.

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Heroism is living for your own sake, without reference to others or their plight.

Wolf gets it. As a result, the more you concern yourself with others or their plight, the less heroic you are. This is the Randian (pace Nietzsche) "revaluation of all values".

This is the psychology/philosophy of a sociopath. It is not Objectivism. It is, however, the philosophy of some purported Objectivists. Living for your own sake--without that qualifier--is Objectivism and is heroic. It is not the end all, be all of heroism.

--Brant

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This is the psychology/philosophy of a sociopath. It is not Objectivism. It is, however, the philosophy of some purported Objectivists.

Yes, well the problem I think is that Rand did not really think all this out clearly; thus she said things that clearly point in this slippery-slope direction whilst also saying things that contradicted it. After all, those who you call the "purported" Objectivists have all read the same Rand books as you. The ideas they have got there somehow - and keep getting in there, it seems.

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[This is the psychology/philosophy of a sociopath. It is not Objectivism. It is, however, the philosophy of some purported Objectivists. Living for your own sake--without that qualifier--is Objectivism and is heroic. It is not the end all, be all of heroism.

--Brant

Help me out, Brant. I'm a little dense. And it' s an important question. Forget what I may have said above. Define heroism, please.

W.

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Ayn Rand curing the lame and the halt. Gimme a break.

Wolf,

Isn't that what doctors and medical scientists are supposed to do? By definition?

Michael

I admit it's an important question. A great deal of money, running into hundreds of millions of dollars, is invested each year by pharma companies to research exotic cures for oddball diseases that only afflict a small number of sufferers. Tens of billions are being spent on new research and giveaway antiviral treatment of HIV-AIDS. Is it heroic? Is handing out free milk and school lunches heroic?

Rand addressed the subject specifically in Think Twice, and I agree that 'curing the lame and the halt' figured in The Fountainhead thematically, not as an intrinsic evil, but a kind of cowardice or socialized self-censorship. Wynand discovered that Roark was social poison, Jackie and her keepers were gods.

Glad to hear other views on this matter. It's important, no doubt on that score.

W.

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Wolf,

What about the Hippocratic Oath?

Not only is the good of the patient sworn by the doctor, but also an oath to practice medicine to the best of his/her ability.

So, should a doctor only cure healthy people? That doesn't make any sense to me. Isn't it precisely when we are in a state of "the lame and the halt" that we take recourse to a doctor? And shouldn't medical scientists be seeking new cures? If not, what should they be doing?

I am confused.

(btw - This is not an endorsement of the semi-monopoly the major drug companies have achieved by being in bed with the government, nor their practice—when they do it—of trying to create generations of addicts to consume their wares.)

Michael

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[This is the psychology/philosophy of a sociopath. It is not Objectivism. It is, however, the philosophy of some purported Objectivists. Living for your own sake--without that qualifier--is Objectivism and is heroic. It is not the end all, be all of heroism.

--Brant

Help me out, Brant. I'm a little dense. And it' s an important question. Forget what I may have said above. Define heroism, please.

W.

Going in (apparent) harm's way to protect or achieve a value--willingness to pay a price for that.

--Brant

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Something from Rand of strong relevance to the discussion of this thread (quoting from The Romantic Manifesto):

"Misery, disease, disaster, evil, all the negatives of human existence, are proper objects of study in life, for the purpose of understanding and correcting them—but are not proper objects of contemplation for contemplation's sake. In art, and in literature, these negatives are worth recreating only in relation to some positive, as a foil, as a contrast, as a means of stressing the positive—but not as an end in themselves ....

That one should wish to enjoy the contemplation of values, of the good—of man's greatness, intelligence, ability, virtue, heroism—is self-explanatory. It is the contemplation of the evil that requires explanation and justification; and the same goes for the contemplation of the mediocre, the undistinguished, the commonplace, the meaningless, the mindless."

Bill (Alfonso)

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"That one should wish to enjoy the contemplation of values, of the good—of man's greatness, intelligence, ability, virtue, heroism—is self-explanatory. It is the contemplation of the evil that requires explanation and justification; and the same goes for the contemplation of the mediocre, the undistinguished, the commonplace, the meaningless, the mindless."

Bill (Alfonso)

It's not self-explanatory to me and I don't see why contemplating "the mediocre, the undistinguished, the commonplace, the meaningless, the mindless" needs explanation.

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Going in (apparent) harm's way to protect or achieve a value--willingness to pay a price for that.

Sounds exactly right to me. That's why I question whether doctors and medical researchers are heroic. Junior hospital staff might be: long hours, lots of urgent cases, front line medical care, up close and personal. Ditto field army doctors and nurses in a war zone, or aid workers helping refugees. We each get to choose the values we think deserve risking our necks to defend.

Most professions involve liability and reputational risk, but I don't see much heroism in accounting or banking. Just as 'best practice' and 'prudence' deter heroism in engineering and financial intermediation (or ought to, damn it), almost all medical practice is cautious, conservative, and consensus driven.

In a world with millions of illiterate children, we could have achieved literacy for all -- for less than the price of a month's combat in Iraq.

(Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz, Washington Post, Mar 9, 2008)

Teaching is not heroic as such. It is typically bureaucratic, hemmed in by rules and regs, institutionally guided to serve the average joe. There certainly have been heroic teachers who risked their necks to lift the lamp of enlightenment, for instance Margaret Douglass. But heroism is not a product of governments or mass action. It is singular, exceptional, almost unique among thousands or millions who were similarly situated and risked little or nothing.

That's why I loved The Fountainhead and still love it. That's why the Stoddard Temple is only a second act twist, not a finale. Heroism is a lifelong endeavor. It involves sacrifice and struggle and loss, just to get in the game. That's why Gail Wynand was destroyed in the end. He hadn't earned the right to stick his neck out heroically, after a lifelong career of selling out to the lowest bidder, the average joe.

W.

Edited by Wolf DeVoon
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Going in (apparent) harm's way to protect or achieve a value--willingness to pay a price for that.

Sounds exactly right to me. That's why I question whether doctors and medical researchers are heroic. Junior hospital staff might be: long hours, lots of urgent cases, front line medical care, up close and personal. Ditto field army doctors and nurses in a war zone, or aid workers helping refugees. We each get to choose the values we think deserve risking our necks to defend.

Wolf: Consider this true story I've related elsewhere: A pediatric brain surgeon who suffered from terrible pain caused by a fulimating degenerative neurologic disease. He operates for eight continuous hours on a child's brain removing a horrible non-cancerous tumour with many tenacles reaching deep into the grey matter. His concentration is continuous and unbreaking. The operation is a success. I wish I remembered his name. He's dead now.

A medical researcher can be heroic. He/she can spend a lifetime looking for a cure for cancer--and fail. It is not just a matter of physical risk.

Heroism has nothing to do with profession. A soldier can be a coward. When I was a soldier I was a coward (head down) and heroic (head up): Bang, bang, bang!

--Brant

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Wolf: Consider this true story I've related elsewhere: A pediatric brain surgeon who suffered from terrible pain caused by a fulimating degenerative neurologic disease. He operates for eight continuous hours on a child's brain removing a horrible non-cancerous tumour with many tenacles reaching deep into the grey matter. His concentration is continuous and unbreaking. The operation is a success. I wish I remembered his name. He's dead now.

A medical researcher can be heroic. He/she can spend a lifetime looking for a cure for cancer--and fail. It is not just a matter of physical risk.

Heroism has nothing to do with profession. A soldier can be a coward. When I was a soldier I was a coward (head down) and heroic (head up): Bang, bang, bang!

--Brant

I won't quarrel with you, Brant, and I accept you have a better handle on it than I do. I've been a coward more often than a hero. If I had my life to live over again, I can't swear I'd choose again to make the same mistakes. It's easy to confuse vanity with virtue. When it's my turn to die, the only claim I have to honor is I loved being alive to the full extent of my meager courage and ability.

W.

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"That one should wish to enjoy the contemplation of values, of the good—of man's greatness, intelligence, ability, virtue, heroism—is self-explanatory. It is the contemplation of the evil that requires explanation and justification; and the same goes for the contemplation of the mediocre, the undistinguished, the commonplace, the meaningless, the mindless."

Bill (Alfonso)

It's not self-explanatory to me and I don't see why contemplating "the mediocre, the undistinguished, the commonplace, the meaningless, the mindless" needs explanation.

Help me to understand your response:

1) It's not self-explanatory to you why one would want to contemplate greatness, intelligence, ability, virtue and heroism

while

2) It is self-explanatory to you why one would want to contemplate the mediocre, the undistinguished, the commonplace, the meaningless, and the mindless?

Seriously? Do you find yourself primarily wanting to contemplate the latter category? Is that what the art which appeals to you primarly focuses on? I'm trying to understand why the latter needs no explanation for you, but the former does need explanation for you.

Bill

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Help me to understand your response:

Bill

Why is to "enjoy the contemplation of values, of the good—of man's greatness, intelligence, ability, virtue, heroism" self-explanatory? I find this very presumptuous. Also, requiring explanation for "the contemplation of the mediocre, the undistinguished, the commonplace, the meaningless, the mindless" I find equally presumptuous. In fact, I find much of Rand's writing presumptuous.

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Help me to understand your response:

Bill

Why is to "enjoy the contemplation of values, of the good—of man's greatness, intelligence, ability, virtue, heroism" self-explanatory? I find this very presumptuous. Also, requiring explanation for "the contemplation of the mediocre, the undistinguished, the commonplace, the meaningless, the mindless" I find equally presumptuous. In fact, I find much of Rand's writing presumptuous.

Do you really not see the inversion which I have pointed out going on in what you have said?

Bill

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Links to heroes? For a hero, in the sense that one of the men who risked his life signing the Declaration of Independence was a hero, consider Rodney Stich — a former multi-millionaire and federal agent with the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration). For fighting government corruption he got sent to federal prison, twice, and eventually was bankrupted.

This interview is a good place to start learning about his career.

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  • 4 weeks later...
[This is the psychology/philosophy of a sociopath. It is not Objectivism. It is, however, the philosophy of some purported Objectivists. Living for your own sake--without that qualifier--is Objectivism and is heroic. It is not the end all, be all of heroism.

--Brant

Help me out, Brant. I'm a little dense. And it' s an important question. Forget what I may have said above. Define heroism, please.

W.

Not compromising value.

The less-able can act as heroically as the more-able. It's not so much a matter of bravery as it is of honesty. Being honest to the fundamental nature of value is what affords bravery its popular appeal in matters concerning heroism.

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  • 6 years later...

An oldie-but-goodie. I was wondering how to thank Mike for being a very gracious host and a much-valued peer.

Quoting him is a good first step. He speaks with such precision (and playful humor) that I find I have to listen intently.

There is a strong militia element in Objectivism -- the Guns, Gold and God crowd -- who want to destroy Islam and bomb America's enemies and kill Islamo-fascists now that they can no longer kill commies and their mommies. Virginia Postrel wrote about these right wing millennarians in The Future and Its Enemies. This has more to do with personal issues of "psycho-epistemology" than with mere political debates over technicalities...

Many Objectivists need evil people around them in order to be virtuous.
They abrogate the responsibility to mind their own business.
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An oldie-but-goodie. I was wondering how to thank Mike for being a very gracious host and much-valued peer.

He speaks with such precision that I find I have to listen intently.

Wolf,

Thank you very much, but if you were referring to the Michael you quoted, that one is not me.

That is the prettier one.

:smile:

btw - That was a great comment by MM.

Michael

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An oldie-but-goodie. I was wondering how to thank Mike for being a very gracious host and much-valued peer.

He speaks with such precision that I find I have to listen intently.

Wolf,

Thank you very much, but if you were referring to the Michael you quoted, that one is not me.

That is the prettier one.

:smile:

btw - That was a great comment by MM.

Michael

By "host" I meant my recent visit to Austin.

You on the other hand, MSK, have done so much for so many that there's no way to

properly express my sincere gratitude, except to send another donation. :)

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(properly attributed this time)

An oldie-but-goodie. I was wondering how to thank Mike Marotta for being a very gracious host and a much-valued peer.

Quoting him is a good first step. He speaks with such precision (and playful humor) that I find I have to listen intently.

There is a strong militia element in Objectivism -- the Guns, Gold and God crowd -- who want to destroy Islam and bomb America's enemies and kill Islamo-fascists now that they can no longer kill commies and their mommies. Virginia Postrel wrote about these right wing millennarians in The Future and Its Enemies. This has more to do with personal issues of "psycho-epistemology" than with mere political debates over technicalities...

Many Objectivists need evil people around them in order to be virtuous.
They abrogate the responsibility to mind their own business.
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