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Me personally, I agree with AR in this regard as to the present. I honestly believe she was performing introspection while in the present as well as extrospection while in the present. I've even posted about this when I first came to this site, Looking for a real life John Galt, and then the posts thereafter with examples of it from her book Atlas.

When I perform introspection or extrospection while in the present, I form rational beliefs by asking myself question after question and answer after answer as to why I do what I do. For me, every action, every emotion should be analzyed while in the present to form those "rational" beliefs.

It has so much to do with the "present." Everyone knows that as time goes on, you forget so much, things become distorted, you forget exactly what you were feeling, your emotions, everything that was said, etc. Or you may start mixing up memories.

I look to my past sometimes to help me explore ideas and situations to help me understand better why I may be doing something while in the present or as to why others may be doing what they are doing while in the present. It's not always 100 percent accurate but it was a way for me personally to form those rational beliefs as to why "I" thought I was doing what I was doing.

This is just my opinion regarding it. I don't know enough about AR, etc., but what I do know is that this is how I personally formed my rational beliefs and it was performing introspection and extrospection while in the present.

I don't have all the answers and I can't answer every single question. But as I've gone along performing it this way, it's enabled me to figure things out more accurately.

Angie

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Is there any way Ayn Rand’s actions can be conceived as being what they are and being the actions of an honest person? I think there is. I think that Charles and Ellen have captured two important elements of Rand’s nature: “...the strongly developed emotional components associated with self-esteem and honesty both acted to prevent Ayn Rand from understanding what Nathaniel was doing” (Charles); “...there is the ‘other’ factor, too, the factor I've described as ‘absolutism’... it's like [Nathaniel] had two categories he could be in...Either he really was the great soul she'd become convinced he was...OR he had to have betrayed his greatness.” (Ellen)

These ideas have sent images flying through my mind, trying to connect information into a picture of the underlying nature of Rand’s psyche. Her own view of causation claims: what a thing is determines what it does. We are trying to understand the nature of the entity (Rand’s psyche) that caused her behaviour. As with many phenomena that can be observed, we are faced with an apparent paradox in behaviour. On the one hand there is the view that Rand is of honest character. On the other there is the view that she distorted the facts of reality. How can these views be integrated?

If one concludes the views cannot be integrated then the choice remains: which view captures reality. If one has a pro-Rand bias, one’s conclusion is she was honest and it is those around her that distorted reality. If one has a pro-Nathaniel Branden bias or a bias against Rand, then one’s conclusion is she was dishonest and intentionally distorted the facts of reality. I think, as Charles and Ellen were suggesting, there is a third option. A deeper understanding of psychological dynamics could reveal a way to integrate the two views of Rand into one complex character.

This reminds me of the problems that face physicists in integrating the paradoxical behaviour of quantum particles. They were forced into concluding that paradoxes exist in nature. Light is both a particle and a wave. Ayn Rand is both honest and a distorter of reality.

I’m not particularly satisfied with simply accepting the existence of paradoxes without causal explanations. I was never satisfied with the Copenhagen Interpretation (or more recent variances) in physics, for exactly the same reasons I cannot simply accept the idea that Rand was just a paradoxical character. I need a causal explanation for how the paradox can exist. The drive for a causal explanation is what has inspired the direction of this discussion.

Unfortunately, my own thoughts are in the process of taking shape. I have my own intuitive model of the elements of the psyche and their dynamic interactions. I am trying to piece together how these elements would align to create a fundamental orientation that might account for Rand’s paradoxical behaviour. I am thinking in terms of how she might have an unconscious shift in what I have called motivational biases that can skew how the world is perceived without conscious intent. There are trivial examples of this all around us. Ellen related one in the situation with Larry and the screw-driver. A more extreme dissociative case would be the paradoxical reality of multiple personalities. I am not suggesting Rand had MPD. I’m just illustrating the fact that unconscious shifts in the orientation of the psyche can account for otherwise paradoxical behaviour.

This discussion has brought to mind the post I made on NB’s Yahoo forum that was instrumental in my coming to O-L. In it I suggested that “I don't believe [Rand] intentionally distorted the truth.” If anyone is interested, you can find it here.

Paul

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I partly understand what Angie is getting at. I think that some people find it easier to retain and understand their experience when they reflect on it, rather than just letting it happen and doing nothing with that experience before it fades from memory. Kind of like taking photos or journaling -- or sharing your thoughts and feelings with another.

Rand had her characters do this in their heads, as inner dialogue, but she herself seems to have done a large amount of journaling, as well as corresponding with other people -- not to mention extended personal conversations in person or on the phone. I have no way of knowing for sure, but my impression is that Rand's introspection was mostly in written form.

This is really the extent of my thoughts on the subject...

REB

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Roger, you wrote:

...my impression is that Rand's introspection was mostly in written form

This makes sense to me. We all have orientations we reserve for our private selves. I know my social orientations can be very different from my more isolated orientations. I think Rand might have tapped into her more intuitive, more vulnerable, self only in private and via writing. I think this might have been how she was able to consciously direct the flow of her intuition.

Paul

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First, as Ellen pointed out, my last comment before a flurry of responses, was only directed at trying to develop some understanding of Ayn Rand's naivety.

Second, I agree fully with Barbara that Ayn Rand's To Whom It May Concern was so lacking in any substantiation of her accusations about Nathaniel Branden's character that it was dishonest. Other dishonesties seemed to flow from that. It also appears clear that Ayn Rand did rewrite history with respect to the character of other people and their contributions to her life with a very disturbing frequency. Ayn Rand's honesty was compartmentalized. In certain types of things, she was honest; in other types of things she was not. I suspect that she would have been honest about having a sexual relationship with someone else, as evidenced by her telling Frank and Barbara about the affair she and Nathaniel were having. Therefore, she could not believe that the man she had taken as a hero would be dishonest about such a thing. This fell inside her honesty compartment.

I think we have all seen the phenomena of people who are scrupulously rational in their professional work, for instance, but not at all so in personal relationships or in their avowed philosophy. We have seen people who are pretty honest in their personal life, but think that the standards of their business allow them to be very dishonest when conducting business. I think Ayn Rand had a compartmentalized honesty. In some areas she was scrupulously honest, in others she was dishonest. These compartmentalizations are very common in people generally.

It seems hard to accept the idea that Ayn Rand, who was so characteristically able to apply a broad integrating vision to complex issues not relating to her personal relationships, had so much trouble cutting down those compartments she had with respect to her personal relationships. The evidence is clear that she was unable to do this, however. The fact that Barbara made this clear, is a great part of why some people hate her so.

I have known a number of people who have a remarkable ability for clearly remembering events from the past as they never were. One of my sisters has a great capacity for remembering things from childhood with great accuracy for some things and total reconstructions of other things. I once had a boss who would have a conversation with me about how the company we worked for had a mistaken policy. He would go to a meeting where the policy was discussed and when he returned he was totally reprogrammed to believe in the policy. He literally could not remember that one hour before he had thought the policy was wrong.

I have known people who remembered a conversation with someone which had a truly ambiguous meaning with respect to how the other person thought of the rememberer. Their recall filled in all sorts of details that never happened but which substantiated their evaluation that the other person thought little of them. I had this happen to me a couple of times with work colleagues. In one case, I always thought better of my colleague, whom I was mentoring, than he did himself and was actually praising his work in the conversation we had. I mentioned one thing he could do better and he took it as a criticism, even though on that very issue, I had said what he did was good and would have been even better if he had done a bit more. I praised his work on several other things, but he only remembered that I had said he did not the best thing on one issue. In the other case, I had no real opinion of the woman involved, since I knew her hardly at all. Nothing in our interaction justified her interpretation of it. She had a very creative interpretation of our limited interaction and told me a great deal about my character, though she did not know me.

All of these people are intelligent people. All of them are generally good people. None of them suffer from any great mental illness. In some things, especially relating to personal relationships, they simply cannot perceive reality. Yet, they are all functioning, independent people. They all had a sufficient number of compartments within which they functioned well.

If we get over the idea of an idealized Ayn Rand, her paradoxical personality is not really all that unusual.

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I have the feeling that if we were discussing anyone but Ayn Rand, subjects like her naivety and her constant about-faces on the qualities of people she formerly admired and loved would be called by something far easier to understand. We would probably say she was lying to herself.

However, as she is Ayn Rand, that seems inconceivable. So we talk as if these things could have had a different nature. Did they? Could Rand have lied to herself at times in order to artificially maintain a chosen premise?

Michael

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I have the feeling that if we were discussing anyone but Ayn Rand, subjects like her naivety and her constant about-faces on the qualities of people she formerly admired and loved would be called by something far easier to understand. We would probably say she was lying to herself.

However, as she is Ayn Rand, that seems inconceivable.

Um, Michael, speak for yourself? ;-) The person I am discussing isn't "anyone but Ayn Rand," it's Ayn Rand. And I would venture to assert that I am without any trace of finding the idea of Rand's lying to herself "inconceivable." I don't think it's a good explanation, however. I think that AR in fact was a person of some peculiar -- some out-of-the-ordinary -- complexities which aren't easy to understand. (I should qualify that I think every person has complexities which are very far from easy to understand. And I wouldn't claim "fully" to understand anyone, including myself. But I do think that even in a world of strangeness -- the world of human psyches -- AR had puzzling qualities. "God" knows, I've pondered over those qualities many times, many times. At times I feel that I sense the innerness of it -- but never that I can well describe what I sense.)

Ellen

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Another example of Rand's dishonesty: in the first edition of We the Living she wrote this horrible passage: What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it? been wrong...). This is also in accordance with her Stalinistic rewriting of history about people she had broken with, even an honest error of judgement would have been deleterious to her self-image.

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Ellen,

I think it was Arthur Koestler (I'm not sure now) who identified a "syndrome" among scientists and other creators. Once a scientist has discovered an idea beneficial to mankind and this idea has been duly rewarded and widely utilized - including lots of fame for the scientist - he usually starts becoming loathe to admit that anyone else participated in the discovery, often including sources in this denial. I know this happens with artists all the time from seeing this up close.

Whether this is called lying to oneself or is part of a more complex psychological syndrome, it still not reflective of reality. History exists as it happened, not as anyone may wish it had happened.

Rand determined that Aristotle was practically her sole philosophical influence and that was that. No others existed. Chris Sciabarra showed differently. Also, Dragonfly's examples above show a perfect example of this attitude in her.

I see Rand's bipolar friendship behavior as related to this "syndrome" or behavior. Once a person has accepted that he/she can rewrite history on one level, transposing it to another is quite a small step.

Michael

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Dragonfly, thank you for reminding (or informing) us of Rand's duplicitous behavior regarding the two editions of We the Living.

I remember being shocked beyond belief in 1970 when I was sent a photocopy of the relevant pages from the first edition of WTL. Not at the fact that Rand had apparently once held such Nietzschean views (as Dragonfly's quote from Rand's journal entry re The Fountainhead clearly shows), but at the fact that she so brazenly tried to cover up that fact -- as if people wouldn't check it out!

There have been 50 years for someone to give a decent explanation of Rand's comments in edition 2 of WTL, other than the obvious one: Rand lied. And nothing I have seen to date has risen above the level of verbal tap-dancing in defense of the Goddess.

That was from the horse's mouth, too -- no hearsay or third-party testimony about which one has to judge credibility. While we're on this general subject, I would be extremely interested to hear/read the actual words Rand spoke about the origin of her pen name to Barbara Branden in their early 60s interviews that led up to Who is Ayn Rand?. Barbara, did Rand tell the Remington-Rand typewriter story in her interviews with you, and do you still have it on tape?

REB

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It's been rattling around in the back of my mind, occasionally in the forefront, that there's a gap of communication between those of us who experienced AR in person sufficiently often to have been left with a felt sense of her "presence," her particular "aura," her "way of coming across" -- whatever words work for you -- and those of us who didn't. Those in the former category seem to understand the description "honest," whereas those in the latter category seem to bring up this detail and then another and thus to not accept the description. I'm coming to think that maybe a different wording is needed, maybe something like "ferocious directness." The quality I'm talking about pertains to her way of going straight AT an issue, as if on a pinpointed lazer beam "whap," the way she didn't appear to entertain questions of "how what I'm saying might sound to my listener."

But then, of course, there will be the objection: But she was reported to be sensitive to context and to give a lot of people a feeling of her uniquely hearing them (this isn't something I experienced myself since I avoided direct conversation with her, but it's something I've heard reported by a number of people who did have personal one-on-one exchange with her). And maybe also the objection that she described herself as using the word "selfish" "for the reasons that it bothers you" (words to this effect).

Fact is, I agree with Barbara on the difficulties of describing Ayn Rand -- and Barbara would have those difficulties even more so than I do, given the many-years-closeness of her relationship with Ayn.

Ellen

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It's very easy to forget one's common sense when attempting to understand Ayn Rand. She was so unusual, so remarkable, and so complex a woman that one tends to reject explanations of her behavior that one would apply to anyone else and to find rather convoluted explanations in their place. I am not throwing stones by saying this; I'm in no position to do so -- having at times come up with infinitely convoluted explanations myself. But in this discussion, I feel rather as if we had caught someone with her hand in the cookie jar, and explained it by saying she had forgotten that one should not steal.

Ellen, you said, about Rand rewriting the history of former relationships: "But is this actually 'dishonesty,' or is it that, her opinion having changed, she'd lost the earlier context?" I simply do not see any way that one can lose the context of a relationship, such as that with Isabel Pateron, so immensely important, so unique and precious, that one would say of her: "You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated."

In the instances where we see Rand rewriting history -- such as rewriting her former evaluations of Nathaniel and Paterson and many, many others, or her denial of the changes she made to WE THE LIVING -- I agree with Charles that "Ayn Rand's honesty was compartmentalized. In certain types of things, she was honest; in other types of things she was not. . . . I think we have all seen the phenomena of people who are scrupulously rational in their professional work, for instance, but not at all so in personal relationships or in their avowed philosophy. We have seen people who are pretty honest in their personal life, but think that the standards of their business allow them to be very dishonest when conducting business. I think Ayn Rand had a compartmentalized honesty. In some areas she was scrupulously honest, in others she was dishonest. These compartmentalizations are very common in people generally."

Rand had a truly remarkable memory. In doing research for PASSION, I was often astonished by how exactly her reports to me of certain events, even of long-ago conversations, exactly matched what I found to be the facts. Yet her report of her feelings, say, toward Paterson, did not match the facts; and her report in To Whom It May Concern" of Nathaniel's supposed financial and other skullduggery, did not match the facts. And even in my interviews with her, I have since found that certain things she told me simply were not true. For instance, she said that she never told her family the new name she had taken in America, for fear of putting them in danger with the Soviet authorities when she became known as an anti-Communist. I have learned that she did tell them her new name. Is this something one can forget? -- that they referred to her by the name "Ayn Rand" in letters to her that she had in her possession?

Ellen, I well understand that you and others hold out for a certain fumdamental honesty in Rand, When one spoke with her or listened to her, one had a powerful sense that she had a simplicty, a directness, a conscientiousness -- an immaculate integrity -- that would make any dissembling impoossible to her. I've often thought, while struggling with the difference between appearances and (some of the) reality, that perhaps her own vast intelligence sometimes worked to her disadvantage: that she was able to find rationalizations for her questionable behavior that the rest of us would not have been able to find for ourselves, I have little doubt that had we told her the kind of issues that have caused some of us to question her honesty, her response would have shaken us severely in our position -- and required us to hold very, very tightly to common sense.

Barbara

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But in this discussion, I feel rather as if we had caught someone with her hand in the cookie jar, and explained it by saying she had forgotten that one should not steal.

Which cookie jar, Barbara? It's fairly common for people to misremember their evaluation of someone toward whom their opinion has changed; AR is hardly unusual in this. Something I'd like to hear is exactly how you conceive of the process occurring in her mind; did she say to herself, "Once I felt X about person Y, but I'm going to tell the story that I didn't?" And what's your explanation of her report that "she never told her family the new name she had taken in America," also of the typewriter story? Do you think she outright lied to you in these cases, even all those years ago when you conducted the interviews?

It's rather weird, MY seeming to defend AR, whose psychological perceptiveness I always found deficient, from my first reading of Atlas, and with whom I never had any desire to come close. But I really don't see proof of actual lying.

Ellen

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Ellen: "It's fairly common for people to misremember their evaluation of someone toward whom their opinion has changed; AR is hardly unusual in this."

I think I covered this when I said, in an earlier post on this thread, "I know how most people view relationships that have gone bad, friends who may have hurt them. Often, in retrospect, they somewhat exaggerate the flaws they were aware of, somewhat play down the meaning such people once had for them. And I understand the psychology involved. But I have never seen in anyone but Rand the almost total negation of any value, any worth, and especially of any emotional meaning the former friends once possessed." And in my last post: "I simply do not see any way that one can lose the context of a relationship, such as that with Isabel Paterson, so immensely important, so unique and precious, that one would say of her: 'You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated.'''

I can see, say, one forgetting that one viewed a person as, for instance, "highly intelligent," and remembering only that he was "rather intelligent." But remembing that he was unintelligent? The extremes of the shifts in some of the cases of re-writing history are simply too great to be credited only to failures of memory.

But no, I doo't accuse Rand of conscious lies, of saying to herself: "I know that X is the truth, but I'll deny it and say that the opposite of X is the truth instead." I think to do this is unusual for anyone, except perhaps when people tell what they consider "white lies," that spare someone's feelmgs but are of no moral consequence. We try to avoid doing violence to our selfesteem by avoiding what we'd have to recogniize are bold-faced lies. Let's say -- and I'm not suggesting that this is precisely what did happen, only that something very like it is what probably happened: Say that I am Rand, and that while I was still in contact with my parents in Russia, I told them the new name I had chosen. It didn't occur to me at the time that I might be putting them in danger by doing so; I realized this only later, and I felt a pang of regret over my thoughtlessness. Years later, I was talking to Barbara about my gratitude to my mother, who had sold the last of her jewelry in order to purchase my fare to America. Telling the story, I feel a rush of protective affection for my mother, the desperate wish that I could have found a way to rescue her from Russia, and I reexperience the horror of my near-certainty that my family perished during the seige of Leningrad. Then, when Barbara happens to asks me if my parents liked my new name, I have the overwhelming feeling that I would NEVER have done anything to endanger them, that I COULD not have, that I would always have been concerned to protect them -- and I have moved from regret to love to the belief that I did not tell them my new name.

And one could outline a similar methodology by which Rand could convince herself that she made no changes of substance in WE THE LIVING -- along the lines of: "But I couldn't ever have believed that the masses may be crushed underfoot for the sake of the superior man -- I know that such a conflict of interests can never be necessary. . . and so I never did believe it or write it; my wording must simply have been inexact because I was still learning English."

I recognize that I am over-simplifying. But this, in effect, is the pattern I see that makes dishonesty possible -- a mix of "I did" and "I couldn't have" -- of "I loved Paterson deeply" and "I couldn't have loved her" -- of: "I know Nathaniel would never be financially dishonest" to" he lied to me about other things. he probably was dishonest about money, too." And so on.

Life would be much simpler if the line between honesty and dishonesty, even between truth and lies, were kept carefully separate in our minds. But there are so many ways in which one can blur those lines, so many ways in which desires can be made to replace facts,. Even a murderer, I suspect, has to try to convince himself that his act was somehow justified. We don't say to ourselves: "This is immoral, it goes against my principles, but I'll do it anyway." Instead, we fog and obscure, in our own minds, the nature of what we are in fact doing and tell outselves we can't possibly be doing it.

Barbara

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Just a quick note to say that there's too much going on here this week -- in that realm called "having a life" -- for me to sit down long enough to try to frame thoughts for posting. But I've read, and was interested by, Barbara's reply as to what she sees AR's "process" as having been in regard to "re-writing" the history of relationships, and other details.

I think that what Barbara said was "psychological" in a way that so much Objectivist discussion isn't, and plausible as a process -- though I'm not convinced that it was the specific process in AR's particular psyche.

I wish I could hear those tapes myself. I think the voice tones would tell me a lot which as it is I have to only hypothesize about.

A question re the tapes: If I understand correctly, Barbara, the original tapes are now in the Estate's possession and you have copies. Yes? If yes, have the copies in your possession been transcribed; or if not, are there plans to transcribe them? (Thing is, I wouldn't quite trust "the Estate" not to delete details, so I hope that someone independent will produce a written record.)

Ellen

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Why not transfer the tapes to CD format and sell them that way? I love transcripts and all that, but since this is personal material we're talking about, actually hearing the inflections &c would be so much more vivid and real (and thus valuable) than simply seeing it in written form.

Are the tapes your property -- and the copy possessed by the estate merely a courtesy/archival copy? If so, then you should be able to market them as you please, no?

REB

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Barbara wrote:

I agree with Charles that "Ayn Rand's honesty was compartmentalized. In certain types of things, she was honest; in other types of things she was not.

Thanks for your feedback on this idea that would seem to fit the facts as I know them, but which admittedly might not fit enough of the facts known by someone who knew Ayn Rand well.

Relative to the more current discussion of how people's evaluative memories become rewritten, I had earlier (18 May) mentioned one of my four sisters. The oldest of my sisters is only 16 months younger than me. I remember very little before I was five, but she remembers many of the events that I first remember and remembers them in more vivid detail. Much of that additional detail seems to be correct, though some is enhanced, when checked out against my mother's memory. But, where her evaluation of relationships is concerned, the actions and events giving rise to the evaluations are often enhanced with details that never occurred. Now, this sister, as is the case with all four of my sisters, is very intelligent. She is the most bookish by far of them. For many years she thought of herself primarily as a poet, though she taught English and History in middle school, then English and Literature in high school, and finally English and Literature in a community college. She had an abusive first marriage, which she fought hard to think of as loving for a very long time. Her poetry was partially an idealized romanticizism of love and partly a dark,hinted scream against her abuse and disappointment in life. During those years, she continued to add color to her childhood memories and reinterpret them. She had always been inclined to spend many hours alone, though she was reasonably popular in school. She had been inclined to see herself as underestimated and neglected relative to her older brother. She had to leave her friends every 2 to 3 years and move with her Navy family. She tended to have friends who were troubled and spent a lot of time counseling them. The evaluations of childhood events and relationships shifted in the negative direction during her years of marriage abuse and never re-emerged even to the tarnished version she held before that period of her life.

Just as my sister lived very largely in her mind and her memories and she was a creative writer, so it appears there is a parallel with Ayn Rand. She was always something of a loner. She lived for her creative writing of idealized people and worlds. She suffered many hardships relating to acceptance: leaving her family and her country, learning a new language, functioning in a new culture, the longer and harder road of learning to write creatively in a new language, having her great novels rejected over and over, being rejected by the intelligensia, a marriage to a less than Randian hero, and finally a heroically-styled love affair with a disappointing end. It seems plausible to me that Ayn Rand's many life disruptions and rejections, her many hours alone with her thoughts, her love of creative and idealized writing, and her very intelligence, might have provided her the many tools to creatively re-write the events and people she remembered much as my sister did. Many of their memories are right in the details, but both embroidered the details a bit and both imposed evaluations upon them rather readily, especially in the darker direction.

While my sister will say mean and cruel things about the people she loves, she actually does love them. She will go to really remarkable ends to help other family members and friends. She is in many ways a rational person, but you must pay a great deal of attention to where the boundaries are for those areas of rationality. She is in many ways a good person, but again, you need to pay attention to where the boundary lines are in her good nature and where her nature slips to the Dark Side. She is a paradox, as Barbara has described Ayn Rand in so many ways.

My sister is a somewhat over-abstracted thinker. I believe that Ayn Rand was a much more over-abstracted thinker. It is clear that Rand's evaluations changed faster and more radically than did my sister's, but in all respects, the disruptions, the rejections, the hours alone, the disappointments, the creativity, the idealism, and the intelligence seem to be enough more extreme for Ayn Rand relative to my sister to make the parallel seem quite plausible to me.

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