Ayn Rand and the World She Made

[Robert Campbell]

The suspense is over.

Lindsay Perigo has actually read an entire book (though someone had to tell him it had endnotes).

It was Ayn Rand and the World She Made, and he really really didn't like it.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/7057#comment-82073

Robert Campbell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

I skimmed through it.

Same old same old from Perigo...

You have to do blind hero whoreship with him calling the shots, or else you are an evil "diminisher" or whatever...

(yawn...)

Being in awe of a person's achievements is not enough to recognize a hero in his kind of world. You have to fake reality, create a false idol and scapegoat targets with bigoted spite so you can bully people.

This crap suits some folks. Not me.

Koolaid anyone? Go right ahead.

I ain't drinking it...

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

A half-hour interview with Anne Heller on Radio New Zealand:

http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/sat/sat-20091212-0810-Anne_C._Heller_Ayn_Rand-048.mp3

It had Lindsay Perigo and acolytes spitting their omelets...

Robert Campbell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

I listened to the interview, which I liked very much. What's worse for the SLOP crowd is that they got so much wrong in their comments. Just flat-out wrong.

They remind me of the way Rand's works were mischaracterized by spiteful people.

I understood the gist of Anne's position to be that many people use Objectivism to justify pure greed in a Gordon Gekko kind of manner, especially in the financial market. But she explicitly said that Rand never condoned that kind of stuff and you can't find it in Rand's works. I heard that clearly in the interview. What were these boneheads listening to?

Although Anne did not say it, I think she believes that more works from an Objectivist viewpoint need to be written to root out this kind of misunderstanding. Since Rand's arguments were misused and this was one of the things that helped result in a financial crisis of global dimensions, there is obviously a problem that needs attention. I happen to agree with that.

But once she threw in a phrase like "social contract," the minds of these individuals turned off and they totally missed her meaning. Blank-out.

Talk about a bigoted knee-jerk!

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just took a look over there and see that the big issue is the Anne said that she thinks she would not have liked Rand as a person. She thinks not having met her was a plus in terms of being able to write a good book about her.

This has been mischaracterized into a "Heller dislikes Ayn Rand" thing. Those folks kind of forgot to mention that Anne was so fascinated by Ayn Rand that she undertook to write a whole book about her to probe that fascination. She said that clearly.

Simply put, she likes Rand's ideas and works. She doesn't think she would have liked Rand as a person.

Once again: blank-out from the peanut gallery.

Boy do I know what she means, though. I even once said to Barbara that I don't think I would have like Rand as a person. And the reason is that I dislike control-freaks. Barbara said that there was a wonderful side to Rand that I probably would have loved.

In my case, there is something else. I really dislike playing the "moral approval" game to stay in someone's favor or stay part of a tribe. I prefer to use my brain and let my observations fall unclouded where they may.

Anne specifically said Rand's work is relevant and will not go away in our culture. It's here to stay. I read someone over there say Anne claimed Rand's work is irrelevant.

And on and on it goes.

I am particularly amused by Whitaker Perigo's distortions and treatment of Anne's meanings.

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

Speaking for myself I rarely look at Perigo's and his Munchkins ravings.

On the question I suspect I wouldn't have liked Rand nor she me. I am deeply grateful for all her work.

[BaalChatzaf]

Speaking for myself I rarely look at Perigo's and his Munchkins ravings.

On the question I suspect I wouldn't have liked Rand nor she me. I am deeply grateful for all her work.

I concur. I work very hard to separate Rand's shortcoming as a human being (she seemed to be a Terrible Person and a Crazy Lady) from her philosophy and social criticism, much of on point. I am disappointed that someone as smart as Rand permitted herself to become a den mother to syncaphants and second rate people. I can sympathize with the let down she apparently had after the publication of AS, but her way of dealing with it left a lot to be desired.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Folks:

As Ba'al just noted, the insular development of Ayn's circle, by it's very nature and structure, was doomed to dogmatism, denial, denouncing "deviants" and extoling the desparate hangers on like Peikoff.

Such, apparently, is the nature of movements, particularly philosophical movements.

For myself, it was hard to accept, but I bit the bullet early and it buffered the disasterous ramifications of the 1968 purge.

However, that was then and this is now.

So we now have the torch.

Let's just say thank you, and go forward.

Adam

[Alfonso Jones]

Folks:

As Ba'al just noted, the insular development of Ayn's circle, by it's very nature and structure, was doomed to dogmatism, denial, denouncing "deviants" and extoling the desparate hangers on like Peikoff.

Such, apparently, is the nature of movements, particularly philosophical movements.

For myself, it was hard to accept, but I bit the bullet early and it buffered the disasterous ramifications of the 1968 purge.

However, that was then and this is now.

So we now have the torch.

Let's just say thank you, and go forward.

Adam

Right - -

Say "Thank you," and remember the wonderful contributions.

Reread Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer" periodically.

and live your own life, thinking independently. Where you have found something sound - build on it. But don't buy the notion that because of Rand's brilliance she couldn't come up with a big error now and then, or confuse her personal taste with something far more broad.

My practice: When I think Rand is wrong - - - - read very carefully. Did I misunderstand what she wrote/said? Am I understanding it IN CONTEXT? Only after addressing that, . . . .

Bill P

[Dragonfly]

I am disappointed that someone as smart as Rand permitted herself to become a den mother to syncaphants

Syncaphants? That sounds ominous...

[Dragonfly]

As Ba'al just noted, the insular development of Ayn's circle, by it's very nature and structure, was doomed to dogmatism, denial, denouncing "deviants" and extoling the desparate hangers on like Peikoff.

Such, apparently, is the nature of movements, particularly philosophical movements.

For myself, it was hard to accept, but I bit the bullet early and it buffered the disasterous ramifications of the 1968 purge.

Tsk, tsk!

[Selene]

As Ba'al just noted, the insular development of Ayn's circle, by it's very nature and structure, was doomed to dogmatism, denial, denouncing "deviants" and extoling the desparate hangers on like Peikoff.

Such, apparently, is the nature of movements, particularly philosophical movements.

For myself, it was hard to accept, but I bit the bullet early and it buffered the disasterous ramifications of the 1968 purge.

Tsk, tsk!

Wow. Totally unacceptable!

Off with my head and I am not even going to chance guillotine...

"its'" "disastrous" "extolling"

and "desperate"

CHECK YOUR WORK

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's some grist for the mill.

Yesterday I wrote an email to a person who asked me about the importance of the Rand-Branden split (among other things). Here is part of my response. I liked it so much I am posting the part that does not identify the person I was writing to.

With respect to the romantic mess between Ayn Rand and Nathaniel, I have become weary of debating it. But here is a thought. We are all responsible for the choices we make in a world where there are no guarantees. That includes how we react to a situation.

I personally believe that Rand tried to mold Nathaniel into her perfect lover and Nathaniel obviously reacted poorly to the trap he walked into (with his eyes wide open, I might add). I think everybody was wrong in that situation. And there was plenty of dishonesty, gross manipulation of public perception, hurt feelings, highly irrational moments, etc., etc., etc. to go around on all sides.

I believe if a person does not see that, he is shutting his eyes to facts on purpose in order to cling to mental images he used to believe in. There is just way too much written evidence and eye witnesses for pretzel logic to rationalize without impunity. The result of that blank-out process is hatred. I have yet to see anything other than hatred come of it, too.

Life gives no one guarantees of anything except death. We have to make our lives worth more than just the biological cycle if we want more value than that. And we have to do that by choice. No guarantees means no guarantees. That goes for all living beings, too, not just volitional ones.

Sometimes we screw up. Does that mean we have to give up?

That's a primary question in acquiring the capacity to value on up to the highest life offers us.

Screwing up is simply part of getting it right. It's part of learning. Sometimes it is not enough to know or believe something intellectually. You have to see how it works in action. And there is where screwing up comes in.

Even though I believe everybody was wrong in the affair, I also do not blame any of them for trying. Talk about a wrongheaded leap into the face of glory! But what a magnificent leap it was! They gave it their 100% best. They went for the big brass ring and to hell with the rest of the world.

It's a damn shame reality intervened and took the thing apart. But that's the way reality does. You simply cannot mold human nature to be anything other than itself. A is A so to speak. Those who do not accept that end up suffering the consequences.

Now look at how Rand reacted to the split and look at how Nathaniel did. He wrote books, developed a brilliant career and became famous in his own right, not simply as Ayn Rand's protégé. And Rand? After completing a few projects that were already in the works, she slowly withered away in bitterness, leaning on her fame and fortune, and surrounded herself with a bunch of intellectual groupie yes-sayers. (How many of those have become well-known only as her protégé? It's something to think about.)

Who reacted better? Ayn Rand or Nathaniel Branden?

Believe me, Objectivism is no buffer against screwing up. And it does not guarantee that you will react well to one of life's most painful experiences, realizing that you screwed up big time with some top value. Objectivism does not make you into an automatic superman who reacts correctly to all of life's situations.

(Like one Internet marketing guru, Brent Hall, put it in a work about fleshing out the possibilities of a market in light of your own capacities: "There's no automatic way to do this. You have to use your brain.")

We all screw up at times. You can't shoot for a top value without screwing up along the way. That is inherent in the nature of a volitional mind that needs to learn in order to function.

Obviously, some screw-ups are worse than others. But those who shoot for the top run the risk of screwing up the worst. This is reality, not some "should be" formulation. That's just the way it is. If you decide to play, those are the rules reality lays down. This fact has not been focused on too much in Objectivist discussions and I believe it is one of the reasons so many underachieving Objectivists get it wrong.

The trick is to react well, correct ourselves and move in the best direction. That's the only way any real achievment happens.

Ever.

And that's where Objectivism really helps—if you let it. It allows you to reboot your mind, so to speak.

Nathaniel did this. Rand did not. Yet she is the greater author. (And I say that from a position of valuing both.)

Ironically, after the split, he practiced the best in the philosophy she devised and she did not.

Those who want Objectivism to be a buffer against looking at their own screw-ups and lack of achievmenet in life will never forgive him for beating her at the happiness game.

I have other thoughts on the tribal nature of underachievers, but this has gone on long enough.

By screw-up, I mean both moral and cognitive screw-ups. The nature of being mortal is breaking down at times.

But look at what we can do and get right!

Here's the formula for how it works in really simple terms:

You decide you want to achieve stuff.

You study stuff and gradually start working on doing it.

You do many things right. You screw up other things. This applies to the whole range of actions, including at times doing stuff you already know is wrong.

You continue practicing and doing what you do right and you fix what you screw up.

You go on studying and achieving.

You get better at doing stuff right and not screwing up as you produce one thing after another.

You go on studying and achieving.

You are happy.

I can't put it any clearer than that.

(Obviously, those who screw up and choose not to fix it are bad, going from slightly bad on up to raw evil.)

And let me add a personal evaluation. Whoever thinks that someone who accepts and uses this process is immoral or idiotic is a loser right at the starting gate.

EDIT: In case it wasn't clear, this is exactly the process Nathaniel Branden used after the split. He got it right. I want to emphasize that.

Michael

[anthony]

Michael,

As I replied to you, I consider this a gem of a response. Now I think that it should be pinned up somewhere for the sake of any who 'take their eye off the ball', and get side-tracked too much by some of the less important-to-insignificant stuff on O'ist forums.

(Or allow themselves to become caught up in single-handed Crusades )

Tony

[Alfonso Jones]

Michael -

Good post. Insightful about Rand and Branden post-schism.

Bill P

[Brant Gaede]

I'm sorry, Michael, but Rand ran out of health and physical vitality because of her age. The Fountainhead was published when she was 38. Nathaniel was 38 at the time of the break. The next 20 years were his Atlas Shrugged years, so to say, and he did marvelously. You need to adjust your frame of reference apropos a 25 year difference in age at least.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I'm sorry, too, Brant. I'm sorry you pity Ayn Rand.

Unfortunately I happen to know of oodles of professional high-achievement writers (and hell, even philosophers, musicians, film directors, etc.) who keep writing and producing high quality works to the end of their lives, even with debilitated health.

Rand didn't.

Nathaniel is 80 or thereabout. He's still writing great books.

Rand stopped doing books in her 60's. The nonfiction ones were compilations, but at least they had strong purpose as projects. It is quite clear that that purpose started waning. For instance, there followed The Ayn Rand Letter—which was irregular as all get out, with reviews of reviews, pieces by Peikoff and so forth—and always months late (I know, I was a subscriber), and there were some very sporadic lectures and interviews. It's true that she worked some on the TV screenplay of AS during that time. But no big projects to speak of. Not like other high-achievers do.

Just because Rand was Rand, I don't give her a special pass from being considered as part of the human race. I don't feel sorry for her.

You want to know something? I don't think she would want your pity, either, nor the pity of anyone.

It's fair to judge Ayn Rand as a human being against other human beings. The last I looked, she belonged to our species.

btw - What are the Rand groupies doing other than essentially making a career out of telling the 4 winds they knew Ayn Rand?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Just another aside.

I see folks on SLOP are wound up about Frank's drinking again. Don Ventura has been cited time and time again as a source. Why didn't anyone think to Google his name? And maybe ask him?

Don Ventura

His stuff's pretty good, too, and he's been winning awards.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I don't pity Ayn Rand. No pity, no pity, no pity.

Nathaniel Branden is to psychology as Howard Roark is to architecture.

Ayn Rand was sui generis.

Facts are facts. She lived her life and did her thing. You and I and everyone else alive today are likely to be forgotten a thousand years from now, but not her.

Where's the room for pity? She got and will get what she wanted--that at the end of her life she didn't know it?

Don't tell me I pity Ayn Rand; it pisses me off terribly. I don't do pity. You are trying to tell me 25 years difference in age counted for nothing without actually saying that, but all I essentially said was they counted for a lot. Nathaniel lied his way through most of the 1960s at great cost to himself and her. His one chance to be a great hero was to have spiked the affair by 1961 by telling her it was over. She paid a greater price for she had less time. I'm not saying she didn't deserve it for she did. She even more than he should have spiked it way back then. Obviously two highly verbal people turned rational into rationalizations and she did the groundwork.

"Take what you want, said God, and pay for it." Everybody did just that.

--Brant

Edited December 14, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[Chris Grieb]

I'm sorry, too, Brant. I'm sorry you pity Ayn Rand.

Unfortunately I happen to know of oodles of professional high-achievement writers (and hell, even philosophers, musicians, film directors, etc.) who keep writing and producing high quality works to the end of their lives, even with debilitated health.

Rand didn't.

Nathaniel is 80 or thereabout. He's still writing great books.

Rand stopped doing books in her 60's. The nonfiction ones were compilations, but at least they had strong purpose as projects. It is quite clear that that purpose started waning. For instance, there followed The Ayn Rand Letter—which was irregular as all get out, with reviews of reviews, pieces by Peikoff and so forth—and always months late (I know, I was a subscriber), and there were some very sporadic lectures and interviews. It's true that she worked some on the TV screenplay of AS during that time. But no big projects to speak of. Not like other high-achievers do.

Just because Rand was Rand, I don't give her a special pass from being considered as part of the human race. I don't feel sorry for her.

You want to know something? I don't think she would want your pity, either, nor the pity of anyone.

It's fair to judge Ayn Rand as a human being against other human beings. The last I looked, she belonged to our species.

btw - What are the Rand groupies doing other than essentially making a career out of telling the 4 winds they knew Ayn Rand?

Michael

Michael; At the Reason 10th anniversary Nathaniel Branden gave a speech in which he said that in a real sense Ayn Rand died when she completed Atlas Shrugged. She did some great work but in a real sense with the completion of Atlas her work was done. A great deal of the work was reaction to things in the culture and not completing the presentation of Objectivism.

One has to read her carefully to find when she makes a positive point. We should look at Atlas and The Fountainhead. Study her writing carefully after these works but prepare to sometimes be disappointed.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Nathaniel lied his way through most of the 1960s at great cost to himself and her. His one chance to be a great hero was to have spiked the affair by 1961 by telling her it was over.

Brant,

His ONE CHANCE?

Talk about being pissed off. How about a lifetime of high-achievement?

If that comment above is not pity for Rand, I don't know what is.

NB happens to be a great hero in life. Look at his work and stop pitying Rand if you want to see what I'm talking about.

I think it's high time to stop the "mean old NB" and "poor little Ayn" crap. The lives of these two great people deserve more.

(Sorry for the rant, but this continued crap actually does piss me off. Good people cling to it as if it were a lifeline. They attack others because of it, and underneath it doesn't mean jack. People should be achieving their own heroism, not cavalierly dismissing that a good productive man missed his ONE CHANCE. Tell that crap to the SLOP crowd. That's the kind of crap they eat with gusto.)

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Michael, my use of heroism was extremely narrow. Nathaniel was the great entrepreneur of Objectivism. He made it go. Libertarianism also greatly fed off that. And he has a tremendous career as a psychologist. There is a hell of a lot of heroism in that just as in Ayn Rand's own life. Now, about those 25 years ...

--Brant

[Robert Campbell]

It surely does make a difference for future productivity that Ayn Rand was 63 (and maybe already in declining health) at the time of The Break, whereas Nathaniel Branden was 38.

It wasn't clear to me as a young Objectivist how Rand's production was down in the early 1970s, because I naïvely took the last years of The Objectivist, the very rare public appearances, and the diminished post-NBI activity by her remaining disciples to be the norm, and didn't realize that Rand had been talking about a systematic book on Objectivism. But it's evident in retrospect that she was slowing down substantially during these years, and bravely referring to projects she would never complete and quite likely knew she wouldn't complete.

I don't think, by the way, that we should discount caring for a loved one with dementia; it's among the worst sources of stress that many of us will encounter in our lives.

Robert Campbell

PS. Of course, if Nathaniel Branden was nothing without Ayn Rand, he'd have accomplished nothing of significance after his expulsion from her presence. The data have been in for a long time on that one, and the prediction was resoundingly falsified.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I don't want to downplay the fact that an older person has less energy than a younger one does. That's obvious.

My original point was about the difference in Rand's and Nathaniel's reactions to the split.

Just because Rand was older and slower, that does not mean that she reacted well. I think she reacted poorly. And tragedy for tragedy, what do folks think she would have done had Frank died in a manner similar to Patrecia around the same time she passed away?

My basic problem in arguing this is trying to keep a clear vision and identify simple facts in this subcommunity so I can evaluate properly. But people constantly make stretched excuses for Rand's shortcomings or attack her unfairly and viciously.

Why aren't simple facts good enough to state clearly? For me they are. (And many people here on OL. I might add, including people posting in this thread.)

After the split, Nathaniel practically made his career as an author. Rand did not have to do that. But, given her temperament, I strongly suspect that if she had not yet made her mark, even slow and old at 63, she would have found the inner resources to do so. Her fame, fortune and circle of groupies permitted her to indulge the weakest elements in her soul. In my opinion, indulge she did, too.

The point about caring for a senile person is well taken. It does drain you. But that was a gradual encroach. It wasn't on the radar at the time of the split. The time context for my comment about Rand reacting poorly in relation to the way Nathaniel reacted is from the split onwards, not merely the end.

Anyway, check this out: Blooming in the Golden Years. I found it on a quick Google search. I don't know how accurate all the details are, but there's oodles more out there. This kind of thing is my real comparison. From that article:

Take note of these several personalities who have still made great achievements in their old age.

Helen Keller is a world renowned deaf-blind who wrote many articles and books. Although she became blind at nineteen months old and deaf soon after, she led a very active life for more than eighty years. At the age of seventy-three, when most people are retired, Helen started working on a new book "Teacher" which was published two years later. Helen continued to live to a ripe old age of 88 when she died in 1968.

George Burns (1896-1996) famous comedian once said, "Age to me means nothing. I can't get old; I 'm working. I was old when I was twenty-one and out of work. As long as you are working you stay young."

For fifty-three years of a tireless ministry, John Wesley called himself "a man of one book" the Bible. He wrote over 200 books, edited a magazine, completed dictionaries in four languages - all in his own handwriting. He crisscrossed England on a horseback for a total of some 250,000 miles. For years he averaged twenty miles a day. He preached 40,000 sermons and rarely less than two a day and often seven, eight or even more. At the age of eighty three, he was still writing books and sermons for fifteen hours a day. At age eihty-six, he was still preaching twice a day.

Corrie ten Boom , a Dutch evangelist, started to travel around the world to preach the message of God's love through Christ in her sixties. She continued her worldwide evangelistic activities until her eighties. For years, she traveled alone, preaching the Gospel of Christ in Cuba,America, Germany, South Africa, Japan, Bermuda, New Zealand, Australia, Spain, England, Denmark, Taiwan, Israel, India, Korea, Argentina, Eastern Europe, Russia.

When she was not in Holland, her travels took her to places for anyone to believe. Who could believe that this old lady was in the midst of Civil Wars in Africa? Who could believe that she was so close to the fighting in Vietnam where she hears bullets snicking and whizzing through the foliage? But there she was in Vietnam crawling creakily out of jeep to deliver the Gospel to a bewildered soldier.

Corrie lived until her ninety-first birthday, Her old age years are much productive than her earlier years.

Here is a list of some more achievers in their old age:

• Miguel Cevantes wrote Don Quixote when he was almost seventy years old.
• John Milton wrote Paradise Regained when he was sixty-three.
• Noah Webster wrote his monumental dictionary at age seventy.
• Benjamin Franklin helped to frame the US Constitution at age eighty-one.
• Alfred Tennyson published the memorable poem Crossing The Bar at age eighty-three.
• Michelangelo was in his late eighties when he painted some of his masterpieces.
• Galileo made his greatest discovery when he was seventy-three.
• Thomas Edison still worked in his laboratory at eighty-three.
• Arturo Toscanini conducted an orchestra at eighty-seven.
• Mark Twain wrote "Eve's Diary" and "The $30,000 Bequest" at seventy-one.
• Titian painted his great work "The Battle of Lepanto" at age ninety-five and his "Last Supper" at age ninety-nine.

I can find more if need be.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

I can find more if need be.

Think of Ludwig von Mises. P.D. James, still writing bestsellers at the age of 89. Of course many musicians: (Artur) Rubinstein, Cherkassky, Horowitz, Casals, Richter, to name a few that just come to mind (there are many, many more, some of them even giving public recitals at 100 years or older).