Ayn Rand

[asterroc]

I haven't ever read Ayn Rand, and I have no intention of doing so. However, I am told that the author of the series I am currently reading, Terry Goodkind, is heavily influenced by her works, and her concepts of "objectivism" and "enlightened self interest." Anyone care to explain these concepts to me in shorter form?

Comments

[shoujo-mallet.livejournal.com]

I cannot explain, but I feel compelled to say the following:

In Dirty Dancing, Robbie attempts to lend Baby a copy of The Fountainhead, offering it as justification for taking no responsibility in Penny's pregnancy. Shortly afterwards Baby pours a pitcher of ice water on his crotch.

Yeah, all my knowledge of Ayn Rand is jibes at her in popular culture.

[tiurin.livejournal.com]

You could probably get a decent summary just off wikipedia. But in a nutshell, objectivism is a shoddy philosophical(I use the term loosely) system based on assertions which are either tautological or unjustified. It's pretty much an entire philosophy founded around the phrase "Fuck off!"

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I was looking for something shorter and more to the point than the doctoral thesis that is the Wikipedia page.

Where I think objectivism particularly comes up in the series is there is a large nation where the people all believe they are working to help their fellow man, but it ends up being bureaucratic socialism/communism run amok, with nobody being willing to work for their own benefit so everyone's conditions are quite crappy. The nation also has a national religion of mankind being wicked and evil and the Creator's light burning into them showing how horrible man is. In contrast, the main character is all about working hard to help yourself, though he feels that a strong government is essential to protect the nation from outside threats.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

What you've described sounds an awful lot like a sketch of the background of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged as depicted in another work I read. So I'd say that the impression that he's strongly influenced by Rand is spot-on.

I have no personal knowledge of her works or philosophy--not having read or studied either--so I'll leave it at that. (Except to recommend the book that I referenced above--Matt Ruff's Sewer, Gas, Electric--on its own merits: good humor+decent SF.)

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

"Me First!"

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

It's got to be about more than just selfishness. See my comment above about where I think it's relevant in the series I'm reading.

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

afaiu, "egoism" is the ADMISSION of selfishness and the acceptance that your own needs come first. It's also the belief that everyone really is completely selfish and just does not admit it. I am in this camp. Everything you do is for yourself: your actions are based on what you believe, in the moment, will bring the greatest degree happiness/satisfaction/contentment. Doing something for others can (and often does) give you a feeling of pride or self-appreciation, even if you do not flaunt it. If you give a dollar to a homeless man, it's not because you want him to have a dollar, it's because his having a dollar gives you happiness. It's a subtle distinction.

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

objectivism is an encompassing philosophy that embraces egoism and concludes that rational indulgence will lead to the greatest happiness. A society that protects individual freedoms and rights will lead to the greatest happiness for everyone.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Not much really. But you wanted short.

Basically her philosophy is that of enlightened self interest. If all people, working with perfect information and perfect rationality, worked toward their own best long term interests, and those of their children, then everyone would do well, and the most elite people would do best.

The thinking is that people operating under enlightened self interest will not oppress other people, because oppressed people may rise up and make life difficult for the elites.

So, the elites will make sure that life is acceptable to the proles, and so that those proles don't make the elite's life more difficult. That the elite will only take for themselves enough that it does not degrade life for the non-elites.

This will all allow every person to rise to their own best level.

It isn't a terrible philosophy, just unrealistic, primarily in these factors.

Perfect information

Perfect information about what the results of all possible actions is never available. Without this, imperfect choices may be made.

Perfect Rationality

People do not perfectly evaluate situations to predict the best outcome for their actions

Absolute Control

Bad things do happen that are not within people's control (yet). No reasonable amount of preparation can prepare for a major earthquake or tsunami.

Unenlightened selfishness

Unless everyone in a society/environment perfectly practices enlightened self interest, some people are going to take advantage of others and mess it up for everyone.

Just plain bad decisions

People make bad choices sometimes. They get pregnant. They have car accidents. They get themselves into debt.

So, until we have perfectly rational people, in a fully controlled environment, with perfect information about current and predicted future conditions, objectivism is simply an unrealistic philosophy.

It still has some interesting and attractive features. Just as Plato's Republic, and Moore's Utopia, and Jesus's Kingdom of God do.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

It reminds me a bit of the concept of enlightened anarchy then, in that it too could result in a utopia ideally but in practice is impossible to carry out (due to things like criminals and outside nations).

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard of the term enlightened anarchy, but it sounds like another way to describe the same sort of thing.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Well, anarchy is a system of government. Self-interest is a set of personal actions. Objectivism I believe could exist in a laissez-faire capitalist society.

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

I haven't read "Atlas Shrugged", which tends to be where Rand-ites draw most of their direct inspiration. But I've read "The Fountainhead" and some of her essays and can give you some sense of what objectivism is.

Rand, in an essay, praised what she termed 'the virtue of selfishness'. This is beyond an argument that 'me first' is what's best for an individual, but an argument that 'me first' is actually what is best for society.

In "The Fountainhead", Roark is an architect of tremendous personal vision who cannot realize his artistic creations because they have to be mediated by others, viz construction workers, financeers, etc... The argument broached is that the best way to promote societal improvement is to let singleminded, completely selfish creatures like Roark do whatever they want because they know better than the groupmind of society does.

Objectivism is the extension of this. gemini6ice has a nice little nutshell definition. A society that lets individuals act as individuals will provided the greatest benefit to all.

Needless to say, there are a lot of obvious flaws with this reasoning and an even larger boatload of less obvious flaws. But it's a worldview that offers certain attractions to some.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Well then, "The Faith of the Fallen" is an outright homage to "The Fountainhead" then. In the climax of the novel the main character has been acting as a stonemason to carve hideous sculptures dictated by the rulers, but decides the only way to be true to himself is to throw off those bounds and carve a thing for beauty for himself. It is set upon a backdrop of thick bureaucracy where his employers aren't able to get enough steel to build a palace b/c the bureaucrats say it's unfair for certain movers to carry more steel than others even though the others don't have a working cart, and it's unfair for certain producers of steel to sell more than others even though the other producers don't have any, and so on. In the end the beautiful sculpture that the main character creates inspires the populace to revolt against their masters.

I did think this situation was ridiculously unrealistic; knowing it's copied from someone else makes me like it even less.

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

Wow... it sounds like not only did he rip off "The Fountainhead", he delivered its central message in an even cruder way than Rand did. And that's no easy thing to do.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Since others have already given good summaries of Rand's philosophy, I feel okay saying this: IMNSHO, if you can get through multiple volumes of Goodkind's work, you can get through _Atlas Shrugged_. Frankly, I'd rather reread Rand than ever touch Goodkind again, and the only way I got through Atlas was pure stubbornness - I was not going to let that book get the better of me, no matter how much I hated it. After the first 3 volumes of Goodkind, I found his ideas so offensive and repulsive that I lost all respect for everything he'd written. Which is a shame; I'd enjoyed his world and plots a great deal for a while.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I don't really enjoy straight up fiction, I like Sci-Fan a LOT more, to the point where I can't get through most fiction. It's not a matter of the philosophies in the book, but the plots.

The only thing I've strongly disagreed with so far in Goodkind's writing is his criticism of having a social safety net such as welfare, and there I focused on the criticisms as a way to improve the existing system, rather than feeling that the whole system should be destroyed. The other things I've found I objectionable either were portrayed as evil (the "breaking" of young Mord Sith, the religion of the Old Word), were something the characters were working to overcome (Richard's lack of understanding about Birdin and Raina's relationship), or were something that was acceptable in the framework of that world (Kahlan's "no mercy" policy with the Imperial Order).

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

It's been several years since I read Goodkind, but I remember getting thoroughly sick of his two primary characters and their relationship, partly because repetition gets on my nerves. And it seemed like Richard just kept turning into more and more of an asshole, and Kahlan just seemed to get more abused and pathetic. Maybe I misremember how it really went, but where in the first book I liked the characters, by third one I despised all of them. Especially Richard. And I have a hard time reading books where I find the characters believably loathsome, especially when they're loathsome and misogynistic (I could get through _Atlas Shrugged_ because, while the characters were loathsome, they were so one-dimensional and fake that they didn't seem like real people).

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

The sad thing is Goodkind started off very well indeed, then went downhill. Books 3, 4 and 5 were awful - I almost gave up on him altogether, but book 6 was just about enjoyable enough that I'll go read the series once when he's finished writing it.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I wonder if I'm more tolerant of audiobooks than text books. There's definitely repetition in his word phrasing that gets on my nerves, but I still think all the books have been pretty good. "Faith of the Fallen"'s copying of "The Fountainhead" has been the only significant downside so far IMO.

[sirroxton.livejournal.com]

Just a couple of tidbits to add to what has already been said.

Objectivism sees capitalism as a moral good. I mean, what's more moral than giving people what they want?

Rand once said that she preferred communists to the liberals of her day, "because at least they have an ideology." *shudder*

The "elites will do best" philosophy really encourages seeing the worse-off individual as being less deserving (rather than having fewer opportunities). To the extent that an Objectivist does not see things this way, he does believe that more opportunities would be available in a more Objectivist society. Consequently, when the subject of increased educational opportunities and social welfare for the underprivileged comes up, the Objectivist will say that the answer is less social assistance, not more.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

So you see Objectivism as a "blame the victim" approach?

[sirroxton.livejournal.com]

Only in part, but yes.

The other part is, "Yes, they got burned, and it's sad. It happened because we don't have Objectivist government. And we can't use government to help them because that would take us further away from Objectivist government." It's a dangerous and naive way of looking at problems.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

It seems like something libertarians and conservatives might like.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I have a hard time differentiation between libertarians and objectivists, but some of them get really offended when you conflate their ideologies.