Ayn Rand

Illustration by Daniel Pudles

Rand was a Russian from a prosperous family who emigrated to the United States. Through her novels (such as Atlas Shrugged) and her nonfiction (such as The Virtue of Selfishness) she explained a philosophy she called Objectivism. This holds that the only moral course is pure self-interest. We owe nothing, she insists, to anyone, even to members of our own families. She described the poor and weak as "refuse" and "parasites", and excoriated anyone seeking to assist them. Apart from the police, the courts and the armed forces, there should be no role for government: no social security, no public health or education, no public infrastructure or transport, no fire service, no regulations, no income tax.

Selfishness is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power.

Slavoj Žižek on architecture and Ayn Rand

Slavoj Žižek about parallax, architecture and Ayn Rand. You can listen to the interview here.

Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Mike Wallace Interview 1959

The Ayn Rand Principle and the Two Senses of Self

Is Ayn Rand correct when she declares that the pursuit of self-interest is the primary motivating force of our lives, and that a fulfilling sense of human ethics can be built around the honest recognition of the pursuit of self-interest?

First, there is the individual self, which might also be called the absolute self, or maybe the atomic self. In this sense, "self" refers to a single person. I am an individual self. You are an individual self. An individual self, or individual person, is clearly bounded in time and space. At the risk of over-generalization, it seems safe to say that every individual self has a name, a birthday, a functioning heart, a functioning brain. Every individual self was born with two parents, and will die. This is the first widely understood meaning of the commonly used term "self".

The second might be called the functional self, or the relative self, or perhaps (taking the chemistry metaphor further) the molecular self. We refer to this type of self constantly in our everyday lives. "How'd we do?", I ask a fellow Mets fan on the streets of Queens. Whenever you are in a transaction with another party, then the "self" relative to this transaction is the sum existence of the group of people who are doing this transaction with you. These selves, these wholes are ethically alive; they exist for themselves, as themselves.

Why Ayn Rand Is Wrong (and Why It Matters)

Adam Curtis -All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (BBC), Adam Curtis' new and insightful documentary, traced links between Ayn Rand's Objectivism and Bill Clinton's affair, the September 11 attacks, the economies of the Far East and the financial crisis.

Rand's Objectivism, we are told, has given birth to a culture of selfishness among the world's most powerful. For the uninitiated it discourages altruism and pushes for every man and woman to become solely selfish beings, driving their own interests to the bitter end. There is no time for weakness, religion or irrationality and each person should make their priority their own happiness. Rand set out this belief in her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). Generally, critics hated her but she amassed a cult following nonetheless.

Economic meldown