Recently read this interesting article by David Bentley Hart, on Ayn Rand's writings and I cant help but agree with few not-so-good things there, even though I have been her hard-core follower. She had always affected my mind many a times in things I said or felt.
Yet there was always a dormant desire in me. to defy her theories, at times, just in small bits
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/the-trouble-with-ayn-rand
But this article is such a venomous take on her, why so much angst for a woman who just spoke what she felt was right?
Some excerpts from this article:
"Ayn Rand and her idiotic “Objectivism” are enjoying a—well, I won’t call it a renaissance, so let’s say a recrudescence"
"Civilization is always a fragile accommodation at best, precariously poised between barbarism on one side and decadence on the other...Rand was definitely on the side of barbarism."
Barbarism, how?
Though I some what agree with this
"I suspect that charity really is the only way to avoid wasting one’s life in a desert of sterile egoism".
And I so not agree with this line
"And, simply said, I cannot find much common ground with someone who believed that the principal source of human woe over the last twenty centuries has been a tragic shortage of selfishness.".
Maybe selfishness is not the single source, but one of the strongest source. Cos the definition of being selfish, as per her, is not as generally defined by us. So we need to take that in the context and not a stand alone thing.
I just laughed my head off at this:
"For what really puts both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead in a class of their own is how sublimely awful they are. "
The mentality of the herd against someone who stands out is so much around, and fills me with disgust.
When I appreciate something brilliant in other, I am pacifying that part of me which could not be all that brilliant.
But if I negate, make it sound ordinary, then there is just one word for such people "jealous".
They are condemning themselves by denying others uniqueness
Just cos they could not be unique, they try to form a herd of people, who would profess to believe in that no-one is unique, all are the same
But silently, and cleverly, they would ry to establish their upper hand on the other, by forming incomprehensible sentences to intimidate the other. And finally telling that
you are ordinary, but
I am not, since I
know I am ordinary....ha!
People look for redemption in others, for their own misery, they always want to hold someone responsible
As Ryan Said :
“They hate you for the greatness of your achievement. They hate you for your integrity. They hate you because they know they can neither corrupt nor ruin you” - I also say that people hate you for your strength, people hate you cos you dont fall apart, people hate you cos you dont even regard them with a hate and intensity which they ask of you.
Some strands of recognition is all they need, from you
But the side note on this line,in that articel, is really funny
(Bloody they—I never could stand those swine.)
:D
Not a bad article in all,it is the author's interpretation and personality which s/he reflects in hi/.her likings and disliking. So has he done it here. But nevertheless, I found it harmless & funny.
He reminded me of that novel again by writing such excerpts :
For her, the world really was starkly divided between creators and parasites, and the vast majority of humanity belonged to the ranks of the latter. “I came here to say I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life,” Roark continues, “nor to any part of my energy, nor to any achievement of mine.”
I absolutely loved that part in "Fountainhead", And just for this, I can be in love with her!
I had written a similar draft in my post which said(though the context here is different) :
"Well, another has only as much hold on you, as much as you give them at any point in time
Never more!
So if someone wishes to be obsessed with you, but if you wish to extricate yourself. You have all the right to. Everything gone in between you 2, before has no meaning. All that we have is today, and today I am allowed to despise someone, and stay away.
One cant hold a moment of past in their kitty to hunt someone down.
Unless of course I have killed someone, or tortured, then I cease to be human and no human rights are not applicable to me"
This paragraph in the article made sense to me in bits and pieces, but not really, cos Ryan emphasized on these attributes, but not denied that there can not be anything apart form this.(If she did then maybe in my mind I have obliterated it)
"Rand really imagined that there could ever be a man whose best achievements were simply and solely the products of his own unfettered and unaided will. She had no concept of grace, even of the ordinary kind: the grace of an existence we do not give ourselves, of natural powers with which we could never have endowed ourselves, and of all those other persons on whom even the strongest among us are dependent. She lacked any ennobling sense that what lies most deeply within us also comes from impossibly far beyond us, as an unmerited gift. She liked to talk about “virtue” a great deal—meaning primarily strength of will and the value that one creates out of one’s own native resources—but for her the only important question regarding the relation between the individual and society was who has a right to what. That is, admittedly, a question that must be asked at various times, but it is never the question that true virtue—true strength—asks of itself."
But Kudos to this para, I know some people who do exactly this, so I just clapped my hands in glee for saying what exactly I have in my mind:
"And, really, what can one say about Objectivism? It isn’t so much a philosophy as what someone who has never actually encountered philosophy imagines a philosophy might look like: good hard axiomatic absolutes, a bluff attitude of intellectual superiority, lots of simple atomic premises supposedly immune to doubt, immense and inflexible conclusions, and plenty of assertions about what is “rational” or “objective” or “real."
Beyond that I could not concentrate more, since too much of negative energy anywhere is not my cup of tea.Thats why I restrain from beign sarcastic, mean and vomit my hatred for anyone in paper.
“There are two ways through life,the way of nature and the way of grace. We have to choose which one to follow.” ~ The Tree Of Life
I choose grace, let others choose their real nature
So Mr.David, you do have substance and potential. Please use it constructively and not by attacking one Ms. Rand
