EAllusion wrote:The CCC wrote:If you want to understand Ayn Rand it is best to come at it by what clap-trap she wrote.
SEE http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/ayn-ran ... -shrugged/
I'm not a fan of Ayn Rand, but this piece at times confuses Ayn Rand's use of metaphor and failures as a writer with her actual positions.
When I read the article I thought it made some sharp points. I also wondered if it wandered well into the territory EAllusions observes here.
Without liking her I still find myself wondering at the persisting influence she has. I find myself reviewing late sixties counterculture and remembering more echoes of her than of radical left wingers. There were those as well as well an Chech an Cong duplicates unconcerned with either of course. People suspected the government as surpressing freedom and individuality. Kesey writes "Sometimes a Great Notion" wrestling with the story behind the story of rugged individuals vs the drab socialist conformate of people trapped in the unions. There are certainly strong Rand echos there.
I checked wikapedia found this quote from Altas Shrugged.
"[To those who say] that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island—it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today—and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it."
I admit that I find a sentiment here which makes sense. Then it might be simple enough to be hard to disagree with. (sort of like an ontology that goes there is a reality we perceive by our senses and must understand using our minds to form ideas)
Is it that we have simple ideas presented in images which carry some emotional impact which as signs or representations of doctrines do not need to be realistic to communicate or be memorable. The article criticizes the unreality of the Colorado hippi commune Galt is running. Perhaps it was not intended to meet standards of realism.
I think there is a difficulty which results however. Not requiring realism bypasses the thinking process which must see realistic context in which actual political policy operates. It may be true the government can be oppressive to individual invention drive aspirations and hard work. It does not follow from that that governement should always be smaller. The idea does nothing to clarify whether our current government needs to be larger, smaller or maybe the same size but better directed.
