No Gods, No Masters

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So, lots of arguments get repeated across forums, even across the entire internet. One of those involves atheism, and what 'bad' things atheism has been involved in; usually as part of a discussion of how much evil is the responsibility of religion. These arguments often turn to Naziism or Soviet Communism or Mao's Communism etc., and things usually degenerate pretty quickly into an unproductive conversation.

It makes sense that it's hard to uncontroversially classify an ideology as being atheist, as atheism is (well, that's a big argument too, but hopefully this short answer will be sufficient for our purposes) not about believing IN something, but about NOT believing in something. It makes sense that not believing in something wouldn't be fertile ground for an ideology, when you know, that's what ideologies are--believing in something.

So a comment in another thread got me thinking about this: there is an ideology that I think is beyond dispute as an atheist ideology, and that's Ayn Rand's Objectivism. I don't think there's any serious question about the connection between the other major beliefs of Objectivism and the rejection of belief in god. The individualism that is at the core of Objectivism cannot coexist alongside belief in any god where that title isn't just a fancy name for a space alien.

Over in another thread there was a post about militant atheism. Didn't want to take this too far over there because it's a "Fellow X Only..." thread. However, it got me thinking: before Dawkins, before Hitchens, there was Ayn Rand:

I loved Donahue. Remember when daytime talk actually dealt with ideas?

Jayhawker wrote:

I loved Donahue. Remember when daytime talk actually dealt with ideas?

Ahhh! Don't remind me how old I am!

Objectivism is one fiction writer's sophomoric attempt at philosophy. I'd be hard pressed to even consider it an actual philosophy so much as a vain excuse to be a selfish prick. It's contradictory, shallow, holds unsound/unscientific precepts, and generally regarded by actual philosophers as garbage.

Ugly, evil, hateful behavior is caused by neither religion nor by atheism; in the same way that a young child who keeps insisting that he's thirsty over and over after many glasses of water at 1 am in the morning probably isn't thirsty at all. Ugly, evil hateful activity is caused by ugly, evil, hateful urges and desires. That Crusader may be telling you that really, he's trying to save your soul, but the smart money bets that he really wants to save your land - from you, of course.

If there's anything bad any particular atheist does, it's probably coming from somewhere other than a lack of belief in gods.

Try looking at Robert Ingersoll's writings (there's been a biography of him recently) or any of the other numerous outspoken atheists and Deists in American history. Ayn Rand is not even in the running for credibility; in fact, I would not be surprised if her stance was used to discredit atheists like Mao or Stalin.

Since atheism is simply a lack of a belief in an invisible superhero in the sky, there are an infinite number of possible variations of belief that are atheist. Rand happens to be one, but criticizing her is only criticizing Objectivism.

Communism would be an excellent example of near-total rejection of her ideas, yet both systems are atheist.

It also strikes me as very amusing, how so many people are willing to so strongly condemn what she's written, without having read it. Now, I haven't read it either, but my opinion about her beliefs is correspondingly muted. I know what people SAY about Rand, but few seem to have read her actual books, so I don't think they're good sources.

I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
I found the train scene which she spent justifying cheating on her marriage in Atlas Shrugged quite disgusting.

Malor wrote:

It also strikes me as very amusing, how so many people are willing to so strongly condemn what she's written, without having read it. Now, I haven't read it either, but my opinion about her beliefs is correspondingly muted. I know what people SAY about Rand, but few seem to have read her actual books, so I don't think they're good sources.

I've tried reading Rand, but I have been unable to get through her books because they are simply terribly written. The famed John Galt speech is what, about 100 pages? It's nothing more than spouting of her personal philosophy through shallow characters and clunky prose. She's a bad writer. I'm incapable of reading her books. That being said, I know a number of Objectivists (I spent many years as a Rush fan, you can't avoid them), and I've read numerous things on her writings. She's a writer--wait, sarcastic quotes, "writer"--who communicates badly.

/threadjack

Ayn Rand, like Dave Matthews, or Tom Brady I hate more for followers and fans than their own works. I cut the Nazarene some slack for never having existed. Her philosophy is, as critics have said for decades built on biased assumptions, and misstatements of science, society, and fact. To not understand how much of her writing and thought came from the Bolsheviks is a serious misstep.

Alan Greenspan, for example is why I have a particular dislike of Ayn Rand.

As a fiction author, meh. I got a few chapters into Atlas Shrugged before I quit. The prose is wooden, the bias is transparent. DO not pick that up in the same year that you finish the Jungle. You tend to be sick of the plight of the poor at that point. I got most turned off with her hammering at the problem of the Bums and Vagrants in the city. I got the impression she read or saw a stage production of A Christmas Carol and was nodding at everything Ebeneezer was railing about in the first 2-3 acts.

There are any number of criticisms of Atlas Shrugged, the only thing I've read of Ayn Rand's, which are both valid and irrelevant. maybe this is a function of what the reader brings--what I brought--to the book, but that can be said of most things, especially of art.

Scott Aaronson wrote something a few years ago I've been intending to respond to, in some fashion, since I read it. Of course he makes perfect sense. The dialog is wooden. The characterization comes from obvious biases. The John Galt monologue is preposterous. All true. All, to me, irrelevant.

You know what else fits these and many similar criticisms? Most cinema of the time, at least what I've seen. The dialog in the typical movie of the era which I've seen is similarly wooden, with a conventional but mechanical, too-fast cadence. The characters are usually very shallow, with little apparent effort made to break them out of the archetypes they embody. See also Asimov.

Guess what else? Many of these things are variably applicable today. I just finished reading The Watchmen and think it started off strongly but soon the grittiness and real-life posture became far less convincing. I endured it more than finished it, despite it being on a Time list of the 100 top novels or some such.

If you go to Rand's for a fully developed world consistent with Objectivism, or even, as Aaronson notes, consistent with claims Rand made of the world (e.g., "For a novel set in the future, whose whole point is to defend capitalism, technology, innovation, and industry, Atlas is startlingly uninterested in any technologies being developed at the time it was written (the fifties)."), yeah you might be disappointed. If you go chomping at the bit to tear Rand off her self-assembled pedestal, yeah, you don't have to look far.

I went to Atlas Shrugged because it seemed respected in some fashion and was lengthy. I enjoyed it as an alternate history, though, yeah, that monologue required some endurance, too. It made me think a bit about superficial human behavior, about cultures of entitlement, about the recklessness of the irrational in the face of the industry of the rational. I took ideas from it, or tangential to it, about how people make decisions. I'm glad I read it, and I guess I got my fill of what Rand has to offer.

The rest of it I couldn't care less about. The institute. Objectivism. Her apparent hammering on about atheism and whatever else. I don't much care about her, matter of fact. I don't know much about her, and that's fine. This reminds me of how I approach music, in a way: I most frequently ignore lyrics and their intended meaning, and instead listen for the tone and volume of the voice and what that carries, for the music itself whether the instrument is a human or other. This seems similar because the creator is putting something out, and I'm taking what I want and leaving the rest alone. I don't care what Chris Cornell & company are blathering on about in most of Soundgarden's songs, and I don't care whether Atlas Shrugged is the epitome of Objectivist literature. I takes what I wants and to hell with the rest.

Maybe I just like that the world is falling apart.

For another take on it which is made of equal parts "What the hell is she thinking?" and "I really enjoyed this," take a look at John Scalzi's reflections on Atlas Shrugged. Here's an excerpt:

All of this is fine, if one recognizes that the idealized world Ayn Rand has created to facilitate her wishful theorizing has no more logical connection to our real one than a world in which an author has imagined humanity ruled by intelligent cups of yogurt. This is most obviously revealed by the fact that in Ayn Rand’s world, a man who self-righteously instigates the collapse of society, thereby inevitably killing millions if not billions of people, is portrayed as a messiah figure rather than as a genocidal prick, which is what he’d be anywhere else. Yes, he’s a genocidal prick with excellent engineering skills. Good for him. He’s still a genocidal prick. Indeed, if John Galt were portrayed as an intelligent cup of yogurt rather than poured into human form, this would be obvious. Oh my god, that cup of yogurt wants to kill most of humanity to make a philosophical point! Somebody eat him quick! And that would be that.

I want to quote more, as I find it very familiar thinking and far more articulate than my summary, but will leave it to you to read.

I read Atlas Shrugged, but it left little impression on me. I'm not totally sure I finished it. It was muddled, poorly written, and when I started looking into Objectivism, it was clearly a muddle of illogic and self-congratulatory worship of self-interest, even selfishness. This has not been enhanced by the couple of people I met who actually followed it as an ethical philosophy.

The thing that struck me about Objectivism is that it was as if a freshman with a little reading of philosophy and history under his belt had decided that he had seen the One True Way - pretty much what happens to everyone in a heady learning environment - but then never gave it up. Get mildly drunk with a few 19 year olds after their first year of college and ask them to tell you about how the universe works, and you'll see this in action. It would be just a harmless niche ideology if it had not been adopted as a guiding force in modern corporate libertarianism and extreme capitalist ideals now current on the far right.

Malor wrote:

It also strikes me as very amusing, how so many people are willing to so strongly condemn what she's written, without having read it. Now, I haven't read it either, but my opinion about her beliefs is correspondingly muted. I know what people SAY about Rand, but few seem to have read her actual books, so I don't think they're good sources.

I've read Atlas Shrugged, Philosophy: Who Needs It, The Virtue of Selfishness, and The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z. I even spent time with an Objectivist Club. I kind of overdosed on it, and I saw firsthand how cultish it can become.

I also read Nathaniel Brandon's My Years with Ayn Rand.

I liked her essays far more than her fiction, but I eventually grew out of it. At some point it became clear that it was a poor fit for anyone that wants to live in a society with other people, and is largely incompatible with democracy, representative or direct, because people with different ideologies can vote.

In a historical-social context, i also have always wondered about Rand's spectacle as so stringently anti-communist in the cold war era. She was educated at a Russian college, post revolution, and was a tremendously outspoken woman about the evils of communism. The gotcha part of all this would be that she would never gotten any sort of education under the Czar.

KingGorilla wrote:

In a historical-social context, i also have always wondered about Rand's spectacle as so stringently anti-communist in the cold war era. She was educated at a Russian college, post revolution, and was a tremendously outspoken woman about the evils of communism. The gotcha part of all this would be that she would never gotten any sort of education under the Czar.

Ayn Rand was born Alissa Rosenbaum, in St. Petersburg in 1905. Her father, a pharmacist, was successful enough to buy both the pharmacy he worked in and the building that housed it. Her mother, foreshadowing her daughter’s future, named the family cats after American place-names. The family employed a cook, a nurse, a maid, and a governess. It was a bad time, of course, to be Russian Jews, and also a bad time to be a prosperous business owner—to be both basically guaranteed disaster. The Rosenbaums were subject to strict anti-Semitic laws, the constant threat of pogroms, and—just as Alissa was hitting adolescence—the Russian Revolution. At 12, Rand watched Bolshevik soldiers march in and take her father’s pharmacy. He would never really work again, and she would spend her adulthood railing, from across the world, against anyone who used force to “loot and mooch” from productive businessmen. As violence escalated and the Russian economy imploded, the Rosenbaums were forced to leave St. Petersburg and move into a small unheated house in a resort town on the Black Sea.
http://nymag.com/arts/books/features...

In 1912, Rand's father became the co-owner of Klinge's pharmacy, a thriving business that employed not only Klinge and Zinovy, but also six assistant pharmacists, three apprentices, and a number of clerks. In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Klinge transferred full ownership of the drugstore to Zinovy, presumably because, as the Russian troops advanced against the German army to the west, anyone bearing a German name was even more at risk than a Jew in the streets and government offices of St. Petersburg. As Zinovy's income grew, he bought the deed to the building that housed both the store and the family apartment. Anna hired a cook, a maid, a nurse for her daughters, and even a Belgian governess to help the three girls improve their French before they entered school, French being the language of the Russian educated classes. The girls also took music and drawing lessons.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...

The worst anti-Jewish violence since the Middle Ages was brewing, and the family was terrified of being killed by the mobs—but it was the Bolsheviks who struck at them first. After the 1917 revolutions, her father's pharmacy was seized "in the name of the people." For Alisa, who had grown up surrounded by servants and nannies, the Communists seemed at last to be the face of the masses, a terrifying robbing horde. In a country where 5 million people died of starvation in just two years, the Rosenbaums went hungry. Her father tried to set up another business, but after it too was seized, he declared himself to be "on strike."
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/b...

It makes sense that someone who's sole experience with socialism was through mob mentality as a child would grow up to right a book deifying individualism.

Something that was rolling about my head today. Karl Marx was also a proponent of atheism. Where Rand saw a parasite to take more money away, Marx saw an institution of the wealthy that fed lies and fairy stories to the poor working masses.

I cannot entirely say I disagree with either one, on that point.

I find myself nodding in agreement to muraii's points. Even that great 20th century author Tolkien was painfully long winded, extraordinarily dense, and so beholden to boring archetypes his books are a manual for others.

What I take away from that, then, is that being a terrible writer - something I believe Tolkien and Rand have in common - does not preclude one from having great ideas. Horrifying, possibly, but great nonetheless.

Huh. A pampered daughter of a businessman finally having to face up to living on her own wiles. Ayn Rand now finally makes sense. Not that I would sympathize with her philosophies any the better for it. So you have to chop your own firewood now. Boohoo. Life's unfair. Deal with it.

Seth wrote:

I find myself nodding in agreement to muraii's points. Even that great 20th century author Tolkien was painfully long winded, extraordinarily dense, and so beholden to boring archetypes his books are a manual for others.

What I take away from that, then, is that being a terrible writer - something I believe Tolkien and Rand have in common - does not preclude one from having great ideas. Horrifying, possibly, but great nonetheless.

Tolkien was a linguist with a passion for mythology; Rand was, as Larry put it, a "pampered daughter of a businessman finally having to face up to living on her own wiles".

Long-winded they may have been, I read Lord of the Rings four times; in contrast, I could only make it through 130 pages of Atlas Shrugged. Whereas the former was trying to tell a story, the latter was trying to sell you philosophy.

And there are people who have dog eared copies of The Fountainhead on their dresser; having a rabid fan base despite being terrible writers is another commonality between the two.:)

Obligatory quote:

Kung Fu Monkey[/url]]There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Rand was, as Larry put it, a "pampered daughter of a businessman finally having to face up to living on her own wiles".

Careful here. I won't object to the characterization of Rand this way. But the pogroms were a horrible and very real threat.

I am not in any way shape or form lending them credibility as justification for Rand's works or Objectivism, however.

Jayhawker wrote:

Obligatory quote:

Kung Fu Monkey[/url]]There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Thank you.

Seth wrote:

[B]eing a terrible writer - something I believe Tolkien and Rand have in common - does not preclude one from having great ideas. Horrifying, possibly, but great nonetheless.

I'm sure there are deep theoretical discussions had, and to be had, about the norms of art changing over time, both as a result of and as a precursor to changes in culture. We could also discuss what, if anything, popularity says about an artist or his/her work. We know of artists and works which became noted and popularized only posthumously.

I also see this locally, or microcosmically. Books I read years ago do not hold up well to my cherished memories of them. For instance, I fell in love with the reach of Greg Bear's Eon. There was something about taking my lunch breaks with that book and chili, fries, and a Coke at Wendy's that grabbed me. (Had something to do with the non-Euclidian geometry, even though I didn't know it as such, and visions of Death Valley.) I recently reread it and, well...it's okay. I can't even remember if I finished it the second time.

That isn't to say that Greg Bear doesn't have a fertile imagination, doesn't have skill as a writer even, so I can't necessarily condemn his work on those bases. His infodump style--which he shares with lots of SF writers--does his work the same disservice that Tolkien's long-windedness (which I remember liking) and Rand's frothing disgruntlement do their respective works. But, as Scalzi puts it, roughly, you can take them on your terms and enjoy them to whichever degree you want. Atlas Shrugged is a pulpy, flat alternate-history novel that cuts through some of the weight of presumed social norms and I can dig that part. I'm attracted to the idea that people and their work should be judged, if at all, on merit.

Of course, as Scalzi also says (forgive my referring to him so frequently: i just found that post yesterday and am gathering a respect for this new-to-me writer), if Rand expected she was writing a practical manifesto for our real world, she either failed spectacularly or had lots more work to do.

Oh, and we can tack George Lucas' stuff onto this posterboard, too. He's is also a lazy writer who (purportedly) believes too strongly in the philosophical content of his work. It is no more philosophically mature for all the millions of rabid fans, and neither the poor writing nor foaming dogmatism detract from the fun of watching Star Wars.

In fairness, few if any folks running for public office pay lip service to whether Han shot first, so Rand's pulp has taken on a unique timbre in American culture (and I guess beyond, though I'm curious on this point). And maybe that was CheesePavilion's angle at the outset, not whether Atlas Shrugged was or wasn't literature.

LouZiffer wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

Obligatory quote:

Kung Fu Monkey[/url]]There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Thank you. :D

++

muraii wrote:

And maybe that was CheesePavilion's angle at the outset, not whether Atlas Shrugged was or wasn't literature.

My angle was that we have an ideology that is (1) unarguably atheist which (2) lots of people blame for problems in our world. In discussions of religion and atheism, there's a predictable script: someone brings up the Crusades/Inquisition/etc., then someone brings up Hitler/Mao/etc. as a counterpoint. Usually that discussion, at best, derails into whether one of the latter can really be called atheist in the same sense as the former are religious; at worst, it just shuts the whole thing down. Citing Objectivism might cut through all that.

I figure it's something to keep in mind the next time one of these religion/atheism discussions flares up. There was a thread on here that got me thinking about Objectivism and atheism, but it was in one of those "Fellow category of person, let's chat" exclusionary threads that were all the rage on here a while ago, and it didn't seem right to expand on the idea over there (even if that thread regularly goes off the rails at this point).

As for the discussion that followed of Atlas Shrugged being literature, I'll just say this for now: when I heard of Twilight and Team Jacob vs. Team Edward, I couldn't help but think of Hank vs. Franc, at which point I realized that at least to some extent, Atlas Shrugged is meant to be a romance novel. One in which the princess saves the hero.

Cheeze, the simple disarm for that is "Religion caused the Crusades; atheism did not cause Communist dictatorships, nor were they established to glorify atheism, nor were they organized around principles derived from atheist holy books." If you need yet another example of the logical flaws of exegesis, that atheist vs religious death count is a really good example of incorrect logic.

Citing Objectivism is just going to sour the discussion, because if you've ever known any real Objectivists, the dickheadedness of the philosophy in action overshadows any of its (to me) coincidental virtues. The *last* group I want atheists to be identified with is Objectivists; as I hinted above, that might turn *me* away from atheism if it became a usual association, or at least put me back in the closet. At least with Methodism I'm allowed to doubt what the Founder insists is true...

Robear wrote:

Cheeze, the simple disarm for that is "Religion caused the Crusades; atheism did not cause Communist dictatorships, nor were they established to glorify atheism, nor were they organized around principles derived from atheist holy books." If you need yet another example of the logical flaws of exegesis, that atheist vs religious death count is a really good example of incorrect logic.

Citing Objectivism is just going to sour the discussion, because if you've ever known any real Objectivists, the dickheadedness of the philosophy in action overshadows any of its (to me) coincidental virtues. The *last* group I want atheists to be identified with is Objectivists; as I hinted above, that might turn *me* away from atheism if it became a usual association, or at least put me back in the closet. At least with Methodism I'm allowed to doubt what the Founder insists is true...

You say 'sour'; I say 'improve'. For exactly the reasons you are talking about.

CheezePavilion wrote:

You say 'sour'; I say 'improve'. For exactly the reasons you are talking about.

A subset of the people that subscribe to {$IDEOLOGY} are assholes.
Gotcha.

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