Why is Ayn Rand so isolated?

kinglear

Rand is not an engaging writer to my mind. Her prose is far book baroque and endless and her points tend to get submerged in longwinded and convoluted sentences.
In general, I think " artists" or arty types tend to be left leaning because it's fashionable.There of course many exceptions( Charlton heston springs to mind) , but its more trendy and easy to talk to media types ( who always seem entirely left-wing pace Fraser)

David Bouvier

Indeed - if Rand is the best or only example, help us all! some interesting ideas, but turgid and over-done, and personally, it would seem leader of a highly fissile personality cult.

I think there is more mixed politics than is obvious from the public conversations. But it is not generally career enhancing to be seen as out right-wing and proud.

Max Kaye

Most artist 'artists' (for lack of a better word, were/are dependent on a patron - or in these days of socialisation - the public purse. Only very successful, determined and/or honest artists are able or willing to survive and prosper only on their own endeavours.

And looking at the absolute crap most of them produce, can you blame them for not being believers in 'redistribution' and such parasite-feeding-conduits such as the Arts Council?

(As for actors, from my experience they are usually very insecure and crave approval. They get this approval - and funding - by accepting the 'moral superiority' of the leftie types who claim to be working for the benefit of humankind, the planet, society, the environment....

Fans of Ayn Rand might be amused to check out a 1999 film called The Passion of Ayn Rand starring the ever sexy Helen Mirren (also of Russian extraction) in the title role.

BrianSJ

There are hunters and there are gatherers. The arty types are gatherers sitting round the campfire with time to write and praise. Writing by hunters gets short shrift and presumably is harder to get published. You may find more of it in genre writing such as SF - perhaps Heinlein orWilbur Smith would be examples.
Where would you put Thackeray?

Short the UK

I agree, The Fountainhead is the better book. I gave up on Atlas.

Short the UK

Here are some thoughts from my Fountainhead:

Could the UK become an Undeveloping Nation?

Three pillars of UK plc:

~Property Speculation.
~The City.
~Retailing.

Feeding off these is the State.

To me, it looks like the three pillars are crashing in a deflationary spiral.

The State requires copious tax revenues to feed the beast.

Darling & Brown have decided to fill the gap by issuing loads of debt. They hope this will replace the lost GDP and that at some point the merry-go-round of rising house prices will garner growth. They expected this to start in Q3 but are now backtacking from this latest delusion. Most pundits are calling for the UK to bounce back in Q4, or early '09, they see it as a mid-cycle slowdown that will self correct with sufficient stimulus.

What if the three pillars have been structurally altered for good:

~The City: casino capitalism that fed on huge leverage has been castrated. Banks will become utility like, with leverage of c.10x. Goldmans and the like, who are in reality listed hedge funds, will never again be able to leverage 30x+. Private Equity will struggle to get the same type of leverage again. Securitisation has died. The huge tax revenues, bonuses and white collar job growth is dead. The likes of RBS & Lloyds will savagely downsize.

~Property Speculation: feeding off the banks, that used securtisation, we had the biggest property bubble in British history. 1.1 million buy-to-let mortgages were snapped up by middle england. The UK consumer owes £1.4 trillion in personal debt. House prices rose as cheap and very easy credit/debt allowed consumers to pay ever higher prices in the delusion that as an island there are not enough houses. Even though there are a c.800,000 empty houses right now. This type of delusion infected Japan and Hong Kong. Now that the banks are bust the property crash will be intensified by rising unemployment, buy-to-let panic selling, and having to save a deposit for a mortgage.

~Retailing: out of The City and Property Speculation boom the huge manipulation of debt enabled Brits to go one huge spending spree. 1 in 10 jobs in the UK is in retailing. As consumers, companies and banks pay down their debts this sector will retrench massively. The government will be unable to bailout this sector.

This magic circle of wealth was built on debt. It was a bubble par excellence.

Now the bubble has popped there seem to be two options:

1. Keynesian all out attack: pile on the debt.

2. Austrian malinvestment bust: clean the culprits from the system. Clean up the balance sheet, pay off debt. Let prices equalise. The market will do it quickly but painfully.

A blend of the two is probably best. Though I'm inclined to the Austrians. Why should we bailout the lousy gamblers.

Alas, our government are going all out on the Keynesian front. I think that Brown, Darling, King, and most of the economic elite are basically clowns. Look at Kaletsky's columns for an insight into the madness at the top table. It is just like Marconi: debt, delusion and a bubble popping. The company went bust. The management destroyed a brilliant business as they fell for a bubble and went on a debt spree, demand collapsed when the bubble popped. Brown went on a debt spree and he knew and stated that a bubble was brewing in housing. Yet he did nothing, zilch. His VAT cut was pathetic and no doubt some horrific plans are coming down the pipe. I believe that he is the man who could bust our country and deliver us to becoming an Undeveloping Nation. The North Sea is abating and the The City is a busted flush. How will we as a nation find growth to fuel our economy? We have a government that is piling on the debt, which will mean higher taxes. The rich are going to get hammered, meaning they will leave Blighty and we will have a brain drain. Why will people want to buy our currency: it is no longer petro or high finance. We have a balance sheet which will hobble the country for decades.

Early in this thread I looked at this bleak scenario and now a couple of months later things are just as bleak. The real decline may not be visible for years but I sense that Britain is now going into a decline. Debt is the reason for this malady. I feel a deep hatred toward Blair & Brown. Like Simpson & Mayo, two men can destroy a company or a nation.

The Men Who Broke Marconi: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3087333.stm

skooch

It seems to me that most people are emotionally motivated, rather than rationally motivated. And, most people (but not the same) are followers, naturally, rather than seekers of influence.

A larger proportion of those who go on to influence will therefore operate emotionally rather than rationally - in any area, literature, politics, economics, you name it.

In addition, the gallery to which they play, largely comprises a like type; a ready and sympathetic ear.

Throw in a heady mix of desire for power and control, and in some spheres, all manner of stupidity is possible.

Am I making any sense?

Paul

I'm amazed how people say that Atlas Shrugged is not a good book.

I think it is brilliant. And I couldn't put it down. That's right. For me, it was a real page turner.

It has a couple of literary faults, some of the characterisation is a bit thin and Rand tends to repeat her points a bit much, just in case you miss them.

Her plotting, though, is terrific which is the key to good novel writing.

Besides that, how can any red-blooded male not end up with a crush on Dagny Taggart? :)

Verity

King Lear - Bruce Willis is also a hard righter. So is Arnold Schwartzenegger.

(As a quick aside, as Obama has never produced a birth cerificate to prove that he was born in the United States, it looks as though that dam has been breached, opening the way for Arnold Schwartzenegger to take run at the presidency next time.)

Verity

Max Kaye - Does Helen Mirren break new ground by keeping her clothes on in that movie?

THX1138

Obama's Birth Certificate.

http://fightthesmears.com/articles/5/birthcertificate

John Wilkes

For me it is interesting to see Ayn Rand come up again. Having tried to travel on the trains from Euston yesterday, where the station staff had Police guards to keep order, it was all so 70's. I went to University in 1977 a callow left winger only to have the scales drop from my eyes in the run up to the 1979 general election, which was a turning point for many of my generation. Before going to universtity I'd met a few conservatives but none who actually believed in the liberal free market economics and individualism that underpinned much of what people on the right were thinking at the time. I vividly remember a couple of people who seemed to be on the wilder shores of this thinking telling me about Ayn Rand and how I wouldn't understand anything until I had read her. Whilst I still haven't (although inspired by this I just might) what they were telling me in 1977 was the mainstream thought of much of my generation within a couple of years. For a long time we didn't look back but now, it seems, we are being dragged back kicking and screaming to a time most of us thought we had escaped. I can't see, given the division that she creates, she is ever going to be the inspiration to a new generation of people but we have to hope that people return to the generality of what she stands for.

The trains, meanwhile are a perfect example of everything we have to fear. For some reason the trains have been a symbol of the failures of privatisation. I have never been convinced. No one commenting on the present chaos (and I'm not joking about the Police guards) seems to have commented that it appears to be the fault of Network Rail - the nationalised replacement for the earlier privatised rail maintenance company. If this is the future it really doesn't work, as I thought we had all learnt 30 years ago.

Max Kaye

Don't be silly, Verity. That would be totally out of character.

(Actually, to be honest, I can't recall).

Max Kaye

Peter,

Ayn Rand herself comments on your question and gives a partial answer in her Playboy interview (cited in the previous thread) saying:

"It is significant that the dying collectivist philosophy of today has produced nothing but a cult of depravity, impotence and despair. Look at modern art and literature with their image of man as a helpless, mindless creature doomed to failure, frustration and destruction. This may be the collectivists' psychological confession, but it is not an image of man. If it were, we would never have risen from the cave."

Craig Strachan

If I may:

http://freestateproject.org/

Verity

Max Kaye writes: "(Actually, to be honest, I can't recall)."

She'll be devastated.

Bob

Politics is about dealing with generalities, art deals with the particular. Successful art(dangerous ground I know; because no consenus as to what that is exists)rises above its inspiration and becomes something else and that something else is not political.

Jack Frake

I am always amazed at how people attack and condedmn ideas and principles when they have not even scratched the surface of the topic.

Objectivism being a good example or MM Global Warming.

People react emotionally and call it a day.

Hugh Kenrick

Ignorance of the subject demands it be attacked by the gibbering classes. If you have nothing to say, you can still shout it.

JackDoitCrawford

Rand herself said she was challenging the moral tradition of 2000 years - religion, faith, altruism, irrationality. Those ideas don't die out easily. But in the 1950's there were only 7 Objectivists in the world. Now there are a lot more.

Rational Infidel

All too often, those who speak of Rand speak of everything but her ideas.

And if she is believed to be too long winded, then try this on for size:

Metaphysics: Objective Reality
Epistemology: Reason
Ethics: Self-interest
Politics: Capitalism

Harry Binswanger

As a professional philosopher who has been advocating Ayn Rand's ideas for 46 years, what most galls me is not the disagreement with her philosophic ideas, nor even the distortion of same, but the criticism of her fiction writing. On this blog it's been called "turgid" and asserted that she writes convoluted sentences. Really? Here's the opening paragraphs of The Fountainhead. Form your own opinion.
------------------------
Howard Roark laughed.

He stood naked at the edge of a cliff. The lake lay far below him. A frozen explosion of granite burst in flight to the sky over motionless water. The water seemed immovable, the stone—flowing. The stone had the stillness of one brief moment in battle when thrust meets thrust and the currents are held in a pause more dynamic than motion. The stone glowed, wet with sunrays.

The lake below was only a thin steel ring that cut the rocks in half. The rocks went on into the depth, unchanged. They began and ended in the sky. So that the world seemed suspended in space, an island floating on nothing, anchored to the feet of the man on the cliff.

His body leaned back against the sky. It was a body of long straight lines and angles, each curve broken into planes. He stood, rigid, his hands hanging at his sides, palms out. He felt his shoulder blades drawn tight together, the curve of his neck, and the weight of the blood in his hands. He felt the wind behind him, in the hollow of his spine. The wind waved his hair against the sky. His hair was neither blond nor red, but the exact color of ripe orange rind.

He laughed at the thing which had happened to him that morning and at the things which now lay ahead.

He knew that the days ahead would be difficult. There were questions to be faced and a plan of action to be prepared. He knew that he should think about it. He knew also that he would not think, because everything was clear to him already, because the plan had been set long ago, and because he wanted to laugh.