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What Ayn Rand Has to Say About the Human Condition

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Back when I was regularly writing screenplays and trying to determine a strategy to market my work, I paid careful attention to the weekly box office.  I would study those charts to see which movies were flashes in the pan and which held up over time.

Sometimes, after watching a film’s preview, considering its stars and its plot (as least what I could gather from the previews and publicity), I would guess how it would fare among film-goers.  I recall my delight when films like Josie and the Pussycats and Gigli tanked as I had predicted they would.

My forecasts, however, were not always accurate.  (I was convinced, for example, that Double Jeopardy wouldn’t earn back its production costs.)  I made sure to see a film which did much better at the box office than I predicted it would, particularly if it earned over $100 million.

After watching it, I would try to figure out why it had done so well.  Now I wish I had typed up my notes.

If a movie continues to draw audiences over several successive weekends, something in its story (or its star or its spectacle) resonates with the public.  And if it holds up over time, it has succeeded in tapping into something in what Jung called our “collective unconscious.”

As it is with movies so it is with books.

That’s why I think it’s wrong for people to dismiss the significance of books like Atlas Shrugged.  That book has continued to sell well long after its publication now over a half-century ago.  It’s not just today that the book is flying off shelves.  Despite negative reviews when it was first published, its sales have remained strong in the five subsequent decades.  In 1998, it was ranked #1 in a on-line poll of the “hundred best novels of the twentieth century.”

As I read it for the second time, I see its flaws more clearly than I did when I first read it as an adolescent.  Its characters are one-dimensional, the prose is often flat, the dialogue would sound clunky if spoken and goes on way too long, yet the story is compelling.  I kept reading it last night even as my eyelids were becoming increasingly heavy.

In dismissing books which continue to sell well over time as have Atlas Shrugged and The Lord of the Rings, literary scholars discount what once defined literature we now consider classic, its ability to illuminate, through a fictional narrative, something essential about the human condition.  And for that illumination to resonate with readers.

Despite her stylistic flaws, Ayn Rand does that.  Otherwise, her books wouldn’t have found an audience.

Comments

  1. A good friend of mine (GPW, you can guess) says Rand’s dialog is “eristic” and “like something out of a movie in the 1930s”. I can’t argue with that.

  2. Das Kapital has also sold well. Philosophically, I dismiss its ideas but the only reason I don’t dismiss the book is because it is dangerous if applied. Atlas Shrugged and Rand in general are fairly innocuous and like her followers, mildly annoying; thus, my dismissing her is, in a way, a compliment. The number of copies sold is not necessarily an indication of a book’s worth and online polls are notoriously bad indicators for obvious reasons.

  3. I liked Josie and the Pussycats, I thought it was amusing for the time.. though I have not seen it in a few years. Man all of this talk about Rand is now going to force me to go buy the book and become equal with everyone else on here. I have a feeling I will be left out of future Rand subjects.

  4. I think Ayn Rand had some very good ideas and it could be argued, successfully in my book, that she save capitalism. Capitalism still needs saving obviously.

    But I think she was quite incomplete when it comes to how the mind works. She dismissed anything that was not logically derived, when its quite clear that the mind can figure out many complex things without an indentifiable process.

    For example, she said that who you fall in love is a direct result of what values you choose. But even she did not follow this. She invented a false rationale for why she was with someone who was submissive and non-intellectual, the exact opposite of her heroes.

    Denying a significant part of we makes decisions leads to a lot of misery, as could be seen when her followers acquiesced to the logical arguments of others rather than their own feelings about what they should do.

    The truth is you cannot live an authentic life if you only rely upon logic and treat relationships as a series of transactions. But its also true that cannot have a successful society without logic, markets and the rule of law.

    The domain dictates epistemology, in my opinion. A holistic approach will end the alienation of those who understand and trust their instincts and those that know that understand and trust logic, markets and the rule of law.

  6. Al, great points.

    Psychology was, I think, one of the weakest areas (or biggest gaps) in Rand’s system. Her approach to psychology was rationalistic – kind of like, “This is how people’s minds and emotions ought to work, and if you are loyal to me you will mold yourself to fit my models.” Her ethical system is pro-joy, it’s all about the individual person achieving happiness by living *rationally* and productively for his or her own sake. But she and her early followers made a lot of mistakes (let’s say), and did much psychological violence to themselves and others, in trying to put that into practice. It just goes to show, no philosophy is perfect and no philosophy (or religion for that matter) can substitute for using your own mind to decide what’s true.

    Having said all that, I give Rand enormous credit for providing a moral defense of capitalism – something that the William F. Buckley types weren’t doing in her day, and to my knowledge, still aren’t doing – and for generally telling the world a lot of uncomfortable truths, that the world really needs to hear. It is truly disturbing how much the world of today has come to resemble the dystopian parts of her novels; Rand was a prophet.

  7. Objectivism is interesting to contemplate until you encounter a minion from the “cult of Objectivism.”

    Libertarian “leaders” always turn out to be psychos or pushed down by the psychos in the movement who think the leader is too weak on libertarian philosophy.

    I think Ayn Rand took Objectivism about as far as you can. It does not call for a dictatorship, but you can see one on the horizon.

  9. Iggy, sure, let’s quote me if that is what you would enjoy. It’s no problem:

    My favorite of Rand’s fiction is _The Fountainhead_. I always say _Atlas Shrugged_ is not good literature; the literary quality starts out OK, but suffers as the book progresses and she becomes increasingly heavy-handed in spelling out the point of every scene.

    As a philosopher, I don’t find that Rand has any equals. All philosophies (and religions for that matter) are reductions of reality, and therefore have large and important gaps. I recognize that Rand’s is no exception. I could talk about the flaws and gaps in her philosophy all day. Still, I will read her over Kant, or any of his successors, any day of the week. Most philosophy produced by professional philosophers is garbage – pure bullsh*t – and Rand, an amateur, was right to point that out and right to present a fundamental alternative. Rand’s meta-ethics (ideas about how to go about ‘doing’ ethics as a discipline) and epistemology describe reality; the others’ mostly don’t. It’s that simple, and that huge.

    Finally and not least, Rand is right to justify and defend laissez-faire capitalism on moral grounds. Socialism is immoral. Big Government is immoral. They’re immoral because they take the fruits of people’s labor from people by force, turning them into slaves. Any system that does it – say, feudalism – is equally immoral. Laissez-faire capitalism is moral because it doesn’t. That’s a huge insight. You don’t have to agree with everything about Rand’s philosophy to recognize it. You could make the point, for example, in Christian terms: the Bible says to love your neighbor, and there is NOTHING loving about seizing your neighbor’s savings and earnings by government force. Jesus said to pay Caesar what is his – not to help Caesar grind your neighbor into dust. You see? But Christian conservatives have long failed to make that argument. The ‘William F. Buckley’ type of conservatives did not present a moral defense of capitalism. Rand did. If you don’t like hers, then come up with a better one. Capitalism deserves no less.

    Comment by ILoveCapitalism — March 16, 2009 @ 11:27 am – March 16, 2009

    I am afraid, however, that I don’t quite see your point. If you would like to communicate some discussable point, Iggy, you will have to use… you know… *English*. Your big-boy words 😉

  11. all of this talk about Rand is now going to force me to go buy the book and become equal with everyone else on here. I have a feeling I will be left out of future Rand subjects.

    Heh – Don’t worry DER, the recent flurry of Rand postings from GPW is unusual and will probably subside. It’s just a bit uncanny how President Obama’s America is coming to resemble Rand’s dystopia.

  12. I agree, ILC. Capitalism needed a moral defense and she provided it when no one else could.

    They say Thomas Edison was a bit of an ass. But I still like them light bulbs.

  13. Saw the funniest comment about Ayn Rand today:

    “– 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. ”

    http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=74020213676&h=rBbRW&u=Mi5GJ&ref=mf