i had a wild fling back in the day with ms. rand. i met her through betty ford. mrs. ford and i were in rehab together and we bonded over our affection for cocker spaniels and gin. she invited me to a get together at the ford's weekend home to honor gerald's old football pal, bo schembechler. well ayn was there and i can tell you she did not like the socialistic fall in line gung ho attitude of football. so she and i started , or should i say she started talking) about the great genius of the individual and how wouldn't it be cool if the smart and rich captains of industry would go on strike, and i thought what a stupid idea, while i nodded my head in agreement. because this is what a guy who is the hero of his own story does to get a chick in the sack you see. you nod your head while wishing you were hangin out with jerry and bo in the man cave, but priorities my boyos, priorities. anyway the rest is they say is history. i'll always remember those lazy afternnons, ayn.
My point was that almost all racist ideology has a some truth to it. Completely dismissing it and not acknowledging it does service to no one. In fact, it just ignores that and the underlying issues that cause such profane ideology to exist.
Denouncing racism is in itself racist.
If we change like 4 words in Rand's statement, it becomes painfully true
"[Traditional societies in the Middle East] are one of the least developed [social construct]. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent [modern and historic] Israel because it's the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are."
Technically, though, it isn't racist... it is ethnocentric.
And part of this refers to the "Arab-ization" that took place in the late 19th and 20th century during and after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Many used the scapegoat of blaming "Western society (including the Ottomans)" for their many ills despite the fact that few true Westerners actually did anything at all.
It is kind of an easy way to inspire extremism and hatred toward "Europeans" because of almost a thousand years of Ottoman rule.
For many in "Arabia," the Ottomans and Israel (Trans-Jordan, Palestine, Judea) were always a target of ridicule because that permanently and continuously settled land has one of the only surface water resources in the Arabian Penisula.
When the Ottomans fell, powers that be like the Rabi'ah and Andinites (that would late become the House of Saud) encouraged and accelerated the rapid breakdown of the Ottoman Empire.
So, you do essentially have bands of nomads frequently attacking Ottoman developments.
Savage? No. But not exactly clean hands either. When you have various individual groups of people trying to reconcile differences and territories after the collapse of the government that had been one of the only unifying forces in the area, it's not exactly fair for an aggressor to come in and cause ethnic clashes and political strife.
The West plays in a part in the problems in the Middle East But Saudi Arabia isn't an innocent party. In fact, I would gamble to say that the Sauds should be on the hook for more of these things since it was primarily them that fired up so much racist and ethnocentric tension in the Middle East.
Hur Dur, you see how "racist" [ethnocentric] can be a valuable tool for learning why it exists rather than denouncing it entirely?
the deep and fundamental distinctions which separate rand supports from rand detractors are too natural to each constituent...
there is no point in arguing for or against her ideals because they are of such a nature that anyone who agrees or disagrees is very unlikely to change their mind...
seems that at the most base of levels, rand vs not... conservativism vs liberalism in america boils down to a certain acceptance that either A) One person can be inherently better than another or B) One person can behave or achieve more than another but is inherently no better or worse than any of his/her piers.
perhaps ive failed to capture this appropriately... but i feel like an argument based on nature vs nurture will likely never be resolved.
Ayn Rand is to ethics what Peter Eisenman is to architectural theory.
Looks good at first sight but there are fundamental fallacies that they commit.
Comparing Rand to Rousseau is laughable. Rand is not taken seriously by political philosophers or ethicists because there is isn't enough textual meat to make much out of of it. That could change but the fundamental relationship between the one and the many, the minority and the majority, etc., is a complex and nuanced one and is a discipline that will keep ethicists and political philosophers busy for millennia.
I read Atlas Shrugged over the christmas holidays - or at least half of it. I got bored. There is no compassion.
My main problem with Randy world is how the arts would suffer - Terry Quinlan would be architect; the Crystal Cathedral would be an icon; Mozart would be the theme; Architectural Digest would be the manifesto.
I think people have read way to deep into the implications of Rand's train of thought, projecting it onto everything they see wrong with the world today. What I took from the book was that there are people who create things of great importance to everyone and we often then attack them for it against our better interests. I think Rand clearly was talking about inventors, captains of industry and producers ( I think thats what she even called them ) being the "Prime Movers" that get shrugged. I hardly doubt that she would have included international financiers stealing 401K monies and running ponzi schemes as part of this class. Somehow I feel her ideas have become tangled up in a recent public uprising against "banksterism". Most likely if you support the wholesale offshoring of entire American industries with the help of your own government you are probably more in tune with Rand than you want to believe.
I agree the book as literature was sort of like a romance novel and way over the top. But remember she grew up in the balkanised Eastern Europe of the early 20th century where political upheavals often meant death squads and witchunts. It seems a lot of people from that era could come off as a little radical and ornery.
Most likely if your AGAINST the wholesale offshoring of entire American industries with the help of your own government you are probably more in tune with Rand than you want to believe.
Rand was an ethnocentric racist. She exhibited both qualities.
I don't disagree that some stereotypes exist for a reason...but what is missing from that thesis is the reasons for why cultures develop the way they do, and the fact that there are always exceptions to the rule. Your arguments support the "Us versus Them" argument...and asserts that certain people are inherently different. That is an imperialist and, frankly, ethnocentric perspective to adopt.
I don't have time right now to respond to your entire post, but I would suggest you read the book "Orientalism" by Edward Said. I think it would open your eyes to the West's construction of Arab identity as backward savages. It seems you've adopted some of these beliefs.
Uh huh... the reason denouncing racism is in itself racist because it presumes innocence when there is none.
You now have groups claiming to be considerably less racist than other groups and then ostracizing one another based on racist commentary past and present.
Essentially, we now have a group of people who pride themselves on being the least racist and the least monstrous despite the fact that there is little self-reflection and admission of guilt or responsibility.
You can only solve a problem by admitting that there is a problem.
By simply saying "that's racist" and removing merit or construction from the original racist object, you're ignoring the reason why it exists in the first place.
Lots of people do things everyday that are no blatantly racist but are still standing constructs of racism. By claiming innocence of racism or racist attitudes, you eliminate the ability to rationalize things as forms of aggression.
---
FP,
There's a huge difference between racism and ethnocentricism. My point was simply that her attitudes are not completely unfounded.
They aren't my attitudes and your fallacy is that you are interjection contemporary moral relativism into a time, place and person when it did not exist.
We can't really expect anyone/everyone before the turn of the 20th century to be figureheads of exemplary behavior.
Conversely, while many people in the Middle East do not like the picture painted of them... that picture is not entirely a Western phenomenon.
Moreover, the Near East paints a pretty gruesome picture of Westerns based on their interactions with a limited number of Westerners and the Ottoman Turks.
I doubt that an apple farmer in Normandy has little to anything to do with Middle Eastern politics and attitude just like an everyday Arabian probably has little to do with current international climate.
However, increased nationalism and ethnic pride make everyone susceptible and responsible for the actions of a few. A lesson the West has learned and has been learning for a while.
Just like it is unfair to label all Arabian people bloodthristy savages, it is unfair to label all of Ayn Rand's contributions as complete bunk because of one cherrypicked quote.
She maybe an awful person but she is a person that has impacted society with her works. While one may challenge the qualitative worth of her literature, it still has a quantitative measure in that objectivity is still pretty a happening idea.
I just think it is mildly ironic to scream "Racist!" and then completely invalidate someone for someone who screamed "Savages!" and completely invalidated others.
You can believe what you will. I told you I respectfully disagree with your comments and recommended a book which, I believe, is relevant.
I still disagree with you about whether or not her comments are unfounded. She views an entire race of people as being inferior to her own. You think I'm injecting moral relativism onto Rand when "it did not exist", but even Donahue in that interview took her to task for her comments, and lots of audience members cheered him for doing so. She was not living in some kind of bubble, where her comments were universally seen as accurate. People did, in fact, disagree with her. So she was notably racist even at that time.
I also do not defend Arab regimes. They're all corrupt, they do not take into account the rights of their own people, and they propagandize to forward their own skewed ideologies. They, like all other countries (including the USA) serve their own interests. And I also don't deny that many Arabs lack progressive stances on issues of women's rights, gay rights, etc etc. But, it's important to note that progressive politics exists within all these middle eastern countries, and that there are indeed grassroots efforts and movements that exist there that deal specifically with more progressive politics. And, it's also relevant to note that the USA and Israel are two countries that also have a long ways to go with respect to equality of its own citizens.
But, back to my original point...I have a perspective about Rand's works that have been filtered through her racist comments. So what...that's my opinion and I choose to take her to task in that respect. I'm not saying she did not impact society. I'm not saying people have not been moved by her works. I'm simply saying that I believe she lost credibility as an intellectual when she enthusiastically and proudly revealed her racist thoughts about Arabs. That's all.
sorry for the tangent, but is there any way we can edit this thread title so it reads "Ayn Rand"...not the incorrect "Ann Rand"...my OCD is killing me!!!
My mothers name is Ann Simples....so she has just been miss spelling her name for all these years....Ayn Rand. To bad she didn't marry a McNally.....cause then she would be Any Rand McNally.
Of course it was easy for her to preach ego-ism & Epistemology. Just put blinders on & live in an ivory tower. Just pretend that 'they' don't exist & you can rationalize just about anything. If you ignore all problems, it's easy to be an idealist like her.
Couple her blathering (who is psycho enough to write a 200 page sentence?) with impressionable, young arrogant louts & you create a nation of self-important lazy axxes. [/i]We're makin' more-n-more of 'em these days![/i]
if people who mate are on par when it comes to looks, i wonder what vado retro looks like.
honestly, i haven't read her stuff but, judging solely from the discussion above, she sounds unpleasant as well as ideological, a bad combo. i don't like unpleasant ideologists; even pleasant ideologists can be a pain (though also can be attractive). i do like unpleasant stuff sometimes however. i like patricia highsmith...unpleasant but in a non-ideological way.
also...really, if you're physically this unpleasant looking you should ensure you're extra pleasant on the inside.
Ayn Rand is just hipster bullshit. And sorry, Jack, but I don't think the captains of industry, who make the same amount in an hour or two that I make in a year, deserve any sympathy. Like it or not, as a species capable of intellectual thought, we require communities, all of us, and to sustain those communities, we need to do a bit more than think about ourselves.
i guess i don't understand what the issue is here. i like The Fountainhead, the only ayn rand book i've ever read. do i agree with everything that it is getting at? no, of course not. do i like the stereotypes about architects portrayed in the book, no, but let's face it: plenty of architects would have only themselves to blame for that, even if The Fountainhead wasn't written. yeah, she's said some disagreeable things about arabs. clearly, she was a flawed person. a lot of great thinkers are flawed. frank lloyd wright was flawed. louis kahn was flawed. how do we get all these weird trains of thought from a photo of ayn rand with gerald r ford?
"at least rand understood that some people are better than others"
a chick said this, i thought this was only man talk.
this is what has always amused me about Ayn Rand, her philosophy is total football locker room dude talk.
and yes for all you naive people - some human being are better than others.
clearly we could present any case on which zone of the world was more retarted than another zone during the history of time, but when Ayn Rand made here comment she wasn't too far off.
FP takes this clear "defend" those being attacked as they are not west, blah blah stance....
look i know Alegebra and Omar Khayyam loved wine and women comes from the middles east, but that was a thousand years ago... a bunch of Mormon like nutty towel heads found oil and have spent $70 billion expanding their VERSION of Islam throughout the world, resulting in radical uprising believing the WEST is evil.
so Ayn Rand was right in what she said, but she didn't need to see which specific group of people, she could of just said
all religious monkeys are nutts.
and then we as rational human being could pinpoint the religous monkey's location and snuff them out with western rationalization?
oh wait, being rational over cultural and religous norms is racist...meanwhile a bunch of civilized people have move long past their ignorant roots and have become modern..
the modern man is free of meaning justified by historical supersition...DUBAI booyaa, Hong Kong, New York...you get the idea
yah fuck you, i'm drunk and still smarter than you...especially FP, i mean that kid is confused. jack's an old man and old men are aloud to take def. stances, but FP what are you really trying to say man?
you going to buy guns and shoot my office up becuase i'm a racist westerner, it's below all your peaceful hate talk.
Metababble. I'm not going to argue with drunken, moronic babble except to say you're much farther from "modern man" if you really believe in all that crap you just wrote. Perhaps it was just the alcohol talking...in which case I'd suggest you attend a few hundred AA meetings. Drinking seems to produce delusions of racial grandeur in you.
don't be so emotional about it, just trying to get a rise out of you, that's what drunk philosophers do. you go to AA if drinking is a problem for you, i don't have a problem i just drink a lot.
you do have to accept the fact that some people are better than others, FP won't even discuss topics with drunk people, but the second you categorize it based on genetic predispositions is becomes an "-ism", or a basis for unfounded discrimination.
i.e. if you require architects with all "A's" in studio and an Ivy League education, you have decided those architects are better than most, but nothing you are doing is racists, sexist, etc....or wrong
had Ayn Rand just reclassified why some people are better than others without resorting to regions and biological born conditions, then this discussion wouldn't be so long and drawn out and dramatic.
my favorite thing about Ayn Rand is that she wrote the bulk of her work at the tender age of 22. A "serious thinker" she is not; more like entitled post-adolescent. Her quasi-philosphical ramblings have been adopted as dogma to live by millions of simple college student only in search of serious conversation fodder. The only people that actually actually like her work are either bat-shit nuts-a la Greenspan/Geithner/Summers or lightweight "intellectuals" that can only take their economic theory with a heavy dose of sex and pulpy action. Liking Ayn Rand for her thoughts is kinda like when Sasha Grey points to 2 semesters at community college and says, "see, I am smart, I read Dostoyevsky, fucking Dostoyevsky"
Ann Rand
does it help anybody feel better about her that she had neutra design her house?
i had a wild fling back in the day with ms. rand. i met her through betty ford. mrs. ford and i were in rehab together and we bonded over our affection for cocker spaniels and gin. she invited me to a get together at the ford's weekend home to honor gerald's old football pal, bo schembechler. well ayn was there and i can tell you she did not like the socialistic fall in line gung ho attitude of football. so she and i started , or should i say she started talking) about the great genius of the individual and how wouldn't it be cool if the smart and rich captains of industry would go on strike, and i thought what a stupid idea, while i nodded my head in agreement. because this is what a guy who is the hero of his own story does to get a chick in the sack you see. you nod your head while wishing you were hangin out with jerry and bo in the man cave, but priorities my boyos, priorities. anyway the rest is they say is history. i'll always remember those lazy afternnons, ayn.
Rand bought Neutra's Sternberg house in the '40s. . .
http://pc.blogspot.com/2009/05/von-sternberg-house-richard-neutra.html
http://en.allexperts.com/e/v/vo/von_sternberg_house_by_neutra.htm
"at least rand understood that some people are better than others"
Would it be fair to say that the basest animal operates on that principle -- and that a goal of civilization is to get past that point ?
Ann would argue the basest animal is the parasitic creature whereas the evolved animal is the predator - or something like that
My point was that almost all racist ideology has a some truth to it. Completely dismissing it and not acknowledging it does service to no one. In fact, it just ignores that and the underlying issues that cause such profane ideology to exist.
Denouncing racism is in itself racist.
If we change like 4 words in Rand's statement, it becomes painfully true
"[Traditional societies in the Middle East] are one of the least developed [social construct]. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent [modern and historic] Israel because it's the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are."
Technically, though, it isn't racist... it is ethnocentric.
And part of this refers to the "Arab-ization" that took place in the late 19th and 20th century during and after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Many used the scapegoat of blaming "Western society (including the Ottomans)" for their many ills despite the fact that few true Westerners actually did anything at all.
It is kind of an easy way to inspire extremism and hatred toward "Europeans" because of almost a thousand years of Ottoman rule.
For many in "Arabia," the Ottomans and Israel (Trans-Jordan, Palestine, Judea) were always a target of ridicule because that permanently and continuously settled land has one of the only surface water resources in the Arabian Penisula.
When the Ottomans fell, powers that be like the Rabi'ah and Andinites (that would late become the House of Saud) encouraged and accelerated the rapid breakdown of the Ottoman Empire.
So, you do essentially have bands of nomads frequently attacking Ottoman developments.
Savage? No. But not exactly clean hands either. When you have various individual groups of people trying to reconcile differences and territories after the collapse of the government that had been one of the only unifying forces in the area, it's not exactly fair for an aggressor to come in and cause ethnic clashes and political strife.
The West plays in a part in the problems in the Middle East But Saudi Arabia isn't an innocent party. In fact, I would gamble to say that the Sauds should be on the hook for more of these things since it was primarily them that fired up so much racist and ethnocentric tension in the Middle East.
Hur Dur, you see how "racist" [ethnocentric] can be a valuable tool for learning why it exists rather than denouncing it entirely?
the deep and fundamental distinctions which separate rand supports from rand detractors are too natural to each constituent...
there is no point in arguing for or against her ideals because they are of such a nature that anyone who agrees or disagrees is very unlikely to change their mind...
seems that at the most base of levels, rand vs not... conservativism vs liberalism in america boils down to a certain acceptance that either A) One person can be inherently better than another or B) One person can behave or achieve more than another but is inherently no better or worse than any of his/her piers.
perhaps ive failed to capture this appropriately... but i feel like an argument based on nature vs nurture will likely never be resolved.
i'm sorry...but i've got better things to do than "be specific"
Ayn Rand is to ethics what Peter Eisenman is to architectural theory.
Looks good at first sight but there are fundamental fallacies that they commit.
Comparing Rand to Rousseau is laughable. Rand is not taken seriously by political philosophers or ethicists because there is isn't enough textual meat to make much out of of it. That could change but the fundamental relationship between the one and the many, the minority and the majority, etc., is a complex and nuanced one and is a discipline that will keep ethicists and political philosophers busy for millennia.
I read Atlas Shrugged over the christmas holidays - or at least half of it. I got bored. There is no compassion.
My main problem with Randy world is how the arts would suffer - Terry Quinlan would be architect; the Crystal Cathedral would be an icon; Mozart would be the theme; Architectural Digest would be the manifesto.
Yawn.
I think people have read way to deep into the implications of Rand's train of thought, projecting it onto everything they see wrong with the world today. What I took from the book was that there are people who create things of great importance to everyone and we often then attack them for it against our better interests. I think Rand clearly was talking about inventors, captains of industry and producers ( I think thats what she even called them ) being the "Prime Movers" that get shrugged. I hardly doubt that she would have included international financiers stealing 401K monies and running ponzi schemes as part of this class. Somehow I feel her ideas have become tangled up in a recent public uprising against "banksterism". Most likely if you support the wholesale offshoring of entire American industries with the help of your own government you are probably more in tune with Rand than you want to believe.
I agree the book as literature was sort of like a romance novel and way over the top. But remember she grew up in the balkanised Eastern Europe of the early 20th century where political upheavals often meant death squads and witchunts. It seems a lot of people from that era could come off as a little radical and ornery.
correction:
Most likely if your AGAINST the wholesale offshoring of entire American industries with the help of your own government you are probably more in tune with Rand than you want to believe.
Rand had her house designed by who else but FLW in 1946 (after wanting to relocate from the remote von Sternberg house)..
Read all about it. . . http://savewright.org/wright_chat/viewtopic.php?t=3722&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
Puddles,
In the time you wrote that you had better things to do than "be specific," you could have written the specifics.
Orochi,
I respectfully disagree with your entire thesis.
Rand was an ethnocentric racist. She exhibited both qualities.
I don't disagree that some stereotypes exist for a reason...but what is missing from that thesis is the reasons for why cultures develop the way they do, and the fact that there are always exceptions to the rule. Your arguments support the "Us versus Them" argument...and asserts that certain people are inherently different. That is an imperialist and, frankly, ethnocentric perspective to adopt.
I don't have time right now to respond to your entire post, but I would suggest you read the book "Orientalism" by Edward Said. I think it would open your eyes to the West's construction of Arab identity as backward savages. It seems you've adopted some of these beliefs.
Orochi Denouncing racism is in itself racist.
idiotic
Uh huh... the reason denouncing racism is in itself racist because it presumes innocence when there is none.
You now have groups claiming to be considerably less racist than other groups and then ostracizing one another based on racist commentary past and present.
Essentially, we now have a group of people who pride themselves on being the least racist and the least monstrous despite the fact that there is little self-reflection and admission of guilt or responsibility.
You can only solve a problem by admitting that there is a problem.
By simply saying "that's racist" and removing merit or construction from the original racist object, you're ignoring the reason why it exists in the first place.
Lots of people do things everyday that are no blatantly racist but are still standing constructs of racism. By claiming innocence of racism or racist attitudes, you eliminate the ability to rationalize things as forms of aggression.
---
FP,
There's a huge difference between racism and ethnocentricism. My point was simply that her attitudes are not completely unfounded.
They aren't my attitudes and your fallacy is that you are interjection contemporary moral relativism into a time, place and person when it did not exist.
We can't really expect anyone/everyone before the turn of the 20th century to be figureheads of exemplary behavior.
Conversely, while many people in the Middle East do not like the picture painted of them... that picture is not entirely a Western phenomenon.
Moreover, the Near East paints a pretty gruesome picture of Westerns based on their interactions with a limited number of Westerners and the Ottoman Turks.
I doubt that an apple farmer in Normandy has little to anything to do with Middle Eastern politics and attitude just like an everyday Arabian probably has little to do with current international climate.
However, increased nationalism and ethnic pride make everyone susceptible and responsible for the actions of a few. A lesson the West has learned and has been learning for a while.
Just like it is unfair to label all Arabian people bloodthristy savages, it is unfair to label all of Ayn Rand's contributions as complete bunk because of one cherrypicked quote.
She maybe an awful person but she is a person that has impacted society with her works. While one may challenge the qualitative worth of her literature, it still has a quantitative measure in that objectivity is still pretty a happening idea.
I just think it is mildly ironic to scream "Racist!" and then completely invalidate someone for someone who screamed "Savages!" and completely invalidated others.
Orochi,
You can believe what you will. I told you I respectfully disagree with your comments and recommended a book which, I believe, is relevant.
I still disagree with you about whether or not her comments are unfounded. She views an entire race of people as being inferior to her own. You think I'm injecting moral relativism onto Rand when "it did not exist", but even Donahue in that interview took her to task for her comments, and lots of audience members cheered him for doing so. She was not living in some kind of bubble, where her comments were universally seen as accurate. People did, in fact, disagree with her. So she was notably racist even at that time.
I also do not defend Arab regimes. They're all corrupt, they do not take into account the rights of their own people, and they propagandize to forward their own skewed ideologies. They, like all other countries (including the USA) serve their own interests. And I also don't deny that many Arabs lack progressive stances on issues of women's rights, gay rights, etc etc. But, it's important to note that progressive politics exists within all these middle eastern countries, and that there are indeed grassroots efforts and movements that exist there that deal specifically with more progressive politics. And, it's also relevant to note that the USA and Israel are two countries that also have a long ways to go with respect to equality of its own citizens.
But, back to my original point...I have a perspective about Rand's works that have been filtered through her racist comments. So what...that's my opinion and I choose to take her to task in that respect. I'm not saying she did not impact society. I'm not saying people have not been moved by her works. I'm simply saying that I believe she lost credibility as an intellectual when she enthusiastically and proudly revealed her racist thoughts about Arabs. That's all.
sorry for the tangent, but is there any way we can edit this thread title so it reads "Ayn Rand"...not the incorrect "Ann Rand"...my OCD is killing me!!!
Word.
My mothers name is Ann Simples....so she has just been miss spelling her name for all these years....Ayn Rand. To bad she didn't marry a McNally.....cause then she would be Any Rand McNally.
Of course it was easy for her to preach ego-ism & Epistemology. Just put blinders on & live in an ivory tower. Just pretend that 'they' don't exist & you can rationalize just about anything. If you ignore all problems, it's easy to be an idealist like her.
Couple her blathering (who is psycho enough to write a 200 page sentence?) with impressionable, young arrogant louts & you create a nation of self-important lazy axxes. [/i]We're makin' more-n-more of 'em these days![/i]
That old bag.
forgive me ann... i know u can take jokes^^
ann studied race as species... generalisation is not a crime, its part of the studies.
AYN
Her name is spelled Ayn. Anne, or Ann, or Jim, or Adolph, is another person.
i know, but i like ann better for typing^^
i know, but i like ann better for typing^^
i know, but i like ann better for typing^^
*Hic*
Try drinking water from the wrong side of the glass -- and call me in the morning.
Oh! THAT, Ann Rand; http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/ann/rand
if people who mate are on par when it comes to looks, i wonder what vado retro looks like.
honestly, i haven't read her stuff but, judging solely from the discussion above, she sounds unpleasant as well as ideological, a bad combo. i don't like unpleasant ideologists; even pleasant ideologists can be a pain (though also can be attractive). i do like unpleasant stuff sometimes however. i like patricia highsmith...unpleasant but in a non-ideological way.
also...really, if you're physically this unpleasant looking you should ensure you're extra pleasant on the inside.
god, i just spit water all over my monitor. effin hilarious.
granted, highsmith was not a pretty sight either. but what a pleasant and enjoyable way of writing. inspite of the unpleasantness.
Ayn Rand is just hipster bullshit. And sorry, Jack, but I don't think the captains of industry, who make the same amount in an hour or two that I make in a year, deserve any sympathy. Like it or not, as a species capable of intellectual thought, we require communities, all of us, and to sustain those communities, we need to do a bit more than think about ourselves.
Word.
(I love saying that. I don't care how gone it is. . .!)
i guess i don't understand what the issue is here. i like The Fountainhead, the only ayn rand book i've ever read. do i agree with everything that it is getting at? no, of course not. do i like the stereotypes about architects portrayed in the book, no, but let's face it: plenty of architects would have only themselves to blame for that, even if The Fountainhead wasn't written. yeah, she's said some disagreeable things about arabs. clearly, she was a flawed person. a lot of great thinkers are flawed. frank lloyd wright was flawed. louis kahn was flawed. how do we get all these weird trains of thought from a photo of ayn rand with gerald r ford?
"honestly, i haven't read her stuff but, judging solely from the discussion above, she sounds unpleasant as well as ideological, a bad combo."
&
"also...really, if you're physically this unpleasant looking you should ensure you're extra pleasant on the inside. "
That about says it all, 'specially about Ayn Rand!
"at least rand understood that some people are better than others"
a chick said this, i thought this was only man talk.
this is what has always amused me about Ayn Rand, her philosophy is total football locker room dude talk.
and yes for all you naive people - some human being are better than others.
clearly we could present any case on which zone of the world was more retarted than another zone during the history of time, but when Ayn Rand made here comment she wasn't too far off.
FP takes this clear "defend" those being attacked as they are not west, blah blah stance....
look i know Alegebra and Omar Khayyam loved wine and women comes from the middles east, but that was a thousand years ago... a bunch of Mormon like nutty towel heads found oil and have spent $70 billion expanding their VERSION of Islam throughout the world, resulting in radical uprising believing the WEST is evil.
so Ayn Rand was right in what she said, but she didn't need to see which specific group of people, she could of just said
all religious monkeys are nutts.
and then we as rational human being could pinpoint the religous monkey's location and snuff them out with western rationalization?
oh wait, being rational over cultural and religous norms is racist...meanwhile a bunch of civilized people have move long past their ignorant roots and have become modern..
the modern man is free of meaning justified by historical supersition...DUBAI booyaa, Hong Kong, New York...you get the idea
yah fuck you, i'm drunk and still smarter than you...especially FP, i mean that kid is confused. jack's an old man and old men are aloud to take def. stances, but FP what are you really trying to say man?
you going to buy guns and shoot my office up becuase i'm a racist westerner, it's below all your peaceful hate talk.
metababble - stick to your alcohol; as your intelligence (or lack thereof) is letting you down.
hearing your ignorant rant does make me almost believe that Ayn Rand got something right. but at the end of the day, racism is still racism.
different soil breed different species... or different format of selfish gene
i'm a naturalist or call me racist if u like^^
Metababble. I'm not going to argue with drunken, moronic babble except to say you're much farther from "modern man" if you really believe in all that crap you just wrote. Perhaps it was just the alcohol talking...in which case I'd suggest you attend a few hundred AA meetings. Drinking seems to produce delusions of racial grandeur in you.
don't be so emotional about it, just trying to get a rise out of you, that's what drunk philosophers do. you go to AA if drinking is a problem for you, i don't have a problem i just drink a lot.
you do have to accept the fact that some people are better than others, FP won't even discuss topics with drunk people, but the second you categorize it based on genetic predispositions is becomes an "-ism", or a basis for unfounded discrimination.
i.e. if you require architects with all "A's" in studio and an Ivy League education, you have decided those architects are better than most, but nothing you are doing is racists, sexist, etc....or wrong
had Ayn Rand just reclassified why some people are better than others without resorting to regions and biological born conditions, then this discussion wouldn't be so long and drawn out and dramatic.
"a little knowledge is a dangerous thing"
what a big fuss over nothing. before hating on others, know yourself first.
Moderators, are you going to allow people here to call arabs ,or others, "towel heads"?
metatroll.
my favorite thing about Ayn Rand is that she wrote the bulk of her work at the tender age of 22. A "serious thinker" she is not; more like entitled post-adolescent. Her quasi-philosphical ramblings have been adopted as dogma to live by millions of simple college student only in search of serious conversation fodder. The only people that actually actually like her work are either bat-shit nuts-a la Greenspan/Geithner/Summers or lightweight "intellectuals" that can only take their economic theory with a heavy dose of sex and pulpy action. Liking Ayn Rand for her thoughts is kinda like when Sasha Grey points to 2 semesters at community college and says, "see, I am smart, I read Dostoyevsky, fucking Dostoyevsky"
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