-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
The GOP hearts Ayn Rand. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and his father Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), all mention the works of Ayn Rand as being influential in their lives. Even Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas references her work as influence in his autobiography. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, is an acolyte of Rand’s thinking and knew her personally.
I would like to focus on one aspect of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, and its implications for Christianity.
Rand saw the role of any philosophical system as the understanding of reality. Reality (existence) and the ability to understand reality (consciousness) are at the heart of Objectivism. Considering existence (reality) and consciousness (man’s awareness of it), Rand assigns primacy to existence, “the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness).” In other words, “wishing doesn’t make it so.”
For Rand, consciousness is the faculty of perceiving that which exists, “consciousness is consciousness of an object.” Eric Johnson, in a review of chapter one of Leonard Peikoff’s book Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, wrote:
Since the nature (identity) of consciousness is to be aware of reality, existence is prior to, necessary for, and not subject to the control of, consciousness.
Consciousness cannot be conscious only of itself because you run into the chicken-and-the-egg problem. Consciousness requires objects to be aware of in order to create consciousness. Sensory deprivation does not validate the notion of consciousness without anything to be conscious of. Consciousness of objects, and their associated memories, were already formed before any experiments with sensory deprivation.
Rand’s primary axiom of Objectivism is the Primacy of Existence. In contrast is the Primacy of Consciousness, “the notion that the universe has no independent existence, that it is the product of a consciousness (either human or divine or both).” Rand’s Primacy of Existence is the reason for Objectivism’s position of atheism with respect to religion, especially Christianity and its “creator God.”
The Christian concept of God as a disembodied consciousness that created everything, except itself, is antithetical to Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Objectivism provides a solid philosophical foundation for rejecting the Christian worldview.
The Primacy of Existence hasn’t received the media attention that it deserves, and I doubt that Rand’s fans in the GOP/Tea Party would understand its ramifications.
H/T: AlterNet, Anton Thorn, Dawson Bethrick, Objectivism Wiki, Ayn Rand Lexicon.
Whoa! Easy on that caps lock there, Lar. All that shouting might tear your foil.
Have you got something to say about Rand and/or Objectivism or not?
It’s a simple yes/no proposition.
If yes, do so.
If not, please transfer your rantings to a more appreciative audience such as you will find here – http://www.wnd.com/
Thank you in advance for your cooperation on these matters.
Elaine M:
that article by Ames is ridiculous. The left loves to smear her. I guess it makes sense.
Many people do take her seriously and are writing actual critiques of her writings instead of taking a statement from a notebook written by a 22 year old child out of context. And extrapolating from that instead of actually reading what she did write and on many and varied subjects.
When the plane has a problem the stewardess instructs you to put the oxygen mask on yourself first and then your child. Maybe selfishness is a virtue. You cannot help your child until you have helped yourself, putting the mask on your child first puts both of you at risk.
OS completely ignored OPERATION NORTHWOODS too—–which was an ACTUAL planned conspiracy/false flag operation to start a war. I posted the actual documents—but OS wants you to believe Northwoods isn’t real, although I gave the proof it is.
Notice how in all of OS’s posts he gave ZERO evidence of his claims and I gave post after post of evidence.
Blarp!
OS said:
“Larry the Pest: I was not talking to you, I was addressing Bob’s question. I have no interest in what any conspiracy theorist has to say, considering every one I seem to meet is an obsessive compulsive nutcase who tries to create “evidence” out of nothingness. Now buzz off. This is a legal blog for grownups. You do not qualify.”
Ahhh I knew you’d completely IGNORE Norman Mineta’s testimony. Doesnt mesh with your bullshit so you dismiss it—even though his testimony is NOT a CONSPIRACY. It was REAL testimony given.
Also keep in mind that I NEVER ONCE lied in our debates. You lied at LEAST 3 times and I pointed it out to you, only so you could IGNORE it again and again.
Tell me OS, if I’m a “nutty conspiracy theorist”—-why did it require you to LIE 3 times????
HMMMMMMMMMMMMM???????????????
Nal and Elaine:
I chuckled as soon as I saw this thread two days ago. I had been taking notes for the past two weeks on a post I was planning to call “Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum and the Republican Budget.” It’s a great topic to bring up and we shall hear much more about Rand and her political followers in coming months.
The Republican Party has become a schizophrenic off his meds. It appears that they intend to rely upon a particularly ignorant and narrow version of Christianity for defining and regulating personal relationships and upon Ayn Rand for defining and regulating economic relationships. That won’t work because it can’t.
I will confess, however, that I have never been able to finish a Rand novel. I find her prose leaden and her characters neither heroic nor admirable. It is much easier reading Robert Ringer, and he doesn’t make a phony attempt to show that objectivism has a solid intellectual base.
Tony,
I had read something about Rand being an admirer of murderer Hickman the other day. I thought I’d check it out. The article by Mark Ames certainly is interesting.
@Elaine: That was a pretty cool article about Ayn Rand’s hero worship of Hickman; I had never heard of her notebook writings before. Thanks for the link.
Otteray,
Well, people listen to Glenn Beck and take him seriously. Some people have even claimed that they learn history from Beck. Now…that gives ME a fronto-temporal headache.
Elaine and BIL, I have tried to read some of the writing of both. I find reading the phone book more interesting. the thing that continues to amaze me is that anyone ever took either of them seriously.
Well, Elaine, her writing is only marginally better than that hack Hubbard. They both have cult followings based on ridiculous ideas. Other than L. Ron having a superior capability to capitalize off of his followers gullibility, they do have a lot in common. I don’t know about OS, but I think that’s an accurate analogy.
Ayn Rand, Hugely Popular Author and Inspiration to Right-Wing Leaders, Was a Big Admirer of Serial Killer
Her works are treated as gospel by right-wing powerhouses like Alan Greenspan and Clarence Thomas, but Ayn Rand found early inspiration in 1920’s murderer William Hickman.
By Mark Ames
http://www.alternet.org/books/145819/ayn_rand,_hugely_popular_author_and_inspiration_to_right-wing_leaders,_was_a_big_admirer_of_serial_killers
Excerpt:
February 26, 2010
There’s something deeply unsettling about living in a country where millions of people froth at the mouth at the idea of giving health care to the tens of millions of Americans who don’t have it, or who take pleasure at the thought of privatizing and slashing bedrock social programs like Social Security or Medicare. It might not be so hard to stomach if other Western countries also had a large, vocal chunk of the population that thought like this, but the U.S. is seemingly the only place where right-wing elites can openly share their distaste for the working poor. Where do they find their philosophical justification for this kind of attitude?
It turns out, you can trace much of this thinking back to Ayn Rand, a popular cult-philosopher who exerts a huge influence over much of the right-wing and libertarian crowd, but whose influence is only starting to spread out of the U.S.
One reason most countries don’t find the time to embrace Ayn Rand’s thinking is that she is a textbook sociopath. In her notebooks Ayn Rand worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of “ideal man” she promoted in her more famous books. These ideas were later picked up on and put into play by major right-wing figures of the past half decade, including the key architects of America’s most recent economic catastrophe — former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and SEC Commissioner Chris Cox — along with other notable right-wing Republicans such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.
The loudest of all the Republicans, right-wing attack-dog pundits and the Teabagger mobs fighting to kill health care reform and eviscerate “entitlement programs” increasingly hold up Ayn Rand as their guru. Sales of her books have soared in the past couple of years; one poll ranked Atlas Shrugged as the second most influential book of the 20th century, after the Bible.
The best way to get to the bottom of Ayn Rand’s beliefs is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation — Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street — on him.
What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: “Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” she wrote, gushing that Hickman had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.'”
This echoes almost word for word Rand’s later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: “He was born without the ability to consider others.” (The Fountainhead is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ favorite book — he even requires his clerks to read it.)
I’ll get to where Rand picked up her silly superman blather later — but first, let’s meet William Hickman, the “genuinely beautiful soul” and inspiration to Ayn Rand. What you will read below — the real story, details included, of what made Hickman a “superman” in Ayn Rand’s eyes — is extremely gory and upsetting, even if you’re well acquainted with true crime stories — so prepare yourself. But it’s necessary to read this to understand Rand, and to repeat this over and over until all of America understands what made her tick, because Rand’s influence over the very people leading the fight to kill social programs, and her ideological influence on so many powerful bankers, regulators and businessmen who brought the financial markets crashing down, means her ideas are affecting all of our lives in the worst way imaginable.
Otteray,
Maybe you’d consider Rand to be the L. Ron Hubbard of Atheism/Anti-Theism???
@Brian: Alright, I did not get that those statements were linked. I thought you were just engaging in your usual practice of writing disjointed non sequiturs.
Elaine, I agree, and would add that where Ayn Rand and her ideas are concerned, I can be even more parsimonious: I don’t care.
It is just knowing so many have jumped on the pseudo-intellectual bandwagon she founded that gives me a fronto-temporal headache.
Roco,
I post excerpts from and links to a lot of different articles for the purpose of adding to a discussion. I, myself, don’t really care whether objectivism is considered to be a philosophy or not.
RE: Tony C., April 26, 2011 at 11:18 am
@Brian: President Obama believes in the rule of law.
You do not know that, and the evidence strongly suggests otherwise. Read Glenn Greenwald at Salon, he has done the best job I know of in detailing that evidence.
#################################
Is quoting out of context a form of error?
Was my remark about President Obama not prefaced by the words, “Fictions are wonderful…”?
Perhaps those words only came through to me, and did not get to anyone else who reads this blawg…
My next project may be learning to laugh and cry concurrently?
@Brian: President Obama believes in the rule of law.
You do not know that, and the evidence strongly suggests otherwise. Read Glenn Greenwald at Salon, he has done the best job I know of in detailing that evidence.
Elaine M:
In your post. You didnt say it but you repeated it, so I will assume you agree with the authors sentiment.
“Ayn Rand’s Pseudo-Philosophy”
Fictions are wonderful…
President Obama believes in the rule of law.
Other attorneys believe in the rule of law.
Attorneys do not always agree about the law.
What law rules?
The rule of the fiction of law?
From Black’s Ninth, page 977:
“Legal Fiction is the mask that progress must wear to pass the faithful but blear-eyed watchers of our ancient legal treasures. But though legal fictions are useful in thus mitigating or absorbing the shock of innovation, they work havoc in the form of intellectual confusion.” –Morris R. Cohen, Law and the Social Order, 1933.
Of course, if the notion of legal fictions is purely fictitious, then there are no legal fictions?