Ranting about Rand
I've been reading some Ayn Rand. I read the major novels in my early twenties and was familiar with some essays, so I knew what I was getting into, but it's been over twenty years and I've been doing quite a lot of introspective work on what it means to be a happy human. Rand is infuriating because she's CLOSE, but not quite complete. It's like listening to what could be beautiful music except it's being played on a piano with two broken keys. She's discordant because she is missing two major pieces.
First of all, compassion is a virtue. It makes me feel happy when I practice it. It gives me personal value to have the assurance of a safety net in case my OWN ability to produce is impacted by any of a legion of mishaps that befall even worthy people. Her lack of understanding of the value of caring for the moochers smacks of being incomplete thinking. We are *all* moochers, starting out as fully dependent infants (whose parents typically don't earn much while caring for us) and proceeding through various mishaps to end in decrepit old age. If we identify as the producers now, it's just because we haven't gotten enough life experience to realize that they are us. We are all part of the same human condition. I totally agree with her precepts about behaving in rational self-interest as opposed to altruism. I just think she misses that compassion IS a rational self-interest. Even good businessmen should try to remember that mankind IS our business.
The other thing she gets wrong is the value of humility, specifically because it causes her to over-estimate her ability to judge. She is so sure that people are either black or white, that all outcomes are knowable, that rational thought will divine the proper course of action. She gives lip service to the concept that humans aren't infallible and accidents happen, but doesn't appear to reconcile the fact that a human can do very bad things sometimes - drive drunk off a bridge and kill a woman - and very good things other times. She says they either HAVE integrity or they DON'T. I'd contend that no one has integrity 100% of the time. Even ones that behave in clearly evil ways are not necessarily evil before or after that evil moment. She claims that people cannot be "gray" without confessing to their own moral failings. I agree, and wonder why she thinks anyone could possibly be NOT gray. Who here is without sin? Is she implying SHE is? And furthermore, who is SHE to judge my actions? She can never know the entirety of the consequences. Ted Kennedy acted in rational self-interest by not reporting his accident with Kopechne. He went on to do many fine and virtuous acts (also using rational self-interest.) Yet dispensing with obtaining her aid was patently ethically wrong and even against our laws. We don't know what he thought about her ability to be saved, or even if he judged his best interests correctly (it appears he did.) How can any of us judge him? How is this the purvey of humans with our limited understanding of what even happened, much less what the full set of consequences were?
Her entire system of ethics is based on being able to judge what is best to do with rational thought. She is so sure that humans are capable of rational thought! But my experience with humans suggests that it's catch as catch can. Sometimes they're conscious and rational, sometimes they're not. The exact same humans in the exact same lifetime can dip in and out of rationality. How do you judge THAT? Yet she supposes she can.
I agree with her take on faith for the most part, but think her lack of humility also blinds her to the VALUE of faith. Faith is a belief that it might not be possible to know everything. Through-out her writing she doesn't credit that concept. She has a worthy brain and her arguments are well constructed, but over and over again I see errors in her knowledge that she didn't even know were there. (Her understanding of homosexuality, for example, is incorrect. So is her assertion about infants being a tabula rasa.)
Compassion, humility and faith actually are sane and rational virtues that can be extrapolated from valuing one's life, one's intellect, and one's rational consciousness. Her lack of understanding of this makes me so mad at her because she WAS brilliant and leaving work so badly flawed just pisses me off.
She's right about a lot, though. If anyone wants me to extrapolate on this subject I can.
First of all, compassion is a virtue. It makes me feel happy when I practice it. It gives me personal value to have the assurance of a safety net in case my OWN ability to produce is impacted by any of a legion of mishaps that befall even worthy people. Her lack of understanding of the value of caring for the moochers smacks of being incomplete thinking. We are *all* moochers, starting out as fully dependent infants (whose parents typically don't earn much while caring for us) and proceeding through various mishaps to end in decrepit old age. If we identify as the producers now, it's just because we haven't gotten enough life experience to realize that they are us. We are all part of the same human condition. I totally agree with her precepts about behaving in rational self-interest as opposed to altruism. I just think she misses that compassion IS a rational self-interest. Even good businessmen should try to remember that mankind IS our business.
The other thing she gets wrong is the value of humility, specifically because it causes her to over-estimate her ability to judge. She is so sure that people are either black or white, that all outcomes are knowable, that rational thought will divine the proper course of action. She gives lip service to the concept that humans aren't infallible and accidents happen, but doesn't appear to reconcile the fact that a human can do very bad things sometimes - drive drunk off a bridge and kill a woman - and very good things other times. She says they either HAVE integrity or they DON'T. I'd contend that no one has integrity 100% of the time. Even ones that behave in clearly evil ways are not necessarily evil before or after that evil moment. She claims that people cannot be "gray" without confessing to their own moral failings. I agree, and wonder why she thinks anyone could possibly be NOT gray. Who here is without sin? Is she implying SHE is? And furthermore, who is SHE to judge my actions? She can never know the entirety of the consequences. Ted Kennedy acted in rational self-interest by not reporting his accident with Kopechne. He went on to do many fine and virtuous acts (also using rational self-interest.) Yet dispensing with obtaining her aid was patently ethically wrong and even against our laws. We don't know what he thought about her ability to be saved, or even if he judged his best interests correctly (it appears he did.) How can any of us judge him? How is this the purvey of humans with our limited understanding of what even happened, much less what the full set of consequences were?
Her entire system of ethics is based on being able to judge what is best to do with rational thought. She is so sure that humans are capable of rational thought! But my experience with humans suggests that it's catch as catch can. Sometimes they're conscious and rational, sometimes they're not. The exact same humans in the exact same lifetime can dip in and out of rationality. How do you judge THAT? Yet she supposes she can.
I agree with her take on faith for the most part, but think her lack of humility also blinds her to the VALUE of faith. Faith is a belief that it might not be possible to know everything. Through-out her writing she doesn't credit that concept. She has a worthy brain and her arguments are well constructed, but over and over again I see errors in her knowledge that she didn't even know were there. (Her understanding of homosexuality, for example, is incorrect. So is her assertion about infants being a tabula rasa.)
Compassion, humility and faith actually are sane and rational virtues that can be extrapolated from valuing one's life, one's intellect, and one's rational consciousness. Her lack of understanding of this makes me so mad at her because she WAS brilliant and leaving work so badly flawed just pisses me off.
She's right about a lot, though. If anyone wants me to extrapolate on this subject I can.