/lit/ - Literature » Thread #7287249

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Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 21:16:48 No.7287249 View Reply Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287278 >>7287310 >>7287385 >>7287463 >>7287570 >>7288053 >>7288292 >>7288769 >>7292765

So yes I know everyone hates Ayn Rand, and apparently she's a shit writer, and as far as I know I don't agree with her Philosophy of Objectivism:

BUT -- if I want to try reading Rand to see for myself, what should I read? Is The Fountainhead enjoyable even as a novel?

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 21:21:29 No.7287278 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287294

>>7287249
>apparently she's a shit writer
She's not shit, just not good.
>Is The Fountainhead enjoyable even as a novel?
Sure but being bombarded by her retarded philosophy is inevitable making the experience less than enjoyable. The novels were the vehicle for disseminating Objectivism, they're inseparable.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 21:23:23 No.7287294 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287364 >>7287630

>>7287278
Well, this is okay. I want to see how she herself explains Objectivism. Would you say Fountainhead is her best?

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 21:25:32 No.7287310 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287249
I really enjoyed Atlas Shrugged when I read it. But I was a staunch libertarian at the time.

>inb4 Objectivism isn't libertarianism
shut the

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 21:34:57 No.7287364 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287294
Fountainhead is good, yeah.

You can tackle AS, I personally enjoyed the dystopia presented, but the speech that lasts well over fifty pages was the worst thing I've ever seen in a book. Skipped over it after eyeing ten or so pages.

All her characters are super rational modern philosophers who know what to do and have near superhuman intuition, feels like a fucking anime at times.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 21:37:07 No.7287375 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287403 >>7287498

What exactly is wrong with the idea that the ultimate goal in life is to maximize one's own happiness? I'm not a fan of degenerate, retard, millennial hedonism, but there's literally nothing wrong with this line of thinking.

Everything else about objectivism is shit, though.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 21:39:13 No.7287385 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287694

>>7287249
>Is The Fountainhead enjoyable even as a novel?

Yes, read The Fountainhead and an article on her philosophy and you've got all you need of Rand.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 21:46:17 No.7287403 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287453 >>7288298

>>7287375
>I'm not a fan of degenerate, retard, millennial hedonism

I hate to break this to you anon, but your boogeyman doesn't exist

Anonymous

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Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 21:55:45 No.7287453 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287556 >>7287619 >>7287658 >>7290890

>>7287403
You're joking, right?

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 21:58:05 No.7287463 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287249

I read a single-volume anthology of some of her philosophical essays.

All of them were garbage. It saved me the trouble of having to read Atlas Shrugged so I have to recommend it.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:04:15 No.7287498 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287533 >>7287694

>>7287375
That's not why people don't like Rand. Epicurus is widely loved and respected. Rand is just a retarded spergy mong who thought nobody should help eachother (unless they were helping her)

basically an angsty self hating highschooler's philosohpy

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:09:02 No.7287525 Report Delete

Quoted By:

the fountainhead can be enjoyed because it isn't thoroughly run through with her political stances, you can read it as a kunstlerroman stressing the integrity of an artist
atlas shrugged is tedious as fuck, the vague occasional plot points about the students of the last rationalist and the static electric engine are kinda awesome but are weighed down with business garbage about trains and rails

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:10:02 No.7287533 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287609 >>7287610

>>7287498

I find it much more realistic to see her as a moderately talented fiction writer with moderate academic capability in philosophy that blew up precisely because she supported and reinforced the ideology of the elite rather than critiquing or opposing it.

There are mid-level professors in every 4 year university's philosophy department that could have eaten her lunch, and there are much better writers who go mostly unnoticed.

I seriously mean this: Anyone with strong writing capabilities that decides to apply them by arguing on the behalf of the ruling ideology will be a huge success.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:13:35 No.7287556 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287453

This (your pic) is what happens when young adults have a strong sense that something is seriously wrong with the world but no reading knowledge to inform them of how to put a finger on it or address it.

These tumblr slacktivists are a hysterical embarrassment to all things Left.

It's social media slouching meets spectacle meme slewing, with a touch of genuine-desire-to-do-good sprinkled in.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:16:10 No.7287570 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287249
I have been reading the Fountainhead this week and have 100 pages left. There is some enjoyment in it as to see what happens to the protagonist, this "ideal man" of hers. Everything else is horrible... the characters are these bizarre caricatures, people speak in essay form, 90%+ of her descriptions of setting are completely unnecessary, so much content could be cut. Read it very fast. The prose isn't worth spending much time on. Besides her horrible stylistics, the whole story is shaped around proving her philosophical view. It makes a lot of the novel seem contrived and shallow (which it is). I feel like it could have been a much better tale if she had some subtlety. I only read it because I got a paperback for free years ago and I wanted to read it before I gave it away.

I read AS like 7 years ago sometime in HS, I don't particularly recommend it.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:24:28 No.7287609 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287533
I thought this was common knowledge.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:24:42 No.7287610 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287635 >>7287651 >>7287681 >>7293589

>>7287533
>ruling ideology
That's not why Rand got a following. The "elite" are an ever changing morass with no ideology. Sure, a few chunks stick around (Hillary Clinton, John McCain, the Rotschilds, etc) but for the most part any individual evil capitalist boogeyman is only actually part of the telepathic global conspiracy for a relatively short period of time before they either lose their money (comparatively speaking), loser their influence, or simply drop out of the rat race.

Rand got popular initially because "le woman philosopher so speshul" (Objectivism is the only philosophy I can think of off the top of my head that was founded almost entirely by women, sans Feminism of course) and for the exact same reason Nietzsche is popular among edgy Middle Class teens: It allows a person to feel good about themselves for acting in their self interests. Rand concocts a narrative of the everyman ubermensch that does what he pleases when he pleases and makes the world bow to his whims.

The "Elite" had nothing to do with it because "The Elite" don't need Rand. The Ubermensch doesn't need Nietzsche. Why would he? He's already everything superior and powerful in a human being, he doesn't need someone else who is certainly not the Ubermensch explaining this shit to him, he already knows it by simply existing. Similarly, the Don Drapers of the world don't need Rand shrugging her atlases down their throats, they're already selfish assholes only in it for themselves. They don't need an excuse or reason for their actions, they've gotten to where they are without Rand.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:25:56 No.7287619 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287453
>and can be revoked at any time
Man, what the hell is wrong with these people?

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:27:35 No.7287630 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287294
Nigger if you only want to understand objectivism, read its wikipedia page. It's faster and clearer than a 500 pages book.
Or read this post:

>the state should only exist to protect people from violence, but beside that, the markets should be COMPLETELY free of government control because every government-imposed limit on enterprise is liberalism,
>which means socialism,
>which means communism,
>which means the leechers will steal the fruit of the work of the Ubermensch (the enterpreneur) and this will make them quit (Atlas Shrugged: they're the Atlases who bear the world on their shoulders) and since they're the only productive people, the whole civilization will collapse and humanity will go back to living in caves.

There. Saved you a week of reading.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:27:39 No.7287631 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288100

Any Rand is the possibly the worst fiction writer to ever live. Waste your finite life at your own peril.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:28:15 No.7287635 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287669

>>7287610
>the elite didn't need someone saying that industralists aren't parasites in the middle on the cold war

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:31:06 No.7287651 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287677 >>7287685 >>7287686

>>7287610

Ideology in the Marxian sense is the group of ideas which serve to reinforce, justify or empower the ruling class. There's nothing conspiratorial about it, at least taking this very simple definition.

You need to calm down with your stupid
>meeeehhh he said "elite" so he's some kind of posturing libtard top kek

I can write you a series of bullet points which typify the American ideology but I assume this is mostly common knowledge on this board:

-if you work hard you will receive your due in proportion to your work

-humans require material incentives to work most efficiently/efficaciously.

-humans are better at solving social ills by ignoring them and pursuing their own self interest than by deliberately using their minds and efforts toward that end

-America has made some mistakes, but we are the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave and a force for good in the world (slides of Paris 1945, cries of USA! from the peanut gallery...)

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:32:30 No.7287658 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287813 >>7293594

>>7287453
The ideology of that post actually has essentially nothing to do with hedonism. She views the world moralistically.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:35:01 No.7287669 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287684 >>7287686 >>7287697

>>7287635
I think you're overestimating both just how little "the elite" give a shit about what you or I think and just how little the average normie gives a shit about what the elite do.

Mark Zuckerberg sells Facebook data to the highest bidder. Obama is further drawing the United States into a protracted Middle East conflict that has been going on since Bush Senior in order to setup an oil pipeline from Saudi Arabia to Europe. George Soros funds entire Leftist movements simply to cause chaos.

"The Elite" don't need apologists when the very outlet that criticizes them in the first place (the media) is on their payroll and outright owned by members of "the elite".

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:36:54 No.7287677 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287693

>>7287651

I forgot the most important one:

-the meaning of life consists in the satisfaction of various individual preferences and desires

Anonymous

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Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:37:50 No.7287681 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287610
>learning about Nietzsche from wikipedia

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:38:44 No.7287684 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287669
I don't know anon, i live in a country where the us implanted a dictatorship that forbid leftist books and killed people who owned them. They seemed to care a little.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:38:55 No.7287685 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287712

>>7287651
Look, I get that he dared to use a definition separate from that used by The Great Marx, but can we keep this thread about Objectivism? Not every thread has to be where revleft lets it's sewage drip.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:38:55 No.7287686 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287669
Those reasons are exactly why they need apologists. If people were 1) consciously aware of how they were being fucked and 2) consciously aware of the fact that they and the others getting fucked outnumber the fuckers by a monumental proportion and 3) if they worked together they could easily tear the whole thing to pieces, the whole thing would come apart pretty quickly. But capitalist ideology is insidious precisely because it reifies the ephemeral financial backbone of economic growth, objectifies and ahistoricizes self-interest, and justifies it all through claims of meritocracy and appeals to nationalism.

In other words, what >>7287651 said.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:40:48 No.7287693 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287677
I think the most important one is:
-human nature is inherently capitalist and egoist, and private property is natural

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:40:58 No.7287694 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287385
It's just so obviously "Living in Soviet Russia really fucking sucked, America is way cool compared to that, lets do more of the big obvious difference between Soviet Russia and America"

Like, I hate psychologizing authors, but it's all there is to it for Rand. And so for her it's a reasonable position to take.

And I do think that there's some stuff that's valuable there. There are people who are self-sacrificing and altruistic to a degree that's unhealthy for them.

>>7287498
It's less that people should not help each other, but that there's no obligation to help others. She had nothing against charity, but did against the idea of a moral obligation to charity.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:41:34 No.7287697 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287669

For Christ's sake, the elite aren't actively engaged in ideology except for a few instances (Carnegie writing "The Gospel of Wealth" or the Kochs funding various free-market economics department chairs).

For the most part ideology is extremely subtle: the society is saturated in it, but as long as awareness of it is confined to a few over-educated middle class folks, there's no problem.

Take for example the racist ideology of the Southeastern US pre-Civil Rights. Almost nobody cared to write or read defenses of racial inferiority/superiority, yet blacks and whites felt it bone-deep; everyone in the South lived in a world saturated with racism. Nobody could put a finger on it.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 22:45:50 No.7287712 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287685

You're going to run into the same problems with this thread that occur in every political thread.

People on the left and right use and understand words differently. (interestingly enough, if there's someone who knows both senses of the word, it's usually someone on the left.)

It's important and constructive to clarify terms. It is NOT constructive to declare someone "revleft sewage drip" for using the name Marx. Frankly there's nothing I've said which is particularly lefty. Relax. Don't be hysterical.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 23:04:11 No.7287813 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287658
It's the "no consequences" aspect of hedonism. The "I can do whatever I want whenever I want and don't you dare judge me for it" attitude that's ruining the West.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 23:41:09 No.7288002 Report Delete

Quoted By:

Atlas Shrugged is a decent read. not a fan of her lackluster writing style and thin plots, but it's not the worst i've encountered. i do own a copy of all her works, but atlas was the only one i found even mildly enjoyable.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 23:50:16 No.7288053 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288195 >>7288303

>>7287249
To understand Ayn Rand start with the Greeks.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 23:57:55 No.7288100 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288733

>>7287631

Are you speaking strictly in terms of style and aesthetics or are you letting your artistic judgment be swayed by ideological considerations?

Rand was able to write a decent sentence; her problems were that she let her ideology dominate her art and that she tended to ramble on paper.

s a g e

s a g e Tue 27 Oct 2015 00:03:05 No.7288134 Report Delete

Quoted By:

the amount of pretentious cringe in this thread is sickening. OP, just pick up one of her books and read it- find out for yourself.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 00:13:36 No.7288195 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288218

>>7288053

lolno
Where's the ontological basis of her works ?

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 00:18:02 No.7288211 Report Delete

Quoted By:

Ayn Rand is a perfect example of a person taking a noble stance on something and taking it to the extreme. People like this are often self confused individuals and naturally filled with hate .

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 00:20:17 No.7288218 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7288195
What? she maps her ontology specifically nigga. She also takes from Aristotle.

She wrote more than just her novels. Her novels were just examples of her virtue ethics.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 00:39:44 No.7288292 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287249
I liked Atlas Shrugged

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 00:42:19 No.7288298 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287403
I'm a millenial in high school and used to be a stoner and yes it is real, although I think most generations, especially since the 60s hippy movement (Anti war is cool but the socialist/communism and free sex/love and all.the drugs.. probably not the healthiest for a modern human society)

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 00:43:29 No.7288303 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7288053
I know this is a meme but Ayn Rands biggest influence according to her was Aristotle

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 03:46:35 No.7288733 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7288100
>Rand was able to write a decent sentence
she was, the problem is she intersperses each descent sentence with three more of unnecessary description

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 03:57:51 No.7288752 Report Delete

Quoted By:

I've only read (and admittedly enjoyed) her paragraph in defense of smoking. She was absolutely a romantic, though, despite and largely because of her romantic love of reason. Being reasonable is another thing entirely.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 04:11:01 No.7288769 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287249
The fountainhead was one of my First novels, and I absolutely loved it. It stuck with Me for a very long time. It's not even preechy on egoism, and it really spoke to my opinions on pop culture and indoctrination of taste. Haven't read AS, though.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 04:21:38 No.7288799 Report Delete

Quoted By:

From reading the wikipedia page she has three novels, so just read them chronologolically.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 14:58:41 No.7290591 Report Delete

Quoted By:

To understand Rand you must read both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. They both touch on different points.
To achieve happiness in this world you need an integrated world view. You think Howard Roark wouldn't know how John Galt's value system operated? I would say that behind the novel of The Fountainhead is John Galt and behind the novel of the Fountainhead is Howard Roark. John Galt is the reason Howard Roark is able to exist and perhaps Howard Roark is the reason John Galt went on strike: to have one of his buildings.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 16:17:08 No.7290890 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287453
I don't see anything wrong with that picture.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 23:54:39 No.7292765 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287249
Read Anthem in a day or two. If you think its okay read Atlas Shrugged.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 28 Oct 2015 05:18:25 No.7293589 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287610
>Rand got a following because she was a woman.
>The Elite don't need Rand

Some serious abstractions these ones are

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 28 Oct 2015 05:23:30 No.7293594 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287658
no she has moralised her hedonism, though I think a better example could have been used
for all the hate Rand gets she's 99% similar to the modern young woman (which is probably why they hate her)

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