Atlas Yawned

Barry Ritholtz notes the reemergence of Ayn Rand. This is one of those phenomena, like orange soda, that I will never understand.
Barry rightly calls Rand’s prose “a giant pedantic bore,” and also zeros in on the cult-like behavior of Randians. I just don’t get it. My theory is that Rand’s appeal is mainly to make college sophomores feel superior to freshmen.
Michael Shermer (via Oliver Kamm) addressed the Randians a few years ago when writing “The Unlikeliest Cult in History.”

One of the closest to Rand was Nathaniel Branden, a young philosophy student who joined the Collective in the early days before Atlas Shrugged was published. In his autobiographical memoirs entitled Judgment Day (1989), Branden recalled: “There were implicit premises in our world to which everyone in our circle subscribed, and which we transmitted to our students at NBI.” Incredibly, and here is where the philosophical movement became a cult, they came to believe that (pp. 255-256):

• Ayn Rand is the greatest human being who has ever lived.
• Atlas Shrugged is the greatest human achievement in the history of the world.
• Ayn Rand, by virtue of her philosophical genius, is the supreme arbiter in any issue pertaining to what is rational, moral, or appropriate to man’s life on earth.
• Once one is acquainted with Ayn Rand and/or her work, the measure of one’s virtue is intrinsically tied to the position one takes regarding her and/or it.
• No one can be a good Objectivist who does not admire what Ayn Rand admires and condemn what Ayn Rand condemns.
• No one can be a fully consistent individualist who disagrees with Ayn Rand on any fundamental issue.
• Since Ayn Rand has designated Nathaniel Branden as her “intellectual heir,” and has repeatedly proclaimed him to be an ideal exponent of her philosophy, he is to be accorded only marginally less reverence than Ayn Rand herself.
• But it is best not to say most of these things explicitly (excepting, perhaps, the first two items). One must always maintain that one arrives at one’s beliefs solely by reason.

By the way, here’s a letter to the editor of the New York Times from November 3, 1957:

To the Editor:
Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should. Mr. Hicks suspiciously wonders “about a person who sustains such a mood through the writing of 1,168 pages and some fourteen years of work.” This reader wonders about a person who finds unrelenting justice personally disturbing.
Alan Greenspan, NY

Posted by on November 16th, 2009 at 9:50 am


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