Has anyone read anything my Ayn Rand?

[NYdemocrat089]

There is an essay contest ( http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=education_contests_index ) from the The Ayn Rand Institute, and my teacher is offering extra credit for participating in it. We have to read and write essays already so it wouldn't be any harder - plus I could win. I'm wondering what her books are like. I would be reading "Anthem" and I would have to find antoher book to read for class.

Thanks!

[glaeken777]

1. Anthem

Is a lot like Orwell's 1984, only much shorter and not nearly as "epic" in scope. "Atlas Shrugged" is considered her masterpiece, but at over 900 pages, it's a hefty read. I don't agree with her philosophy at all, or the notion that a cult of sorts has been built around it... but Rand is admittedly a good novelist.

[Marie26]

19. Funny, I'm reading that right now

It is extremely short; you could probably get through it in a day or two. It seems more like a novella than a full-length novel. I read it because I'm interested in Rand, but don't have the heart to try one of her 900-page "masterpieces." The biggest issue I had was her obvious philosophy that tolerance & equality could lead to conformity & a facist state. She'd probably be a big fan of the right-wing Republicans; but I wonder what she'd think about the fact that it's the "individualists" (her heros) who are taking our freedoms away.

[hopein08]

2. I've only read "We the Living"...

by Ayn Rand

It was very good. But be careful, not too many people here on DU seem to like her writing very much.

But if you need something else, I honestly could not put "We the Living Down."

[skooooo]

3. Yeah..because she's basically a fascist.

[Union Thug]

7. bitter over her family losing their biz to the bolsheviks

Ayn Rand is a megaphone for the myth of the benevolent capitalist. Oh the poor benevolent railroad tycoon who can't build his railroad and bring prosperity to all the poor, ignorant people because of evil beaurocracy...

[DJ MEW]

22. I have to defend the author

I think it comes off that way because she was political refugee of Soviet Russia and wanted to dramatize how she saw things and how she felt about things.

I know there are a lot of freeper types that would read her books and see the justification for Bush Co's actions but I am not one of them.

To me the stories were all about working your hardest for your dreams and taking a sense of pride in your abilty as a person to do great things.

But it all depends on what you read in to it.

[tanyev]

4. I tried to read the Cliff notes for Atlas Shrugged but gave up

on page 4 or 5. It's not difficult, just extremely barf-inducing.

[Joy Anne]

5. right-wingy justification of selfishness

The basis for the libertarian right. I've come to the conclusion that the so-called me generation doesn't stem from self-indulgent hippies but from self-righteous libertarians who figure that a world that doesn't adulate their efforts is wrong, all wrong!

Good luck!

[norml]

6. I suppose her stuff made good anti-commie fiction, but the worlds she

creates are so forced, they become comical.

Humans have evolved so well because of cooperation, as much as because of competition.

Successful living requires both of these approaches, not just one or the other extreme.

[Union Thug]

8. More so because of cooperation...

There's no way early humans could have survived on the savannah without cooperating and working communally.

[Kipling]

9. I've read Atlas Shrugged.

Pile of shit. Parts are well-written, but that's obsured by the endless polemicising and the paranoid hatred of all "communal values". Rand seems to believe that being nice to people will remove all your drive, ambition, and intelligence at a stroke.
One day I'll write an inverse version of Atlas Shrugged. A boy will grow up in an Objectivist society.
At 12 he will be given an aptitude test. It'll measure his abilities. However, as he will be educated only by a bottom-of-the range school, he'll fail. Instead of being given plastic surgery and becoming one of the tall, beautiful Capitalists, he'll be consigned to miserable poverty for the rest of his life. Don't know what'll happen next. Maybe he'll volunteer to have his leg sawn off on live TV for a small reward. Maybe he'll go bankrupt through paying for his mother's medical bills and become an indentured labourer forced to test out new and dangerous drugs. The possibilities are truly endless.

[postulater]

11. Sounds like a good read

Let me know when it's published!

[ET Awful]

18. That's not too far removed from Stephen King's original novella

"The Running Man" (originally written under the pseudonym "Richard Bachman" and prior to it's horrendous adaptation as a Schwartzengroper film).

[MasonJar]

10. I read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead many years ago;

there is also a Gary Cooper movie from the latter. These two novels were very readable. At the end of AS, the robber baron types all disappear to leave the rabble to fend for themselves. In today's world ole Georgie Porgie would just vanish in thin air. Oh, well, I knew there was a reason to like the book. Her philosophy is not pallatable, but her novel is quite impelling...900 pages or no.

[Bridget Burke]

21. The Fountainhead is good campy fun.

And the movie was even better. The "wonderful" development her hero-architect wants to build looks just like those dreadful public housing towers that are no longer being built.

[pretzel4gore]

12. she takes the christian philosophy

which hamstrung the laiser faire capitalist (unfettered capitalist, or pig) in christian type societies and reversed the idea slightly: reintroducing greedy and selfishness and gluttony as 'indicators' of 'productive drive' or businesslike energy. At the same time, such virtues as generosity, compassion, altruism and concern for the less fortunate as evil, because they perpetrated or made acceptable conditions of poverty, and the poor who 'indulged' themselves.....ayn rand avoided mentioning christianity or religion, unlike the communists and socialists who condemned religion outright as an opiate, which drugged people enmass to the awfulness of the system. This was the basic dishonesty of rand's bullshit philosophy: one cannot be a christian and a randian at same time...and greedy christians thus grabbed onto ayn rand for the win win possibility

[Marie26]

20. Is the philosophy basically...

that selfishness does more good than altruism? For example, Bill Gates, a ruthless selfish businessman, rips off the idea for Microsoft Windows & ends up making billions of dollars. He also creates jobs for thousands of people, helps make the US a high-tech magnet, and most importantly, donates 4 billion dollars for vaccines in Africa. You could argue that Gates' selfishness did more to help the lives of Africans than an altruistic aid worker. How can we do the most good? I know nothing about Rand, besides her book, but is this basically the philosophy? I don't think I buy it, not only for the reasons you mention, but because Rand didn't seem to care at all about people in need anyway. It's just the capitalists going onward & upward, leaving everyone else behind. I agree that Christianity seems more in line w/Socialism or Communism than true capitalism. The combination of Randian & Christian thought you mention is particularly ugly - take the Randian selfishness & capitalism; take away the Christian compassion & concern, but keep the intolerance & judgement, and stir into a right-wing frenzy. Isn't this basically what the right-wing is today?

[Joe Chi Minh]

13. Randy An,

the messiah of the snake-in-a-suit - 'cep' she's deed noo, and a nobody, like Hitler, a losers' loser in the pits of Hell, if we are to believe Christ's Gospel (good news) teachings. She and her acolytes, in their purblind self-deification, are as clear an exemplar of the Anti-Christ as can be imagined.

Here is an excerpt from the Constitution of the Second Vatican Council on the Church in the Modern World, which gives the lie to madame's diabolical values:

That the earth and the heavenly city exist simultaneously and intermingle is a fact recognisable by faith. It will remain a mystery of human history - a history which will be constantly disturbed by sinfulness until the splendour of the sons of God is fully revealed.

Pursuing the purpose which is proper to her - that of saving mankind - the Church communicates the divine life to men. But not only that; in some ways she casts the reflected light of that life over the entire earth. She does this most of all by the healing and uplifting influence she has on the dignity of the person, by the way she strengthens the bonds which bind human society, and imbues the everyday activity of man with a deeper meaning and importance. Thus the Church believes that, through her individual members and her whole community, she can contribute a great deal towards making the family of man and its history more human....

(snip)

Rest assured that the employment and status of your teachers and their college governors, if they favour her atavistic repudiation of all that is good, decent and noble, will soon see their world turned upside down, and themselves disgraced. Permanently.

Social Darwinism is virtually the definition of atavism, except that if we do not rise above the level of the dumb beasts, we fall below it, assuming the nature of devils.

[Uncle Roy]

14. "Has anyone read anything by Ayn Rand?" Yes...

There have been quite a few threads on her. I've kicked up a few of them for you. There are probably more.

PS: I find her fairly tiresome now, but I liked "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" when I was a teenager.

[NMMNG]

15. Yes

IMO she should have stopped after We The Living. Her writing became obscenely infused with proselytizing for "Objectivism", the characters plastic and one-dimensional, and (particularly in Atlas Shrugged the plot events veering towards asinine.

Her non-fiction treatises were no better. In one she even claimed that businesses remain in existence because of the owners, not the customers--that the customers have nothing whatsoever to do with the success of a business. :crazy: She also spent much time concocting bizarre sci-fi like scenarios of how life would be should the "leftists" be allowed to achieve total control in America. I'm not saying she had no logical ideas whatsoever, but for the most part she was pretty off the wall.

[terryg11]

23. businesses exist due to owners?

could you tell me where she said that? I could really use that

[bemildred]

16. Got through most of "Atlas Shrugged" as a teen.

Her prose blows chunks and her "philosophy"
is really fantasy, contrary to simple observation
of how things work in the real world. Robber Barons
rob. Employees build things.

[dr.zoidberg]

17. Yes, and it's all so boring.

On the plus side, her books could be considered a cure for insomnia.

[terryg11]

24. aww, she's alright

her ideas make sense to a degree but have to be in the right mood to read Atlas Shrugged. Her characters are so one dimensional it's hard to take the writing seriously some times