My experience of reading Rand was complicated by reading Herman Hesse at the same time. It worried my family. Ayn Rand imagines such a pure world that it is impossible to read her without catching fire. She comes to many people at the point when they long to become-for-themselves and break away from the living-for-others limitations. Tha…
My experience of reading Rand was complicated by reading Herman Hesse at the same time. It worried my family. Ayn Rand imagines such a pure world that it is impossible to read her without catching fire. She comes to many people at the point when they long to become-for-themselves and break away from the living-for-others limitations. That’s really important. Yet, It’s helpful to reflect on both the positive and destructive effects of Ayn’s fire—and all fires—because they emanate from an ideal region of mind where the obstacles of earthly life seem far away and can be dismissed lightly. So Rand is a vital voice, but to me, it’s good to look at the whole history of how her flame has moved. She is the darling of many men (and some women) who have not lived as Howard Roark’s — but as builders of the collective systems of tyranny and enslavement — of political systems coopted by titans of industry. Most of corporate masters of the universe who slay the unaffiliated Roarks and the unaffiliated John Galts have tempered their swords in the flames of Ayn Rand’s philosophical purity. The very people who move power in Davos and DC and Silicon Valley and who have truly turned out to be unconscious power wielding “parasites” as you rightly say — have basked in the glow of Ayn Rand religion of self. Strange?
Also, perhaps each generation has a burden unlike other generations. It useful for me to look at the struggles of each generation encountering a new world with temptations and dangerous unintended consequences that were not reckoned ahead—and tests that were failed or barely passed. The current crop of critical history theorists are fairly tunnel visioned about the merits of historical figures in context. On one level, we could say keeping close to Our Creator has been the challenge of the whole anguished and exciting journey—but has any generation been perfect? Or, has any generation been less monstrous? I heard an old Buckminster Fuller tape recently. He talked about what an epic transformation it was for humankind to move from elder apprenticeship to a new form of learning from the media purveyors of information. The radio brought a radical change to child rearing for our species. The generations since have been subject to manipulation at unimagined levels—way beyond our capacity to cope. Now we are living through the whirlwind of media and psy ops amplified by media that the world has never seen before. We are being manipulated by purist ideologies and mass hypnosis strategies aimed at our reptilian brains.
Life is always hard for every generation and yours is truly hard pressed— we are all of us at the affect of madness we never wanted. Yet, the bitterness can be sweetened by gratitude. You strike me as a man with an enormous capacity for gratitude and greatness. Thank you for your passionate voice. (Excuse my edits- I think this is it).
My experience of reading Rand was complicated by reading Herman Hesse at the same time. It worried my family. Ayn Rand imagines such a pure world that it is impossible to read her without catching fire. She comes to many people at the point when they long to become-for-themselves and break away from the living-for-others limitations. That’s really important. Yet, It’s helpful to reflect on both the positive and destructive effects of Ayn’s fire—and all fires—because they emanate from an ideal region of mind where the obstacles of earthly life seem far away and can be dismissed lightly. So Rand is a vital voice, but to me, it’s good to look at the whole history of how her flame has moved. She is the darling of many men (and some women) who have not lived as Howard Roark’s — but as builders of the collective systems of tyranny and enslavement — of political systems coopted by titans of industry. Most of corporate masters of the universe who slay the unaffiliated Roarks and the unaffiliated John Galts have tempered their swords in the flames of Ayn Rand’s philosophical purity. The very people who move power in Davos and DC and Silicon Valley and who have truly turned out to be unconscious power wielding “parasites” as you rightly say — have basked in the glow of Ayn Rand religion of self. Strange?
Also, perhaps each generation has a burden unlike other generations. It useful for me to look at the struggles of each generation encountering a new world with temptations and dangerous unintended consequences that were not reckoned ahead—and tests that were failed or barely passed. The current crop of critical history theorists are fairly tunnel visioned about the merits of historical figures in context. On one level, we could say keeping close to Our Creator has been the challenge of the whole anguished and exciting journey—but has any generation been perfect? Or, has any generation been less monstrous? I heard an old Buckminster Fuller tape recently. He talked about what an epic transformation it was for humankind to move from elder apprenticeship to a new form of learning from the media purveyors of information. The radio brought a radical change to child rearing for our species. The generations since have been subject to manipulation at unimagined levels—way beyond our capacity to cope. Now we are living through the whirlwind of media and psy ops amplified by media that the world has never seen before. We are being manipulated by purist ideologies and mass hypnosis strategies aimed at our reptilian brains.
Life is always hard for every generation and yours is truly hard pressed— we are all of us at the affect of madness we never wanted. Yet, the bitterness can be sweetened by gratitude. You strike me as a man with an enormous capacity for gratitude and greatness. Thank you for your passionate voice. (Excuse my edits- I think this is it).