Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/05/24/animated-interviews-with-fut.html
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I enjoy this style of animation.
Kurt Vonnegut was a literary genius. I suppose his insistance that the artist must suffer for their art wasn’t such a cliché when he gave this interview.
The Huxley interview reminds me of his essays, which were much better written than Brave New World.
The animation of Ayn Rand repeatedly talking over her interviewer certainly echos with today’s media, and her sophomoric sophistry is barely more intelligent than the drivel on Fox News. I guess they put her last so people wouldn’t close the video before the other two.
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Rand is up there with the likes of L. Ron in the Shitty Writers Inspire Awful Cults hall of fame.
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Rand’s interview struck me as on of the most selfish, petty and evil things I have ever heard. It goes against everything I stand for. It’s well proven by history that great things come from people coming together to make a willing sacrifice for the future.
I doubt that Rand had love in her heart. The things she spoke about people and the rhetoric she puts forth is the as how psychopaths say.
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I doubt that Rand had a heart in her body.
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I think everyone operates in their own self-interest, but people vary widely in how they evaluate what is in their interest. Some people see selflessness as being in their own self-interest, because that’s the kind of world they want to live in.
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The whole point of “objectivism” is that I “objectively” evaluate what is best. Since I am objective, I am right. If anybody disagrees, they must be _sub_jective, and therefore wrong. (Note that in one of her books she proves objectively that tap dance is the highest form of art. I swear I’m not making this up.)
I cannot fathom how the illogic of this position didn’t just jump out at her. Her private life was absolute chaos near the end - she was constantly excommunicating her followers, including her lover. I suspect she was realizing, when it was too late, that her philosophy was bunk, but she had too much invested to admit it. Cf: Sunk cost fallacy.
Today she is almost universally recognized as an awful writer and an awful philosopher. But for successful young douchebags, (including me at 20,) she justifies their douchebaggery, and so her name will live forever with a certain demographic.
Some people never outgrow her. Paul Ryan. Alan Greenspan. There are many others.
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I mean… I like some tap dancing as much as the next guy, but…
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As an aside, it’d probably be a pretty relaxing day hanging out with Queen Liz.
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PROTIP: If you want a great sex life avoid taking any lover whose core driving principle is the pursuit of self-interest.
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Maybe I’m nitpicky here bit this seems like a paradox.
Caveat: I’m extremely skeptical about psychological egoism in the first place, and definitely to the idea that it is the sole mechanic for human behavior.
I wish to have a better world for myself, therefore I must create a better world.
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What the Ayn Rand interview revealed to me is that she never grasped the concept of “us”, now humans became so successful as a species because we work together for the good of the tribal unit, not out of self interest. I am more reminded of Joseph Campbell writing about how myths and initiation rites help instil this sense of belonging to the group, and realise she never belonged, not even to her own family. In that way, she reflects a stunted development. The thing she never grasped was the feeling of being a part of something bigger. She only felt resentment.
Give me Kurt Vonnegut any day. At least he taught us that the one reason we are all here is to fart around. And so it goes.
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