"Ayn Rand is a Dick" - excerpt from a new book by Mike Monteiro

I first read Ayn Rand before I was aware of the greater social implications of objectivism. Based on the too-brief descriptions I read I placed it in the realm of classical Stoicism. I first read a short sorry or novella the name of which I can’t recall (post-apocolyptic society, man finds flashlight and fixes it; that’s a bad thing I guess?). I found it completely inscrutable so I read the first half of Atlas Shrugged. Only two times have I quit a book midway in protest; Little House on the Prairie (racism, ignorance and complete fabrication; plus Pa is a dolt) and AS. It started dawning on me that these people were heartless sociopaths and the book seemed to be lauding them for it. The sex sceen really did me in. I regretted quitting for a few years until I realized that my hot take was the right take. Civilization isn’t built by the will of a few gods-among-men, it’s the consensus of kindness and compassion and a general will to grow as a species. Yeah, trains are nice, but their usefulness in society is predicated on humans working toward the common good.

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Anthem. This was my first introduction to Rand as well. It was inspiring to a 14 year old boy in high school who worried about being the same as everyone else to read a story where being different is praised (by the author, not society). Thank god my ADHD defeatism didn’t let me even attempt to read Atlas Shrugged…

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Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter (and suspected ghost writer of her books) was a friend of Ayn Rand.

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Yeah, after trying to read it to my kids I read about her under the assumption that I was missing something and that there would be a payoff at the end. In fact, there’s almost nothing about her that is appealing, they only lived on the prairie for like a year and a half before running back to Minneapolis with their tails between their legs and she likely stole most of her later material from her daughter. She’s also an incredibly tedious, flat writer.

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Awesome! Another book I want to read. Added to the backlog.

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This site has an interesting breakdown /taking a blowtorch to it criticism of Rand’s works

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Yes, she is.

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Also obligatory:

She wasn’t a very good designer, either.

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Can you imagine the some things that she would design? Cars that run on human sweat?

Or node locked tractors.

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i’ve never been able to understand the cultish embrace of the Dear Leader Ayn Rand by her supposedly free-thinking libertarian followers. it is just funny. or it would be, were it not for the amazing damage that these people have inflicted on our society.

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Ayn Rand is a dick!!

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I once read an essay explaining how Anthem was a sequel to Atlas Shrugged. After the inevitable collapse of society in the latter when the “geniuses” decide to abandon the world and move out to their own utopia (see angry flower comic) the survivors decided not to repeat the same mistake and create the collectivist world of Anthem to make sure no individuals are able to destroy the world and that it’s safer not to become reliant on technology again.

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One of the saddest, most pathetic* characters in The Fountainhead was the young woman who dedicated (i.e. wasted) her life toward helping disabled and underprivileged children.

*I’d describe that character as “pitiable” but this is what Ayn Rand had to say about the concept of pity:

“This is pity,” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.”

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I bought it early on in college but was never able to sit still to read it. Years later I learned what hot mess it was connected with. So glad I didn’t waste any time on it.

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I thought it was interesting how both the paperback version of “Atlas Shrugged” and “Dianetics” have a form in the back of the book where a person could fill out and mail away to “learn more”.

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“Society”? That implies civilization, organization, people living together in peace. What Rand really describes is a world full of nothing but predators and prey-- choose which one you want to be, there is no middle ground.

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The amazing square that gets circled in GOP circles over Ayn Rand is that she’s a militant atheist. It isn’t that she just disagrees with Christianity, it’s the villain of her story (if the villain were a two-headed monster whose other head was Communism).

The concept of “treasures in heaven” (i.e. not accumulating material wealth in favor of a rich afterlife) is the antithesis of Rand’s beliefs. And yet, so many Republican politicians manage to profess staunch belief in both Objectivism and Jesus at the same time. It ought to be impossible.

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my response to reading it at 14 or 15 was to decide it was a remarkably evil book. my response to later learning how many republicans and right-wing oriented business/finance/government types used it as a foundational piece of their personal philosophy has been to read it about once every ten years to remind myself of how much evil and bullshit walks among us.

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I think you can skip the next reading, given what’s going on nowadays.

I managed to avoid reading the stupid book entirely. I don’t think I’ve missed anything.

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in some ways, despite the evil inherent in it, it gets funnier with every reading. her reliance on trains, steel mills, and petroleum as the beating heart of her universe was enormously funny the last time i read it. i’ve also read the John galt speech" section aloud onto tape while i was reading it the time before last just to see how long it actually takes to say out loud. it took me 3 hours and 20 minutes. i thought that was pretty funny too.

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