{"id":518,"date":"2010-03-09T11:13:56","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T11:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/2010\/03\/individuality-freedom-and-superiority-returning-to-ayn-rands-problems.html"},"modified":"2010-03-09T11:13:56","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T11:13:56","slug":"individuality-freedom-and-superiority-returning-to-ayn-rands-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/03\/individuality-freedom-and-superiority-returning-to-ayn-rands-problems.html","title":{"rendered":"Individuality, Freedom, and Superiority: Returning to Ayn Rand’s Problems"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Because this Rand issue has played
\nsuch an important part in my own intellectual and moral history, and because my
\ndiscovery of the Hickman stuff helped solve a puzzle for me about the
\ncontemporary political right, I will answer the critics at some length.  <\/span>I assume you have read the first post
\nand perhaps the replies<\/a> her admirers have sent.   <\/span>Because this answer delves
\nmore into some interesting philosophical issues with strong spiritual implications,
\nespecially what it is to be an individual, I will make it a new post.  <\/span>Who knows, maybe this will become part
\nof a more finished essay some day.<\/p>\n

Despite what some of her defenders
\nhave written, the “empathy thing” is central to my argument and to the lasting
\nquality of Rand’s work.  <\/span>It forms a
\npattern, both in her work, most all of which I have read.  <\/span>It is even more central among many today
\non the political right who use her as an inspiration or hide behind her
\nreputation as an excuse.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n

There is a central tension in Ayn
\nRand’s work as I remember it.  <\/span>On
\nthe one hand – and this is the positive part – there is a celebration of
\nindividuality and creativity, of people who persevere in their vision despite
\nthe uncomprehending and often disapproving attitudes of the broader
\nsociety.  <\/span>I think this is where her
\nwork can and does inspire people, especially young people, who are seeking to
\nfind their way in a society where hypocrisy and confusion seem to reign, and
\nwho seek the strength to stand their own ground.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, there is also a
\nview that society itself is composed mostly of the weak, the uncreative, the
\ndependent, who are the undeserving beneficiaries of the creative few.  <\/span>The best of them honor their betters, but
\nthe worst, such as the Ellsworth Tooheys, are consumed by envy, and use the
\nconcept of self-sacrifice to bring the creative few and others as well into
\nsubordination. This is why “Atlas” had to “shrug” letting the world descend
\ninto barbarism while the creative few set up camp in “Galt’s Gulch.”<\/p>\n

When the first side of the tension
\npredominates the Randian crowd tends to be defenders of freedom of the
\nindividual.  <\/span>But when the second
\nprevails freedom is not what emerges. 
\n<\/span>What emerges is such contempt for the inferiors that they can be
\nsacrificed when necessary.  <\/span>This is
\nbecause if the gap between the capable and the weak is big enough, not
\nsubordinating the inferior becomes a kind of ‘self-sacrifice’ that is
\n‘irrational.’<\/p>\n

The amount of empathy a person
\npossesses seems to be the critical factor in determining which prevails among
\nthose inspired by Rand.  <\/span>And in
\ngeneral she did not put much emphasis on the concept, and so for that or some
\nother reason, the bulk of her work tends, when they come into tension, to tilt
\ntowards the second of these tensions.<\/p>\n

I know Randians will object – but
\nbefore you go off on it, please explain what she herself said about Indians
\nusing some other rationale.  <\/span>I
\nthink you cannot. She is quite explicit. 
\n<\/span>If I remember correctly, another example would be the murder of a man in
\nAtlas Shrugged by one of her main characters, a murder justified by the
\nvictim’s personal failings when measured against Rand’s preferences.  <\/span>He stood in the way of their plans, not
\nas an aggressor, but as a weakling. 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, people’s exalted
\nsense of their own superiority gets in the way of their capacity to empathize
\nwith others.  <\/span>And when this sense
\nof a gulf is strong enough, it leads to a brutal disregard for others.<\/p>\n

Which of these two central
\ntensions predominates when they come into potential conflict depends entirely
\non the empathetic capacity of the person holding them.<\/p>\n

Back to Hickman…<\/p>\n

The Hickman case apparently caught
\nRand’s imagination not because she approved of his crime – she did not and the
\nquotes I gave made that explicit. 
\n<\/span>If her biographers can be trusted, Hickman appealed because he stood
\noutside society’s hypocrisy.  <\/span>The
\nmoney quote is “No matter what the man did,
\nthere is always something loathsome in the ‘virtuous’ indignation and
\nmass-hatred of the ‘majority.’… It is repulsive to see all these beings with
\nworse sins and crimes in their own lives, virtuously condemning a
\ncriminal…”  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

She
\nis right when the mass get on their self-righteous high horse about someone who
\nsimply differed from them.  <\/span>I am
\nthinking of the Dixie Chicks’ treatment a few years back.  <\/span>Hypocritical, disgusting, and depraved
\nare a few of the words that come to mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

On
\nthe other hand, as in Hickman’s case, to argue that many of those who condemned
\nHickman had committed “worse sins and crimes in their own lives” takes this
\npoint to another level.  <\/span>Rand is
\nwrong, deeply wrong, and we are led to wonder why she wrote it.  <\/span>Why she thought it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Given this tension, her philosophy
\nof freedom easily becomes a philosophy of domination by the strong.  <\/span>That she has become more popular than
\never before at a point where the American right wing has become less interested
\nin freedom than ever before, beyond not paying taxes and having guns, suggests
\nthat I am right, and that her reaction to Hickman gives a crucial clue: she
\nreally did have a hard time appreciating the situations in which other people
\nfound themselves.<\/p>\n

To bring this back to
\nspirituality, to me Rand’s work owes much to Christianity, in a weird way.  <\/span>The individual as something totally
\nseparate from society and owing nothing to it is very compatible with the
\nnotion of the soul descending into the fallen world but not a part of it.  <\/span>The individual is utterly alone, with
\nhis or her needs, allies, and impediments, and great individuals succeed in
\nturning the world to their purposes and visions.  <\/span>The world is not a home; it is a stage for acting out the
\ndrama of a life.<\/p>\n

In my experience this view is so
\npartial as to be wrong.  <\/span>Yes, each
\nof us is a creator of worlds, as Yevgeny Yevtushenko put it so well<\/a>: [Thanks, Vesta for, correcting my using the wrong first name.]<\/p>\n

In any man who dies
\nthere dies with him<\/span><\/p>\n

His first snow and
\nkiss and fight.<\/span><\/p>\n

It goes with him.<\/span><\/p>\n

. . . <\/span><\/p>\n

Not
\npeople die but worlds die in them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The
\ncrucial parts that Yevtushenko saw and that Rand did not really seem to
\nappreciate, were first, that this was true for every person, and second, that
\nthese worlds were created in relationship with others. The notion of the
\nsolitary genius when followed myopically leads to sacrificing other lives and
\nother worlds on the altar of one’s own inflated ego.  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I
\nwant to expand a very little on this second point.  <\/span>Beginning with our genome we are composite beings, as
\nqualities we receive come together to form an individual.  <\/span>This process never stops.  <\/span>Every individual is from one
\nperspective a unit, unique in all the world, and from another a gestalt manifestation
\nof myriad qualities and experiences all shared by others, but forming a unique
\npattern.  <\/span>Thus who we are is both
\nour own creation and the sum total of the gifts and injuries we have received
\nfrom others.  <\/span>In my view these two
\ndimensions are irreducible to one or the other.  <\/span>If the first emphasizes our uniqueness, the second opens us
\nup to embrace the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

So
\nRand’s model of the individual is lacking in depth because it does not address
\nhow each of us as individuals came to be who we are.  <\/span>She simply takes them for granted as elemental forces of
\nnature.  <\/span>As the African proverb
\nputs it: “I am because we are.” <\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps
\nthis is why the true geniuses of our age and hers did and do not seem all that
\nimpressed by Rand’s analysis.  <\/span>It
\ndoes not fit their own experience. 
\n<\/span>In addition, the ones who are threatening today to “Go Galt” would
\nprobably leave the world a better place if they did so.  <\/span>They are in no sense the “Atlases” who
\nsustain the world on their shoulders.<\/span><\/p>\n

I
\nthink my analysis explains the strange dereliction of duty in the defense of
\nindividual freedom on the part of so many who take Ayn Rand as an inspiration,
\ncombined with a lack of even the most basic concerns for decency towards
\nothers, as my initial post described. 
\n<\/span>These are not Rand’s failings. 
\n<\/span>She is dead.  <\/span>They are the
\nfailings of those who hide behind her name, but that her name affords such
\ncomfortable hiding room for the right wing sociopaths among us is a sad
\ncommentary on her own work.  <\/span>For in
\ntheir words and lives they are the negation of her celebration of creative and
\npersevering genius.<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because this Rand issue has played such an important part in my own intellectual and moral history, and because my discovery of the Hickman stuff helped solve a puzzle for me about the contemporary political right, I will answer the critics at some length.  I assume you have read the first post and perhaps the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-social-and-political-theory"],"yoast_head":"\nIndividuality, Freedom, and Superiority: Returning to Ayn Rand's Problems - A Pagan's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/03\/individuality-freedom-and-superiority-returning-to-ayn-rands-problems.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Individuality, Freedom, and Superiority: Returning to Ayn Rand's Problems - 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