Tag Archives: Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand is Your Friend But She Won’t Kiss You No Matter How Much You Beg

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Fundamentally, I agree with Ayn Rand. I take care of me, and you take care of you, and we can come together as equals. I’m not a caretaker kind of guy. No, seriously. My wife was sick this one time, and she had passed out trying to get to the hospital, and I stepped over her inert body to get to work. Well, it wasn’t that bad, but almost.

I had breakfast with an Ayn Rand fan, and he had a VERY interesting take on our girl, Ayn. Yes, she believes in selfishness, but it’s a selfishness that allows us to exist in the world. I take care of me, you take care of you, and we come together as equals. Yeah, I already said that. Feel like your reading Atlas Shrugged? It’s all in the archetypes and the repetition.

The Ayn Rand Fan, or ARF from here on out, made it clear that charity, like taking care of the mentally ill or those who simply can’t take care of themselves is common sense. What is the wickedest form of evil, according to the ARF, is when you coerce a capable human being into charity and take away their right to struggle and achieve. When you give charity to people who don’t need it for the sake of power. It’s like parenting.

If my daughter can make herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and I make it for her, I’m robbing her of her independence. And as my children get older, I need to let them work things out for themselves because Lord knows I am not going to be around forever, and this whole boomerang thing? Boomerang generation, as in your children go away, and then come back to live with the parents. Let me tell you, once my kids are in college, I’ll be somewhere in the Micronesia Archipelago, and if they can afford the plane tickets, they can visit. If not, good luck.

I loved Atlas Shrugged because it was a critique of mediocrity, and you know, most people want everyone to be mediocre. If we’re all mediocre and dull, then we won’t feel bad about ourselves. Like with eating. If you eat well around people who aren’t, it makes them feel bad. Ayn Rand is all about eating fruits and vegetables, to be the best, to give our best with passion.

I won’t get into the whole free market capitalism, less government, blah, blah, blah stuff. I don’t understand enough to have an opinion. But I will say this. Americans do better with less government. We really are by nature anti-government. Get out of our way and let us pursue our happiness, dammit. And those evil corporations have fed us for a century. If you love to farm, well, let’s get rid of the evil corporations. Better yet, create your own evil corporation and make millions and be that wicked 1 percent. Mwa, ha, ha.

Bottom line is this. After talking to the ARF, I felt hopeful, I felt impassioned, I felt good. I felt like the world was good and we can make a difference and things will work out. I felt empowered. And that is why I think people are drawn to Ayn Rand, because there is an optimism and an energy in the work. That we can make millions and fly planes and create new ideas and be powerful in the world.

Okay, this is my last blog post on Ayn Rand. You know why? Because I’ll be too busy starting up my own business selling my books and making millions of dollars and touching the lives of billions. And flying my own plane. Because in the end, I wanna be Dagny Taggert.

Kisses.

The Ayn Rand School of Parenting and Love-Making

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“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
— Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist

Only two more blogs on Ayn Rand, I promise, that will be it. I love how Ayn Rand polarizes people. Folks either want to bed me for reading it, or they want to crucify me. I have on friend who reads it every year. Another would burn every copy. And to be honest, no one yet has asked me for coitus because I read Atlas Shrugged. It’s called hyperbole, son. Look into it.

So I had breakfast today with an Ayn Rand hater. He provided me with the quote that started this blog out. Yeah, love that. In some ways, Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged are similar. The men of Numenor were actually free market capitalists, but Sauron, read as Stalin, wanted to kill them. True story. But I think Atlas Shrugged has more in common with comic books than fantasy novels, though Atlas Shrugged has been described as science-fiction in some circles. I can see it. Reardon metal and John Galt’s perpetual motion machine and Martians, lots of Martians.

The universe, according to Ayn Rand, is a lonely, cold place and if you can’t compete, well, sorry. I will trod over your corpses on my way to fame, fortune and love. Do we really want to live in a world of jungle capitalism? The reality is that even if Ayn Rand was embraced by everyone, very few could it. We call them psychopaths. As tribal animals, we care about what happens to people we know. I’ve housed friends and I’ve offered money to friends because we live together in a society.

And you couldn’t raise kids using Ayn Rand’s philosophy. Well, I tried. With my two year old, I would say, “How come you don’t have a job yet? You’re a moocher and a looter. You’re worthless. You can’t compete. I disown you, looter.” Tears would follow. But if you can’t compete, well, you’re a moocher.

I find it’s funny that people are so enamored with Ayn Rand because really, it reads like an anti-communism tract and as we have seen, communism didn’t work out so well. So yeah, capitalism is the way to go, however, capitalism on its own is an ugly thing. The world would look like L.A. for one thing. And another, we saw how unregulated capitalism worked with companies like Enron and others. My friend says John Galt owes the American people 750,000,000,000 dollars. No, we need regulations.

So, yes, Ayn Rand has some interesting things in her work, but in the end, it’s a comic book. And I would hope we wouldn’t govern using a comic book.

On a personal note, as a writer and small businessman, I can’t write alone. I can’t sell and market alone. I need help. Does that make a moocher and a looter? Or does that make me a human being?

Atlas Shrugged Part 2 – Ayn Rand Murdered My Critique Group

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I love critique groups. I’m gonna be like James Rollins who is a bestselling writer and still has a critique group. Um, not a fan of James Rollins. We wouldn’t critique well together. Where would I hide the body after I murdered him? Just kidding. Not really. Jealous much? Yes. Get to your point. Sorry.

Ayn Rand couldn’t have put Atlas Shrugged through a critique group. As literature, it is iffy. But I went over that in my first Atlas Shrugged explosion posing as a blog post. Don’t read it. It is a scream because I had just finished the book.

I can imagine it, me and Ayn, at a table, my chicken-scratch on her pages.

ME: Ayn, um, every character is pro your ideas or against. I mean, every single one of them. They really aren’t characters, but just talking heads. Cardboard either painted white or painted black.

AYN: I’m trying to make a point.

ME: You took your point, strapped me to a dentists chair, drilled out all of my teeth, lubed up your point and rammed it down into my small intestines. I can still taste your point. And that yucky rubber taste of the dental dams.

AYN: Get out of my way.

ME: Um, not in your way, but your characters…

Then she’d slap me, and I’d cower. Every embarrassing. But seriously. Atlas Shrugged’s characters are like super heroes. No, seriously. You could totally do a comic book, a Justice league of America meets Wall Street cross over. Dagny Taggart, Hank Reardon, Francisco d’Anconia, and John Galt. Versus the moochers, the looters, and Solomon Grundy. And maybe the Joker. Larger than life.

I’ve met entrepreneur uber-successful people. They are humans. Humans don’t belong in Atlas Shrugged. It’s all about archetypes because it’s not about real life. Otherwise, the whole thing would crumble because Ayn Rand’s ideas are limited. But I’ll post more about that later. I’m having breakfast with a pro-John Galt and an anti-John Galt.

So Ayn brings in her 50 pages of John Galt’s radio speech. Oh, man, and here is how that goes:

ME: The speech is really long, and you repeat all of your ideas, and it is completely unnecessary.

AYN: Frak you.

ME: Ayn, no, seriously, I get your point. As plot, you need a speech because it drives the entire climax, but come on, 50 pages? No, give me a couple of paragraphs, blah, blah, blah. And would Dagny really go to look for John Galt?

AYN: Get out of my way.

ME: I’m not in your way. All I’m saying is that it completely stops the book. It’s a slog, getting through that wretched speech.

AYN: I reject your God. And your comments. I’m world famous. You are a looter.

ME: All I’m saying is…

AYN: Get out of my way!!!

ME: Yeah, you keep saying that. Oh, I feel like I’m reading your book because you keep repeating your ideas over and over and over.

Then we fight with knives. There can be only one. I could take Ayn Rand, though, in a knife fight. I’m pretty sure.

I liked the story of Atlas Shrugged. I mean, the 100 pages of story in the 1000 page book. And I liked the writing. I have a friend who says that’s why Ayn Rand was so dangerous. Her writing was so good. But everyone in Atlas Shrugged has an airplane. So to be successfully, you have to be completely selfish and know how to fly an airplane. Gotcha. Okay. But again, Atlas Shrugged transcends critique groups, the rules of writing, the whole thing because it is beyond all that. It’s like Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash transcends country music. Yeah, Ayn Rand versus Johnny Cash. They would fight with sledge-hammers. If Johnny Cash were drunk, I’m thinking Ayn would bash his skull in, bash it right the frak in.