Re: [WikiEN-l] apologies to Jimbo re Ms. Rand with text>>Fred: I think you have it right Julie. She's an engaging writer but you have the >>problem pegged pretty well, in short, a set of blinders.
Such is philosphy. Rand, as I understand her -- and the way her name has since been used (exploited) by a former partner of hers who does not share her... depth -- is that she was held up as emblematic of a former Soviet Block turned Capitalist American success story -- and this was her access to American culture at the time. Kinda like listening to Arnold Schwarzeneggers 'deep thoughts' on American poltics, etc. For an immigrant *not to renounce their socialist, communist, whatever... roots and embrace fully the 'conservative' American ethic -- would mean that you were'nt paying your political dues like all good immigrants should. Hence the 'conservatism' among Hispanics, Asians, etc... Freedom... woohoo! This is the general context that I think of Rand -- as sincere as she sounded -- she was still just a woman trying to make a life in conformist-era USA.
But more importantly, as all who wax philosophical should be taken with a grain of salt -- the size of that grain often depends on what the feeling is -- based on what some of the people who adhere to that 'philosophy' -- hence, when I take a look at the Ayn Rand Institutes' website and see a bunch of nonsense on there, my grain of salt reminds me that what these people -- supposed loyalists to Ayn Rand -- write, isn't necessarily what she, herself would have said. In fact, understanding the controversy within her following about who exactly is running her foundation -- who's bearing the torch, and is he doing a good job -- it seems as if this is really a tragic case where people are using her name and her much-lauded intellect to justify anything from welfare gutting to deportation and so on.
The *real message that I get from what little I've read of her -- is a kind of silent thread -- (A silent theme, perhaps, because of where she writing all of this ) -- that despite how terrible it was where she came from, its not really ideological differences that lead to that -- rather the unyielding adherence to an ideology that makes people blind. Her intuitive navigating, despite having the old blinders on (as mentioned by Fred) is what resonates with people. We all live with our own respective blinders on. To communicate from the point of view of absolute clarity doesnt always resonate well. Thats my limited sense of it.
-SM
"Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune." Noam Chomsky
Sorry about that Jimbo I clearly have not made a study of Ayn Rand, and my analysis was based entirely on my reading of Atlas Shrugged in college. If I¹ve got her entirely wrong, I¹m sorry, but I don¹t think that I am the only one who sees her writing being used to support a social construct that, while certainly forcing people to take the blame for their own actions, it also seemed that there was a lot of ³not my problem² in it. Maybe I¹ll give it another try.
JHK