Holy shit, this is so long. But I will finish it.
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Holy shit, this is so long. But I will finish it.
Holy shit, this is so long. But I will finish it.
UFOs Are A Psyop Shirt $21.68 |
DMT Has Friends For Me Shirt $21.68 |
UFOs Are A Psyop Shirt $21.68 |
2012 Twitter thread
>woke up tired today ooooooh well
>i wonder what ill eat for dinner tonite
Godspeed anon
Why?
Because some parts are good. It's interesting to read her descriptions of a collectivist society -- like the perverse incentives it creates and the way it's justified to the citizenry.
It's shit. Like not even talking about objectivism, it's a bad novel.
>unrelatable idealized protagonists
>"conversations" in which characters say a hundred paragraphs of stilted philosophical statements to each other
>clumsy romance stuff
>etc.
Peter Thiel puts it best: "Ayn Rand's heroes aren't realistic, but her villains are."
I agree with him. Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead is a good villain. Atlas Shrugged doesn't have a great individual villain, though.
Toohey is a fantastic character. Even more so once you realize our world is now chock full of Tooheys doing the exact same shit.
Yes, that realism was necessary to make him so good, the sort of villain that makes one's skin crawl.
His intelligence too. When a villain isn't particularly bright, I can retain a slight sense of safety.
>Atlas Shrugged doesn't have a great individual villain
Atlas Shrugged has multiple smaller villains that are all scummy in their own way. Like wienerroaches. Toohey is more memorable because he's self-aware in a way that the villains in Atlas Shrugged aren't while being charismatic even though he is pathetic.
The best way to enjoy Ayn Rand is to enjoy all her characters except for the primary ones like Roark and John Galt who are meant to be the poles of good.
Pretty good take actually.
Good quote.
The book makes for a pretty amusing take on collectivism. Its proposed solution though is fantasy nonsense.
Worth a read, but you can safely skim Galt's enormous diatribe towards the end.
>wtf, this book expects me to actually think as I read it? nooooo I don't want to be challenged
Imagine picking up a book with heavy philosophical undertones and complaining that the dialogue involves philosophy.
>it's a book with heavy philosophical undertones, so OF COURSE the dialogue is extremely long, tiresome, and wildly unrealistic; there's no possible alternative
Uh huh. And let me guess you just so happen to abhor her philosophy too? Just coincidentally?
NTA but vice versa. Do you like her novels only because of her philosophy? Regardless of her political beliefs, her skill in fiction is shit. It's orwell tier of not caring about the art of novelmaking and only using fiction as a boring vehicle for philosophy. There's a reason people only talk about the ideas communicated in books like 1984 or Atlas Shrugged, they're only engaging for their ideas and not much else. Purely functional novels like that should remain manifestos.
So when you say vice versa you mean you like her politics but dislike her writing?
Personally I like her writing. It isn't conventional but it's enjoyable to read. People go overboard on criticizing the prose because they dislike her ideas.
It is extremely overlong and dull. If I'd read Atlas Shrugged first then I never would have gone near another Rand novel but luckily I started with The Fountainhead, which is actually good.
It's definitely worth a read, but if you want something shorter you can read The Fountainhead.
Have you actually read it?
>>I haven't read anything from Rand
Then why the frick are they giving out their opinion on Rand?
This. I'm yet to find a single critic of Rand who has actually read her books. It's absolutely astonishing.
> using terminology that's explicitly confrontational and looking to court controversy (e.g. her use of "selfishness")
No anon, the confrontational terminology is the use of "selflessness" or "self-sacrifice" (ie destroy yourself), but over millennia society has largely naturalized these notions.
>and her and her followers' attitude of dismissing all criticism as bad faith
As I said before, I'm genuinely yet to see criticism of Rand that isn't made in bad faith. Most of the non-arguments thrown at her boil down to shit like this
>she hates poor people!
>she's evil, because she just is OKAY
>well I haven't read Rand's books, but isn't she like... the ideology of businessmen and shit? And this random businessman did something I don't like, so I guess Rand bad
The one thing I will say about Rand is that her disdain, later in life, of Nietzsche was pretty meaningless. Stirner, Nietzsche and Rand are some of the greatest exponents of metaethical skepticism, ie recognizing that morality is nothing more than a tool of social control meant to deceive you into giving up your will.
Please don’t. It’s the worst book I’ve ever read.
no man ever finished with Ayn Rand
that's what she said
>reading anything by Ayn Rand
Cringe
https://nintil.com/why-ayn-rand-is-not-and-ought-not-be-taken-seriously
>I have never read a piece of work from Ayn Rand, beyond some paragraphs and extracts here and there on the internet. I never gave Objectivism, her system of thought, much importance.
>But there are people -Objectivists- who think she is one of the greatest, or the greatest, philosopher ever (along with Aristotle, they'll add). Sometimes, Objectivists tell people who have not read Rand to read her, so that they can become rational, and abandon their "non-Objectivist, mystical beliefs".
>I haven't read anything from Rand because I consider that the effort won't be worth it, as every time I've read something from Objectivists, I have not been persuaded that there is much to be learned from Rand. And also, there exists a critique available on the net that demolishes Objectivism. I will give reasons later why I believe the critique succeeds.
>This conclusion, however, has to be qualified. Should we reject views just because others with good qualifications say they ought to be rejected, and there are no critiques of their arguments for the rejections? Usually, yes. Such combination of factors is a very good reason to reject something without reading about it. This is how we generally go about in our life: rarely we go to the depths of Physics' journals to believe or disbelieve claims that physicists make. If a lot of people who have studied a subject for a long time agree on something, that is evidence for that something. It is not ultimate evidence, but the burden of proof is on you is you want to go against the consensus.
>So defenders of ideas that are out of the consensus of relevant experts should take the best critiques that have been made against them, and refute them. It would also be nice for them to provide a brief introduction to their ideas, to reduce the cost for others of acquiring information about those ideas.
>I haven't read a piece of work from Ayn Rand
>But she's wrong and you shouldn't read her.
This is basically every anti-Randian I've ever seen. I don't get why she in particular makes people seethe so much.
>I don't get why she in particular makes people seethe so much.
It's a mix of her defending political ideas that are generally unpopular among intellectuals and doing so using terminology that's explicitly confrontational and looking to court controversy (e.g. her use of "selfishness"), and her and her followers' attitude of dismissing all criticism as bad faith and general ignorance of both historical and contemporary philosophy outside of their bubble.
>using terminology that's explicitly confrontational and looking to court controversy
Any modern academic who complains about this, pot meet kettle.
Aside from one copypasta I didn‘t read, not sure why randbots think their detractors haven‘t read this drivel. I did used to be 19 years old after all.
>I don't get why she in particular makes people seethe so much.
It's the central Objectivist moral idea that human beings are ends in themselves, not means to an end. Drives people absolutely nuts when they've lived all their lives expecting that other people exist to serve them.
She's popular and they can't control her influence nor properly argue her on her own terms because that would involve intellectual integrity and effort. It's very easy to just go lmao her prose is bad without explaining yourself. It's easy to say that her characters are stock archetype without further detail. It's easy to just say that she has dumb philosophy by just saying that young people enjoy her and that she's just a lesser version on Nietzsche because he's 'respectable' and she is for the common plebs whom she sought to speak directly.
Fundamentally, Ayn Rand recognized that philosophy shouldn't be bullshit for people in their ivory tower but understand for the masses and wrote in such a way to be understand by the masses and she became successful for it, and she was unique in her philosophy compared to her contemporaries and wrote good books. And people hate her for other reasons such as characterizing her villains so openly that people will often say 'wow, and here I thought Ayn Rand was exaggerating with her villains' because she knew the score and the problem at play. The issue is that the way she portrays her fiction is within a specific romanticism canon that people don't want to accept on its own terms, so they meme dumb phrases as though it's enough to deny her influence or merit.
It's more interesting to talk to people who do engage with her merits and philosophy because at least you get something out of it. What can you even learn from ignoring her or reading this
snide remark?
>The one thing I will say about Rand is that her disdain, later in life, of Nietzsche was pretty meaningless.
I disagree. Ayn Rand was influenced early in her life (iirc at 16) by Nietzsche and his influence and eventual rebuttal with Gail Wynand is clear in The Fountainhead, and it is easily to see her as an Apollonian rejection of his views and a proper means of establishing one's values in which Nietzsche equally advocated incoherently with analogies. Ayn Rand wanted a systemized philosophical system to live rationally and Nietzsche was not in favor of that, even if he was an egoist, and Ayn Rand held a proper (if flawed) meta-ethical system of values based on life as the standard. Nietzsche and Stirner were meta-ethical skepticism, but Ayn Rand merely rejected the same things they rejected rather than be a skeptic.
Although, admittedly, there is a cultish mind-blocking element of objectivists that becomes annoying since they accept her ideas without thinking since they are potent and direct. If you've ever interacted with objectivists, you know what it is, and they tend to be very dogmatic since everyone just dismisses them on on lazy intellectual grounds, yet they also tend to have a very narrow view of the world that makes them seem and act naïve Yet you can only seemingly have an honest discussion with objectivist on matters of values because everyone else is ideologically corrupted by disintegrated ideas, even if they are dogmatically repeating Ayn Rand's ideas and views.
Despite how long the Galt speech is, I find it conceptually kino. Ayn Rand argued that you should have a big speech at the end that summarizes the themes of your novel. And people seem to love big speeches. You don't see anyone complaining about Roark's speech in The Fountainhead. Galt's speech is meant to be the ultimate 'this is why you're wrong and go frick yourself' speech that destroys the world. And despite how people meme its length (rightfully so), there's really nothing else like it, and it took Ayn Rand two or three years to write, so it's not as though she didn't put effort in the speech. By the time you reach Galt's speech, all the ideas were already said in many different ways, and Galt just says it plainly. It's a big speech for the whole world. Imagine writing a single paragraph speech about the ills of the world. It would be lame.
>https://nintil.com/why-ayn-rand-is-not-and-ought-not-be-taken-seriously
This whole thing is basically
>I haven't read her and I don't really know what she says, but there's a guy who has read her and he disagrees so that that settles that I guess
It's like the author goes out of his way to play into a caricature of a Randian "second-hander".
AS is meh, Fountainhead is much better.
Every time I read a criticism of Rand's novels along the lines of
>those heroes aren't relatable
>the characters are flat and have no arc
etc., I think of a boomer looking at a modernist painting and going
>I could draw that
>it's not pretty or realistic
Completely baffled by the notion that things could be consciously done differently and for a purpose.
>It's shit on purpose
What do you find bad about them?
>But I will finish it.
That will impress nobody.
I dropped it. Don't care about politics, it was just unbearably boring
women books make me anxious the way they talk about relationships and psychology in the petty interactions and trying to drag people down
you actually can just do this but i don't know why you want to know this person
how about, how can this go well for you as quickly as possible
Russian israeliteess tripe like Rand should have been banned in the US. Horrible and subversive.
>john galt's speech was canonically around 3 hours
>takes 5+ hours to verbally enunciate, not counting piss breaks, taking a swig of water, or pausing
It is honestly really good. I’m shocked how it basically knew what was coming. So obviously it is not well received by a lot of people. It’s venom to the mainstream way of being.. and written by a woman too. AYN RAND IS HOT
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.
orc family structure is backed strickly by the subject object distinction. and metaphysics of creation and synthesis of the objective and subjective never came back.
I swear people weren't always like this. What happened to make so many people unable to communicate without framing their speech in meme templates? It has to be more than just low IQ.
uhhhh why. my cognition is quite simple.
This is why collectivists hate her to such an outsized degree. They have near total narrative control but her books capture some young minds instead. Same with Jordan Peterson.
I want to give this book another go because it's the dystopian novel that best reflects the state of modern-day California and possibly the whole of the US.
That‘s moronic. She wasn‘t going to name the israelite, or identify the ongoing zionist war machine, or its repercussions in flooding the country with opium and brown people. The only relations of randian thought to the present day u.s. are that she wanted war lobbies to have even more of an outsized influence (and always distanced herself from libertarians because of this point) and for the H1-B profiteers to have more opportunities to make you compete with pajeets and squatamalans who will work for peanuts to pay off studio apartment rent with four other guest workers.
It's a commie pretending to be a chud isn't it
She predicted the effect your policies would have on Detroit back when it was the richest city in the world.
>clueless lolbert pretending to be right-wing
You're obviously a commie. Why can't you guys ever be honest about what you are? You are always trying to do this chameleon thing on here.
I'm honest about morons like you needing to be purged from our movement
And commies later will try to tell you that the National Socialists aren't socialist.
Change "the rich" for "the israelites", or viceversa, and it's the exact same drivel.
>commie
>Detroit
And then in the next breath you'll claim credit for the American labor movement
i may claim Ayn Rand
she was communist differently from Detroit
One of the worst books I have ever read. It's just awful on all levels. Awful characters with awful punny names. Awful dialogue. Awful plot. It's downright embarrassing to hear people talk about it as a good book. It's about high school tier. By a thoroughly unmotivated student,
It's worth it. All the best!
I'm to the right of anyone on the planet but Ayn Rand can't write for shit. Try anthem, that's the name right? It's her short story which is used to support her political views, much quicker to get to the point.
Interesting thread. I will admit that I never read her or Atlas Shrugged because of the criticisms against her. Reckon I might give Atlas Shrugged a read. Or is it better to start with the Fountainhead?
Probably best to start with The Fountainhead. And if you like it, definitely read Atlas Shrugged.
Star with The Fountainhead. I argue that Atlas Shrugged is a serialized sequel to The Fountainhead, so starting with Atlas Shrugged robs you of the experience and shocks you when Ayn Rand goes directly into politics. The Fountainhead is about the morality of integrity without politics, and Atlas Shrugged complements it by having two of the same characters in The Fountainhead learn about the need of integrity spreading out to the realm of politics.
After The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, you can read Anthem which is short and read some of her non-fiction. We The Living isn't really required reading.
If it isn't obvious, Dominique is a doomer about people whereas Dagny is overly optimistic in trying to convince people to life morally and productively through her efforts. Roark never lets go of his career and integrity and Readen has to learn about letting go of his job because he is being exploited by the government and others around him. Readen is basically Roark if he never learned the ills of society.
Thanks bro.
Read Atlas Shrugged if you want a moron to bludgeon you with her ideology for a thousand pages
Well, how else am I expected to get an erection?
>Willingly reading anything by a woman
Your opinion is automatically discarded. FOR LIFE!
>Holy shit, this turd is so long. But I will finish it.