Who is Ayn Rand? Flashcards
Wealth was a Physical Sport
In the time before the Industrial Revolution and the Machine Age, it was said that wealth is the
product of brute, muscular labor. This would suggest why women may have been hard at fitting
in with the notion of economic equality, in the past. It was said that wealth was acquired by the
exploitation of workers.
The Moral Revolution in Atlas Shrugged
The story of Atlas Shrugged is, what would happen to the world if the men of the mind refused
to function? John Galt, the leader of the strike of the men of mind, is an inventor of genius and
physicist. He convinces all of the masterminds within his time to leave their stations within
society and abandon the human race. The novel advocates man’s right to live and belong to
himself. Throughout our history, man has always been told that living for oneself, with self-
interest, is evil, and that unselfishly giving yourself over to the common good, was pure, and
right. This was stressed because, of course, they did not want you to be free. They wanted and
needed man’s labor. Before machine’s, human muscular might is all they had. This sort of self-
sacrifice has always been presented as representing benevolence and love for mankind. It has
commonly been called, “Altruism.” It is a code to die by, not to live. Altruism and morality were
illogically, poised as synonyms. Mankind’s response has always been an expression of horror
and indignation when they did not approve of someone’s particular choice of WHO should play
slave and beneficiary. However, they never question the basic fact that man is inherently free
and that it is his right to be so. It is a fact that can never be escaped.
Capitalism is a Victory, Nearly Realized. Or, Capitalism Nearly Delivered Us to Ourselves.
Capitalism opened the door to trade, in lieu of violence. To ability, not brutality. For man’s
capacity for furthering life, not inflicting death. The reason mankind had that BURST of invention
and intellectual expansion in every area of academia during the industrial revolution is because
they were gaining civil rights for the first time in human history, and all that creative force was
uncorked! Capitalism is not based on “survival of the fittest,” man’s methods of survival is not
that of an animal, men do not survive by fighting over a static quantity of meat (or wealth). We
solve problems and procure solution. Our rational interest is against war, and all forms of
fighting (not to be confused with passion).
How We Still Hang On to Illogical Cognition
Ayn Rand SAYS, that the tragedy of Western civilization was that while men rejected the
theology of mysticism, they did not reject its ethics of sacrifice. She states that what changed
was the beneficiary, so then, it was not God, but society, who was to be the collector of men’s
sacrifices. Capitalism cannot survive, however, within a system that scorns self-interest. This in
totality, is Ayn Rand’s theory. I will see if I agree with her as she writes .
Sadists and Masochists tend to have a lot in Common
To think is in Man’s self-interest. The man who sacrifices others is no more concerned with his
self-interest, in fact, than the man who sacrifices himself. The same goes for those who pursue a
policy of irrationality, evasion, parasitism, and destructiveness. Sadism and masochism are two
forms of irrational self-disinterest.
The Free- Capitalist Society Standards
A rational society offers men condemnation for actions or traits in character that are anti-life
and contempt for their vices and wrong doings.In order to have a free society and all of its enjoyed luxuries, you must have many, fundamental
basics in place. They must be learned men who understand the world around them, they must
be taught how to think independently, there must be responsible leaders who run the society
and who are rewarded for serving such an important role, and they have to have basic human
rights.
Ayn Rand Solves and Dismantles Our Fatalistic, Self-Fulfilling, Metaphysical Motif
The metaphysical belief that suffering is a natural component of man’s existence has seed in the
illogical philosophies men have been offered as a guide by which to live. Whatsoever a Man
believes, it WILL BE- to him. If he believes that life on earth is misery- it will be. Without a logical
mode of being, Man’s life could be nothing BUT tragic. If one genuinely would like to alleviate
human suffering, one must begin by recognizing that to live “non-tragically,” man requires a
rational view of existence and rational code of moral values. He must think. He must judge. An
unearned forgiveness of evil, is a shrug of indifference toward the pain of the innocent. There is
such a thing as right and wrong.
What Leads to the Productive Human Being?
Productiveness is the primary expression of man’s rationality in his relationship to nature.
Ayn Rand and her Objectivist Philosophy: How to Think
The name Rand has chosen for her system of thought is, Objectivism. Following Ayn along her line of Objectivist logic (she is a philosopher), she says that living organisms’
existence is not unconditional, it depends on specific courses of actions. It is the living organism,
only, who constantly faces the alternative of life or death. Life, is a process of self-sustaining and
self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies. It is the concept of Life that
makes the concept of “value” possible. It is only for the living entity that things can be good or
evil, for I must value what is good for me and I must not like that which is evil toward me. It is
only a living organism that is therefore capable of needs, goals, morals, values, etc., in life-
meaning. They have a practical derivation. Given the appropriate conditions, the appropriate
physical environment, all living organism, with the exception being Man, are set by their nature
to originate automatically, the actions required to sustain their survival. Man is born with no
automatic means of survival. We are only equipped with our ability to think. Therefore, we must
think, act, constantly learn, and support one another- volitionally. This is proof that we NEED
each other. We MUST think and be conscious. The passive, perceptual level of awareness is
inadequate a state for Man to exist in. He must therefore exert his will in the desire to be
conscious and present, at all times. He must exercise his mind toward conceptualizing and
forming abstractions. These are the human level of thinking. It is upon his ability to think that
man’s life depends. The key to human nature is the fact that Man is a being of volitional
consciousness. It explains very many things about Man- his personality, behavior, existence, etc.
What an entity is, determines what it ought to do (and be). He must make the choice to think
and carry out any other functions, for that matter. You are NOT free to evade your nature. You
must answer to it. You cannot escape the consequences of acting against your nature: anxiety,
depression, failure, unhappiness, misery, unfulfillment, destruction, and so on. **Thinking is
Man’s basic virtue. Reason is the faculty that perceives, identifies, and integrates the material
provided by his senses. Thinking is the activity of perceiving and identifying that which exists- of
integrating perceptions into concepts, and concepts into still wider concepts, of constantly
expanding one’s knowledge to encompass more and more of reality. The tool of thought is logic.
Logic- the art of NON-CONTRADICTORY IDENTIFICATION. Everything is linear and works/working
together. Evasion, the refusal to think or obey logic, IS the source of most of the evils that have
been historically found within Man. Man’s life means: Life lived in accordance with the
principles that make man’s survival qua man, possible. Reality is an absolute. Everything that he
does must be in accordance with the facts of reality. To exist, both to stay alive and to live well,
is one’s standard. In Atlas shrugged, and with Ayn Rand in general, she does not advocate a
single moral principle that cannot be traced back, by an unbroken chain of logic, to the
demonstrable requirements of man’s survival qua man. Such is the great originality of her
approach as a human being to life, and in her writing. Rationality is the unreserved commitment
to the perception of reality, to the acceptance of reason as an absolute, as one’s guide to
knowledge, values, and action. What are the major virtues man’s survival requires? Rationality-
independence-honesty-integrity (you are an integrated being and have integrity)- justice-
productiveness-productivity- activity-pride. Honesty, meaning the refusal to fake reality. Here is
a further line of logic: Since life on earth is the standard, then it is not the man who sacrifices his
values (“humility,” “altruism”) who is moral, but the man who ACHIEVES them, not the man who
renounces, but the man who creates; not the man who forsakes life, but the man who makes
life possible and extends it. Man is an end in himself, and each other. The achievement of his
own, and other’s, happiness is man’s highest moral purpose. The purpose of morality is to teach
you how not to suffer and die, and to enjoy (pleasureful) yourself and live. To hold one’s own
life and one’s own happiness as one’s highest purpose are two aspects of the same
achievement. Existentially, the activity of pursing rational goals, is at the same time, the activity
of maintaining one’s life; psychologically, the resultant reward and concomitant is an emotional
state of happiness. Life, is an end of itself. Life, is worth living for. The relationship of cause to
effect is constant. If you achieve that which is the good by a rational standard of value, it will
necessarily make you happy. You need to know WHY things make you happy. What, makes you
happy. If man were to make choices based on whim, in other words, without conscious
awareness as to, WHY, they adhere to something, then, in the moral wilderness that would
result, their interests would, of course, clash, and men would have no alternative but to view
one another, as they have throughout all human history, with fear, suspicion, hatred, as
potential victims, or executioners. Throughout history, Ethicists, philosophers, etc., have
commonly declared or implied that man’s basic moral alternative is: to sacrifice others to
himself (they called it egotistical)- or to sacrifice himself to others (which they called humility or
altruism- higher good). Moral- concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the
distinction between right and wrong; ethical.
(Random Notes from a Nathaniel Branden Reading I forgot to include in my Notes)
~Nathaniel
Branden grew up in a household where being unhappy was displayed as normal. He took control
and changed his life. ~ Marriage is initiated with so much love, devotion, affection, and goodwill.
~ Nathaniel Branden deals with the subjects of Self-esteem and Romantic Love. You must love
yourself first in order to be successful in love with another. Our lives are run by self-fulfilling
prophecy. ~Quite marvelous things can happen by relatively simple means. Simply becoming
aware will make marvelous things happen. ~Pain or negativity, something unpleasant in
experience, always means, either, something must be fixed or you must gain a new skill for
which you have no understanding. Your lack of knowing is what is causing the frustration. You
are not doing something properly.
Hot Facts to Send Your Brain a-Ticking
1) A man’s brain is the only vital organ that is volitionally operated. His heart, lungs, etc., function
on their own. 2)In positions of leadership and at the top, you are creating Men into what they ought to be, what
they would like to be, and into what you would like them to be. It is an honorable position and
worthy of reward. 3)Rand is a worshipper of Man. 4)The base of the science of psychology is the need to answer two fundamental questions: Why
does a Man act as he does? What would be required for a Man to act differently? This pertains
to his physical, as well as mental actions. The key to his motivation lies in the realm of values. It
is Man’s values that determine his actions and emotions.
The Argument for Mental Labor (vs. Physical)
**Good ideas, create an endless amount of prosperity and wealth for a person. Physical labor is
limited to what physical labor you can do and, it is limited to your doing one task at a time. The
benefit of this time, the time of the Mind, you can make an endless amount of money and
conceive or any level of greatness and luxurious lifestyle you want for yourself, and make it
happen. Leaders of the Mind dominate during this time. They conceive of ideas and create this
world that we live in, including everything in it. Every item of convenience.
Ayn Rand’s Objectivist View of Man (As He IS)
You must be able to think for yourself, to look outside the frame of reference of one’s
predecessors and contemporaries, to question their implicit assumptions, to challenge their
standard definitions and to look at the facts of reality with an unobstructed glance (this is
characteristic of Ayn Rand). Ayn’s postulations are startlingly illuminating. Branden writes, “No
single book (Atlas Shrugged) has ever challenged so many traditional beliefs in so many areas of
human life. Just as Rand presented a new code of morality, so emerging from the pages of Atlas
Shrugged is a new concept of man, a new concept of the human potential, of the human ideal
(that we have spoken of for all these centuries!). This concept is, the Man who is passionately in
love with existence, passionately in love with his consciousness, the man of intransigent
rationality, and inviolate self-esteem. In Atlas shrugged, the character named, Dagny Taggart
sees John Galt for the first time and remarks on his features: “…a face that bore no mark of pain
or fear or guilt. The shape of his mouth was pride…and the look of serene innocence…she
grasped the intense perceptiveness of his eyes-he looked as if his faculty of sight were his best-
loved tool and its exercise were a limitless, joyous adventure, as if his eyes imparted a
superlative value to himself and to the world- to himself for his ability to see, to the world for
being a place so eagerly worth seeing.” (You can READ things on people. You are always SEEN.
As within, so without. It is real. Just like the movies. Do not forget these things, it is easy to
forget in this dead, zombie like, Kardashian world.). Ayn Rand paints a rational picture of the
ideal Man who is BEING THEMSELVES at all times, without holding anything back. So, this would
be like the movies, and like the popular kids in school. Happy, confident, full of self-pride,
everything is magical in experience, and REAL, REALLY HAPPENING. Fantasies come to life. No
delusion. One can surmise, from all of Ayn Rand’s works, that if you choose to be conscious and
obey reality, you will be popular, a good and beautiful person, well-loved and liked, etc.,
because, that is, logically, all that you could be! The heroes in Atlas Shrugged are distinguished
because they have chosen to exercise rationality in ALL aspects of their lives, not just in their
work. Many great Men in history choose to utilize their thinking capacity within their careers but
fail to put it to use for the other aspects of their lives, which is irrational. Case in point, the
Greeks were great thinkers and promoters of rationality, but their societies were based on
slavery and they were highly superstitious of women and doubted if they had souls! **For Man,
and for me, I wish to attain the most highest values possible. In this book, the
mystic/theological-altruistic-collectivist ethics has received an analysis from which that ethics
can never recover (amen!).
Thinking is a Manual Obligation, beset Upon Man
We must work to be conscious of as much as we can, at all times. We are not able to focus on
100% of things, it would be too much quantity to focus on. Thusly, we are always operating
automatically/subconsciously to a point. You must strive to be responsible and be alert about
everything going on within and without you, you must always seek to understand things when
you do not outright, and you must always ask questions and pay attention to things-double
check everything. **Man’s knowledge of reality is not innate, it must be acquired by the process
of thinking- which he CAN shun.
The Majority of Men (most evident today) Live to Survive, Not to Enjoy Life. We Are Largely Unsuccessful at Living
The majority of Men (you can see it still prevalent in our Kardashian world) hold values that are
part-rational, part-irrational- part-consonant with and part-inimical to his nature and needs-
consequently, they spend their lives in anxiously precarious fluctuation between life and
destruction, neither dying immediately nor achieving their full human potential (I didn’t die
a.k.a. kill myself-good job, but I didn’t win, either. I didn’t live a full life).; they pay the price of
their unresolved contradictions (internal and external) in frustration, misery, and neurosis
(expressions of unhappiness). Contradictions in one’s values result in contradictions in one’s
emotions. There you become conflicted. Psychological conflicts are the base of philosophical
conflict.
