The poison of Ayn Rand

I’ve seldom read anything with which I’ve disagreed as much as I have with Ayn Rand, in her series of essays The New Left: The Anti Industrial Revolution. I haven’t read much of her before, but her ideas keep popping up, and I thought it was time to read what she actually had to say.

Wow!

She reminds me of David Icke. There are parts I strongly agree with. Her criticism of certain aspects of philosophy, particularly the abstract removal of philosophy departments (I know, I also faced the beast by majoring in philosophy). She writes a wonderful piece criticising a position by certain conservative philosophers who refused to take a position against the Vietnam War, seeing it as political. What could be more political than philosophy? Of course she was equally critically of the Marxist opponents of the war. In bemoaning the general lack of critical thinking I agree with her. But, like David Icke, she seems to lure the weak thinker into agreeing with much of her statements, and then tossing in something completely unrelated, and hoping the reader agrees with that as well. In fact, she’s easier to disagree with than David Icke, because her writing at times is so emotional and irrational, that if one doesn’t share those prejudices, they come across as jarring.

I don’t know enough about Objectivism, Rand’s philosophy, to dismiss it out of hand. There are Objectivists who oppose her sexism and homophobia. But from what I’ve read of Rand’s attempts to apply it, I’m not interested to explore much further. Her legacy leads to blindly supporting the aims of big business, coloured by the terms freedom and capitalism, not recognising that it was Rand’s childhood fears that coloured so much of her philosophy. The Bolsheviks confiscated her family business, and she spent much of her early life fleeing from their physical influence, and all of her later life fleeing from their physchological influence. Anything that hinted of the hated collectivism was vehemently opposed.

Perhaps it was a timeous read, as I’m giving a talk at the Origin Festival this weekend, broadly looking at the links between technology and green living. And Ayn Rand has made the enemy, to use that unfortunate term, or rather the muddy thinking so prevalent today, a little clearer. To her, there’s technology on one side, and the ecologists on the other, otherwise described as savage, unwashed hippies, representing all that she fears, collectivism, reptiles in the swamps, and so on.

She’s badly deluded!

Technology is a manifestation of human consciousness. To Ayn Rand, technology (which she sees simply as a beneficial consequence of reason) is a god (how she’d hate that term), to be worshipped regardless of its consequences. She makes the ridiculous statement that one should give thanks to the next sooty smokestack one sees.

Her poison lives on today in the same short-sited support for nuclear technology, for genetically-modified food, and so on. Anything smelling of hippies must be opposed. I remember reading a comment on a forum recently. The article was about solar panels on individual houses, and being able to sell excess electricity back to the grid. A rather rational and sensible concept. The comment basically read: I am an anti hippy. I don’t support this. Rand might not have been so unsubtle, but the same irrational prejudices apply.

She was unable to see the bigger picture, to understand the economic forces involved, to look at the long term effects, to realise that rationality and reason can also be used as tools of manipulation. In a pro-GM blog, people opposing GM food are described as anti-technologists, a similar prejudicial label to those used by Rand to denounce her dislikes. I find the anti-technologist label rather amusing when applied to me, but it has made me aware of the need for me, as someone with skills and interests in both areas (technology and ecology), to correct this misconception. My aim in the talk (and perhaps this post) will be to reconcile those two forces, not in a naive technology will save the day way, but looking at the broader context, and the influence of consciousness. The union faces attackers from both sides.

In contrast, another book I’ve just finished is The Art of Happiness, Howard Cutler’s book based on his interviews with the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama would perhaps be described as a mystic by Rand, a term she, like hippy, uses stongly in the negative. The Dalai Lama comes across as highly rational. However, his is a rationality without obvious prejudice. He can see things clearly, including his own faults, unlike Rand, whose irrational homophobia (she said that morally it is immoral, and more than that, if you want my really sincere opinion, it is disgusting.”) and sexism (she apparently stated that women are not psychologically suited to be President) gives her critics more than enough ammunition to tackle her with.

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