Playboy Interview, Ayn Rand (about 1964)

[Tuomas]

I see your point, that you were more praising 1) her method of seeking Truth, her efforts to find the facts, and not relying on faith, and 2) her believing there is an Objective truth.

For 1), this is a canon of modern science and empiricism. Look to the facts; don't just 'have faith' or 'accept dogmas' or 'ancient authorities. It goes back at least to Descartes and Locke, as well as scientists like Galileo and Newton (all four believed in God, incidentally). Generally the school is "Modern Empiricism," though oddly, Rand declined that label.

Please note that one may follow 1) and DISbelieve 2); this is the case of some modern scientists, though folks like Einstein, iirc, do believe in objective truth.

Many scientists of our time are secular and humanistic. Rand is in the same ballpark as these, except for her ambitions in 'objective philosophy' and promotion of capitalism. IOW, if you are secular and humanistic, you have little reason, IMO, to choose Rand as guide or exemplar. Dawkins for example would do just as well, or, earlier on, T.H. Huxley, the biologist.

In sum, IMO, for those who choose Rand, it's more than her devotion to objectivity and facts; they are attracted to her politics.

Yup. Ayn Rand was not the first to believe in objectivity. The neat thing she does is apply that search for objectivity to politics, or more accurately, to economics. Her knowledge of economics is scant, if at all, but her atempt to objectively view social delimas is very interesting. I think she provides some valuabe messages, and her critique of the lack of moral standards in today's social arena is right on. Of course, she is no the only one doing this, but that does not mean she doesn't have a message worth listening to.

 

[FallingToFly]

I think therein lies the key to your opinion: you were forced to read it.

Not so much... most of my teachers found that they could get me to read something quite easily- no force to it, but if I found it to be utterly useless on a personal level, I would say so and proceed on to something else. I believe I was reading the Rose of the Prophet series and Poppy Z Brite at the time, so I was occupied in other ways.

The Ayn Rand Institute, and the Centre for Objectivism

Kudos for her. Now, did they actually do anything, or are they simply those types of organizations that tend to lend prestige to a resume and give out scholarships without actually making any active changes in their environment? (Not being bitchy- I honestly don't know)

If you think Ayn Rand should have taken charge of the world around her, you did not understand what she was saying. Unlike socialist totalitarians who DO take charge of the world around them (Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin), Rand advocated an idea that people should take charge of themselves. You can't force people to be free.

Never said she should have taken charge, honey. I think you misunderstood what I was saying, or rather, asking. Did she go out in the world and attempt to help others with the truth that she had learned, or merely surround herself with sycophants? (Again, not being bitchy- I memorized facts on her for as long as it took to ace the test, and then immediately erased the hard drive of my memory so I could get back to memorizing dressage tests.)


Like Ayn Rand?

Exactly. I have porn to write

 

[Selena_Kitt]

An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man's value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man's reason and his emotions-- provided he observes their proper relationship. A rational man knows-- or makes it a point to discover-- the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them. He never acts on emotions for which he cannot account, the meaning of which he does not understand. In appraising a situation, he knows why he reacts as he does and whether he is right. He has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, his consciousness is in perfect harmony. His emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life. But they are not his guide; the guide is his mind. This relationship cannot be reversed, however. If a man takes his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect, if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind only to rationalize or justify them somehow-- *then* he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction-- his own and that of others.
"Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand,"

ack! this makes me want to cry...

 

[Tuomas]

I think therein lies the key to your opinion: you were forced to read it.

Not so much... most of my teachers found that they could get me to read something quite easily- no force to it, but if I found it to be utterly useless on a personal level, I would say so and proceed on to something else. I believe I was reading the Rose of the Prophet series and Poppy Z Brite at the time, so I was occupied in other ways.

Understandable...

The Ayn Rand Institute, and the Centre for Objectivism

Kudos for her. Now, did they actually do anything, or are they simply those types of organizations that tend to lend prestige to a resume and give out scholarships without actually making any active changes in their environment? (Not being bitchy- I honestly don't know)

I really don't know, either. I do know that the wander around doing seminars and stuff. The problem is that Rand's philosophy sort of frowned on telling other people what to think...

If you think Ayn Rand should have taken charge of the world around her, you did not understand what she was saying. Unlike socialist totalitarians who DO take charge of the world around them (Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin), Rand advocated an idea that people should take charge of themselves. You can't force people to be free.

Never said she should have taken charge, honey. I think you misunderstood what I was saying, or rather, asking. Did she go out in the world and attempt to help others with the truth that she had learned, or merely surround herself with sycophants? (Again, not being bitchy- I memorized facts on her for as long as it took to ace the test, and then immediately erased the hard drive of my memory so I could get back to memorizing dressage tests.)

She did surround herself with sycophants, but she did put in a lot of effort to spreading the word, if you will. The latter half of her life was almost exclusively about lecturing and speaking on the subject, so much so that she stopped writing fiction and concentrated only on the advancement of Objectivism. This has, of course, been quite criticized as well

No matter what you do, you will not make everyone happy...

Like Ayn Rand?

Exactly. I have porn to write

Yay!

 

[amicus]

Try shortening the first row of ~~~~~~~~~~~

Just got up. Will read and see if I have something to say later.

~~~

Thank you Liar...that solved the problem, much appreciated...


amicus...

 

[amicus]

I would especially like to thank Tuomas for posting the link to the interview, I followed, it is active and valid, thus negating the need for me to painstakingly retype the rest of the interview for the post. I also would like to take this opportunity to welcome Tuosmas to the forum and apologize for creating the circumstances the led to jumping into an anti Ayn Rand firestorm, no way to warn you. Thanks again…

~~~


interview

The actual, real interview without commentary:

http://ellensplace.net/ar_pboy.html

Tuomas

I took the ‘without commentary' as a slight dig at first, but then, yes, that is the interview without my comments and it may have just been intended as such.

~~~~~~



Roxanne Appleby…

“…On emotion

An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man's value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man's reason and his emotions-- provided he observes their proper relationship. A rational man knows-- or makes it a point to discover-- the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them. He never acts on emotions for which he cannot account, the meaning of which he does not understand. In appraising a situation, he knows why he reacts as he does and whether he is right. He has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, his consciousness is in perfect harmony. His emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life. But they are not his guide; the guide is his mind. This relationship cannot be reversed, however. If a man takes his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect, if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind only to rationalize or justify them somehow-- *then* he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction-- his own and that of others.
"Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand,"…”
~~~~~

Those of you who care to follow my musings will recognize the thoughts expressed above and I wish to extend my appreciation to Roxanne for posting that segment of the interview and of Ayn Rand’s thoughts.

I have a direct response to the above ‘Randism’, but before I do, I wish to tell you a little story of how I discovered the writings of Ayn Rand.

I was just married to my high school sweetheart, a tall, thin dark haired. blue eyed beautiful girl who caught my drunken ass as I was falling in a roller skating rink while rowdying about in a rival town with a couple of high school buddies. That is another story, but…I had to leave her in our little apartment in Belmont Shores, California to do a duty watch aboard a naval warship anchored in San Pedro.

Now a ‘mid’ shift, midnight to 8am, is eight long hours of drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, (ten cents a pack, 90 cents a carton, Lucky Strikes), logging in hourly to a radio net and monitoring messages on a teletype machine and hoping war doesn’t break out on your shift. It was somewhere in 1958, after the Suez Canal near war and before Vietnam, peacetime, I guess, although we did war cruises throughout my enlistment.

Now perhaps one needs to be in context…Eisenhower, the great General of World War Two, was President and Richard Nixon was VP, although I neither knew nor cared about either, I was not just a high school drop-out, I was a 10th grade drop-out and joined the Navy to learn something other than farming which was how I had been raised.

I was way more surprised than the recruiters, when they tested my IQ and stuck me in electronics school…the only thing I knew about a radio was how to turn it on.

But a Radioman, I became and married I was, with a baby on the way and doing a ‘mid-watch’ aboard ship and wondering how to pass the night…when lo and behold, in a trash can no less, I discovered a copy of “Atlas Shrugged“, discarded by the previous watch as it is now discarded by many…

I began to read and could not stop…and I stumbled home to my lovely wife, who for the first time in our married life, blinked in wonder but brought coffee and sustenance as I read all day until the book was done.

It wasn’t and isn’t, so much what Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shrugged that gripped me, it was her, ‘sense of life’, an aura of hope and optimism for those of us who are cursed with intelligence and forced to think rather than feel.

My life changed upon reading that book…not immediately and most likely not in any discernible way at first, but it changed; I saw the world differently than I had before.

It was much later in life before I realized that the awakening I had upon reading that book was not shared by all. I have concluded that many, perhaps most, simply do not have the capability to exist as an individual and must have group support, suffice it to say that ‘group support’ takes many forms.

And that of course, is the quintessential essence of the works of Ayn Rand, the recognition of the individual human being as the basic standard of value in existence.
~~~


That being said and returning to Roxanne’s paste about emotions…

Ayn Rand, somewhere in her writings, said: “Show me the woman a man sleeps with and I will tell you all that is important to know about the man…” (paraphrase, not a quote)

In context with her other writings…that was profound…for a while…

It is logical to project that extending one’s values to another human being reflects those values and what one admires and respects. It is not ‘logical’ to project that one might find the direct ‘opposite’ of those values to be those things that one is attracted to.

Not logical or rational at all.

Yet…and still…that be the way the cookie crumbles…

And it does make sense…if one accepts the concept of mutual exclusion… i.e., one cannot be the opposite of what one is simultaneously. You can be one or the other or vacillate, but you cannot be both…and it is the ‘other’ that attracts us, yes, the Yin/Yang of Eastern philosophy always comes to mind.

I will have more to say on this…should anyone enquire or if I get a wild hair and too much schnapps one late evening…

~~~~~~~


Pure: “…We know from infant studies that looming objects trigger fear reactions. The consequence, virtually a reflex, is, in a hurry to move out of the path or protect oneself, NOT to try to 'account' for, analyze the cognitive processes that might be involved (insofar as they can occur in a half second).

This is a really pallid attempt by Pure to impute some ‘prior knowledge’ in the human mind at birth, no such thing as, ‘looming objects qua fear reactions’, a newborn has no innate fears, no innate emotions, no innate knowledge or memory.

I used to consider Pure as just a ‘Gadfly’, a mosquito like insect, buzzing about one’s ears that you bat away when they get too near…I have reconsidered, what with his displayed intelligence and cleverness, that he should be treated more as a bumble bee, that one also swats away, but with a folded newspaper.

Pure has and never has anything to offer, only criticism…and thas okay, the world can tolerate critics, like the jerk in Fountainhead, Toohey, was it?

I leave you with this final portion of the Playboy Interview I referenced: reason, purpose, self esteem…

Thanks for reading…

Amicus…

RAND: Yes, I am optimistic. Collectivism, as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead. But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism, have not yet been discovered. I think men will have time to discover them. It is significant that the dying collectivist philosophy of today has produced nothing but a cult of depravity, impotence and despair. Look at modern art and literature with their image of man as a helpless, mindless creature doomed to failure, frustration and destruction. This may be the collectivists' psychological confession, but it is not an image of man. If it were, we would never have risen from the cave. But we did. Look around you and look at history. You will see the achievements of man's mind. You will see man's unlimited potentiality for greatness, and the faculty that makes it possible. You will see that man is not a helpless monster by nature, but he becomes one when he discards that faculty: his mind. And if you ask me, what is greatness? -- I will answer, it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self esteem.



 

[captainscarlett]

weird aside

My publisher's mother was one of Ayn Rand's best friends until her death. I once insulted ayn rand in his house while his mother was there. she spent the next hour grilling me, once she figured out I wasn't talking from ignorance she allowed me my opinion. trust me when I say that I will never do that again. He told me if I ever insulted "Gramma Ayn" again he'd never publish another word of mine.

p.s. how cool do you have to be for Alvin Toffler to interview you for Playboy? Jesus Wept.

 

[amicus]

[QUOTE=captainscarlett]My publisher's mother was one of Ayn Rand's best friends until her death. I once insulted ayn rand in his house while his mother was there. she spent the next hour grilling me, once she figured out I wasn't talking from ignorance she allowed me my opinion. trust me when I say that I will never do that again. He told me if I ever insulted "Gramma Ayn" again he'd never publish another word of mine.

p.s. how cool do you have to be for Alvin Toffler to interview you for Playboy? Jesus Wept.[/QUOTE]

~~~~~

Please tell us more captainscarlett...this intrigues me!

and...welcome a warm welcome to the forum!

amicus...

 

[captainscarlett]

Please tell us more captainscarlett...this intrigues me!
and...welcome a warm welcome to the forum!

What would you like to know, and thanks.

 

[amicus]

[QUOTE=captainscarlett]My publisher's mother was one of Ayn Rand's best friends until her death. I once insulted ayn rand in his house while his mother was there. she spent the next hour grilling me, once she figured out I wasn't talking from ignorance she allowed me my opinion. trust me when I say that I will never do that again. He told me if I ever insulted "Gramma Ayn" again he'd never publish another word of mine.

p.s. how cool do you have to be for Alvin Toffler to interview you for Playboy? Jesus Wept.[/QUOTE]

~~~

What would I like to know? who are you..maybe as a beginner....what would others like to know...perhaps the context from which you speak....you left a lot of room for speculation...but nothing of consequence concerning Ayn Rand and her thoughts, but...that personal anecdote...should that be all you have to offer, is appreciated...

amicus....

 

[amicus]

As I mentioned earlier, I also posted this item on AllPoetry a few days ago...the contrast in responsive commentary is amazing in a way and points out again the truly left wing and jaded constituency that the Author's Forum really is.

http://allpoetry.com/Column/2276792

http://allpoetry.com/Column/2275101


And let it be known there are some very intelligent writers on AP, as there are here, but most of them are open rather than closed as most here seems to be.

Interesting, I thought....if you have the time...read the comments on AP and judge for yourself...the same post...totally different responses...I think it does say something about this forum...


amicus...

 

[amicus]

One further thing...I received several, five to be exact, thank you's from AP writers, for the link and also a mild complaint about the Sexually Explicit Avatars that appear on the forum...this has happened before when others have asked and I directed them to a post of mine that answered a question or gave an avenue of thought.

The Author's Forum, is what it is, of course, as is Literotica in general and I appreciate that...and although I can only speak for myself, though I suspect others might share my opinion, I am here not as a pornographer, but as a writer of stories that have sexually explicit scenes that are often not welcome elsewhere.

I also don't appreciate seeing Penis's and Pubic hair on avatars, not that I suggest a censorship, but I will say that the exhibitionism by many is offensive to me and perhaps others.

amicus...