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| "Think of all the folks we'll leave in the dust." "Oh yes! Ha, ha, ha." |
What a perfect headline and what a splendid opinion piece by .
We are falling prey, in the United States, to the temptation to equate “freedom” with selfishness.The blood running through the veins of the individualistic, freedom-loving conservatives seems to have turned to ice water. Ayn Rand's philosophy, or "morality" as she chose to call it, of the negation of self-sacrifice is the antithesis of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The wonder to me is how those amongst the selfish freedom lovers who call themselves Christians reconcile the Randian morality and the teachings in the Gospel.
This is ultimately a counsel of despair and the direct antithesis of the biblical values of love and compassion.
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Jesus of Nazareth was absolutely clear that we have a responsibility to care for one another. Jesus instructed us to “love one another” (John 13:34). Cultivating the virtues of empathy, compassion, and support for other people is the way we love one another in an individual and in a social sense.
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Yes, Ryan’s attachment to the works of Ayn Rand is revealing of his own views and it’s deeply problematic. But the problem of selfishness as a virtue is far more widespread and corrosive in American society than the views of any one person.
Through decades of conservative ideology, the concept of freedom itself has been narrowed to mean simply ‘it’s okay to be selfish.’ In fact, caring for our fellow citizens is regarded as the antithesis of our own individual freedom.
Thistlethwaite is correct when she says the equation of freedom to selfishness has leached into the consciousness of many in the country who may know little of Rand, while the ardent Rand disciples seem soulless in their lack of empathy. To run a country putting Rand's philosophy into practice would result in life in a dystopia, the likes of which it would be difficult to imagine. Some brave and gifted soul should imagine and write a fictional account.
H/T to IT at The Friends of Jake for the link.
It's actually rather easy to meld Rand's morality with Christian values, even if Rand herself dramatically rejected that road.
ReplyDeleteRand recognized the importance of value, and held that if acting in accordance with your values, if done voluntarily, was consistent with selfishness. (And bear in mind that she re-defined selfishness to mean more than just "me, mine, and to heck with you".) Even dying for one's values was acceptable to her if not doing so meant betraying them or losing them to a degree that made one feel life was not worth living. (She specifically cited people who give their lives to save the lives of people they love as a worthy example.) So (and here's the road Rand refused to travel) if you value other humans, if you value compassion and love and keeping people from poverty and misery and emotional havoc, then you need to act to fulfill those values, or else you betray yourself--you are the opposite of being selfish in Rand's terminology. )To her, being selfless did not mean putting others ahead of yourself in the material sense--it meant living thorugh others instead of living as one's own person, accepting the standards of others instead of having standards of one's own. You, Mimi, are a selfish person in the way that Rand meant the word selfish. So is everyone who can say "I do it my way".) So while being a Christian overtly contradicts Rand, living a fully Christian life because that's what you value would not.
I'm not sure Ryan has thought it throught that way, of course, but there are some people who claim to be both Christian and Objectivist.
You might want to read "The Virtue of Selfishness", which is a book of essays, and probably the best explanation of her philosophy Rand wrote. it's a good deal more readable and more tied to reality than any of her novels. (Read the title essay if you don't want to indulge the whole book.)
kishnevi, your reasoning that Randian philosophy is compatible with Christianity is too byzantine for me to follow. What you've said makes no sense to me. Probably there are some areas in which Rand and I would agree. I read that she was vehemently against racism.
ReplyDeleteI'll be honest. There's little chance that I'll explore Rand's morality further. I choose what I read carefully, because my time is valuable (one of my values!), and I'd rather spend my time reading other books. Thanks for the suggestion of "The Virtue of Selfishness". Maybe I'll read the title essay if I can get hold of it.
The text of the book is evidently available here: http://tinyurl.com/d5xdkz4 .
ReplyDeletePaul (A.), thanks. I have the text, and I am now reading the first essay.
ReplyDeleteDo give us a short book report when you're done. I can't imagine any true compatibility between her "morality" and Christianity, but I'll wait to hear your response.
ReplyDeleteI'm now in the process of reading the first essay in the book. The beginning was tedious nearly beyond what I could bear, but the essay became less boring as I read along. Unfortunately, I'm now on my laptop with no access to notes I made as I was reading on my desktop. I actually agree with some of Rand's morality, such as her aversion to the initiation of violent action. Obviously, her Republican disciples did not read or did not understand her philosophy against war, as they led us into two unjustified wars during the Bush administration and are trying to lead us into another with Iran.
DeleteOf course, Paul Ryan is now disassociating himself from Rand's philosophy:
“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan told Robert Costa of the National Review. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview.” He added that he had merely “enjoyed a couple of her novels,” which also included another bestseller, “The Fountainhead.”
Which is bullshit, because...
Speaking to a group of Rand acolytes in 2005, Ryan said, “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand. And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.”
Apparently, Ryan missed the part of Rand's philosophy which emphasizes integrity and honesty, too.
BTW, the first link to Thistlethwaite's essay up there doesn't work. I found it by going to TFoJ blog.
ReplyDeleteLater in her essay, she calls the Rand-Ryan view a "counsel of despair," which it certainly is. Especially if you aren't one of the big dogs of the world from the get-go. Nasty-minded crap is what I call it!
Thanks. I fixed the link.
DeleteDigby has an interesting post on Mitt Romney's Mormonism and the Gospel of Wealth.
ReplyDeleteRoger, I read Gopnik's reviews of the books on Mormonism in the New Yorker. I know I do not want to read The Book of Mormon. I'll check out Digby's post.
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