>>Ayn Rand was an intellectually brilliant woman whose larger life was imbalanced and her philosophy severely diminished by her atheism and self-centeredness.<<
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Excellent summary of Rand. She is a perfect example of an atheist who tried to erect a false god and worship it.
Then she went all Fatal-Attraction on her protege, Nathaniel Brandon. I sometimes think that was God’s wakeup call for impressionable highschoolers like me who were following her extremely closely in the late ‘60s-early ‘70s; although, frankly, I think becoming a college freshman was antidote enough for her bizarre ideas.
Do her modern followers even see how kooky she was?
Psychologically she was clearly a Borderline Personality, splitting everything/everybody into camps of absolute good and absolute evil—the personality deficiency that eventually unraveled her.
Does it matter?
She told many truths. Learn to separate the wheat from the chaff.
We did it with the Donald, didn't we?
I didn’t get around to her until the 1980s; she wasn’t included in any schooling that I received.
I always thought that her life could have been so much happier, her accomplishments ever more briliiant...but she was philosophically and emotionally ‘stunted’.
The books are interesting, and have a lot of good points in them. But knowing how she actually lived her personal life tainted a lot of it, for me.
I always figure that if someone possesses a good, valuable philosophy, it will show positively in the record of the person’s personal life. Otherwise, what good is it?
If you can’t make it personal, it’s all just academic; and Most of us don’t live ‘academic’ lives.