*very* interesting...
There was a time when I was quite enamored with Ayn. Indeed her life story is an amazing one....but I also began to note her philosophical disdain _for_ the metaphysical and for the supernatural.
I also learned how men I respect like William F Buckley were not particularly fond of her “philosophy”. Additionally, I was disappointed to learn of her other moral failings...she seemed in them to be a supremely selfish (and not selfish in a morally good sense) person...her breaking of trust with her spouse, for instance, was not an ideal behavior.
Her interviews, available on youtube (some even near the end of her life, like on the Phil Donahue show) were interesting and showed someone who seemed to be supremely interested in the world empirically and politically but not spiritually...which made me sad. Her loneliness was evident.
My conclusion after internalizing all of this leads me to think Ayn Rand was quite right in her conclusion that capitalism was the best economic system, but her dismissal of the spiritual, religious sphere of life was woefully wrong.
My guess is her hatred for C.S. Lewis might have stemmed from the fact that they both seem to have come from the same fountain—an atheistic one—but Lewis was drawn out of that mindset, and she may have been angry about his conversion.
That’s the problem with the cult of Rand. Materialist atheism, whether Randian or Marxist, is going to produce a world no sane person would choose to live in. There is no humanity in either of their visions. She may have done good service as a counterweight against the intellectual bankruptcy of socialism, but at the end of the day she was still selling a brand of madness. Two sides of the crazy coin, IMO.
“...both seem to have come from the same fountain—an atheistic one—...”
Godless souls ALWAYS manifest their human anger. Truth was breathed into the dust of Men at the dawn of time and it cannot be denied.
"Somewhere in the distant reaches of his childhood, when his own understanding of reality clashed with the assertions of others, with their arbitrary orders and contradictory demands, he gave in to so craven a fear of independence that he renounced his rational faculty. At the crossroads of the choice between “I know” and “They say,” he chose the authority of others, he chose to submit rather than to understand, to believe rather than to think. Faith in the supernatural begins as faith in the superiority of others. His surrender took the form of the feeling that he must hide his lack of understanding, that others possess some mysterious knowledge of which he alone is deprived, that reality is whatever they want it to be, through some means forever denied to him." - Ayn Rand
I was disappointed to learn of her other moral failings...she seemed in them to be a supremely selfish (and not selfish in a morally good sense) person...her breaking of trust with her spouse, for instance, was not an ideal behavior.
That is disappointing, and it will lead to a lonely state in life. I wonder if the selfishness is linked to her being a writer - and a good and successful one. Writers are often selfish, it goes with the territory.
Cheers!