what is the deal with Ayn rand

[chaz wyman]

Let's face it. Christians are a confused bunch of morons.

And let's face it; that kind of sweeping statements won't help you convince anybody about anything, least of all any Christians. Provoking people is good, insulting them will only make them stop listening to whay you have to say.

The truth hurts?

[Pluto]

This guy moves (presents/hands on hips) like Hitler did. I see Hitler when I see this guy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH-SyrS9 ... re=related

Though, I like this guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-y-Anmm ... re=related

[chaz wyman]

This guy moves (presents/hands on hips) like Hitler did. I see Hitler when I see this guy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH-SyrS9 ... re=related

Though, I like this guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-y-Anmm ... re=related

I'm puzzled why you think they are different.
They are both making lots of money telling people what to do based on a lie.

How do you think this relates to Ayn Rand.

[Pluto]

True, they both do that, but I feel the Joel character is less vindictive and dangerous in his message. Are all belief systems not fabrications and so one could say, based on lies.

The two links I put up were a natural progression from the previous links and conversation regarding christianity. Though, what these two guy have in common with Ayn Rand per se I am only able to speculate. Perhaps, to say, all three put forward ideas of how a life should be lived in all its complexities. And, that her ideas could be a reaction to theirs and theirs hers, though somewhere along the way both have become fused into a paradoxical totality.

[The Voice of Time]

Reading the wikipedia article about Ayn Rand she appears to me to be the kind of person who feeds the weak to hungry lions. I name her immoral and void of understanding human values, but stupid I need more info to reckon.

[Pluto]

Actually, I was only half joking about the character Joel. But just listen to what he's saying. It is extremely down to earth and relevant, (only at the beginning perhaps) he uses god as a goal. And, he doesn't have the 'corporate' about him, that others might. But then, he dilutes it by using Capitalism as his goal.

[Pluto]

There's an ideology that takes a lot of effort to implant: it's so inhuman that it's hard to get into people's heads, the ideology to just take care of yourself and forget about anyone else. An extreme version is the Ayn Rand version. Actually, there has been an effort for 150 years, literally, to try to impose that way of thinking on people.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/ap ... ext-occupy

[chaz wyman]

There's an ideology that takes a lot of effort to implant: it's so inhuman that it's hard to get into people's heads, the ideology to just take care of yourself and forget about anyone else. An extreme version is the Ayn Rand version. Actually, there has been an effort for 150 years, literally, to try to impose that way of thinking on people.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/ap ... ext-occupy

Such an ideology flies against all natural instincts that have made humans what they are.
No man is an island and no man can be an island. Modern living, for which humans are not adapted, may equip them for the first time to be insular and put on the pretence of being self-sufficient whilst reaping the benefits of modern technology which can furnish them all the basics without socially interacting with those who provide them.

However, when it comes to the basic human need of friendship and companionship, the ideology falls down. It is no surprise that Rand's own life was a complete contradiction of her ideology.

[ForgedinHell]

Young kids don't know a lot about anything, so they don't have much to use in their intellectual arsenal to argue against Rand. Her philosophy is very simple; and, therefore, easy for young kids to understand.

Many kids also have passing fads with Marx, and such commie nonsense as well.

In the end, the system that works is capitalism, with some government intervention when needed. Rand mistakenly thought the free-market could never fail in any situation, and that's why her opinion ultimately fails as people get older. For example, two people involved in an exchange, that leads to the production of a television, that leads to the pollution of the air I breathe, have harmed me without paying me. That's why Friedman stated controlling pollution is a government job. Rand completely ignored such things as externalities. Had she not done so, then she would have seen that her own system of morality actually required the abandonment of a totally free market system.

Plus, as boys get older, they fixate on more attractive women.

[chaz wyman]

As we all know we have had capitalism working for us since long before 500BC when the Greek ships plied their trade here and far. Sadly this inevitably led to s system where wealth was polarised and concentrated amongst an elite body of men to give us aristocracy and feudalism for millenia. Unbridled capitalism leads to the polarisation of wealth and feeds on poverty of the many for the benefit of the rich, through mechanisms that even a child can understand.

It was not until the early 19thC that social policies that redirected the wealth to the poor that the situation for the many was able to mobilise market forces to improve the standard of living for all. Welfare, progressive taxation, public housing, public sanitation, education and so on are just some of the methods which have put resourses and cash to places where it can do most good (out of the hands of the super rich). Re-directing wealth to the bottom created the demand that fed innovation and technological advancement. Thankfully socialism is the only politics that can do this.

[ForgedinHell]

@Chaz: Seriously, your fascination with socialism just makes you look stupid. Feudalism was not capitalism. Socialism brought mass deaths in the USSR, China, and many other places. The Russians gave up on it, the Chinese are running away from it, and India has a revived economy after abandoning socialism. You can keep up the commie dream, but the real world is leaving you behind.

[Arising_uk]

... and India has a revived economy after abandoning socialism. ...

When did they have this?

[chaz wyman]

@Chaz: Seriously, your fascination with socialism just makes you look stupid. Feudalism was not capitalism. Socialism brought mass deaths in the USSR, China, and many other places. The Russians gave up on it, the Chinese are running away from it, and India has a revived economy after abandoning socialism. You can keep up the commie dream, but the real world is leaving you behind.

Moron - Feudalism was the consequence of capitalism.

Wrong again it was not socialism that brought death to China and Russia it was tyranny!! Just the same before and after the revolutions in those countries, and exactly the same now that Capitalism rules in China there is just as much daily death from the tyrannical system.

It's you that is looking fucking stupid. You are failing to make a distinction between an economic system and a political one.
Caesar's proscriptions and other misdemeanours such as the sacking of Gaul were all done in the interests of capitalism.

Go back to school.

[Pluto]

Ayn Rand
Influence around 06.00
http://thoughtmaybe.com/video/all-watch ... ving-grace

[chaz wyman]

Ayn Rand
Influence around 06.00
http://thoughtmaybe.com/video/all-watch ... ving-grace

I saw this bit of fluff when it first came out on British TV.
It is a monument to the power and the allure of the image, and the axiom that bullshit baffles the brains. It preys on the unenlightened idea that seeing is believing; the seduction of saying outrageous and untrue statements next to the truth. Before this documentary, no one in their right mind would have associated Ayn Rand with any of the technological achievements or political and economic movements that the programme discusses. You might as easily have made a programme that applied Marx, or Russell in the same way.
But the fact is that Rand was always primarily a second rate novelist masquerading as a third rate philosopher. Her popularity exists rather too late for the history that the programme brings to her and is most vested in teenagers angst - at least those teenagers who are not smart enough to understand Nietzsche.
Rand should stay in the wank-bank of these sub-nietzschean teenage boys. She has little to offer philosophy.