Ayn Rand and the contradictions of Objectivism

I was slumming through a few of my lesser visited forums the other day when a friend of mine brought up an old thread about Ayn Rand and he bemoaned how misunderstood she was. Keeping in mind that he is in his early 20's and that Rand tends to hook every 20-something at some point with her siren song, I gave him this perspective by looking back from 40 to 20...

Ayn Rand is a great portrait of self-contradiction. I love her only for the twisted logic that was her life. Atlas Shrugged is interesting, but I think I made a resolution to never read it again after I hit 30.

Rand's Nutshell Objectivism: "Do what you need to fulfill yourself, but try to do it following my philosophy. Oh! And buy my books so I can be fulfulled."

Gotta love her selling an entire philosophy just to live comfortably. "Elron" Hubbard is another author who came up with a brilliant scheme. Sell Scientology, to sell books. Want the secret of the universe?..buy our texts for $100k I hold Rand in much higher regard, but as I get older, I also become more supercilious.

I don't dismiss everything Rand promoted, but I definitely see strong contradictions in her philosophy that can not be resolved in a simple manner. Her very insistence that total individualism is the nadir of human accomplishment while depending on a social structure to print, distribute, and pay for her lifestyle is a complete piss-off. She wishes to eschew the need for others, but can only do so within a social system her philosophy must ultimately deny.

Personal janitor's philosophy/opinion to follow....warning!: Objectivism is empty if you remove it from a civilized world. Man is still at his core a stupid beast striving to be more. He was incapable of that "more" until he submitted to the safety, organization, and rules a societal structure demands. To proclaim (as Rand does) that she no longer is beholden to those rules because others can toil while she only pursues that which she holds important is a bankrupt philosophy. Bankrupt because it is not universal. For objectivism to work, society must always have some whom are willing to remain within the rules and socialization and benignly ignore objectivist disruption. In other words, we are back to the two-class conundrum of Lang's Metropolis... Slaves and (in this case) willfully ignorant masters.

She was virtuous if nothing else. She did do her best to live by her philosophy her entire life. She followed her virtues explicitly, even dying alone. The problem was the, philosophy was not completely self-contained.

I am not saying there is no admiration. I was a big fan of Rand in my youth, like so many others. The problem is that her "path" is not fruitful. It has no destination. It's spiritual stock with little value. I know of no "old" Objectivists. One of the reasons I am a Buddhist is because it provides what Objectivism lacks (basic social acknowledgments and true pluralism) while still demanding personal responsibility and self-awareness (a la Objectivism) from the individual.

I do miss all the people I used to debate Rand with. The Lyceum is rather empty these days. What ever happened to the people who could read criticism of their own philosophy and actually LISTEN to it and take it to heart? We have lost something since 9/11. Too much fear. Too much partisanship. Too many civil liberties and religious freedoms lost. Looking back, I realize that even I have been tugged into more extreme positions than I once held, if only to protect a few of the values I hold dear.

Even the lowly Janitor gets to talk with an instructor from time to time.