Reader mail: Emphryio

 

emphryio wrote:

 

“I used to love Rand. And there absolutely was misanthropy involved. The misanthropy in the fiction (a few great men pulled down by the lazy masses) is as clear as could be.

It's also a bizarre pipe dream.

In reality the few most powerful people get their power exactly because they'll do whatever it takes, without the constraint of any kind of ethics. Some thing to hold such people back like democracy, no matter that it's heavily flawed (especially in a world where people see no problem for those exact same men to control the news), is essential.”

 

First I must thank you for writing your comment on this blog, but I am afraid I have to tell you that your focus is rather narrow and very selective. You see misanthropy because a struggle between the individual and the collective is depicted, and you focus solely on the fact that Rand’s fiction seeks to show what happens to the individual when subdued to a collectivist society – this, to you, is misanthropy not because the individual is squashed, but because collectivism is painted in a negative light.  It is akin to saying that individual rights activists are misanthropists because they depict the Iranian government in a negative light by focusing on the death of Neda Aghani Soltan.

Rand's novels deal with a world in which the individual rights of men are not respected and instead are run over 'for the greater good.' They are meant to display  the consequences that arise from considering the individual as less important than the collective of which it is allegedly a part. More importantly, the fiction in itself is not a series of edicts of commandments, but rather all of the actions by heroes and villains stem from two sets of principles based either on individualism and collectivism respectively.

I am afraid you have made a misrepresentation, one not uncommon if all you have ever read is the fiction and never cared to examine the principles behind it (which are laid to bare in the non-fiction). Fiction is only the demonstration of a principle in action, and most people seem to take concretes for the principles themselves and not as a specific manifestation stemming from a foundation based on principle. For a crash course on the basics, I would recommend Bernstein's "Objectivism in one lesson" to see if you are indeed correct in your original assertion, which I suspect is flawed. I began my study of Rand’s philosophy through her non-fiction first and then finally tackling her fiction, and the philosophical landscape was much clearer to me than if I had started with the fiction- and gone no further. I make the assumption that you have only read the fiction since that is the only thing which you have mentioned. If you wish to address perceptions of misanthropy in the non-fiction, please feel free to do so.

I also would like to point out that you misunderstood the ethics proposed by objectivism. No objectivist actually celebrates corrupt CEOs and leeches of industry,  It is precisely the system that allows these kinds of men to exist- a mixed economy where they can pull and push for government favors and impunity- that objectivists denounce. It is not the Alan Greenspans that are admired. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact.

It is perfectly possible to become 'powerful' through ethical means, but you have misplaced your concept of 'power' here: The current 'powerful' CEOs are powerful because they have a heaping help of government scruff in their hands and they extend their influence throughout the market and government the same way cancer propagates through an organism. This kind of individual will have no qualms in performing whatever unscrupulous actions he can in his rise to power, but it is precisely the renunciation of principles and of individual responsibility that allows for this kind of creature to ascend to power.

Collectivism (after all, he did it ‘for the good of the company/business’) and moral relativism/pragmatism (‘whatever works’/’the means justify the ends’) make it perfectly possible, and these collectors of power are precisely the kind of people that know how to make government control and intervention work for them: they’ve been doing it for decades already, so all government control ever does is expand their field of play and influence.

You call for collectivism as being necessary to ‘hold these people back,’ when the only thing that is truly necessary to hold them back is, more than ever, a push for individual rights and the understanding of rational self-interest as the moral core of the existence of man. Ayn Rand did not write idly when she wrote, during John Galt’s speech:

“Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that's through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality -- you who have never known any -- but to discover it.”

The 'powerful' men of industry in the objectivist concept are not men who command industry through fear and favor, but are men who have achieved their goals of production and have some modicum of influence not through their use of unprincipled force but through the virtue of their creativity. Unlike the Rat CEOs they are not immune from competition (they have no government 'buddies' watching out for them through anti-competition laws and the like) and are always aware of the possibility of superior competition.

These men and women understand that engaging in harmful practices will only end up harming the market and themselves in the lung run, and therefore it is in their best self-interest to respond with an attempt at offering a superior effort. If you want to ask next “Where are these men and women of which you speak?” I will have to answer “Look at the system you are proposing, a system of government control, and what it has made possible. Then you will know where they have gone.” You cannot expect a flower to survive if it is watered with poison.

So, we have two views of man present here: your letter  and my reply. In your letter you imply that man is an irrational beast who needs to be held back by laws, whereas I have said that all man needs to do is to rediscover his nature as a rational beast and the understanding that rational self-interest is a morality that allows him to exist on earth as a productive individual without despoiling or exploiting his fellow individuals.

To label Rand as a misanthropist because she wanted to see man free to enjoy his life, free to pursue his happiness rationally, free  without being shackled by collectivist laws and sacrifice - it is puzzling, to say the least.

In each hero of hers, from Dagny Taggart to Eddie Willers, you can see that it is within the grasp of every individual to become honest and rational, even if the capacity of becoming super industrialists, chiefs of industry, or world-shattering inventors is not in them (after all, there were many other people in Galt’s Gulch representing different professions, from composers of great note to merely famous actors, and simply unknown but honest and hardworking principled people)- all that matters is that an individual be honest, rational, principled and uncompromising in matters of fundamentals.

Rand used the villains and collectives of her novels to demonstrate the effects of holding contrary philosophies, but in no moment did she ever state that her heroes were a special breed of people and that the principled life was beyond the rabble – that  would have been misanthropic. Instead, throughout the novels there are isolated examples of people responding to greatness or achievement in a positive way (the reaction to the John Galt Line, for example), even if it is people who lack a completely structured philosophical approach, it is clear in the novels that they want to see great things done and admire them.

These anonymous good people become disillusioned and listless (as it is implied in the state of the world in Atlas Shrugged when North America is near its collapse) because they have no structured philosophical approach that would help them understand why  are these things happening and who is responsible for them- they’re good people (like Cheryl Taggart), but by having only an osmosis approach to  philosophy that they are at the mercy of the current and  many drown in it (a point of interest to you on this would be to read some of the essays in Philosophy: Who Needs It? that touch upon this very point)-  they are at the mercy of the tides precisely because they live in a society that has discarded the value of individualism- they lack a sense of self and self-worth that would otherwise save them.

You might want to rethink your original approach, because although you implied that Rand’s view (and therefore your own when you “used to love” her) is an inherently misanthropic one from which you have moved beyond, your words suggest that you have moved into a position rooted in misanthropy: now you are arguing that the only means by which man may be ‘held back’ (controlled) is not by his own mind or rational argument, but by the brute force (translated into legislation) of a collective movement (this is most likely why you see Rand as misanthropic, as she attacks the very means by which you think the individual must be reined back.)

This indicates to me a far dimmer view of the human condition than Rand ever expressed -after all, there are heroes in her works and her philosophy is explicitly geared towards the attainment of a rational state in which men trade value for value, whereas the existence of rational and honest men is qualified by you as ‘a bizarre pipe dream.’