Ayn Rand and Objectivism

Last fall I finished reading Atlas Shrugged. I had wanted to read it for a while, having heard it mentioned by many people withing similar political ideologies to myself, and I was really excited when I finally found it on the shelf of a Goodwill for $1. At ~1200 pages that's quite the bang for the buck.

I have to say that overall I am not entirely impressed. Ayn Rand seems to suffer from the same problem handling concision as Noam Chomskey.

Obviously she is a smart person, but perhaps she could express things in less words? Several times in the book I felt quite anxious for things to progress, and instead the same themes were getting pounded on over and over again.

From one point of view, this was exactly what she wanted. Atlas was supposed to be her grand philosophical exposition on Objectivism, and she surly did beat in the basics. When I finished the book and read the section in the back which explained what objectivism was I really didn't find too many surprises. Still, I was a little surprise by the shallowness of the philosophy. The basic idea is certainly interesting - it's basically rational self interest. This looks to be very similar to John Piper's Christian hedonism, but falls short of encapsulating the richness of the human experience in a similar manner.

A recent post on the Mokingbird blog talks about the consequences of this partially developed world view. If a philosophical system leaves no room for the pleasure that comes from helping other people, some of whom many not deserve it, even as a selfish motive for a better world for yourself or your children, there is something seriously amiss.

Now, I don't think Ayn Rand completely missed this. In Atlas there are several incidences of people helping each other, but she seemed a bit unable to address this in any formal manner, and thus it seems many of her adherents ignore this component of her philosophy and stick to strict surface-level self interest.

I think this is akin to adopting a surface level philosophy of utilitarianism. Even introductory level philosophy class discussions quickly show how we all object to the idea of killing one to save a few (see below). So is utilitarianism not at all valid? I don't think so. I think we have to go a bit further to look at the full implications for a set of actions. What are the larger societal consequences? How does this change the choice of maximum utility? Unless we go far past the immediate surface level variables defining our problem, we cannot hope to really address something so complex as a moral choice with any degree of rigor.



Still, I would say its best not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are parts of the book that were inspiring and genuinely interesting, and I really did enjoy the story at large. The idea of striving for self dependence and owning up to our own self interest were very refreshing to me, but it is also important not to adopt a system of morality without making sure you fully understand what it is and why its set up the way it is. Anything less is simply morally irresponsible.