Things I hate about Ayn Rand

It feels like it would be better to get off the load of some things off my chest while starting to blog. And one of them is Ayn Rand. Of course her books look to me too silly to get to be a load , but the adulation and hype surrounding her seems to me too dangerous, and also quite puzzling. Knowing that most of the young people are not the ones to cause a July revolution, it becomes still more puzzling to me that what can attract them to Rand ? I can easily understand them being not attracted by Ibsen or Dickens and swearing by Sheldons and Agathas, but what hip do they find in Rand ?

So I come necessarily to the conclusion that to believe in Rand is fashionable for most and only serious for some, as many things are fated to be in this world, good or bad. A more comforting thought to me that people are not behind a Toohey en masse. Since that's what I see Rand as, through her writings she seems to me quite manipulative (and successful at that) and domineering, imposing her opinions on everyone else. Now for a more serious tone.

The first time I encountered her was reading The Fountainhead. I was very thrilled by Roark and dismayed by the fact that somebody as cruel and cold as Roark, Dominique , and Wynand were being put upon a pedestal. The whole novel is about a hate of incompetence , but leaving aside the first question that darts through the mind at this stage that how competent is the writer herself and who is she to judge others, the biggest question that arises is that whether incompetence is something evil ? For Rand has not simply despised incompetence, she has not merely showed the evil effects that incompetent people can have on earth but she has equated the incompetent with evil. I cannot, for the life of me, agree with this. What if I say that Roark and other heroes of the novel are themselves incompetent, incompetent socially, dysfunctional to an extreme degree - is incompetence limited to the sphere of one's profession only.

Of course, there are Tooheys, of course there are missionaries mostly because they have either been disillusioned of life or they had had never the illusion of life. So you will find many lifeless or cruel sort of people in theological activities, but Maugham tackles them better than Rand here. The shallow sincerity of most of the missionaries has always been brilliantly exposed by Maugham , but leaving him aside , Rand has really tackled the shrewd, public characters like Toohey and the hyped-up dummies like Keating or the female writer(I again forget her name too) very well. But what Rand conveys is that every missionary is like that, every person is in fact like that , everyone is selfish.

Of course that's true to me. A person who gives two pence to the beggar does not give them for the beggar's sake really, it is only that he is getting enjoyment out of his charity. Different people take pleasure in different ways, the charming child through caresses and the perverse,wilful child through more taunts being levelled at him, through more scorn being heaped upon him. Some people get a more enjoyment out of thinking of eternal life, so they keep washing themselves in holy waters and sacraments ; some like to think of themselves being remembered by posterity, so they keep trying to do great things ( great may not necessarily be good). But does it matter ? The point is simply that the real heroes are those whose selfish pleasures lie in doing good to others. I do not care that when a mother is sacrificing her only morsels to her unaware child she is doing so only for a selfish pleasure, I only care that it touches my heart. Of course, it is preposterous that anybody should do anything unselfishly, but it is not preposterous that a person, always selfish, yet does something for the other ( maybe due to his selfishness only). The problem with Rand is that she simply does not try to clear the misconception that people are unselfish, but she goes further on imply that no person can do anything for the other unless there is some ulterior, ugly actions or feelings of disillusionment or frustration behind those. It is as if she herself is now not believing in selfishness - why can't she simply believe that there are good actions done in this world for the sole purpose of goodness, that is for the sole selfish purpose of "easing of conscience" and a "feel good factor" for the do-gooder. The do-gooder need not be a Toohey.

As for characters like Roark, very thrilling, very strong mentally , but dismaying. He is cold, ruthless. He has only his assertions to back him that whatever he is making is the best, but should he not understand the types of people, their psychologies, and in what sort of a house would they want to live in. It is like that he's forcibly invading the privacy of people whose houses he is designing ( not simply Dominique's when living with Wynand). Although I admired in fact the astute mental makeup of the man who refuses to see anything beyond himself, yet I did not see the resulting ruthlessness as very admirable.

By the way, I then bought Atlas Shrugged and could read it only halfway through, too disgusting and not even a realistic story. Worse than The Fountainhead easily, strange that the former is more famous. But an interesting new element, brilliantly tackled, is Rearden's wife who looks her husband sort of dirty if he demands passion, who looks upon sex as only something to formalize completely and solemnize completely the rituals of marriage, and nothing more.Rand has always been very good at attacking some of society's conventionalities and ideals, its only that she writes with a propaganda , and no propagandist ever becomes a good writer.