[MD] Can you teach an old dog, new tricks? (Part 3)

[Ant McWatt]

OK Ham,

To conclude the third part of my reply to you:

Hamilton Priday stated May 5th 2013:

> Incidentally, I noted that your response to my Apr 14th message was largely
> a diatribe against my "right wing" views, including the 'Wicked Witch of
> Westminster' quotes and characterization of Ayn Rand as a "hippie". So,
> perhaps this assignment was directed toward my conservatism as much as it
> was a request to provide a position statement of my philosophy viz-à-viz
> Pirsig's MOQ. If you had a metaphysical purpose, however, I'll be most
> happy to elaborate on any aspect of Essentialism you don't understand.
>

Ham,

The impression I have of Ayn Rand is derived from two sources; two authorities if you like:

The first is an article termed "Confessions of a recovering objectivist" by Victoria Bekeiempis.  It can be found via the following link: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/10/confessions-recovering-objectivist-ayn-rand

The second authority is Dr Greg Alvord (the guy who wrote the Pirsig PhD Commentary which can be  found via the following link: http://robertpirsig.org/PhD%20Addendum.htm ).

----------------

Now the Guardian newspaper is a little bit "establishment" for my liking but, as Pirsig also recognises, its opinions can - on the whole - be trusted.  I therefore didn't get a good impression of Rand (or her ideas) when I read the following: 

"Much to the lament of my philosophy classmates, I was that girl who frequently (and loudly!) argued in 
favor of Rand's illogical claims that altruism doesn't exist; that 
selfishness is a virtue; and that 'rational egoism' is the only right 
way to live."
"Thankfully, I grew out of that phase. Not 
surprisingly, but a few years of minimum-wage work cleaning up cat 
faeces, without benefits, and other thankless, unstable odd jobs made me
 question Objectivism's foundations and rekindled an earlier interest in
 anarcho-syndicalism. Eventually, leaving Rand was no more 
different or difficult than, say, leaving a friend who had grown to 
annoy me over time – sure, I was very intimate with her ideas, but that 
just gave me more insight into their outright dysfunctionality, and the 
strength to say 'sayonara!'What's scary is that so many Americans have not
 grown out of that mentally puerile phase. Instead, this contingent – 
now largely comprised of Tea Party radicals – remains mired in her pop 
philosophy..." 

And then later on, in the article, the following:

"Granted, it's doubtful that any political group so suspicious of the intelligentsia would actually read Rand's 1,200 page magnum opus,
 Atlas Shrugged, but her ideas are clearly being used to justify 
inequality, giving credence to institutionalized wealth-based elitism.This
 has to stop, and stop now. But not just for the reasons that typically 
get brought up. Anti-Rand commentators have long pointed out both the 
pragmatic and personal problems with Rand. As evidenced by the Great 
Recession, for example, anything even remotely close to the unfettered 
capitalism advocated by Rand plainly does not work." 
"As a teenager in Russia, 'she watched her family nearly starve while she treated herself to the theater.' She railed against government benefits but cheerfully collected social security and Medicare. She championed integrity, but bastardized Nietzsche's best ideas..."
"That said, her 
theory – and summarily, its corollaries – are belied by the abject 
sketchiness of their most basic premise: rational egoism. Far
 smarter, more articulate people than me have pointed this out, but what
 needs to be emphasized is that Rand conflates descriptive psychological
 egoism (people act in their self-interest) with normative ethical 
egoism (acting in self-interest is the right thing to do). Part of this 
"ought-from-an-is"-type assumption is that altruism does not exist – 
very much the backbone of her belief system." 
"West Valley College's Sandra LaFave does a great job following this line of thought
 and pointing out why it doesn't work. The basic claim of egoists, 
LaFave notes, is that people 'always and invariably act in their 
self-interest'. However, most moral codes call for altruism, which, in 
egoists' account, is 'demanding the impossible'. Moral codes, so 
egoists' thinking goes, should not demand 'the impossible', so we should
 take up a 'more realistic' system such as – ta-da! – ethical egoism."
"To
 accept this conclusion, you have to accept the premise that 
psychological egoism is a given fact in the first place. To date, 
neither Rand nor anyone else has been able to prove definitively that 
the proverbial soldier who dives on a grenade acts selfishly, not 
altruistically."
"Even if, for the sake of argument, we accepted 
that all acts were selfish, there certainly seem to be a great many 
unselfish-looking selfish acts (diving on the grenade to save your 
comrades), as well as selfish-seeming selfish acts (blowing your kid's 
college tuition money on a shopping spree.) LaFave points out that this 'empirical distinction' renders across-the-board selfishness more of a 
semantic trick than something that meaningfully describes ethics. Go 
ahead and claim all human acts come from self-interest, fine. This seems
 kind of silly, however, when the morality of said selfish acts will still be measured by how altruistic they seem."
With finally, Bekeiempis concluding:

"The
 kernel of this belief system is nothing more than a philosophically 
hollow shell. It should absolutely not play a role in policy-making – 
especially when the end result would be disastrous. I outgrew Rand; now I
 wish America would, too."
-----------------------------

Now my second authority for Rand is Dr Greg Alvord, who like Bekeiempis "fell under Rand's spell" as a young undergraduate and then "grew out of" her ideas when he discovered East Asian philosophy and then Pirsig.  Alvord read "Atlas Shrugged" in his 20s, took the protaganist in the book as a role model for a few years but now dismisses it as young person's folly.  Likewise only a fool would dismiss Alvord's opinion in this regard; he has published over a 100 academic papers (not even many full-time academics do that in a lifetime!) and is now Director of the National Cancer Institute in Maryland. 

I therefore have difficulty in taking Rand seriously as a philosopher even worth looking at.  I hope you can also see from the above why I defined Rand as essentially a hippy; 
that is to say essentially "a freedom loving irresponsible drag on 
society"!

The more worrying issue - as an outsider to American politics - is that such a writer is being taken seriously (at least on the surface) by some elements of the Republican party.  Then again, maybe this should come of no surprize because if the American Right took on board a philosopher (such as Noam Chomsky) who promoted global intellectual values (such as free speech and justice for all) rather than biological or social values (as Rand seems to be doing) then its policies would be in danger of becoming too progressive!

Best wishes,

Anthony




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