RoR: Forum

Tyson,

I had a similar history. I had been studying von Mises and Hayek, along with the founders of this once great country for years before I read the Fountainhead. Actually, all this time a great friend of mine had been trying to interest me in Rand, but I couldn't see what a mere "fiction" writer could say of importance. Finally upon reading George Reisman's "Capitalism" he referred to Rand so many times I had to set it down and get the Fountainhead to figure out what all this fuss was about. Needless to say, my opinion about the value of fiction changed. What Rand provided me was a philosophical basis to wrap around the economics and politics that I had spent so much time studying.

Post 21

Monday, April 23, 2007 - 10:17pm

My sole-pre Randian philosophical education came from my Father, although I would credit Carl Sagan and J.R.R. Tolkien, Larry Niven & Robert Heinlein as influences on me. The "beat them at their-own game" ethos of Doctor Who, where he killed them not with guns but with jelly-babies was my sense of life.

I came of age watching Jimmy Carter destroy what was left of the country, and still see Reagan as a great man - not a brilliant or a perfect or an unflawed man, but still a great man. (And I hated George Bush Sr. even before the Howard Baker's and George Will's of the right pushed him on us.)

I became interested in philosophy as a subject about a year before I read Rand. Nietzsche was the only writer who didn't bore me to death, but I didn't quite get him. I came up with the idea that without choice, there is no need of morality. I didn't make the essential connection that Rand did that this choice is necessarily an individual's choice. But I used that idea to back up my natural minarchist hawkish classical liberalism. I loved the Founding Fathers. I was never a commie nor a racist nor a religious zealot, just a generous deist. Oh, and knowing that I was bi since I was 13 helped me realize that conventional morality and the church were wrong. I rejected the idea that I was a sinner the moment I first understood sex. And I knew in that moment that I'd have a hard time of life. This was just before AIDS was identified.

But my father had taught me when I was 10 that even though you don't like to, sometimes you have to kick the shit out of a bully, and when you do, he suddenly becomes as meek as a mouse.

I was a Randian before I met her.

Post 22

Monday, April 23, 2007 - 10:39pm

Great personal anecdotes.

Evidently, as Ted alluded to, morality is nothing without choice. I choose to agree to with much of Rand because of my own personal exploration of what is morality. Her works and ideas are a means to my ends. And thus, I can subscribe to no one else's philosophy but my own- for this I have to answer with how I live, with my life.

N'er an Objectivist will I be.

All the best,

Tyson

Post 23

Monday, April 23, 2007 - 11:38pm

Tyson, are we toddlers becoming the Village of the Damned?

I wouldn't say that I choose to agree or disagree with Rand. I either see what she sees and agree, or know something different, and don't. I call myself an objectivist, since I owe her that much. I don't take my agreement or disagreement with anyone else as a matter of pride.

Ted

Post 24

Tuesday, April 24, 2007 - 8:57am

Ted:

Since I am not the grand standing type I'll just say I see your point.

All the best,

Tyson

Post 25

Tuesday, April 24, 2007 - 10:24pm

The first Ayn Rand book I read was Atlas Shrugged, which I was loaned by my boyfriend about two months after we started living together (though now, I think I have claimed it as my own book, haha, and it has a special place in our library).

I read it in less than two days, on a break from school and work, getting up with the book still in hand to get food and go to the bathroom, etc.- it completely sucked me in, and demanded my full attention. He was amused, to say the least, that I became so engrossed in it. Apparently, when he got it from one of his friends years before, he had done the same thing, and then proceeded to buy Anthem and We the Living, and also to check out The Fountainhead from the local library- which I promptly purchased the day after I read Atlas.

It was a time in my life where I was experiencing a "rebirth", so to speak, several months earlier from a very destructive struggle in my life with bipolar disorder, three rapes, an eating disorder that lasted twelve years, and four suicide attempts. I had convinced my therapists, through a written argument, that group therapy was the most destructive possible thing to my recovery, and that instead, I needed to design my own "treatment" through the development of individual pride in my own capabilities (a major struggle for me in the past), which they agreed to try- and that was successful for me. At that time, I had never even heard of Ayn Rand except in passing- but, I found much to appreciate when I did pick up her books, much that I had needed to hear and that pushed me to pursue my own passions.

Atlas Shrugged, coming at a perfect time when I had just began my first steps to regaining a life I had tried to destroy, was my catalyst to living in my own right, and for myself. I quit pre-med (not my choice in college programs), joined a band, began pursuing art history (my passion), and truly began my pursuit of happiness through rational selfishness and productivity at that point. It helped me to regain the confidence that was so absolutely mine in the past which I had lost, and to add to it.

I read that book again and again, and have loaned it to my mother, in hopes that she will experience something similar to what I had when reading it. So far, it's looking good. *smiles*

Post 26

Monday, April 30, 2007 - 11:38pm

For those who indicated that they were assigned to read Rand in school, in what type of school, (public/private/adult) and what level? What work?

To the people who first met Rand through her non-fiction, again, what work? Under what circumstances?

I guess we can conclude that word of mouth - friends/Rush/references are more important than marketing - cover art, although I loved the white watercolor covers of the eighties editions.

How many people have YOU turned on to Rand?

Ted Keer.

Post 27

Tuesday, May 1, 2007 - 4:14am

Ted,

I've developed a very hard time with being able to sit down and read a fiction book. I can only read non-fiction for some odd reason.

For this reason, I never actually read The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. I listened to them both on audio. It was great fun.

However, I have read all of Rand's non-fiction. I prefer to read non-fiction, but listen to fiction. Go figure.

Post 28

Tuesday, May 1, 2007 - 12:47pm

While I was a voracious reader in elementary school, I read only non-fiction until I read The Hobbit in the fifth grade after seeing the Rankin & Bass version on TV. My mother actually commented that it was weird that I didn't read fiction. But I think it was mostly because I found so much fiction to be simply bad writing. Once I have found an author I like, fiction or otherwise, I tend to devour all of their books. I am just finishing the last one of Oliver Sacks' that I hadn't read, his Uncle Tungsten, which is a memoir ingeniously interwoven with a history of the material sciences.

But as for being able to listen to, but not read fiction, that seems bizarre to me, but then you might want to look at Ed Thompson's thread on the Fountainhead. Perhaps you two share some rare neurological condition? Weird that two posters to this list have made the same comment, but I've never heard it elsewhere.

Ted

Post 29

Tuesday, May 1, 2007 - 2:09pm