| | Ted and Jack: I think pretty much anyone can find good critics if they look hard enough. It's a big planet, filled with many experts, and many Rand fans too.
She may have had to work and search much harder than other professional intellectuals. Maybe it was even an objective outrage that this was necessary. I tend to think this. Maybe she indeed had to really go out of her way to write or visit an obscure college professor and specialist in Aristotelean epistemology, for instance, to get good feedback on Objectivist epistemology. But it almost certainly would have been worth it. She chose not to make the effort, I think.
I reject altruism and social duty absolutely. But getting people to critique you can be a great boon, intellectually and personally. It makes you much stronger and happier, potentially. As Benjamin Franklin once famously noted, your critics are secretly your friends, since they helpfully point out your errors.
Given Rand's fame, fortune, intelligence, virtue, connections, personal charm, etc., she could have gotten a lot of high-quality intellectual friends if she wanted them. But I don't think she wanted them. She preferred being a big fish in a slightly smaller bowl.
She also preferred to create and then live in her own personal Galt's Gulch and Shangri-La. This choice is great as far as it goes. But perhaps it doesn't go far enough.
It's terrific to be worshipped as a goddess. It must feel fantastic! But it's possibly, quietly even sweeter and more wonderful to be surrounded by equals and friends -- not worshippers.
Of course, there's only so much a single heart can stand. She fought the whole world magnificently until quite old. Maybe she thought she had strived enough and couldn't do any more. Maybe she thought she needed a rest. She certainly deserved living in Shangri-La and resting profoundly.
Personally, I want the paradise of Star Trek's Captain Pike! I don't condemn Ayn completely on any of this. But there was more to life. She was a great hero -- but evidently not infinitely great.
Everyone needs critics. And she even could have utilized those inside her "collective" if she had allowed them to think and speak freely. But she didn't. This has to be seen as a fault.
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I don't give a damn about my critics. I have yet to meet a good one.
