Thebestoftherest wrote: ↑Sat Jul 22, 2023 6:42 pm
HEy I don't know anything and RAndian Ideology other than it apparently taste bland, can someone explain that maybe use that to help the debate.
Ayn Rand was a refugee from the Soviet Union and like many people who suffered under it, took one look at Western capitalism and said, "This is much better." However, her views coalesced in her science fiction and literature books to create a sort of anti-communism that basically reverses everything Marx believes in the extreme.
Very short summary being that private ownership of everything is superior, welfare and other social programs only encourages parasitic behavior from the poor, that there are "creators" who are the people who keep society running versus takers who are a leech on the former's good will, and the rich basically deserve to be the rich (unless these rich people are stealing from the government or other creators).
Also, "facts don't care about your feelings" and materialism is superior to any spiritual nonsense with the words "A=A" being one of her easiest quotes. I'm simplifying of course. Rand basically believed in a social darwinist view that if we removed societies safety nets, the corrupt society of today would collapse and a better one run by the superior human beings AKA creators would thrive while the parasitic would die off or shape up.
ATLAS SHRUGGED, her magnum opus, was basically the story of how a super genius named John Galt gathered up all the world's smartest and most productive people in a secret valley and once the rest of the world didn't have them, society collapsed into an apocalypse that wiped the slate clean for them to repopulate it. Another notable book of hers was THE FOUNTAINHEAD which was about an architect who really fucking hated when people screwed with his designs and ends up blowing up a building that his employers altered from his plans--which he wins the criminal prosecution of by impassionately saying it was his design.
Randism has some interesting proponents like Steve Dikto (who has been noted as having a VERY WEIRD view of Objectivism because the idea of an Objectivist superhero for no pay or fame doesn't make much sense), Alan Greenspan (who was in charge of the US economy for way too long), and a few others like most Silicon Valley techbros who envisioned their Valley as Gault's Gulch in reality. Terry Goodkind, THE SWORD OF TRUTH author, was a passionate believer in Rand and it started seeping into his works.
Perhaps the greatest critique of the philosophy and biggest argument that video games can be art is BIOSHOCK which had the premise of Andrew Ryan building an underwater sea society based on Objectivist principles. It eventually falls apart because the lack of a social safety net results in people turning to religion as well as popular reformists who Ryan immediately starts using political power to crush (and betrays his own free market principles). Interesting, the popular reformer is exactly the sort of parasite manipulator that Rand would have loathed and many Objectivists have said that Bioshock is also a good argument to the benefits of the philosophy as Rapture was a pretty awesome place before it fell apart.
