Late Night/Early Morning Musings on Objectivism and Ayn Rand

Up late with insomnia, I was reading a book called I Watch, Therefore I Am - a little tome on philosophy and television - when I come to the chapter on Ayn Rand. As I read, two realizations came upon me. One has to do with a Rush song called Prime Mover and the other had to do with what is happening to our country right now. So I wrote this (also published over on Daily Kos).

 In the novel, Atlas Shrugged the dystopia is the government. The corporations embody the creative spirit. When the government is finally overthrown, the industrialists (led by John Galt) take over. Their perfect new society is based on individual creativity and freedom from the state. Sound familiar?

It is important to remember two things here; 1) Ayn Rand was an escapee from Revolutionary Russia, where she saw the worst of the oppression it brought and 2) Atlas Shrugged is a work of fiction. This latter point is especially important because there are people who base their lives on it. They are basing their lives on the hyperbolic fiction of someone who has escaped from a bogeyman. The dystopia in the novel was based on Soviet Russia. Because she was under the thumb of it as a child, when everything is bigger, more important and overwhelming (and one is powerless against it), she created a world using Soviet Russia as the ultimate dystopia. Read; the government is the bogeyman.

For modern Americans to live by this work of fiction is contradictory to what this country was founded on, IMO. It was formed and its Constitution written by, Deists and Christians. These two philosophies DO believe in a Prime Mover, though they don't agree on its name or nature. They envisioned a society in which the whole was as important as the individual, where we live by the Social Contract pretty much as laid out by John Locke. To reject these ideas and adopt the Objectivism of Rand is to reject the foundation of America.

It occurs to me further that the Tea Party and other modern Objectivists are actually trying to bring Atlas Shrugged to life. In the novel, the corporatists and industrialists lead a strike against the government which, deprived of revenues to operate, collapses. Galt and his "me first" cronies then take over. I don't know about you, but that sure sounds an awful lot like what the Republicans and Tea Partiers are trying to bring about. Remember Grover Norquist's stated goal "... to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

In Rand's virtue ethics, the only ethical question someone needs to ask is "what's in it for me?" But one thing that these modern Galts either don't understand or conveniently forget is that Rand held Reason as the ultimate attribute of Man. There is very little Reason in their current actions and words. Rand states that the ideal man "... must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself" (my emphasis). That last bit seems to have been forgotten and/or rejected, too.

All in all, I would say that the Objectivism of Ayn Rand is a movement whose ultimate end is incompatible with the American spirit. Why people would act according to the frightened imagination of an author, I cannot fathom. Save that it gives them a rationalization for being selfish.

As to the other realization... it concerns the band, Rush and their lyricist, Neil Peart.

In asserting that man is the ultimate being in the Cosmos, the Objectivists refute the Greek philosophical idea of a Prime Mover. This leads me to believe that the song Prime Mover is a statement from Neil repudiating his former Randian beliefs. In his younger days, influenced by Rand's Anthem and Atlas Shrugged, he had apparently embraced most of the Objectivist Philosophy. But you can see the evolution of his thoughts beginning with Permanent Waves (Freewill, Natural Science, Entre Nous) and culminating in the song, Prime Mover from the Hold Your Fire album.  The repetition of the phrase, "anything can happen" seems like he is encompassing other philosophies. "The point of the journey is not to arrive," is rather Kierkegaardian. But the last verse,

I set the wheels in motion
turn up all the machines
activate the programs
and run behind the scene

I set the clouds in motion
turn up light and sound
activate the window
and watch the world go 'round-

while not a strict acceptance of a deity, voices the idea that there may possibly be one. A Prime Mover. Completely the opposite of the Randian idea that man is the only prime mover and is the end in and of himself. Hence, Neils' rejection of his earlier leanings.

This is what my mind gets up to when I can't sleep because my brain won't shut off. Yeah, it's an odd place, my brain. ;)