Ayn Rand, a Russian-American novelist and intellectual thinker most noted for her philosophical novel called Atlas Shrugged written in 1957, but first had her initial rise to fame with her 1943 novel The Fountainhead, is a remarkable creature in her way of thinking. She was and still is likely to challenge one’s conventional beliefs and perspectives as to how they should effectively and morally live their lives. Her fictional works obviously present her as a strong proponent of individualism, laissez-faire capitalism, and governmental power having limitations in control, and as a person quite opposed to the welfare state and its system of taxation. She was firm in the promotion of ethical egoism and firm in the rejection of the commonplace accustomed code of altruism, and instead invented her own code of altruism. She believed that each and every individual being is morally entitled to serve their own self interest, that everything that one does for others he/she must also do for himself/herself for the sake of authenticity and for the sake of his/her own personal fulfillment. It is this philosophy of hers that she considers, in an interview with Mike Wallace, to be objectivism or representational of logic and fact rather than being representational of subjectivism or anything based on just a simple non-universal and personal viewpoint.
In a 1959 film, Wallace interviews Rand and refers to her philosophy as “Randism”, in which during this segment of the video she immediately protests to her philosophy being referred to as this, because of her desire in having it be generally interpreted and referred to as objectivism. I find a bit of irony in this since I have come across yet another philosopher who tries to claim their philosophy to be objective. We do in fact have such prolific philosophers all claiming to have indubitable and intrinsic truths, but yet, all of which they claim to be so indubitable and intrinsic are also so dichotomous to each other, how can we not question reality and ask “Is objectivism really existent and can objective truths be absolutely uncovered?” “Is every proposition claiming to hold absolutism of truth, in actuality, holding ulterior subjectivism?”
Clearly Ayn Rand is not supportive of religious faith or any reliance on something above and beyond human existence, but is rather supportive of what is considered to be logic, evident, and plausible. Of course, this is really nothing newly innovative on her part since the prolific number of intellectuals, both preceding her and after her, are evermore operating in this hackneyed pattern of perception and conclusion of reality. I understand why those who are not advocates of faith believe that we people of faith are irrational, and it is because they perceive of us working so hard to serve and abide by the laws of an entity not visible to our eyes or audible to our ears. Such intellectuals do not want to be circumscribed by some idea of the cosmos that perhaps people of society quite possibly could have formed through their imagination and have promulgated to the rest of society to serve. Intellectuals like Ayn Rand, because of the orthodox perspective that religion has formed and prevalently practices through contorted interpretations of doctrine and pulpit-sophistry, think that religion and the god(s) that each religion serves literally want to subjugate your entire life and being to prevent you from attaining your greatest potentiality of identity, intellectual thought, and innovation. I, hereby claim to be a testament against such paranoia of the God I serve in that He is not anything like this since. We are not entitled to conform to one imposed perception of the reality of God, but instead are entitled to conform to our own personal interpretations of Biblical texts, and through our own individualistic relationships with God figure out for ourselves what is obligatory.
This is not to say that all intellectual thinkers are rejecters of faith, because there are intellectuals who are in fact supportive of religious faith.
Many philosophers who are rejecters of faith, much like Ayn Rand, are in a round-about way inevitably the same with the exception of certain aspects differing. They are the same in seemingly to always have the same exact sentiments and reasoning for rejecting religious faith; nevertheless holding the belief that anything reliant on the supernatural is nothing more than pure reliance on emotional consolation and/or euphoria which does not entirely provide any credible remedy and momentous wisdom.
I detect that her rejection of religious faith is derivative of her detestation of the moral precept of “being your brother’s keeper”. She conceives of this as being some form of collectivism and socialism and a lacking of individualism and universal liberty. I can most certainly understand where she is coming from in this regard, because I feel as though perhaps the church is liable or may tend to condemn someone for failing to give unto the poor. I can understand where she is coming from; I believe there is a looming fear within people of having to give and give so much that they end up not having enough left for themselves. There appears to be some kind of fear of persecution from the church or fear of them enforcing condemnation of selfishness, corruption, ignorance upon those who have not much to give or are struggling to give, and will say the Lord is going to punish them for their failure. I refuse to digress in saying there are existent churches, sectors, and religious systems who execute this type of persecution. Additionally, I also refuse to digress in saying that allowing our perceptions and feelings toward God to be controlled by mankind’s sinfulness and poor examples of righteousness is entirely unwise. Not to mention the fact there are also say existent Christian churches and other various religious sects that do not do this. At this point I cannot directly say what religious sects are guilty of this, but I am merely stating the obvious detestable guilt which is used to enforce people to give money or to do whatever it is that the religion tries to manipulate them to do.
Perhaps Ayn Rand conceives of the church as another institution, if it were brought to power as a government rule or theocracy, with its unlimited prerogatives, would wield its power uncontrollably thus bringing upon the people oppression. Frankly, she is right about this and frankly whether the governing entity is conservative or liberal it will bring oppression when given too much power. As long as mankind is preconditioned and programmed by its carnal nature, and as long as institutions are perpetuated by mankind for this matter, regardless if whether or not the presiding institution acts under the name of God, they will corruptively use their unlimited prerogatives when it comes to fulfilling their own self interest. Furthermore, I must reiterate my assertion in saying that we should not be left to base our interpretation of the character of God solely on our perception of people, their deeds and misdeeds, and any one single man-made interpretation of God’s desires and personality.
In watching the interview between Rand and Wallace, I can conceptualize several hypothetical situations of gradual processes throughout the course of one's life that would cause them to hold this morality. I can also understand why she may be abiding by these precepts, however, I believe that her precepts are in fact not totally worthy of adherence, because if man were to adhere to such code of morality I can foresee there being many great mishaps and great societal degradation, more so than necessary. It seems as though she is intending to eliminate any and all moral conviction that compels us to help someone else when in actuality we don’t really desire to do so. She is merely trying to facilitate her life so she doesn’t have to make any inconvenient sacrifices that will inevitably deny her of comfortableness. This is completely understandable, for it seems as though all of us have the tendency to operate in this manner already, perhaps, because humans are inherently selfish and thus need to be taught the meaning of nobility and the fulfillment that can be gained in helping others.
Her philosophy is highly conducive of a dilemma much like if someone were to fall and break their ankle, anyone walking by should bypass this person if the only reason they would try to help them would be to avoid the guilt they would feel for not helping them or to avoid having other people condemn them for not helping the fallen person. Accordingly, no one should help the person if inevitable resentment were to follow because of the moral imperative. Consequently, one has to sacrifice being on time for an appointment or some type of important event that they were on their way to as this incident took place.
Where I do agree with Ayn Rand is we should not have to help others who are going to severely take advantage of our kindness, but instead help them until they are fully capable of helping themselves. We should in fact help someone when it is in our self-interest and we whole-heartedly desire to help them because we have a servant's heart or someone who finds much fulfillment in helping others. Additionally, I have an inquisitional approach that may slightly oppose Rand in perhaps trying to motivate people to develop a self-interest that is directed towards others, and it is: "What if we do not often enough have the motive to help other people when they seriously need help? What if too often we are so caught up in our own agendas so much that we forget about those who are in serious need, and all the while, being in the midst of a society that is greatly declining in prosperity and all the things above, we continue to decline even more because the lack of sacrificial service? What would become of our societal future of success and prosperity?" It seems as though Rand is endeavoring to escape being burdened with any type of inconvenience or ever having to make a sacrifice for anything; which is something very understandable because don't we all try to avoid inconvenience as much as we can?
According to Ayn Rand, the altruistic morality in “being our brother’s keeper”, everyone unhappily becomes enslaved to everyone. She sees this form of morality to be a consequential causation of collectivism and socialism. I object, for the moral precept in being our brother’s keeper does not have to entail the oppression of socialism. In being our brother’s keeper we do not sign all of our rights and our entire life over to meeting the needs of the poor before we tend to our own needs, that is unless if we decide do this because it is in our own self interest. There should be no compulsion and requirement against our free will to make us do what is commonly perceived as altruistic.
We arrive at action by voluntary consent and voluntary cooperation of man, unforced. Her stance on politics in some aspects I find to be quite favorable since it is fundamentally right-wing and quite pragmatic. However, her philosophy has its flaws and even could be precarious or non-beneficial if it were to be entirely executed in our society. I agree the government should be prohibited from being forceful in intruding into the lives of all of the constituents for its selfish advancement such as daunting upon the people unreasonable and nocuous high taxes. The government should only use force when any one or more constituents commit unlawful acts that endanger any part of society. The part of her philosophy that discomforts me a bit is the fact of her being in complete opposition against all facets of control meaning there is no welfare legislation, unemployment compensation, regulation during times of stress, certain rent controls, and so forth. This perhaps implies that once someone becomes rendered to financial distress they will remain there forever because they have no outside compensation or assistance. I say, perhaps welfare compensation and everything that I had mentioned above should not come out of the pockets of us the people and the workers of the middle and upper classes through levying of increasing taxation, but instead the money should come from the same amount of tax dollars that we have already been owing to the government’s income to support those who are impoverished or in the welfare class.
The level of taxation the government levies upon us should remain at a reasonable rate no matter how desperate they become to collect money. No middle and upper class people should bear the burden of working so hard to enjoy the fruits of their labor for so many years, to then suddenly have some totalitarian entity deprive them of all that they worked for and enjoyed having for the sake of creating equal distribution. There must be a balance between right wing and left wing in our society! Socialism, one world power, totalitarianism, and the termination of capitalism will not work. The termination of capitalism is what will destroy our country’s innovation, uniqueness, and effective means of trade. But in the same vein, not ever giving unto the poor and not supporting charitable funds and foundations will not work either.
I know that the government fills their pockets by what we taxpayers give, but the government should not cause us middle class and upper class people, who work difficult jobs, to have to give unto welfare legislation so much that we have a financial status equivalent to those who are within the welfare system. Furthermore, and predictably through time, those unemployment compensators will gain enough money to where they have just as much as the middle and upper classes have once those classes are pulled down through increased taxation, thus creating a one-class-stratification system. The unemployment compensators have the liberty to only take so little for such a length of time to get them back up on their feet. So much wealth and prosperity cannot be borrowed and compensated to the extent that our nation transforms into a one-class-stratification system. We middle and upper class people cannot be enslaved for the rest of our lives to the ones who once were poor and now became no-longer-poor by the sweat of laborer’s brow.
