Yes, I did at one time, for a few years, consider myself a student of Objectivism. I didn't feel comfortable calling myself one, simply because I never felt I had enough of an understanding of some of its finer philosophical points. And no, I did not become interested in Rand as a teenager. My father gave me one of Rand's philosophical books to read when I was in High School, and I hated it. I was extremely liberal in my "thinking", and saw nothing but coldness in her writing. It wasn't any naive idealism that attracted me to Rand's work as a youngster. Her ideas only made sense to me as an adult.
I developed an interest in Objectivism when I was thirty-two, a short while after a few years of heavy drinking and hanging around with the dregs of society. Think Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat, and you'll get an idea of how my life was during my early to late twenties. I learned that some people are down & out and dirt-poor because they will do virtually nothing to help themselves, and I resolved to have no sympathy for those types of people. They are users and abusers, they cheat, lie, and steal; their hearts are black, they have no conscience, and they focus on nothing but the present. I was constantly being used, as I was one of the only people among my group of cronies to be able to keep a job. Despite the fact that I drank habitually, I was still able to figure out that I needed to work in order to be able to purchase alcohol. Most of those happy-go-lucky rogues I hung around with and lived with were actually unable to make this simple connection. Or maybe they thought they were too clever to work, since they could simply beg, borrow, or steal their hooch from one working schmuck or another. I grew very tired of coming home to see my apartment in shambles, my cigarettes stolen, my beer gone, my CDs lying out all over the floor. Mind you, I am not saying that this kind of crap describes the poor, generally speaking. I am only speaking about the people I was involved with at a particular time. There were a lot of them, they were dirt poor, like me, and they were assholes.
Eventually I was able to afford a place of my own. The cronies still came a' begging from time to time, with compliments aplenty, their transparent cordiality in full swing, almost exactly like the characters in Steinbeck's novel, but eventually they gave up on me. During this time I was involved with an older woman I worked with who was separated from an alcoholic husband and was sincerely worried for me. I was in my late twenties, drank almost daily. I kept telling her not to worry about me. I wasn't going down the path that she seemed certain I was destined to take. I was totally aware that most of the limitations I had were self-imposed, and I tried not to make any excuses for the fact that I had a lousy job and drank too much; but I was also convinced that life was full of possibilities, that I was in charge of my life and that I would dictate the direction my life took. There was no way I was going to start missing work, lose my job, and become like those drifters I had hung around with. I always went to work, I always did a good job, and I was valued by my employer. My friend insisted that I was kidding myself, that it was unwise to think I had control over my life.
At the same time, it had always bothered me to talk with religious people, because of what was essentially the same thing: the notion that our lives are guided by powerful forces over which we have precious little control, whether those forces be external or internal. I spoke with some members of AA that I worked with, and heard still more of the same from them. My faith in myself was angering God, I was told. My life was determined by the cravings of my body, and my mind was my own worst enemy. It was just a matter of time before I started to act like those old friends of mine of whom I'd grown sick and tired. Unless I surrendered my heart and mind to some misty, undefined Higher Power and admitted my complete depravity to that Higher Power, and also myself, I was doomed. I said bunk to that and quit drinking when I got married, in 1996. This coincided with my interest in Ayn Rand. I hope that the reasons why are obvious.
Though I've always had dreams of being a musician and a writer, I don't think I ever truly desired to be wealthy. My interest in Rand's philosophy had nothing to do with rationalizing some sort of unsavory ambition or bigotry. Last year I earned a hair over 25K, which, being that I am the sole wage-earner in a family of four, puts me squarely in poverty-ville, at least here in AZ. Even though I'm technically poor, I don't feel poor. I don't feel like anybody's victim. I don't want for much. Sure, life is a bit precarious. I could be in trouble if I miss a few paychecks. But I'm very careful with my money, and I have good credit. I have medical insurance because I am employed full-time and I'm a low-risk, so my employers pay most of the premium. I'm doing better than some people who earn more than I do, simply because they don't know how to live within their means, and they don't know to handle their finances. But that's another subject. I think.
I associate Objectivism with a respect for reality (yes, I am aware of the problem that some people have with that word) and reason, as opposed to mysticism. I associate it with having complete responsibility for one's life, with respect for the lives of others, with a belief in free-will as opposed to determinism, with a lack of responsibility or pity for every sad-sack who stumbles drunkenly across my path, with a belief that charity ought to be given not as a moral duty but as a willing response to a person's virtues, and with a belief that there is nothing wrong with ambitiously pursuing rational goals, and that there is nothing wrong with regarding happiness and yes, even prosperity, as the rewards of a life lived sensibly, legally, and morally. I reject any notion that the happiness of one person must result in the misery of another. I reject the notion that people who work hard and manage their money wisely should feel guilty over the existence of people who refuse to work and/or have no idea how to handle the money that they do have; I reject the notion of attributing the bulk of human failure to any number of diseases, addictions, compulsions, or disorders. I reject the notion of attributing success to selfish desires, bigotry, or chauvinism.
I've hated bigotry ever since I was a small child in New York. I didn't understand, even then, how it was possible to judge a person's character by virtue of their ethnic origin. I grew up with pig-headed racism all around me, and so it delights me to no end that I am now one half of an interracial marriage, and that my children are of mixed heritage. They get to grow up learning two languages, while all I had was one. They get to interact with people from two very different cultures, while all I had was one. It's also been a pleasure for me to try and change my wife's mind insofar as how she feels about herself. She grew up believing that women were naturally subordinate to men: wives to their husbands, even sisters to brothers. I speak passionately about my regard for the ideas of freedom, and rights, and all that. I tell her that she can do anything she puts her mind to, and that the only thing stopping her is her irrational fears. She is currently trying to begin her own business, and I have every faith in her ability to succeed. If her business works out, and she starts working again after three years of down-time, she'll probably wind up earning a great deal more than I do, and I have absolutely no problem with that. I am proud of her and want only the best for her.
So it bothers me to see Objectivism associated with racism and sexism, though I can understand it slightly. After all, one of Rand's worst mistakes, I believe, was making that comment that women shouldn't aspire to be President. I think that idea flatly contradicts the primary tenets of her own philosophy, and quite frankly I was shocked to find out that she believed it. That was one of the straws that finally broke this camel's back, as well as some of her other views on sex and the sexes, and some of her views on esthetics.
Finally, I didn't develop an interest in Objectivism out of some teeny-bopperish idol-worship, or hero-worship, or because I thought it rationalized some immoral trait I possessed, or made excuses for the absence of some moral trait I didn't possess. I became interested in it because it made a great deal of sense to me at the time. I've had some trouble with its essentials, after reading the more complex arguments around the net; but not that much trouble, to be honest. Still, I'm no genius. I learn as I go.
Happy Birthday, Mom!
I developed an interest in Objectivism when I was thirty-two, a short while after a few years of heavy drinking and hanging around with the dregs of society. Think Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat, and you'll get an idea of how my life was during my early to late twenties. I learned that some people are down & out and dirt-poor because they will do virtually nothing to help themselves, and I resolved to have no sympathy for those types of people. They are users and abusers, they cheat, lie, and steal; their hearts are black, they have no conscience, and they focus on nothing but the present. I was constantly being used, as I was one of the only people among my group of cronies to be able to keep a job. Despite the fact that I drank habitually, I was still able to figure out that I needed to work in order to be able to purchase alcohol. Most of those happy-go-lucky rogues I hung around with and lived with were actually unable to make this simple connection. Or maybe they thought they were too clever to work, since they could simply beg, borrow, or steal their hooch from one working schmuck or another. I grew very tired of coming home to see my apartment in shambles, my cigarettes stolen, my beer gone, my CDs lying out all over the floor. Mind you, I am not saying that this kind of crap describes the poor, generally speaking. I am only speaking about the people I was involved with at a particular time. There were a lot of them, they were dirt poor, like me, and they were assholes.
Eventually I was able to afford a place of my own. The cronies still came a' begging from time to time, with compliments aplenty, their transparent cordiality in full swing, almost exactly like the characters in Steinbeck's novel, but eventually they gave up on me. During this time I was involved with an older woman I worked with who was separated from an alcoholic husband and was sincerely worried for me. I was in my late twenties, drank almost daily. I kept telling her not to worry about me. I wasn't going down the path that she seemed certain I was destined to take. I was totally aware that most of the limitations I had were self-imposed, and I tried not to make any excuses for the fact that I had a lousy job and drank too much; but I was also convinced that life was full of possibilities, that I was in charge of my life and that I would dictate the direction my life took. There was no way I was going to start missing work, lose my job, and become like those drifters I had hung around with. I always went to work, I always did a good job, and I was valued by my employer. My friend insisted that I was kidding myself, that it was unwise to think I had control over my life.
At the same time, it had always bothered me to talk with religious people, because of what was essentially the same thing: the notion that our lives are guided by powerful forces over which we have precious little control, whether those forces be external or internal. I spoke with some members of AA that I worked with, and heard still more of the same from them. My faith in myself was angering God, I was told. My life was determined by the cravings of my body, and my mind was my own worst enemy. It was just a matter of time before I started to act like those old friends of mine of whom I'd grown sick and tired. Unless I surrendered my heart and mind to some misty, undefined Higher Power and admitted my complete depravity to that Higher Power, and also myself, I was doomed. I said bunk to that and quit drinking when I got married, in 1996. This coincided with my interest in Ayn Rand. I hope that the reasons why are obvious.
Though I've always had dreams of being a musician and a writer, I don't think I ever truly desired to be wealthy. My interest in Rand's philosophy had nothing to do with rationalizing some sort of unsavory ambition or bigotry. Last year I earned a hair over 25K, which, being that I am the sole wage-earner in a family of four, puts me squarely in poverty-ville, at least here in AZ. Even though I'm technically poor, I don't feel poor. I don't feel like anybody's victim. I don't want for much. Sure, life is a bit precarious. I could be in trouble if I miss a few paychecks. But I'm very careful with my money, and I have good credit. I have medical insurance because I am employed full-time and I'm a low-risk, so my employers pay most of the premium. I'm doing better than some people who earn more than I do, simply because they don't know how to live within their means, and they don't know to handle their finances. But that's another subject. I think.
I associate Objectivism with a respect for reality (yes, I am aware of the problem that some people have with that word) and reason, as opposed to mysticism. I associate it with having complete responsibility for one's life, with respect for the lives of others, with a belief in free-will as opposed to determinism, with a lack of responsibility or pity for every sad-sack who stumbles drunkenly across my path, with a belief that charity ought to be given not as a moral duty but as a willing response to a person's virtues, and with a belief that there is nothing wrong with ambitiously pursuing rational goals, and that there is nothing wrong with regarding happiness and yes, even prosperity, as the rewards of a life lived sensibly, legally, and morally. I reject any notion that the happiness of one person must result in the misery of another. I reject the notion that people who work hard and manage their money wisely should feel guilty over the existence of people who refuse to work and/or have no idea how to handle the money that they do have; I reject the notion of attributing the bulk of human failure to any number of diseases, addictions, compulsions, or disorders. I reject the notion of attributing success to selfish desires, bigotry, or chauvinism.
I've hated bigotry ever since I was a small child in New York. I didn't understand, even then, how it was possible to judge a person's character by virtue of their ethnic origin. I grew up with pig-headed racism all around me, and so it delights me to no end that I am now one half of an interracial marriage, and that my children are of mixed heritage. They get to grow up learning two languages, while all I had was one. They get to interact with people from two very different cultures, while all I had was one. It's also been a pleasure for me to try and change my wife's mind insofar as how she feels about herself. She grew up believing that women were naturally subordinate to men: wives to their husbands, even sisters to brothers. I speak passionately about my regard for the ideas of freedom, and rights, and all that. I tell her that she can do anything she puts her mind to, and that the only thing stopping her is her irrational fears. She is currently trying to begin her own business, and I have every faith in her ability to succeed. If her business works out, and she starts working again after three years of down-time, she'll probably wind up earning a great deal more than I do, and I have absolutely no problem with that. I am proud of her and want only the best for her.
So it bothers me to see Objectivism associated with racism and sexism, though I can understand it slightly. After all, one of Rand's worst mistakes, I believe, was making that comment that women shouldn't aspire to be President. I think that idea flatly contradicts the primary tenets of her own philosophy, and quite frankly I was shocked to find out that she believed it. That was one of the straws that finally broke this camel's back, as well as some of her other views on sex and the sexes, and some of her views on esthetics.
Finally, I didn't develop an interest in Objectivism out of some teeny-bopperish idol-worship, or hero-worship, or because I thought it rationalized some immoral trait I possessed, or made excuses for the absence of some moral trait I didn't possess. I became interested in it because it made a great deal of sense to me at the time. I've had some trouble with its essentials, after reading the more complex arguments around the net; but not that much trouble, to be honest. Still, I'm no genius. I learn as I go.
Happy Birthday, Mom!
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