Today I heard, curiously enough, a caller on an NPR show reference Ayn Rand. Her comment was "What has happened to the true conservatives, the people who believe in self-sufficiency? What happened to Ayn Rand?" I say it was curious, because I've been rereading Ayn Rand lately (Atlas Shrugged), and I found the comment interesting.
In case it's been awhile, here's my impression of Ayn Rand:
Cagny looked up from the blueprints of the railroad track that she had been designing, her own personal symbol of the thrust of mankind's potential into the trembling waste of the lowly natural world. Her first view of Sven confirmed that he was the one she had been waiting for; the angular planes of his bronzed godlike face reflected back all her despair and ambition, and the arrogant stance of his shoulders mirrored his existential triumph over the forces arrayed against those who live for profit. She loved him instantly, violently. He tore her transparent shirt from her fragile shoulder, her will rising up to meet his in a viciously tender clash of bodies that betrayed the oneness of their ragingly independent spirits. Her joy, the climax of her suffering, revealed an indomitable will to live, to triumph. At last, an eminently competent man. "Oh Sven," she moaned, "I love you like..." She tried to think of something deeply rational. "...Like a motor." Sven slapped her face with a resounding crack. The bead of blood at the corner of her mouth tasted of her own salvation. "No," he said, "you love me like money."
Perhaps my son made the best commentary on Ayn Rand today when he ripped the cover off Atlas Shrugged and attempted to eat it while I was putting in my contact lenses in the bathroom this morning. She always claimed that she owned no philosophical debt to anyone but Aristotle. Yeah, riiiight. The 1084 pages that she took to say "a) rich people deserve to be rich b) there ain't no free lunch and c) step off lesser mortal" were really unnecessary. Since she was a big fan of efficiency, it would have helped the trees of the world out quite a bit, while fulfilling her worldview if she'd just said "go read Nietzsche. And oh yeah, go on a diet."
I mean, as someone who had ties to Eastern Europeans during WWII/the holocaust, she's definitely justified in thinking: big government--bad. Still, you'll notice that all of her (good) characters are simply bursting with youth and vitality. Nobody ever gets old, nobody ever gets sick. If that's the way you see the world, then I guess a belief in rugged individualism makes sense. She's the kind of woman that Thoreau might have courted, until he decided that she's probably insane. Of course, the family pencil factory might have benefitted from her business model--it's hard to know.
Anyway, I don't think that Ayn Rand ever had any children. I don't mean that you can't lead a full life without them, but they do interject a certain element of chaos into your worldview, as well as a desperate need to believe in the orderliness of creation, the redeemability of the human spirit. All of these things, I think, are missing in Rand's fiction. She didn't need to have children personally, but a few months as my daughter's preschool teacher could have shaken up those beliefs she had about supermen and the will to power. Show me a three-year-old at bedtime, and I'll show YOU a will to power.
Anyway, it's interesting to think about Rand as a advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, as she most certainly was. I wonder what she'd think about how Chevron bought the patent for an efficient electric car and then deep-sixed it. Or about the current gas crisis. Or about pharmeceutical companies advertising unnecessary drugs on tv. Hmmm. Then again, I suppose she would have just told us to take mass transit--after all, railroads are more efficient and, apparently, sexier. And oh yeah, we should all go on diets...
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