Is life a heroic journey? Is it true
that to be truly heroic you have to be selfish? Is it true that to make a dent in
the universe, you have to believe in yourself, nobody else, listen to your own gut,
nobody else’s? Great heroes do not listen to others. They make their own mistakes
and triumphs. And that makes them heroic. Ayn Rand wanted individuals to put themselves
before others, arguing that selfishness was a good motivator for us to be creative and productive.
She rejected altruism, religion, and collectivism. For her the only value we have in this world
is what you can offer to others. If you have nothing to offer except your moral virtue,
you have nothing to exchange with others. Her philosophy is a combination of
Aristotelian teleological purpose and Adam Smith's value exchange. For
instance when a man and woman meet, they look for values to extract from the other.
Without any values, no relationship works, just like a market transaction only happens
when both parties get a value out of it. There’s no altruism, it’s pure self-interest.
So today, I will tell you all about Ayn Rand, her life, her writing, fiction and nonfiction, and
finally what philosophical secrets we can learn from her. So get yourself some coffee and let’s
talk rationality, selfishness and creativity. Life
Ayn Rand was born in Russia in 1905 as Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum into a wealthy
Jewish family. Her father ran a pharmacy in Saint-Petersburg but it was confiscated after the
Bolshevik October Revolution of 1917. Tavarish, we don’t believe in private property. Now I
know why Rand was fiercely against socialism. The family fled to Crimea for a period of time
but Rand herself returned to Saint-Petersburg, which was now named Petrograd. Aged
16, she enrolled at the University of Petrograd to study history. By
the time she graduated in 1924, the city was changed to Leningrad after the death
of Vladimir Lenin in the same year. Perhaps that gave Rand the idea of changing her professional
name to Ayn Rand. If a city can change its name, why not her. This name-change also coincided
with her desire to leave the country. In 1926, when she was 21, she moved to the United
States to become a screenwriter. She moved to Hollywood, where else? She did some acting as
an extra and wrote some screenplays. But nothing was really working and her visa was running
out. So in 1929, she married Frank O’Connor, another extra and two years later she became an
American citizen and never returned to Russia. Despite living in America most of her life, she
spoke in a very distinct thick Russian accent. O’Connor quit acting and became a rancher to
financially support Rand in her writing career, but later on he became an artist himself. In
1932, she sold her first screenplay, Red Pawn, a spy thriller set on a prison island in Russia
about a woman who is trying to free her husband from prison. But it was never produced. She
got the money so who cares. Two years later her court-room drama Night of January 16th
was staged in Hollywood and then on Broadway. Ayn Rand’s first novel, We the Living, set in
post-revolution Russia, came out in 1936 telling the story of a rebellious young woman fighting in
two fronts, against her family as well as the new Soviet state. She continued her attack against
Soviet totalitarianism with her next novella, Anthem in 1938, a dystopian novel about a future
dark age. It’s somewhat similar to the 1921 novel, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which according to
many inspired both Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984. So her first few stories were
all about the danger of totalitarianism. It was as though she had escaped from a nightmare in
Russia but the trauma was still fresh for her. In 1943, Rand published, The Fountainhead,
which made her very successful and famous. The novel is about a resolute architect
who fights against established conventions, collectivism and stagnation. Rand depicts
individualism being superior to collectivism, rebellion superior to conformity and
innovation superior to conventionality. With her new fame and financial success,
Rand was able to move to New York in 1951 where she gathered like-minded people in her
apartment to develop her philosophical ideas as well as her literary style. As a result of
working closely with these intelligent people, she wrote her most famous novel, Atlas
Shrugged, which came out in 1957. In Atlas Shrugged, Rand introduces us to her core
philosophy of Objectivism. It tells the story of a dystopian future in which the welfare state
has cushioned the people so much that creativity and productivity are no longer valued and even
have stagnated in the United States. As a result all the creative minds have taken refuge in a
secret valley—not to be confused with the Silicon valley—where they have set up their own state
based on a free market economy that incentivises productivity and creativity. The novel’s main
premise is based on the idea known as 80/20, in which 20% of a country’s population
creates 80% of wealth or innovation. This is considered to be true within a company and
country. So by leaving the country, the creative minds have brain drained the economy so to speak,
a common issue today in the developing world, where the brightest young people move to the first
world for better job opportunities. The novel is a critique of the welfare state for making people
less hard workers. But critics on the left have criticised the novel for promoting selfishness and
some even blamed the book for the Banking Crisis of 2008, in which bankers gambled on other
people’s money for their own selfish gains. The novel made Ayn Rand into a philosopher
and soon she founded The Objectivist, a philosophical newsletter. She also became a
lecturer at the Nathaniel Branden Institute, headed by man of the same name who also supposedly
had a sexual affair with Rand. Ironically, Rand, as a teacher, was extremely strict with
her students and demanded uncompromising conformity from them, which went against her own
philosophy of non-conformity. Criticising her or disagreeing with her made her extremely angry. In
some way that’s the story of every organisation, institution, revolutionary state or individual
who gains power and authority. In Animal Farm, George Orwell allegorises how before the
revolution, the Russian Bolsheviks promised freedom from Tsar’s tyranny but after
taking over, they became Tsar themselves. Of course, Ayn Rand’s flipping anger is not
comparable to revolutionary atrocities, but it just shows that human nature is always undefeated.
No matter how much you believe in total freedom, when you have to run an organisation, institution,
or state, or even manage a classroom, you really want a bit of tyranny to control others. This
is me talking as a YouTuber who wants all the comments to say how much they love me, not
criticise me. So I can relate to Ayn Rand about non-agreeable people out there. Of course
I am joking. I welcome valid criticisms. Outside writing, she was also politically
active with the US Republican Party. Her fierce anti-communism and in favour of free market
capitalism made her a darling of the right and conservatism. Later in life, she supported
the right to abortion, opposed the Vietnam War, and supported Israel’s war against what she termed
as Arab savages. She had many unpopular opinions including being against homosexuality, as well
as justifying European colonialism saying that if the table was turned, the colonised
would have done the same thing. She was fiercely against the welfare state, calling
those on welfare as lazy. But later in life, she allowed herself to get social security as
well as medicare. She died in 1982, aged 77. Today she is known as a great novelist as
well as a philosopher who still divides opinions. Her style of romantic realism
promoted individualistic heroes who went against the grain, opposed conformity,
conventional morality or even duty, in the same vein as Nietzsche’s ubermensch.
In other words, Rand wants a world in which heroes push boundaries in order to create
new things. She wanted progress through the heroic deeds of individuals, not
the collective. For her collectivism stifled creativity while individualism
promoted hard work and productivity. Her style of writing also promotes competition
among men, as her female characters are always entangled with two or more men, suggesting
that a woman’s ultimate goal is to see which male character wins and then she chooses him
as her mate. This closely resembles nature, in which male animals compete physically
in order to mate with the female. She was influenced by writers such as Victor
Hugo, calling him the greatest novelist in the world, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the German
romantic poet Friedrich Schiller. For her, romanticism as a movement best captured
the heroic mentality of humans, the daring, courageous act of going against the grain, and
challenging the conventional wisdom of a group. Romanticism started in the 18th century in Europe
as a direct response to the scientific revolution and the age of reason that promoted a more
one-sided rationality at the expense of natural passion. For Rand, romanticism allowed humans
to dare. Or the free will to do heroic deeds. Since she spent a few formative years in
Hollywood, her style of writing is also more plot-driven, in which the camera pans from a
wide-angle to a focused, close-up shot. For Rand, storytelling was the best medium to express
philosophical ideas, because literature emphasises context and concrete scenarios that can
help philosophical ideas to be more grounded in objective reality and concrete human interactions,
not some abstract scenarios. She considered literature to be the best medium of expressing
philosophical concepts as it provides context for such concepts. Literature is a perfect stage
on which philosophers can discuss their ideas. She received criticisms from both religious
people for her atheism as well as philosophical establishment for her philosophical egoism. I
personally think the emphasis on rationality as the only truth goes against the romanticist’s
emphasis on human passion. I think we are more driven through passion than reason.
Reason might give us a clear picture of reality but it hardly ever motivates us
to do things that might be unreasonable, or deeply heroic and innovative. She
championed productivity and creativity, but without passion, neither of those can
be achieved. So reason alone is not enough. While she claimed that her greatest philosophical
influence was Aristotle, it doesn’t take a genius to see a lot more similarity with Nietzsche.
Her idea of an individual going against a whole society is very much a Nietzschean ubermensch.
Also Nietzsche embodied the Romanticist movement in philosophy. What’s different about Rand and
Nietzsche is that Rand only allows rationality while Nietzsche’s entire philosophy is a
critique of rationality. Nietzsche wanted humans to return to its passionate past that
allowed artistic flourishing. Nietzsche saw too much rationality stifling creativity, in
the same way that religious morality stifled expression. At the heart of rational philosophy
is conformity that everyone is the same and everyone is rational. Anyone different therefore
should align himself or herself with others. Ayn Rand’s books have sold more than 37 million.
Not surprisingly, her popularity has remained limited to the US, because her philosophy of
making it all by yourself through hard work and grit, a very individualistic philosophy, is
the cornerstone of the American dream. So people could resonate with her writing. After her arrival
in the US, she was part of the Hollywood world, and later became a TV celebrity, which helped her
to become a house-hold name. Some of her novels, including The Fountainhead and Anthem are
taught in American schools as well as in the UK. Now I will discuss her novels, The
Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Novels The Fountainhead
Published in 1943, The Fountain Head was Ayn Rand’s first major success. More than 6
millions sold and translated into 20 languages. It tells the story of an intelligent young architect
named Howard Roark who’s somewhat similar to someone like Steve Jobs who goes against the grain
and established conventions in order to innovate. Of course, Steve Jobs became the establishment
himself and that’s how human society works. You break the old and create the new until you
become old and someone else comes along to break down what you created and built something newer.
This is evolutionary biology 101 applied to social change. So the underlying philosophy is that we’re
ultimately alone and that an ideal man’s job is to pursue his goal of achieving something
and nobody, except himself, can help him. So you can see that Ayn Rand is writing
against socialism which was dominating the eastern part of Europe in the 1940s
when the novel was published and national socialism of Hitler was dominating the
central part of Europe. Only America and some western European nations were
carrying the free-market capitalism torch. The protagonist, Roark, roars like a lion
against those who conform and sees them as second-handers who rely on the creativity
and productivity of someone like him. A good analogy would be a lion that kills a prey and
a bunch of lazy scavenging hyenas eat the meat. These lazy people include Peter Keating, a fellow
architect, Ellsworth Toohey, a socialist critic, Gail Wynand a tabloid publisher and
most importantly Dominique Francon his girlfriend who moves like a pendulum
between collectivism and individualism. We are in 1922, the Jazz Age, the roaring
20s when the Great Gatsy was having lavish parties in his New York mansion. The young
architecture student Howard Roark finds himself expelled from university for not following
architectural conventions. He heads to New York and gets himself a job with a famous
architect named Henry Cameron. Life is okay but things change when one of his former
classmates, Peter Keating who wasn’t very bright and whom he helped with his homework,
graduates with a degree and gets a job at a more prestigious company. Peter, a mediocre
student at best, but socially cunning, quickly moves up the career ladder and becomes a
partner. This is so unfair. Howard the real genius is still toiling at a struggling company. But
things get worse. The company collapses when the owner dies and to add salt to injury, Peter hires
Howard. But wait, he is soon fired by Cameron, Peter’s partner, for refusing to design
a building in the conventional style. Things go from bad to worse. He gets odd jobs
here and there and even opens his own company but finds no clients. At his lowest, he finds
a job at a quarry owned by Cameron, Peter’s business partner. But wait a minute. Here Howard
meets a young female journalist, Dominque, who is incidentally Cameron’s daughter. There is love at
first sight. But it’s not all rosy, their first sexual experience is pretty rough and animalistic
which according to her is non-consensual. It doesn’t end there. Later when Howard returns
to New York to work on a building project, Dominque attacks his work in her newspaper column
but at the same time secretly comes to him for some rough sex from time to time. While she enjoys
the rough sex in secret, in public she talks shit about him to her colleagues. One of her newspaper
colleagues, Ellsworth Toohey a socialist, uses his media influence to destroy Howards’s
reputation by setting him up to design a building. A rich man commissions Howard to design a temple.
We know Howard. He is not a conventional man. He designs a nude statue of Dominque in the temple
which the socialist journalist uses to persuade the owner to sue the architect for malpractice.
They go to court and all the journalists testify against Howard. As expected the rebel
architect loses the case and not only that, he also loses the woman. Now to add salt
to injury, Dominque, his sneaky link, not only abandons him, but also marries his
fiercest rival, Peter Keating. Not only that, she does everything to support her man and she
even cheats on him with clients in order to get him more clients. In other words, she wants
her husband financially well-off even if it means sleeping with other men. You gotta
be kidding me. Ayn Rand shows that women only love you when you have something going for
yourself. A defeated man gets no sympathy from women. This is nature 101. Male animals fight
and the winner gets to mate and the loser? Well, our rebellious architect Howard continues
with his work in the shadow of his mediocre classmate, Peter Keating. But here is a twist,
perhaps a bit far-fetched. But let me tell you. Dominque while married to Keating has an affair
with her boss at the newspaper, Gail Wynand. Why? Because he is looking for an architect and she
wants him to hire her husband for the job. But the twist that seems unbelievable is that the
boss, Gail Wynand, fall in love with Dominque and pays her husband Keating a huge sum of money
to divorce her, so he can marry her. Ayn Rand’s female character is not an independent thinker.
She hops from winner to winner like a bunny. Or a monkey from branch to branch for better man.
She marries her newspaper boss. Her new husband, Gail Wynand is still searching for an architect.
It turns out, all his favourite buildings are designed by one man. Who could it be? After a
quick search, we find out that it is none other than our protagonist, the anti-establishment
Howard. Now we come full circle. Now we enter a phase that is called the
redemption period in our hero’s journey. Gail Wynand befriends Howard hoping to get him
design a house for him and his wife Dominque, unaware that in the past she used the same
man for some wild, rough sex from time to time. Not only Dominque used Howard
for some raw sex, the other architect, Peter Keating also used the rebel man in most of
his successful design projects. In other words, our unconventional hero is not only an animal
in bed, he is also a brilliant architect. But as things look up for him, Ayn Rand throws a
spanner in the works. While designing a building with his former classmate, Peter Keating, Howard
makes him promise not to change his design. But when the building is complete it looks nothing
like what he had designed. Our hero is outraged. He takes matters into his own hand and burns
the building. He’s arrested and put on trial. Everyone condemns the man, except his new
friend, Gail Wynand who defends him in his newspaper at a huge cost to his business. People
cancel his newspaper and his staff go on strike. Dave Chappelle and Netflix all over here. But
when the pressure mounts, the boss caves in and apologises to his staff and condemns his new
friend, Howard. This 180 degree change of mind is going to be costly, at least in the bedroom.
Women like men with a backbone. Only one man has a backbone in this novel and that’s Howard
who is sitting pretty in jail awaiting trial. At the trial, he defends his stance that a
man must have integrity because without it, he’s nothing else. Much to everyone’s surprise, he
is found not guilty. Our hero is redeemed. Guess what? Do you remember Dominque who was married to
Peter Keating then married Gail Wynand? She jumps ship for a third time. Now Dominque and Howard are
together. Not only that, Gail Wynand understands that a man needs a backbone so to redeem himself
he commissions Howard to build a huge skyscraper in New York. At the end, one of the most symbolic
scenes is when Dominque climbs up the new building to be with…you guessed it… the winner Howard. They
walk into the sunset together. Well, you cannot walk into the sunset from the top of a skyscraper
unless you’re insane. But you get the point. Now, I will discuss some of
the themes of Fountainhead. Ideal man
So for Ayn Rand, an ideal man is someone who goes against the grain and social conventions
in pursuit of excellence, not conformity. A new alpha male not only has to fight others
and social conventions but also has to be a brilliant mind. That’s what women are attracted
to. According to Rand, women generally do not want mediocre men without a backbone, integrity
and independent thoughts. Men who flip flop and quickly bend to the will of others are not to
be trusted. In other words, Peter Keating and Gail Wynand chased money and social validation and
they ultimately lost as a result. If the prize for men is to win the heart of a woman, he must have
a goal and stick to it. Peter Keating was a tree climber who used his cunning mind to reach the
top without doing the work, always tried to please others or never swam against the current. The
fact that Howard had to fight others, in school, workplace and even in his romantic pursuit, meant
that he was robust and didn’t give an s to what others thought of it. He only listened to his own
inner voice. That independent thinking combined with a brilliant vision allowed him to change his
world based on how he saw things. So a visionary man coupled with strong will can create a
new empire… state… building in New York. How about an ideal woman? Well, the novel has one
major female character. Dominque who has her own inner conflict. While she enjoys intimacy with
Howard, a man who doesn’t give an s to anyone, but at the same time she is a practical woman who
is seeking a secure and comfortable nest so she can lay her eggs. She wants to be with Howard
but not at all cost. For Ayn Rand, her female character is a woman who wants to be with a strong
man who is also a winner. The fact that she jumped between three men, showed that she mostly followed
her pragmatic head. When Keating was winning by climbing the career ladder, she married him
but he lacked individuality and when Gail Wynand was winning as a wealthy newspaper owner
who had come from nothing she was with him but he lost his backbone as he only wanted power and
nothing else and finally when Howard was redeemed, she came to him because he was neither seeking
power not social acceptance. He was a genius who didn’t give an s to anything but ingenuity and
innovation. Only Howard had her heart and her head. The other two men were simply means to an
end for her. So female mating strategy is to be with someone who is capable of changing society
and is respected by others and secure enough to have a nice nest where their kids can grow
in safety and comfort. Of course, feminists would have a serious problem with Ayn Rand and
specially with her female character Dominque who instead of changing the world herself as an
empowered woman, always aligned herself with the strong men. The scene of rough sex specifically
has been as called a clear case of rape, and some feminists called Rand as a self-hating woman. Rand
argues that Dominque had invited Howard and she ultimately went back to him despite that difficult
scene. By the end of the novel, she chose him. Individualism vs collectivism
Rand also takes a huge swipe at socialism through the character of the
newspaper journalist Ellsworth Toohey who uses all kinds of weapons including
deception to destroy people’s self-worth and the sense of individual autonomy, because
he sees the world through the lens of class, not individual. His main philosophy is
selflessness or altruism and equality, therefore he condemns anyone promoting
selfishness or individual pursuits. Ayn Rand choice of architecture is perhaps a
symbolic swipe at socialism that ultimately we all want to live in our own house, not in some commune
where you share a big building with lots of people. Animals defend their caves and territories
with their lives, and humans are no different. Our evolutionary goal is to work hard and build a
nest where our kids can grow and do the same. We are not like ants or insect colonies that
we all work for others. Our natural tendencies are individualistic and selfish and Rand says not
only there is nothing wrong with being selfish but also argues that being selfish brings the best
out of us. When you work for others, you have no motivation to do your best. We find meaning
by working for our own goals set by ourselves, not goals set by the state or our parents. People
in the past were forced to live together but as technology has improved, our architecture has
allowed us to be more individualistic. This aligns with what we innately want. Kids, we want a room
of our own and when grown up, a house of our own. The novel despite being criticised by the
left and feminists, has been extremely successful around the world. Not only has
it inspired many architects and writers, it has also been adapted to
films and television many times. Atlas Shrugged
Published in 1957, some 15 years after the Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s
most successful novel selling over 9 millions and translated into 30 languages and considered
her magnum opus. Just like the Fountainhead, it, too, pursues philosophical themes such as
individualism, rationality and capitalism but with a dystopian setting—similar to George Orwell’s
1984—when things go south in the US as the welfare state takes over and over-regulate things to the
point that business collapse and innovators are stifled. But in this novel, Ayn Rand further
elaborates on her new philosophical school of objectivism that there is nothing but objective
reality and no better tool than reason. Themes such as religion, god, altruism, collectivism
and equality are nothing but pipe dreams. So the novel pits two opposing forces in the US.
On the one hand we have the over-regulating state on the verge of collapse and on the other hand we
have private businesses who see their productivity is used to feed the less productive members of
society through the welfare state. At the heart of the novel, we have a power couple—not some
social media one—but a real powerful couple, Dagny Taggart, a railway executive and her
lover, Hank Rearden, a steel magnet, who are both recruited by John Galt, an objectivist
philosopher and visionary, to abandon their businesses to teach the US a lesson that they
are the real backbone of the American economy. Ayn Rand introduces us to a really powerful
woman, Dagny Taggart, perhaps to compensate for the criticism she received after the publication
of her first successful novel, The Fountainhead, for not championing women. Dagny is a
bad-ass railway executive, competent, rational and spirited under extreme economic
crises mostly due to tightly-regulated economy and nationalisation of industries. Meanwhile Hank
Rearden, a steel magnet, has similar problems with the overreach of the state in interfering with
business. But business is not his only problem, he also has issues at home with his wife. So
Ayn Rand has set things up for Dagny and Hank, two struggling souls to meet. They meet
when Dagny opens her new railroad. The love is almost at first sight. They end up
in bed together. We are animals after all. Forget about business or marriage, let’s
make the most of what we have. Copulate. They find each other’s company very enjoyable so
they go on holiday together. While on holiday, they stumble upon a factory with a
mysterious, but ingenious machine that runs on static electricity. It appears the scientist
who invented the machine abandoned it for some reason and nobody knows who that person is.
The two hire an engineer to reconstruct the machine but red tape after red tape means they
have to abandon it all. The government learns about the sexual affair between Dagny and
Hank so they use it to blackmail him into compliance over his business. If you have not
noticed, the government is the bad guys in this novel. Ayn Rand’s heroes are business leaders.
This is very unconventional in literature, because normally the good guys tend to someone
from the outside. It’s hard to make Jeff Bezos the hero of a novel or Elon Musk, but that’s
precisely what Rand does in this novel. Dagny, one day, meets a homeless man who tells
him about a man named John Galt. But who is he? It turns out he is the inventor of this new
machine that runs on static electricity. Ayn Rand makes some of the scenes a bit too
far-fetched, but let’s go with it. Dagny, while chasing one of her employees on a plane,
crash-lands somewhere remote. But it turns out this place is occupied by a mysterious group
of people. Who are they? Amish people? No, these people are headed by none other
than the engineer who invented the new, yet abandoned machine, John Galt. Why are they
here in this remote valley? It turns out John Galt is leading a strike of the brilliant minds
and creative workers against the government and its over-regulation. Some are business
leaders, some are artists and some are engineers. All the creative and productive
minds that run the economy so to speak. As expected, love is in the air. Ayn Rand’s women
fall in love with powerful, charismatic men. Dagny is in love with John Galt, the cult leader. Maybe
cult is not the right word. The philosopher or the visionary is perhaps a fairer term. John Galt
asks her to join them in the strike, but she is torn between her job at the railway company and
her new love. At the end, she reluctantly leaves the business hippies and returns to her work. But
things have gone from bad to worse. The country has turned into a proper authoritarian state.
But wait. The philosopher John Galt leaves his hippie camp and returns to New York in pursuit
of the lady Dagny. While in New York, he hacks into a radio station to broadcast his communist
manifesto. Oops, I meant his objectivist manifesto in which he tells the nation that there is no
other reality but objective reality and no force is more powerful than rationality and no goal is
more virtuous than pursuit of our self-interest and so on. After talking for 3 hours on the radio,
he leaves but before he reunites with his lover Dagny or returns to his capitalist hippie camp, he
is arrested by the NYPD. The government tries to recruit him to restore the country but he refuses.
They waterboard him a few times. Ok, but they do torture him a bit and soon enough the whole system
crumbles and all the workers unite. I am joking. When the government collapses, those on strike
return to the city to reclaim their government. The novel ends when the new people are in charge.
So you could read it as a capitalist fiction. At the heart of the novel is this question,
what if instead of workers going on strike, the business leaders, prime engineers,
the creative minds went on strike? So Ayn Rand takes a socialist premise of workers stop
working and turns it on its head. What if their executives and leaders went on strike? To put it
somewhat crudely, it asks what if the flock had no leader? Where would the reindeers go without the
alpha females? Or what would happen to the pride without the male lion? Ayn Rand argues that human
civilisation only flourished when they had robust and competent leaders. By setting the novel on
industries, Rand wanted to remind us that when it comes to infrastructure, it was the brilliant
innovators and inventors who moved society, not the bureaucrats at the government. It’s
people like John Galt on the ground who invents the new machine. The title Atlas Shrugged also
symbolises that we often take for granted and do not notice or appreciate that it’s Atlas, the
Greek titan, who holds the earth on his back. The only way we appreciate something is when we lose
it. It’s like, we don’t notice garbage collectors, unless they stopped working for a few
weeks. Then we notice that the town starts to stink.
Ethical egoism
The underlying philosophy of the novel is ethical egoism which means since we are
inherently selfish, it makes us rational about it. Not only is selfishness not a bad thing, it should
be encouraged. When we realise our self-interest, we do our best to work for it and once everyone is
rationally selfish, then society operates better because we all know what other people want so
we do our best to offer value. This in turn promotes honesty, fairness, independence and most
importantly productivity. Humans are inherently lazy and always take the path of least resistance
so if we can get away with not doing anything, most of us would take that path. To counter that,
Ayn Rand proposes selfishness as a virtue and everyone is transparent about it. Now nobody can
hide behind the mask of altruism or virtue signal for something they don’t really mean.
In contrast, according to Rand, socialism,
fascism and any form of collectivism or even a religion-based society would inevitably lead
to some members of society being productive while some relying on others for subsistence. This is a
common criticism directed at the welfare state by the right and the conservatives. The novel also
refers to those in favour of higher taxes or strong government and government bureaucrats
and those surviving on welfare as looters, moochers and parasites. Quote: "So you think
that money is the root of all evil? ... Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money
is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce
them. ... Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or the looters
who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce.”—Ayn
Rand (Atlas Shrugged). So the novel rejects any form of handouts by the government. Instead
it promotes that everyone should work for what they want. In today’s world, the elite of society
is often demonised by the media and the populous as corrupt. But the novel takes a big swipe at
the government as the main agency of corruption.
Of course, just like her previous novel, many critics,
especially those on the left, condemned the book for a variety of reasons. One major criticism
was for its atheism and others criticised it for promoting selfishness. If there is one thing
you learn about Ayn Rand is that she didn’t care about what people thought of her. She went against
the dominant way of thinking. So while the novel has been extremely popular among the masses, to
some extent it was pushed aside by the literary establishment. Literature tends to favour heroes
who are outsiders, powerless, and poor. Ayn Rand didn’t give an s about that and made her heroes
top executives and big bosses and some brilliant engineers. She had balls. Swimming with the
current is an easy thing to do but swimming against the current is a lot harder. In fairness,
she wasn’t alone. The American anti-communist sentiment did help her in her career so she was
not swimming totally by herself. There were big sharks swimming by her.
Now I will discuss 7 lessons we can
learn from her life and her writing. Lessons
Lesson 1: Selfishness is virtue This is one of the most controversial
philosophical ideas Ayn Rand put forward. She argues that humans are inherently selfish
and beating the bush only means one thing. We hide our true intentions from others which forces
us to make excuses and bs that comes with it. Since we’re naturally selfish, as the Darwinian
evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins pointed out in his book the Selfish Gene, therefore it makes
sense to not demonise it. Instead we should accept it as reality. Ayn Rand argues that even love is
selfish. She famously said in an interview that her love for her husband was selfish because she
got something out of the relationship. We don’t love our partner because we are altruistic, we
love them because the other person has some values or virtues that benefit us in some way. Published
in 1964, the Virtue of Selfishness is a collection of philosophical essays by Ayn Rand and Nathaniel
Brandenin in which they put forward moral egoism as a philosophical foundation of human society.
So what Ayn Rand articulated is that we all want to be happy and have a fulfilling life. And
not just that, we are extremely selfish in our pursuit of happiness. By making selfishness a
virtue, we become more transparent in society and now nobody can hide behind a mask of altruism
or virtue signal anymore to deceive others of their true selfish intentions. Rand’s ethical
egoism is centred on the idea that we should rationally seek our happiness and self-interest,
not the collective interest of our tribe or group. Individuals, she says, should live for himself
or herself, not sacrificing themselves for other people. Altruism promises self-sacrifice,
like soldiers dying for their leaders without considering their own life’s goals and happiness.
We can no longer hide behind some tribal or ideological wall. But Ayn Rand argues that we
cannot be selfish without also being rational. Lesson 2: Reason is the only solid doctrine
Many people characterised Ayn Rand’s selfish philosophy as a recipe for chaos as everyone wants
what’s best for them, therefore you cannot have a coherent social fabric anymore. Throughout history
most societies were created around religious doctrines, or equality, altruism, superstition
etc. But Rand rejected religions and ideologies. So how do you organise a society when faith or
ideology or myths no longer play a role? She offers rationality as the best foundation for a
robust society. Why? Because reason is universal, while faith, whims, emotions etc are subjective.
Rand argues that reason alone can guide us in life. So our perception of reality should be
based purely on reason, not biological instinct, or emotions, intuitions or religious revelations.
You have to be rationally awake all the time. In other words, reason is the only essential tool in
our disposal. So reason guides us to one optimal conclusion: to pursue your own self-interest. She
argues that when you make selfishness a virtue, everyone suddenly uses reason to further their
own interests in society. If we are rational, we all know that chaos doesn’t benefit you in the
long run. If we think rationally, we understand that you cannot deceive people and be successful
long-term. If we just extract value from others, soon people stop giving us. So we have to be smart
in providing value in return. So a rational person knows that he or she should provide value in order
to gain something from someone. Even in marriage, both parties know the other offers something
they really want. She argues that egoism should not be a negative thing, instead once we all
act to promote our own self-interest and our own happiness, not the interest of others, we
are forced to be more responsible for our own actions.
Lesson 3: Take responsibility
for your own life, nobody else’s Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism is
rooted in the harsh reality of life that nobody is responsible for your life, but you. As
adults, we are responsible for our own well-being, happiness and goals. When on a plane, the rule
is fasten your own seat belt first before you can help others. It’s the old saying that nobody can
make you happy, except yourself. We make choices in life and those choices have consequences.
Rand’s philosophy is that we cannot claim to be victims because we are responsible for the choices
we make in life. Life is an uneven path, with ups and downs, struggles, trials and tribulations,
therefore we should not rely on others to make those choices for us. As responsible, rational
beings, we have to take accountability for our choices and actions. Once we take responsibility
for our own life and happiness, we become more creative and productive. So Rand’s moral egoism
makes us more productive as we have to provide value in order to extract value from others.
Lesson 4: Happiness comes from
creativity and productivity Life’s a journey is a cliche but it is true.
We all want to be happy. Often without doing anything. Rand argues that the true happiness we
drive is through creativity and productivity. The happiest people are also hard working and
creative people. We should drive pleasure not by indulging ourselves but creating value to
exchange with others. Ayn Rand uses Adam Smith’s value exchange market capitalism as the best
system that allows us to flourish by becoming competent. Adam Smith had argued centuries before,
in which each individual is like a shop front. You sell your products, skills, creativity and
in return you buy things you need or want. In other words, equal values are exchanged, which
promotes more creativity and more productivity. Under the free market, the right to private
property is protected. While under communism or any other forms of collectivism, individuals have
little incentive to work hard and be creative, because they have no say in how their products are
exchanged. This was depicted in her novel, Atlas Shrugged in which the creative and productive
people go on strike that cripples the economy. So for her, an ideal man is someone who goes against
the grain in his attempt to innovate and create, which should make him happy in the long-run.
Lesson 5: Break boundaries.
Ayn Rand was a rebel. She wrote about things that were not popular. She
talked about selfishness, atheism, ideal man etc that made her very unpopular, especially
among the left. But she refused to bow to pressure because she was fiercely against
conventional thinking. In her first novel, The Fountainhead, she attacks conformity as a kind
of sheep mentality of following others and not having original ideas. Her main character breaks
with conventions, norms and established order to revolutionise architecture and ultimately wins. A
true hero is someone who pushes society to become better. Of course, not all innovation is good.
That’s why Ayn Rand emphasised rationality to be the foundation of society, not faith or whim.
In a rational society, the winner is someone who comes up with the best idea and product, not the
idea that is popular or sticks to rules. So her philosophy promoted innovation and breaking
with rules in order to move society forward. That’s how evolution works. It throws things out
and something sticks and then it moves in that direction. Innovation and creativity works in
the same way. Conventions, rules, boundaries, on the other hand, limit creativity.
Lesson 6: Life’s a heroic journey.
Romanticism as a movement began in Europe in the 18th century and 19th century
against the over-emphasis on industries and the rational science of humanism dominating social
changes. Unlike the humanists, romanticists wanted a return to nature and free human expression.
While universal humanism through industrialisation and urbanisation focused on conformity,
predictability, and safety, the romantics were more focused on creativity, honour, courage
and bravery. Ayn Rand agreed with the romantics as an artistic movement that pushed boundaries.
Published in 1969, The Romantic Manifesto is a collection of philosophical essays in which Ayn
Rand argues that a piece of art is inherently tied to the values and characteristics of the artist
who created it and the viewer who views it. In other words, both the artist and the viewer adds
a piece of their own value in the piece of art. So art cannot be objective. The artist creates it
based on his own values and the audience enjoys it based on their values. At the base of her
argument, Rand asserts that one cannot create art without infusing a given work with one's own
value judgments and personal philosophy. Even if the artist attempts to withhold moral overtones,
the work becomes tinged with a deterministic or naturalistic message. The next logical step
of Rand's argument is that the audience of any particular work cannot help but come away
with some sense of a philosophical message, colored by his or her own personal values,
ingrained into their psyche by whatever degree of emotional impact the work holds for them. In the
book she also defends romanticism in art as a raw and natural approach to creativity. As a result,
she argues that life is meant to be a heroic journey. She says, quote: ”The concept of man as a
heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement
as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”—Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged).
Lesson 7: Passion really motivates us.
While Rand only saw reason as absolute, human history has shown us that that’s not alway
the case. Humans are more driven by passion more than reason. If you explain life crudely, we
are here to survive and have babies. Sure, it’s rational to pass on your genes to the next
generation and that’s why the urge to have sex is extremely strong in us. While Ayn Rand articulates
that when it comes to organising society and how an individual navigates society, reason is our
best weapon. When reason goes out of the window, problems occur. However, human passion which often
goes against rationality is one of the biggest motivators of human behaviour. We fall in love,
not because we are rational. We sometimes choose mates not because we use reason and logic. We fall
in love which means we give up control to passion, urges and emotions. Our emotions and whims come
and go while reason is solid. That’s why we fall out of love. That’s why emotions override
certain decisions today but tomorrow when we sober up a bit, we realise how foolish we
acted. Philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche argue that human passion
is not only as important as rationality but also we cannot do without it. We’re driven by the
blind passion, be it Schopenhauer’s will to life or Nietzsche’s will to power or Albert
Camus’s will to happiness. This is one of the major disagreements she had with Nietzsche.
Nietzsche’s critique of western philosophy was centred on reason being given the primacy
at the cost of reducing passion to something evil. Ayn Rand sees passion, emotions, whims
as unreliable tools for social interactions, therefore she says reason alone is the primary
mode of social interactions. However, modernity, which favours reason above else, has resulted in
nihilism, the tendency towards meaninglessness on the one hand and pleasure-seeking
self-indulgence on the other, which Rand was vehemently against. To truly motivate someone
to be creative and productive, human passion, which is not rational, plays a huge role.
For instance if you want to recruit soldiers, paying them money can be a motivator, but nothing
can replace the idea of making it a noble cause, or fighting for good against evil, or the idea
of sacrifice, all of which are not strictly rational. The most successful empires have not
used reason to unite, but religions, myths, stories, and good-evil division to unite
people and recruit soldiers to defend it. One can admire Ayn Rand’s honesty in admitting
that we are ultimately selfish creatures and there’s no point in denying that. Today a lot of
ruthless people hide behind the mask of altruism to virtue signal to certain moral outages
in society, but in reality they are nothing but selfish people benefiting from their fake
selflessness. Ayn Rand exposes us all saying that let’s not pretend we really care about others when
all we care is about ourselves. But the problem is that nothing is really black and white in society.
Humans are great at learning and adapting to new situations. Even if we are put in heaven, we might
find ways to get out of it. Oh, hang on a minute, we have already done that according to the Bible.
So Ayn Rand says, the sooner we accept that we are selfish animals, the easier it is for us to
unmask ourselves and be less hypocritical about things. We must accept reality and use reason
to organise everything in society. Some argue that we are heading towards a fully rational
society, in which we become more like robots, which the extreme of rationality of 2+2=4.
This was precisely what Dostoevsky was warning us against 150 years ago. To understand
Dostoevsky’s philosophy, watch this video. Thank you for watching.
