Nathaniel Branden on "My Years With Ayn Rand"

I was fourteen years of age when I discovered the phone that my sister had been reading it as she left him to the table I picked it up I read and within two sentences I felt hypnotized that I have no other way to explain them I had the sense of an instantaneous deep I'll even say spiritual connection with the author of this book a few years ago decided to take a walk through town and they had a bookstore there so like all authors were curious to know you know as ideally about any of my books out there I went there I don't no longer remember whether they had any my book or not because I was so stunned when I saw they had a stack of but a yard long if not longer a vine ram books and fiction and nonfiction and I the manager came over and she's you could see now something I had some interest in this and I said hi let me ask you a question is this normal to have this I see you really carry a lot of rands here that's I'm having a great admirer myself but does this have any particular significance and she said yes a whole new generation that's just discovered iron ran and every few years there's a new wave 9 gave a sense of human possibility that was exactly what they were not getting at home or in their culture young people that is to say she gave people the sense they could be effective than if they would persevere stick by your standards work hard you can achieve something that you will be proud of find that power than you find she would say the heroine your own soul and work toward that Oh a is a is of course Aristotle's law of non-contradiction it's a way of saying you know identity existences identity quoting Iran that which is is quoting Iran and a few other people so it's a way of asserting simply that a fact is a fact objectivism is the philosophy defined by iron Rand which holds reason as the sole source of reliable human knowledge that insists that a rational code of ethics is possible is achievable by human beings but the emphasis in that statement is rational what is rational probably philosophers would have different opinions about that I would understand that to simply mean that an almost common sense basis but you mean supported by available information facts and the respect for information that it's as they report respect for facts as they are made manifest to us so it's not the rationalism as the term is used in philosophy where a person can divine all the secrets of the universe from reason false reason is a process of achieving knowledge it is not itself the knowledge [Music] the idea that a highly rational person is not at the same time a passionately emotional one is completely false in fact almost the opposite is true in my work as a psychotherapist I tell clients feel deeply to think clearly it is through emotions that we are able to experience the significance of various facts or events or perceptions as they pertain to our well-being or the lack thereof so emotions our means of experiencing the joy of life and the pain of life the pleasure of love and the pain of love when it is the loss and so on my point being that when we give up our defenses and our pretenses are not worried about how people will perceive us or interpret into what we've just said if we are willing just to be simple and uncomplicated or put it out when it's relevant to express one's thoughts or feelings then you have a mind you can talk to then you can understand the other person better and vice versa ran like paradox she enjoyed saying things that she saw who she thought would shock or surprise a little but she certainly she thought it was funny to call this group of alleged individualist the collective she thought was funny because was a paradox at a party in my and members of my home we have a small dinner party among the guests with Mike Wallace I am at a certain point in the evening was trying to explain to the people there why she did not regard the Soviet Union as a serious military throughout the United States and they were kind of surprised to that and she said look it's almost impossible for an American to understand the level of incompetence which is the norm in the song as in a communist Society end of story [Music] with regard to drugs in general bran would have been opposed to the kind of the recreational use of drugs she would also be opposed to the government arrogating to itself the right to make it illegal she would argue that people certainly ever write about what they put into their own bodies so we may say well we think a rational person wouldn't do this but that led me to show her an article which I've been reading which which was suggesting that marijuana could confer some very interesting mental results that are worth experiencing and he smoked it we're going to take it in a biscuit and I showed her the article or I summarized and I forgot wish and I don't know what mood she was in that night but she says let's get someone try it I almost passed out I mean I thought this this is this is - by tomorrow she won't remember this it would let it be right now because this is but I can't believe nobody will believe me I was bothered there was no way to name Who am I we didn't have objectivism yet you know and then somewhere how I'm not I have no idea how I came across the word libertarian and I gathered that that meant like a minimalist view of the proper functions of state of the government and I said - I am I think that could be a very good name for our political philosophy because it's not a word in general use now and we like to have something to for us to call ourselves so I instead were advocates of lazy fair capitalism I said I am that doesn't do it because - unto grounds number one it puts the emphasis on business as though those important thing about libertarianism is business on the freedom of the marketplace but we need something more broad something like what it basically is philosophically globally not word stands politically but she was still using conventional language like a Republican a conservative not and I would say to her why do you commonly tell people you're a conservative you're no more conservative than than that my pussycat you know I said unanimous our we're not Republicans and we're not conservative why do you use that language I can't understand that and she thought she's well you're absolutely right what we really are is something like radicals for capital D if you are going to offer a new and global code of ethics as ran saw herself doing every code of ethics has to include something about redemption has to include something about people making bad choices even immoral choices but pulling their life together correcting whatever they did wrong as best they can and getting on with their life there is no treatment of regeneration of your life there is no treatment of the motion from failure to success in the moral sphere in errors of knowledge we would say well of course we can always correct errors of knowledge but errors of morality for example somebody would say Rand doesn't have any kind of truck for people to make mistakes and they had another person there says well that's not true yesterday look at Hank Rearden that Outlets drug he made mistakes I said yeah but they were not moral errors there were errors of knowledge and he was willing to pay the full price for those errors but we're not talking about areas of knowledge we're talking with arrows of morality that would have been such a great thing to put into that novel if you had a bad guy who was almost as bad in some ways as the good guys and then you show Redemption now you're talking about something because everybody in this planet has done things they wish they had done differently and those things may be a little bit ashamed of it now or embarrassed by now so what welcome to the human race the real thing should the separates in my books the good guys are the not so hot guys is what do you want to do about it now [Music]

Channel: ReasonTV

Views: 121,870

Keywords: ayn rand, barbara branden, nathaniel branden, the collective, libertarian, a is a, objectivism, objectivist, radicals for capitalism, reason.tv, reason magazine, reason foundation, reason

Id: 8KZUKJjgCqg

Length: 9min 59sec (599 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2009