The DISTURBING TRUE STORY of Ayn Rand’s Indoctrination (Masterclass Excerpt)

has anyone heard of Ein Rand I'm going to talk about her for a minute the average novelist will sell 3000 of their books in their lifetime her book sold over 27 million copies she was among the most successful novelists of the 20th century she had a major influence on some names that you would know like Alan Greenspan Ron and Rand Paul Clarence Thomas John Stossel lots of politicians um lots of CEOs professors authors two of her books were made into movies and she is pretty well known as one of the major moving forces of the libertarian movement which became the libertarian party have has had massive influence in the 20th century on the way that people think about themselves and about government she was born in 1905 in Russia and St Petersburg and she was an early teen when the Russian revolutions happened in 1917. and so she saw firsthand how it all went down and it wasn't pretty for her family they were middle class they lost their business there were lots of days when there wasn't enough to eat by the time she was nine she knew she wanted to be a novelist by the time she was 13 she was done with God she just knew that there couldn't be a God that would make these kinds of things happen and she decided that she was going to base her life on reason and that was gonna work out real well for her she did get to go to college in Russia which was unusual at the time but awesome for her and she got to read some of the greats Aristotle and Hugo had a huge uh Victor Hugo had a heat influence on her and she learned from them she was absolutely brilliant everybody that knew her called her a genius and she knew that she was smart she spent her whole life developing her intellect she studied the greats she learned everything she could she was very hungry to learn and a very brilliant woman so she is able to get a visa to come to the U.S and she just never goes back and she decides to go to Hollywood she's going to start by trying to write screenplays and she has some success she meets a an aspiring actor named Frank O'Connor they fall in love he's a very kind gentle quiet kind of man and she's a very strong domineering personality but they loved each other and um she had some success then she wrote We The Living which was kind of a novelized version of her experiences in Russia and she wrote anthem it's kind of a novelette all the time she's developing this new Morality In fact it's this whole world view that she calls objectivism and it is the dedication to reason as your ultimate value you hold reason higher than anything because of course and this makes a lot of sense reason is the thing that we that's different about us obviously there are other things that are different about us than than the other creatures but reason is definitely a major moving force and who we are as human beings and so she starts to um ask ourselves these really profound questions about what is right and what is wrong and how she can figure out what is right and what is wrong using her reason and what's amazing about Iran Rand is that she's very principle-centered in a lot of ways in fact it was said of her often that she couldn't make a decision unless she'd found the governing principle on which it rests on which it rested and then she would move forward especially when it came to government and economics she was really grounded she had paid a huge price to understand the difference between what was going on in Russia and what's going on the United States she absolutely adored the free market which is why she loved New York always wanted to live there spent most of her life there so she she builds this new morality this new Godless world view based around reason and some really true awesome principles and she loves to she loves to talk and reason of course and so she would invite friends over and they would stay up all night I mean this was very common activity for her they'd stay up all night just talking things through just figuring them out reasoning him out so she decides to write The Fountainhead and she's going to infuse this novel with a lot of these new ideas that she's putting forward and she sends it out to Publishers no one wants it because it's too intellectual they they think it's brilliant but they don't think anybody's going to read it and she's brilliant enough and has enough vision she says to one of her one of her friends never forgot her saying my book is going to be published and it's going to be a bestseller and it's going to change people's lives and it's going to be made into a movie and when it is I'm going to insist that I get to choose the actors and Gary Cooper will be the lead and all that happened you can go watch The Fountainhead with Gary Cooper she was an amazing woman in so many ways but very domineering and as she pushed forward in her goals and plans Frank receded into the background their marriage became more and more broken and unhappy they were both unfulfilled in it but as Frank kind of gave up whatever Ambitions he ever had for Ein and her goals he became more and more emotionally and financially dependent on her so it became more and more difficult for him to leave I do think there was part of him that always respected her and bought into much of what she taught so The Fountainhead is published and I want to read you what one student said the students were reading it with a sense of ecstatic release from the amorality they had been taught in their classrooms so this is the kind of impact that has on the younger generation they're eating it up because there's actually principles there's actually absolutes and fundamentals and they as they grow in their teens and young adult years they want to Fashion their lives around this new world view that eins put forward it's it's compelling they can see that much of especially if you've read any of her Works they're very kind of free market heavy and you can see the impact of that you can see those principles how they've played out in America and so it's very convincing so Along Comes a young man is in her mid-40s Nathaniel Brandon's right around 20. they're both in La he's a college student and she's started her new magnum opus Atlas Shrugged and she winds up spending 12 years writing it two years just on the cumulative speech of the main character and she I mean that woman was a Workhorse she could put in her time and so she's working on this book and it's going to be the cumulative effort it's going to prove to the world that objectivism is the correct world view and that she has created a new morality that can be embraced Nathaniel red The Fountainhead as a teen and it changed his life and he's here in college and he's trying to adopt this world view that eins put forward then he calls her up and begs to see her and she has some conversations with them and finally says okay you can come over so he comes over on a Saturday night and they're up all night talking things through reasoning thinking questioning and he goes home and tells a really good friend Barbara who also was transformed when she read The Fountainhead and it was one of the biggest reasons why they were friends and he's he tells Barbara she is Mrs logic she is everything and more that we would have wanted from the author of The Fountainhead and she's agreed to meet with us both next weekend so Nathaniel and Barbara head out to their Ranch and spend all night with them and I want to read you what Barbara said about that experience because it was absolutely life-changing she talked about what a superb teacher Ein was and how patient she was in talking through every tiny intimate detail to try to help you get to the conclusion she was trying to lead you to she says here with this woman in this room ideas mattered here was a war a world ruled by the rigorous cool Elegance of rationality I listened to iron Rand with a sense of wonder and with tears stinging at the back of my eyes on the way home she told Nathaniel I feel as if intellectually I've always stood on a leaking life raft in the ocean and as I jumped to cover one Leak with my foot another spurts forth and I leap to cover it and then there's another but now the sense that it might be possible to stand on Solid Ground to understand to know what sort of world I live in it's as if as if for the first time the Earth is firm under my feet like a religious conversion Ein helps them figure out make sense of a confusing subjective irrational world where there's no absolutes anymore that's how they've been raised she says she was like a youth who had started out on the same Quest the quest to acquire a set of principles to guide one's actions and practice but had never given up and had reached her goal and could Now show us the steps of that long road now they really quickly knew how important iron would be in their lives and she says this Barbara said this started an enchanted time she was like a mother and a mentor they spent almost all their spare time there while they were in college Nathaniel was a psychology student and so she he and I would hash out psychological principles of objectivism and try to get clear about what that would look like and did more analyzing and more reasoning and more thinking in fact they even tested her Barbara brought her professor over who was older he was well respected in his field he um was seen as a as an authority and I just kind of chewed him up and spit him out I mean she stayed with her all night and on the way home he told Barbara she shot holes in everything I hold dear I cannot I couldn't I couldn't reason it out with her I couldn't defend my doctrines and positions in the face of her reason so by this time Nathaniel and Barbara know eins it like she's a genius she's a famous World author nobody can stand up to her including the most important people that we know and respect she's taught us truths that have transformed Our Lives we are all in like this is it this is our life path and so they eventually all wind up in New York and they are just studying like mad uh Nathaniel is now writing articles he's he opens the Nathaniel Brandon Institute which is just to promote objectivism this worldview and they work very intimately with iron all the time and their lives are just all wrapped up in each other in the meantime Ein convinces them to get married Nathaniel really wanted to but Barbara wasn't super attracted to Nathaniel so she went along with it because I thought it was a good idea one of the reasons why Barbara thought it was a good idea it's not just because Anne had I had so much influence over them but Ein also would redefine old Concepts so for where for example she hated altruism if you really think it through no one can ever really actually do anything contrary to their own best interest there's no such thing as altruism it's a lie and people are duped by it in religion all the time that's why she considered religion so dangerous she also redefined love she said that love is what we give each other for holding up the right values so really what that means is that people will commit the life their lives to reason and that those who hold the highest values that they hold will be the people that you love so you will be attracted to the people who are most reasonable who hold up the objective is value is best that's why she knew that Nathaniel and Barbara would have a happy marriage so a year and a half goes by after they got married they're all in New York they're doing their thing they're building this world view she's working voraciously on Atlas Shrug she reads the papers to them they're helping her write it and they go on a weekend trip as couples way back Nathaniel and Ein are acting really strangely and Barbara gets back to the hotel room and calls Nathaniel on it she's like what's going on he's like I don't know she's like there's something between you and then he's like are you are you crazy there's 25 years difference I'm not interested Barbara's like I'm just saying I I saw what I saw I know what I saw well within a couple days iron calls Nathaniel in and sure enough they confess their love to each other and of course this is reasonable and right because they are the two that understand objectivism the most and hold the highest values so of course the romantically attracted to each other so now it gets really ugly they sit their spouses down and tell them we are in love with each other but this is not a threat to you because we still love you too and of course I am a woman of principles so I will never do any I will never lie I will never go against what I know to be honest and forthright and truthful so we would like to have an affair and we need your permission now you laugh but this was serious big time they were like a lot of years into this thing financially intellectually spiritually emotionally career-wise their lives are so intertwined and you know they hold they don't have a god is a God iron is the founder of the world view iron is the one that knows what's right and wrong now they don't I mean weeks go by honestly for weeks they hash it out because Ein has to convince them that this is what needs to happen but they're kind of like where are we gonna go like we know she's the smartest woman in the world we know she put our lives on Solid Ground we know millions of people around the world follow her I mean at this point Nathaniel is speaking on objectivism his Institute is growing and it's just going to get bigger and you know he's never had a lot of success with women and ions is Idol and he's actually quite complimented that she's so attracted to him weeks go by she talks and talks and talks I mean they just finally give in and every week for two years they have a couple days a week of private time and their spouse know what's going on Barbara said in retrospect it remains astonishing that there was even a question in Frank's mind or mine about what action to take in retrospect in retrospect remains astonishing that even the power of ions personality could cause us to consider agreeing to an affair but it was as if she had cast her spell long ago and it was too late to flee from its web now you can imagine what the consequences were to all of them Barbara essentially had a year and a half long anxiety attack she woke up in bed one night and it never abated Frank turned to alcohol and became a raging alcoholic and interestingly Nathaniel and Ein became bitter resentful judgmental and so as The Institute is growing while they're engaged in this Fair affair they'll pull in students and do these interrogations on them and ask them all these questions to try to make sure that they align with pure reason and objectivist principles in fact Barbara said Ein exhibited a lack of human empathy that was astonishing now you have to understand from Ironside if you've read any of her books they're very sexually explicit and she's in a very unsatisfying marriage she's living in this fantasy world all the time writing these books and she just desperately wanted connection she desperately wanted to experience that I mean she's going on 50. she's not getting any younger so she finishes Atlas Shrugged and it's published and her Fame grows astronomically but the reviews are bad and because she's finished her life's work she has no idea what to do with the rest of her life so she falls into this really deep depression the last two years so she tells Nathaniel okay well I'm super depressed she cries every day it's really for a woman who rejects emotion flat out it's really kind of fascinating anyway she tells Nathaniel we need to pause the affair but we'll get back to it sounds great Ein so six years goes by and now you can imagine how established they all are they're flying all over the country doing these speeches I mean there's tens hundreds of thousands of students in the Nathaniel branded institute there's tons of employees they both you know Nathaniel runs it they have these this objectivist newsletter they write these articles together in fact that's when virtue of selfishness was written actually it was written during the affair some of it so iron comes back to Nathanael I'm ready to go in the meantime his relationship with Barbara fell apart and he's in love with someone else and he is not interested older he's wiser so for a year Ein and Barbara and Nathaniel are caught up in this horrible vicious cycle where Barbara resigns confidante and Nathaniel's confidant while Ein tries to convince Nathanael that they should resume the affair and Nathanael tries to get out of it and she I mean grueling all-nighters with Nathaniel psychoanalyzing him to figure out what's wrong with him that he doesn't get in line with this true principle of love that she's come up with and in fact Nathan Nathaniel said don't you think I know that my behavior is inexcusable I'm in a maze where every Avenue leads only to tragedy of course it did so finally he decides okay this is the plan I'm going to write on a letter and tell her that the age difference is too big now I know she's going to be devastated she's probably going to cut me off but I've got I can't I can't do it and he gives her the letter she flies into a rage and she goes immediately and cuts him out of her will she doesn't have any children and so he's her intellectual and financial Heir so he she cuts him off and she puts Barbara in the will and now Barbara's like you've got to be kidding me so she goes to Nathaniel she's like I can't uh the game's up I can't I gotta tell her that you're in love with this other woman and she's just got to know the whole thing and so Barbara does that and it's I mean it's all Iron goes on a rampage like a total self-destruct mode she cuts both of them off she closes the Nathaniel Brandon Institute she stops the international speeches she shuts down a play that's about to be performed on The Fountainhead she makes Nathaniel give a public statement about how he's deceived her and he she even goes to her Publishers and tries to get them not to publish him to ruin his career for the rest of his life and it's total chaos total chaos and hysteria and Nathanael Brandon Institute headquarters everybody else Cuts Barbara and Nathaniel off stays loyal to Ein Barbara said a philosophy that exalted individualism and joy became in practice a set of dreary duties and a source of agonized emotional repression a philosophy that was a mighty hymn to the possibilities of human life was because had become in practice a dirge the bright promise was gone the golden days of Enchantment would never return that is indoctrination [Music]

Channel: Audrey Rindlisbacher

Views: 433,887

Keywords: self help, principles, audreyrindlisbacher, themissiondrivenmom, themissiondrivenlife, MDMAcademy, thetruthwillsetyoufree

Id: pCQe5ueLbqo

Length: 22min 51sec (1371 seconds)

Published: Wed May 03 2023