File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_1999/anarchy-list.9910, message 72


Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 01:54:01 -0500
From: Sandi & Scott Spaeth <vespags-AT-stlnet.com>
Subject: more Ayn Rand nonsense...


Hey all,

After my last email where I admit that I was influenced by Ayn Rand, I
remembered an essay I had written some years back (dunno when, sometime after I
got a computer but before I had run across the Anarchist FAQ, which was the
first anarchy web page I found and which lead me here).  Unfortunately, it
isn't a whole essay, just a start of one, but I think it might shed some light
on where at least some objectionables and wrong-libs are coming from (probably
not).


"The difficulty I have with Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism stems from a
fundamental dissagreement we have.  Her opinion is that an idea belongs wholly
and inviolably to its creator.  Hence, we have Ayn Rand’s philosophy of
Objectivism, rather than Objectivism as a living and varied philosophy.  This
would be fine except for two difficulties.  The first being that I find in it
so much appealing to me that I cannot leave it alone, and the second (and much
more serious) being that no one who truly thinks and reasons for themselves can
be a disciple, and yet that is what is precisely demended by Objectivism.

The central idea of Objectivism, that every individual is an end in himself, I
find highly agreeable.  It places personal achievement regardless of outside
opinion as the central goal of every man.  This too, I agree with, but I begin
to feel leery of the word  ‘every’.  Every implies universal inclusion, and no
philosophy can endure under that weight.  Nothing is true, philosophically, for
eveyone.  It cannot be, for everyone is not the same.  Can I say that being
neither a leader nor a servant is the ideal?  Yes, for me it is.  Is it the
ideal moral situation?  Yes, but here it ceases to be realistic.  Too many are
willing to throw the responsibility that is demanded by such an ideal away in
favor of the convenience and security of others making their decisions for
them.  There will always be followers, people that choose and desire to live in
servitude, people who are most comfortable in a hierarchial setting.  And
because of that, because no vacuum in the social setting is allowable, there
must be people to step in and act as shepards to the great masses of sheep. 
Objectivism, to be real, must be a chosen option to the small number of people
who will choose a lifestyle, or it is simply another dogma for the masses to
pay lip service to."

Anyway, I thought I'd share.  Dunno how I feel about that "there will always be
followers..." bit now - as anarchists, we claim the opposite, that everyone
wants to be free - but right this moment, I don't know it that's true.

cheers, 
Scott

---------------------------------------------------------
The freedom of each individual is the ever-renewing result
of numerous material, intellectual, and moral influences 
of the surrounding individuals and of the society into 
which he grows up and dies.  To wish to escape this 
influence in the name of a transcendental, divine, 
absolutely self-sufficient freedom is to condemn oneself 
to non-existance... Such absolute independence and such a
freedom, the brainchild of idealists and metaphysicians, 
is a wild absurdity.

                                -Mikail Bakunin 1871

Piston Ported Vespas:
http://www.piston-ported.homepage.com
words
http://home.stlnet.com/~vespags/words.html
----------------------------------------------------------

   

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