Live from the Middle East

[Preechr]

Originally Posted by Sethomas

I've never read Ayn Rand, but judging by the Objectivist Club at my old school I'd have to say that I never have any plans to do so. I mean, if I wanted people to think I'm any more of a dick, I'd just start out by ceasing to use my turn signals as religiously as I do and work up to smoking indoors in places that prohibit it.

That's the big warning label that should go on her books. She basically paints a picture of a world full of idealized, iconic producers and dangerous, looting leeches that aren't even really alive. A young person reading that sort of stuff will generally decide she's, of course, one of the good guys. Unfortunately, young people will also tend to forget her philosophy is packaged in a romantic novel, not a non-fiction tome. She is portraying a world that doesn't really exist, not one that can or will be, in order to highlight the ethical and moral problems that plague the actual world.

I've read some very good critiques of her work by some that have actually read her work at an early age, and they complained that after having mistaken her fictional world for our real one, they did indeed become assholes for many years. Well, the critics didn't actually accept the mistake they made, instead they chose to blame her for lying to them about the nature of the world.

She doesn't advocate that moral people should attack or even notice "looters." She highlights the ultimate ends of two moral paths through life: the moral path that worships life as a man, and the immoral path that claims death is man's highest ideal. It's a very black and white world, and some of her younger readers have a hard time understanding gray. Since gray is what most of what the real world is, there's no way she could cover all that in any number of books... so, she mostly avoids it when portraying the godlike producers, with a couple notable exceptions. That's left for the reader to fill in.

Each looter character is a portrayal of one moral flaw writ large. Sane real people aren't like that.