They’re cracked in the head:
One man drove 12,238 miles and across 30 states in the U.S. to scrawl a message that could only be viewed using Google Earth. His big shoutout: “Read Ayn Rand.”
Nick Newcomen did a road trip over 30 days that covered stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. First, he identified on a map the route he would need to drive to spell out the message. He put a GPS device in his car to trace the route he would follow. Then, he hit the road.
“The main reason I did it is because I am an Ayn Rand fan,” he says. “In my opinion if more people would read her books and take her ideas seriously, the country and world would be a better place – freer, more prosperous and we would have a more optimistic view of the future.”
Okay, let’s unravel this clusterfuck and see precisely why it is so wrong.
1) This guy spent tons of fuel, money, and time…
2) …to trace out a message that can only be read using a software program that hasn’t been relevant since 2006…
3) …to urge people to read an author who is so popular and so well known that in The Modern Library’s “100 Best Novels of the 20th Century,”* all four of her novels made the Readers’ top ten (and her magnum opus took the number one spot)…
4) …and an author who has been so influential in American politics that one of her disciples was the head of the FEDERAL RESERVE for nearly TWENTY YEARS!
That’s why Objectivism, beyond the occasional human-shaped turds that worm their way into the government from time to time, is a doomed ideology. Let’s forget the fact that Rand’s philosophy is an intellectually incoherent ripoff of Nietzsche and Stirner as filtered through her literary masturbations over a serial killer who tortured and butchered little girls. (Objectivism may be the first school of philosophy founded on a gina tingle.) Rand could have been right about everything she ever said, ate storm clouds and shat rainbows and none of it would matter. Randism fails because the Randroids are a bunch of mentally stunted, nerdy man-children who think cross-country road trips to trace lines on a satellite map that no one will ever look at is a good way to promote their ideas. Oh, and they’re a bunch of pansies too.
Hat tip for the article: P.M. Jaworski.
…
* – That list is great because it reveals some amusing differences and similarities between the literature-loving Smart People and the proles. For example, the number one book according to the masses is Atlas Shrugged – according to The Modern Library’s board, it’s Ulysses, by the shame of Ireland, James Joyce (another of whom’s books makes an appearance at number 3). Arguing over which is the worse writer – Joyce or Rand – is like arguing whether it’s better to die from a bullet to the head or being stabbed in the heart. The Crowd may be stupid, but the elites still have no taste.
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Joyce’s Dubliners was the best set of meditations on the human condition & wasted lives I have ever read. Perhaps you have to be Irish to understand it. In many ways it’s far better than Ulysses. Simplicity is an underrated virtue in 20th century literature.
[Dubliners was okay, but the rest of Joyce is awful. I think the way my professors forced his crap on me in college left a bad taste in my mouth. And I remain convinced that Finnegans Wake was nothing more than one of the world's most elaborate practical jokes, to see if people would actually take it seriously. - ed.]
And I thought the Fountainhead, though not at all in the same league, was pretty good in terms of human venality, pettiness & malice (the bad characters were her best creations).
I don’t agree on the whole single best book thing anyway.
We The Living was by far Ayn Rand’s best literary effort (it was also the shortest, earliest, most Nietzschean and least “Objectivist”).
[Agreed! Great minds think alike. - ed.]
But anyone who’s interested in the subject matter could do no worse than to read a true magnum opus of a genuine literary and moral giant, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. If that’s too long or its misery too imposing, I’d definitely recommend Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon or Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
Wow you commenters. Nobody cares that you’re pretending to have read a book before. It’s not impressing anyone.
Your logic is all jacked up, Ferd. As with nerds, you kind of boiled this down to a circular and simplified “Randroids suck because they’re lame” nugget of nonsense. Randroidism (I refuse to call it “Objectivism”) is Modernism shrink-wrapped. It’s the rejection of Tribe, Tradition, and Transcendence formalized, systematized, and repackaged for consumption by pseudointellectual wankers eager to uphold their godlessness, alienation, and self-worship as a vaunted ideal.
[I vaguely recall in one of her essays, Rand declared racism to be the lowest form of collectivism. Talk about not getting it... - ed.]
I personally practice the philosophy of naked hedonism. It has served me well.
I think Rand’s ideas on rational egoism were fantastic. But as applied to large scale societies, it’s naive and ultimately useless.
I just noticed you moved me from “New Right” to hereditarianism. I actually have no idea where I should be, but since Sailer’s in the same category, I imagine it fits.
[Explanation forthcoming. - ed.]
Of course it’s the right fit, One. Ferd usually gets it right, and besides, you’re either too disengenuous or too woefully unaware of your own true motivations, that you could never just come out and say that you’re a stompdown true believer in the divine right of (White) kings, and stuff like that.
But then again, what else is new…
O.
The “Randroids” pretty obviously spammed that reader survey. That Top Ten is almost all Rand or L. Ron Hubbard, not exactly two literary heavyweights
http://lowcarbish.blogspot.com/2010/08/and-rome-continues-to-burn.html
OT. but watch the video at the bottom. Class warfare.
Ferdinand Bardamu,
I’m still reading through ANUS.com’s archives.
Despite Prozak’s views to the contrary, I’ve come to the conclusion that Traditionalism and a uniquely American culture can be integrated while avoiding the pitfalls of race-obsession as long as culture and class are left intact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditionalist_conservatism
What do you think?
How far would the U.S. have to “revert” to protect itself against the “sickness” much of western civilization is afflicted by?
“Objectivism may be the first school of philosophy founded on a gina tingle.”
Beautiful in it’s elegance, innuendo and best of all – almost true.
I happen to rate Atlas Shrugged the second most influential book I ever read. But then again, the top spot in my list is taken by Sven Hassel…
For example, the number one book according to the masses is Atlas Shrugged – according to The Modern Library’s board, it’s Ulysses, by the shame of Ireland, James Joyce (another of whom’s books makes an appearance at number 3). Arguing over which is the worse writer – Joyce or Rand – is like arguing whether it’s better to die from a bullet to the head or being stabbed in the heart.
Say what you will about Rand’s philosophy, at least she used syntax.
Play Bio-Shock. Its shows the end result of objectivism.
Only part you left out was Rand’s psychopathic personal life as a cult leader. Just a horrible, fucked-up person. Joyce gets dense and annoyingly self-referential with his endless literary games later on, but Dubliners is indeed great. Celine or Proust have a better title to being the Big Literary Genius of the 20th century though,
Say what you will about Rand’s philosophy, at least she used syntax.
And plot.
I am dumbfounded as to why ANUS.COM is not a porn site.
[I'm pretty sure that they've gotten some hate mail to that effect. - ed.]
“The Crowd may be stupid, but the elites still have no taste.”
True, the elites have little taste, or taste in things that are ugly. Still, the crowd did pick Ulysses at number 11. I never liked Joyce much, although his prose style is quite brilliant. I think I liked him for for his prose style in his earlier works. And yes, Finnegan’s Wake is probably a gigantic practical joke to made academics look stupid by taking it seriously.
As far as fiction, the old pulp stuff is great. Great plots, great action, and great writing. Seriously underrated today for their quality. I find most modern novels too boring to read.
And as studies have shown anyways, 80% of readers of fiction are women. So it has become pretty much a chic thing, as I think it always was, just more so now than before, especially with the demise of the pulps. I think most male readers gravitate more towards hard boiled crime fiction, espionage fiction, or westerns than towards the standard, boring, literary novel.
On the “Hereditarnianism” label:
Looking forward to it. Note that Sailer, myself, and HS cover more topics than just HBD, including culture, nationalism, gender politics, and the like. But I guess our views are premised on the “paleo” construction of man, so maybe Hereditirianism fits. I initially construed it as a little too restrictive is what I’m trying to say.
I’ll ignore the other comment directed at me.
Only part you left out was Rand’s psychopathic personal life as a cult leader. Just a horrible, fucked-up person.
Who cares? Newton was autistic and spent most of his life self-flagellating and disseminating crazy talk like alchemy and astrology and other Bible based woo.
Rand declared racism to be the lowest form of collectivism.
This is an essay in Virtue of Selfishness.
On Rand: I admire her honesty and her defense of rational egoism, but not her idealism or her John Galt acolytes.
You can run, but you can’t hide, OneSTDV, LOL. Simply put, you honestly believe that White is Right, Black get back. That isn’t the problem, so much as your utter cowardice for refusing to just coming out and saying so.
Like I said, Ferd pegged you right.
O.
Good call on Finnegan’s Wake. I also always have seen it as a writer’s practical joke, and what a laugh Joyce must be having about how long the joke has persisted.
[Hey Nova, long time no comment. - ed.]
[I vaguely recall in one of her essays, Rand declared racism to be the lowest form of collectivism. Talk about not getting it... - ed.]
Rand’s essay “Racism” can be read here. The opening paragraph:
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.
Throughout human history, the tribe has always tried to lay claim to the life of the individual. (You somewhat alluded to this in “White-knight nationalists and the decline of the white American woman”) It is in this sense that tribalism is the original collectivism.
[I understand where Rand is coming from. What I mean about her missing the point is that there are legitimate reasons for certain forms of collectivism to exist. Indeed, our culture and society would not exist were it not for collectivism. The biggest reason why I refuse to swear fealty to the white race as I mentioned in that post (among other things) is because tribalism is a two-way street. The individual aids the tribe, the tribe aids the individual. White nationalists, Laura Wood-esque traditionalists and their kin expect people like us to lay down our lives for nothing. - ed.]
BTW, while we’re on the subject of blog categorization, could I be switched over to “New Right”? (I should start writing again…) I write about politics much more than sex.
[Meet the New Right, cooler then the Old Right.]
Some of Dubliners is ok, the hellfire sermon and its aftermath from Portrait are amazing, some of the parodies and pastiches of Shakespeare in Ulysses are very funny. Verdict: uneven, but generally worthy of his reputation.
I could never get past the first few chapters of anything by Joyce.
Not a “real” Irishman. Try Sean O’Casey, “Plough and the Stars” or John M. Synge, “Playboy of the Western World.” Brendan Behan’s “Borstal Boy” (autobiography) is a classic.
Where did you find the A Wyatt Mann cartoon of Ayn Rand? I hadn’t seen that one.
[Encyclopedia Dramatica. - ed.]
Previous thoughts on Joyce here:
http://manwhoisthursday.blogspot.com/2007/03/period-pieces-part-ii.html
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Discover magazine do not protect you, they protect criminals and impostors, the comment at number 46
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/08/14/gellers-limp-spoon/comment-page-1/#comment-292062
was not made by me. If you read their privacy policy page they say this :-
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It is easy for anyone to impostor you on these comment boards and the webmaster does nothing about it. Anyone can use your name, use your email address, though your ip address will not be attached to it as you did not make it, but the impostor could be using a proxy server to publish here and mask its own genuine ip address. This can cause big problems for you if someone who impostors you decides to make some unpleasant comments connected to your name.
They need to attend to their privacy policy and introduce an email verifications facility before approving posts. They do not, they just publish them willy nilly even if you are not the one to have posted a comment. They then refuse to help you to discover the identity of the criminal. Identity fraud is a crime and they do nothing about it.
I have referred the matter to my lawyers and the UK police.
From their website:
Why did you name it A.N.U.S.?
Absurdism is the hardest type of humor to create or appreciate because it requires both audience and storyteller to be acutely aware of reality, and as a result, to see how it is absurd or what would be out of place. Our fundamental idea is that the anus is as holy as the mouth, because both are needed for life, just like both positive and negative are needed to create the groundwork on which life rests. Like a yin-yang, the anus/mouth duality represents our search for harmony beyond what appears “safe” and “good” to human beings.
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