this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (22 children)

I think people do not understand where Ayn Rand was coming from. She came from the Soviet Union, a highly collectivist society. Everyone is expected to conform and be all the same economically. Then she got sick of it, emigrated and formed her own Iam14butthisisdeep philosophy. Unfortunately, some rich American asshats saw that her ideas have self-serving utility to justify their ultra-capitalist beliefs and privileges and continue exploitation, and then spread her nonsensical "objectivist" ideas around. Not many people actually believe the philosophy, although we unconsciously apply this especially with middle class NIMBYISM.

"Oh, poor homeless people. I hope they could be housed. But I will elect a politician who will not build social housing because it will bring down the value of my property."

"I support mitigating climate change. But I do not want windfarms nearby. They are eye sores."

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (10 children)

Then she got sick of it, emigrated and formed her own Iam14butthisisdeep philosophy.

No, you're being disingenuous. She formulated her philosophy moral objectivism from her experiences as a child.

This is what happened (from her wikipedia):

Rand was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905, into a Jewish bourgeois family living in Saint Petersburg in what was then the Russian Empire. She was the eldest of three daughters of Zinovy Zakharovich Rosenbaum, a pharmacist, and Anna Borisovna (née Kaplan). She was 12 when the October Revolution and the rule of the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin disrupted her family's lives. Her father's pharmacy was nationalized, and the family fled to the city of Yevpatoria in Crimea, which was initially under the control of the White Army during the Russian Civil War. After graduating high school there in June 1921, she returned with her family to Petrograd (as Saint Petersburg was then named), where they faced desperate conditions, occasionally nearly starving.

When Russian universities were opened to women after the revolution, Rand was among the first to enroll at Petrograd State University. At 16, she began her studies in the department of social pedagogy, majoring in history. She was one of many bourgeois students purged from the university shortly before graduating. After complaints from a group of visiting foreign scientists, many purged students, including Rand, were reinstated. She completed her studies at the renamed Leningrad State University in October 1924. She then studied for a year at the State Technicum for Screen Arts in Leningrad. For an assignment, Rand wrote an essay about the Polish actress Pola Negri; it became her first published work. By this time, she had decided her professional surname for writing would be Rand, and she adopted the first name Ayn (pronounced /aɪn/).

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (9 children)

Where is your objection? She formed her philosophy after experiencing a collectivist dystopia. Her family's business was nationalised. That is part and parcel of such extreme collectivist socio-economics and thus enamoured by hyperindividualist extreme counterpart.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Dystopia in her experience. The peasants going to uni would have had a different perspective.

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