Art and Greed

Notes on art and the rejection of toxic self sacrifice balanced with our responsibilities to our fellow human beings.

For those who enjoyed my Ayn Rand article (and for those who didn't,) I must recommend Anne Heller's book Ayn Rand and the World She Made. Thanks to Patreon patron Ken Talton who gave me a year's worth of Audible gift certificates, I got the audiobook and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was the most balanced book about her I've ever encountered. I may have that opinion simply because Heller reflects my own views about Rand. I was shocked while listening as some of her conclusions were almost word for word the same as mine. 

This may simply appeal to the ego I figure I earned after reading a lot of Ayn Rand, but you be the judge.

Though she doesn't go as far as calling Rand a harasser re: her treatment of Nathaniel Branden, she discusses how Rand's inappropriate treatment of Branden may have permanently damaged his ability to make life healthy life choices.

She also briefly mentions Rand's views of "free love" but when you dig further, Rand didn't really believe in free love as much as she believed in having what she wanted...but it was entirely up to her if that person was entitled to make the same choice. That's not very free. Rand was extremely jealous and possessive, and became unhinged when she found out Branden sought sexual relations with a beautiful young woman Rand found intellectually unworthy. 

I'd get into a deeper discussion about Rand's views on art, because as I wrote before she had a great love of art...and a great hate of any art that didn't reflect her values. But I think this book pretty much covers it.

She had a fondness for the Charlie's Angels TV show - "I love those girls!" she enthused, and a hatred for the paintings of Maxfield Parrish, which she dismissed in one word: "Trash."

Your mileage may vary.

Anyway, despite the fact that Rand, IMHO, was an abuser of young Branden, Branden doesn't come off well at all. He is arrogant, manipulative, rude. I got that impression from my previous reads from other sources, too. 

The entire Rand sect had no boundaries and kept setting themselves up as counselors for their fellow Randians despite the fact that none of them had appropriate training, and little empathy. Branden set himself up as his own wife's counselor, for example.

Good grief.

Now I know that times have changed and practices regarding mental health care have come a long way in the ensuing 70 years, but manoman. I enjoyed reading about these people, but would not want them in my life. I have far more sympathy for Rand than I did before reading this book, but in general, her circle was power mad and dangerous to know.

Except for Rand's husband the handsome, taciturn Frank O'Connor, that is. This guy was just so sweet, so likeable, and so kind and so stunning, I remain baffled how he ended up with Rand, except by all accounts she just bowled him over with her enthusiasm. If someone came at me like that, I'd cry "Stalker!" and run for my life.

Some of the stories about Rand's social cluelessness are quite touching, such as how Frank's gay brother (and Rand was not comfortable with homosexuality, she was just opposed to laws that infringed gay people's rights,) had to take Rand aside and teach her how to dress.

Further illustration of Rand's blind eye when it came to her own values and teachings is her enthusiasm for her husband's art. It's amateurish at best. But he liked doing it, and she liked that he liked doing it. However, there is no way she would have liked that art if it came from someone other than her husband. The work did not reflect Rand's stated teachings about intellectual quality and high achievement.

Here is one of his paintings.

It was used on an edition of her novel, The Fountainhead.

It's hard to find pictures of his paintings on the internet, but they all look very amateurish and disconnected to me. Very depressed. Which was, apparently, the case.

The book is a great read (or a great listen) and I don't think you will get a more balanced view of Rand's ideas and where they originate from any other source.

A few more of my personal observations.

Another big fat hole in Ayn Rand's epistemology is the lack of understanding of human greed. She doesn't seem to think high achievers are greedy. In all her books, the high achievers - the people of genuine talent and ability - are extraordinary, focused people who care about one thing and one thing only: excellence.

I totally get this. Many of my creative peeps are blind when it comes to money and only care about money as the means to an end: making more stuff being The End.

I loved her work, but it falls apart on closer inspection. It only works if everyone is a great genius whose only concern is being excellent. And being with excellent people. And being ethical. 

World doesn't work that way. 

And what the hell do we do with all the people who aren't excellent? 

I realize her point about forced altruism, but there comes a point where we just have to recognize our responsibilities as human beings to other human beings who have no access to the choices we get to make. 

I was sitting there one day and it just hit me: disabled people, children in her work, her theories...where are they? My parents, getting old...what does society owe them? Rand believes in helping people in YOUR best interests, when you choose to do so, but what about people who have no support at all? And what about a world where people don't choose to help enough?

Money, in Randian terms, is a symbol of Achievement, not something to be pursued for its own sake. She didn't really care about money and its trappings and didn't even do much to grow her wealth with investments. She had fairly simple tastes.

But Rand never quite understood the kind of people for whom money is the achievement in and of itself. Money without genuine achievement - you know, like rich kids on Instagram.

Just because a subset of highly talented people cares about The Work almost to the exclusion of everything else, that does not mean all highly talented people care about The Work to the exclusion of everything else. 

Rand was very good at identifying envy and greed as the cornerstones of a lot of society's ills. Envy of ability, envy of achievement, envy is the thing that propels society and holds it back. I have no rose-colored glasses on re: socialism, which, in its darker manifestations, has envy propelling it beyond notions of altruism.

Enforced altruism was Rand's fear, and not an unjustified one considering her background. Enforced altruism can be a front for envy, and can lead to a Harrison Bergeron nightmare of a world, which is the world from which Ayn Rand came. She fled Lenin's Russia, and who wouldn't want to.

Ayn Rand could see greed and envy in movements she did not like, but she could not conceive of it in her own movement. Unfettered capitalism, no regulation, this is something she thought would sort itself out as excellence would prevail in the end. 

But creative excellence does not prevail. 

It doesn't prevail when other people's area of excellence is rapacious exploitation and greed. Rapacious exploitation can flourish in capitalism, but Rand could only see these flaws in the communist/socialist environment from which she fled.

She thought the gifted could simply step out of society and society would collapse without them, because they would take their superior skills with them, and nothing would be left but morons. But Rand never seriously considered (outside of character studies like Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead, a flawed person because he published junk news, but he wasn't a corporate giant poisoning a river with chemicals,) that a lot of very gifted people are assholes too, not morally superior to anyone else. 

Being able to do something well does not mean you're a good human being.

So you end up with corporate giants raising the fees on medicines simply because they can make more money, not because they are delighted at the prospect of making another discovery for the sake of excellence.

I wouldn't have the skills to develop that medicine or run that company, but being able to do so doesn't make you a good person.

Rand thought being excellent at something equaled good. She spent most of her life doing ontological backflips trying to make this argument work. If you were the best singer in the world, that was all that mattered; until you disagreed with her on some point, then you were "corrupted".

A woman I knew who's all into Rand is one of the most openly jealous people I have ever known, in every way the opposite of what a truly free and outstanding innovative person of excellence ought to be. Envy seeps from her pores. But for whatever reason, she's convinced herself that she's just so much better and smarter and more gifted than other people, though the evidence shows she simply has no skills beyond doing a largely clerical job most people don't seem to want. I assume she does it well, by her standards.

But in a Randian universe, she would not be John Galt or Dagny Taggart, she'd be Ellsworth Toohey. If she ever wakes up and realizes it, she'd spontaneously combust.

I guess you have to know Rand's work to get that reference, but whatever.

I enjoy Rand's fiction, and like some of her ideas, and agree with (some) principles of ethical egoism (yes, it is OK to pick and choose to whom you offer help, and yes, it is OK to put yourself and your own needs first, which is different from putting your own wants first). It's just that many of Rand's followers I knew don't seem to have the self awareness to be the judge of whether or not their actions are ethical, and Rand would be at the top of that heap in that department.

I think for a lot of young people (as I wrote in my last post,) Rand makes an impact because so many of us are raised to feel ashamed of doing things for ourselves. Of pursuing selfish "show-offy" interests like music and other arts.

We get a lot of "Who do you think you are?" Rand gave us permission to say, "I yam what I yam." 

And that's fine. 

But none of us got to "I yam what I yam" without a support network around us, even if it was a tenuous one. The idea of enforced altruism, especially feeling compelled to contribute to people and things I did not agree with or found abusive, was a big problem for me. I was led to believe I had to love my enemy so much I had to give to my enemy to prove I was a good person.

That's the kind of thing Randians rebelled against. 

But then you grow up and realize that you really don't have to toss a dollar in the hat every time someone who kicked you in the shin passed it around to show you are good. You don't have to prove you are good to bad people. You just have to get on with your life.

And if you don't like the way government is using your money, vote. And if you can't convince people to vote otherwise, your arguments aren't very good.

I still feel compelled to help my enemy even when I know it's not in my best interests, but I am less likely to do so now. I mean, if I want to contribute to a cause, there are children in Syria. I can give them money.

Rand saw characters like Ellsworth Toohey as villains, suspicious and hateful of talented people, a promoter of mediocrity, a destructive force. Which he was, he was a manipulative asshole. 

But many creative people and things are also destructive and manipulative, and they do it for The Better World. They destroy things which came before in order to build room for themselves and their ideas. This is the essence of Modernism, isn't it? The rejection of what came before to build this new world.

There is an element of destruction in many creative forces. And sometimes the destructive element that propels a new idea is a very destructive person who sees something he wants, as Steve Jobs did, and does whatever he can to push the idea or thing forward at the cost of the human beings who created or construct the thing.

If the purpose of the thing is the betterment of mankind by improving the world via the introduction of Important Thing, then doing that on the steaming corpses of a lot of people who made that thing is no different than the sacrificial lamb principles of the socialism Rand despised. 

The ubermen in Rand's world - the achievers, the minds - the engine of their creations cannot function unless there are a lot of people at the bottom making the machine go. Which means the philosophy that tells you self sacrifice is bad depends on the self sacrifice of the worker ant.

This would drive Ayn Rand crazy, but I think it applies: modern corporatism is a form of feudalism and getting more so with time, with corporations having an inordinate control over employees and behaving in a collectivist fashion expecting personal sacrifices on the part of workers while a tiny elite gets rich. It seems like a principality to me, with corporations having their own countries and rules, and the court feeding on the mass contributions of employees while not rewarding them commensurate to their contributions. I don't see any major difference between this and the collectivism Rand said she despised. 

Except it's a private government doing it. 

One of the major faults I have with segments of modern activist movements is in near-Victorian notions re: moral purity and the push for self sacrifice. This was a major reason why Ayn Rand appealed to many people, IMHO: rejection of toxic self sacrifice. 

It is OK to do for others but never OK to do for yourself. 

Ironically, we now have spiritual gurus pushing the idea of "self care" as in if you can't help yourself you can't help anyone else, which is pretty much what Rand stated. 

Joanna Russ in her essay "Magic Mamas and Trembling Sisters" openly declared "Self sacrifice is vile". I think a lot of people miss Rand's appeal as a rejection of toxic self sacrifice and this is her hold over a lot of her readers.

Like a lot of people who are wrong about a lot of things, she's right about that one. Self sacrifice can be toxic. 

But she never saw that she was also preaching self sacrifice. Irony, no?

The notion of rejecting toxic self sacrifice is something we can now accept...as long as we aren't getting that news from Ayn Rand, apparently.