Monthly Archives: August 2021

American writer and philosopher (19051982)

Alice O'Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum;[a] February 2,[O.S. January 20]1905 March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand (), was an American writer and philosopher. She is known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. She had a play that opened on Broadway in 1935. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead. In 1957, Rand published her best-known work, the novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own periodicals and releasing several collections of essays until her death in 1982.

Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge and rejected faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism and rejected altruism. In politics, she condemned the initiation of force as immoral and opposed collectivism, statism, and anarchism. Instead she supported laissez-faire capitalism, which she defined as the system based on recognizing individual rights, including property rights. Although she was opposed to libertarianism, which she viewed as anarchism, she is often associated with the modern libertarian movement. In art, Rand promoted romantic realism. She was sharply critical of most philosophers and philosophical traditions known to her, except for Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and classical liberals.

Literary critics received Rand's fiction with mixed reviews. Although academic interest in her ideas has grown since her death, academic philosophers have generally ignored or rejected her philosophy due to her polemical approach and lack of methodological rigor. Her writings have had political influence among libertarians and some conservatives. The Objectivist movement attempts to spread her ideas, both to the public and in academic settings.

Rand was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905, to a Russian-Jewish bourgeois family living in Saint Petersburg. She was the eldest of three daughters of Zinovy Zakharovich Rosenbaum, a pharmacist, and Anna Borisovna (ne Kaplan). Rand later said she found school unchallenging and began writing screenplays at the age of eight and novels at the age of ten. At the prestigious Stoiunina Gymnasium[ru], her closest friend was Vladimir Nabokov's younger sister, Olga; the two girls shared an intense interest in politics.

She was twelve at the time of the February Revolution of 1917, during which she favored Alexander Kerensky over Tsar Nicholas II. The subsequent October Revolution and the rule of the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin disrupted the life the family had previously enjoyed. Her father's business was confiscated, and the family fled to the Crimean Peninsula, which was initially under control of the White Army during the Russian Civil War. While in high school there, she concluded that she was an atheist and valued reason above any other virtue. After graduating in June 1921, she returned with her family to Petrograd (as Saint Petersburg was renamed at that time), where they faced desperate conditions, on occasion nearly starving.[22]

After the Russian Revolution, universities were opened to women, allowing her to be in the first group of women to enroll at Petrograd State University. At the age of 16, she began her studies in the department of social pedagogy, majoring in history. At the university she was introduced to the writings of Aristotle and Plato; she came to see their differing views on reality and knowledge as the primary conflict within philosophy.[27] She also studied the philosophical works of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Along with many other bourgeois students, she was purged from the university shortly before graduating. After complaints from a group of visiting foreign scientists, many of the purged students were allowed to complete their work and graduate, which she did in October 1924. She then studied for a year at the State Technicum for Screen Arts in Leningrad. For an assignment, she wrote an essay about the Polish actress Pola Negri, which became her first published work.

By this time, she had decided her professional surname for writing would be Rand, possibly because it is graphically similar to a vowelless excerpt of her birth surname in Cyrillic handwriting, and she adopted the first name Ayn.[b]

In late 1925, Rand was granted a visa to visit relatives in Chicago. She departed on January 17, 1926. When she arrived in New York City on February 19, 1926, she was so impressed with the skyline of Manhattan that she cried what she later called "tears of splendor". Intent on staying in the United States to become a screenwriter, she lived for a few months with her relatives, one of whom owned a movie theater and allowed her to watch dozens of films free of charge. She then left for Hollywood, California.

In Hollywood, a chance meeting with famed director Cecil B. DeMille led to work as an extra in his film The King of Kings and a subsequent job as a junior screenwriter. While working on The King of Kings, she met an aspiring young actor, Frank O'Connor; the two were married on April 15, 1929. She became a permanent American resident in July 1929 and an American citizen on March 3, 1931.[c] She made several attempts to bring her parents and sisters to the United States, but they were unable to acquire permission to emigrate.

During these early years of her career, Rand wrote a number of screenplays, plays, and short stories that were not produced or published during her lifetime, some of which were later published in The Early Ayn Rand.

Rand's first literary success came with the sale of her screenplay Red Pawn to Universal Studios in 1932, although it was never produced. This was followed by the courtroom drama Night of January 16th, first produced by E. E. Clive in Hollywood in 1934 and then successfully reopened on Broadway in 1935. Each night a jury was selected from members of the audience; based on the jury's vote, one of two different endings would be performed.[d]

Rand's first published novel, the semi-autobiographical We the Living, was published in 1936. Set in Soviet Russia, it focused on the struggle between the individual and the state. Initial sales were slow and the American publisher let it go out of print, although European editions continued to sell.[56] She adapted the story as a stage play, but producer George Abbott's Broadway production was a failure that closed in less than a week.[57][e] After the success of her later novels, Rand was able to release a revised version in 1959 that has since sold over three million copies.[59] In a foreword to the 1959 edition, Rand stated that We the Living "is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write. ... The plot is invented, the background is not ..."[60]

Her novella Anthem was written during a break from the writing of her next major novel, The Fountainhead. It presents a vision of a dystopian future world in which totalitarian collectivism has triumphed to such an extent that even the word 'I' has been forgotten and replaced with 'we'. It was published in England in 1938, but Rand initially could not find an American publisher. As with We the Living, Rand's later success allowed her to get a revised version published in 1946, which has sold more than 3.5million copies.[63]

During the 1940s, Rand became politically active. She and her husband worked as full-time volunteers for the 1940 presidential campaign of Republican Wendell Willkie. This work led to Rand's first public speaking experiences; she enjoyed fielding sometimes hostile questions from New York City audiences who had viewed pro-Willkie newsreels. This activity brought her into contact with other intellectuals sympathetic to free-market capitalism. She became friends with journalist Henry Hazlitt, who introduced her to the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises. Despite her philosophical differences with them, Rand strongly endorsed the writings of both men throughout her career, and both of them expressed admiration for her. Mises once referred to Rand as "the most courageous man in America", a compliment that particularly pleased her because he said "man" instead of "woman". Rand also became friends with libertarian writer Isabel Paterson. Rand questioned Paterson about American history and politics long into the night during their many meetings and gave Paterson ideas for her only non-fiction book, The God of the Machine.

Rand's first major success as a writer came in 1943 with The Fountainhead, a romantic and philosophical novel that she wrote over a period of seven years. The novel centers on an uncompromising young architect named Howard Roark and his struggle against what Rand described as "second-handers"those who attempt to live through others, placing others above themselves. It was rejected by twelve publishers before finally being accepted by the Bobbs-Merrill Company on the insistence of editor Archibald Ogden, who threatened to quit if his employer did not publish it. While completing the novel, Rand was prescribed the amphetamine Benzedrine to fight fatigue. The drug helped her to work long hours to meet her deadline for delivering the novel, but afterwards she was so exhausted that her doctor ordered two weeks' rest. Her use of the drug for approximately three decades may have contributed to what some of her later associates described as volatile mood swings.

The Fountainhead became a worldwide success, bringing Rand fame and financial security. In 1943, Rand sold the film rights to Warner Bros. and she returned to Hollywood to write the screenplay. Afterwards she was hired by producer Hal B. Wallis as a screenwriter and script-doctor. Her work for Wallis included the screenplays for the Oscar-nominated Love Letters and You Came Along. Rand also worked on other projects, including a never-completed nonfiction treatment of her philosophy to be called The Moral Basis of Individualism.[f]

Rand extended her involvement with free-market and anti-communist activism while working in Hollywood. She became involved with the anti-Communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals and wrote articles on the group's behalf. She also joined the anti-Communist American Writers Association. A visit by Paterson to meet with Rand's California associates led to a falling out between the two when Paterson made comments, which Rand considered rude, to valued political allies. In 1947, during the Second Red Scare, Rand testified as a "friendly witness" before the United States House Un-American Activities Committee. Rand testified that the 1944 film Song of Russia grossly misrepresented conditions in the Soviet Union, portraying life there as much better and happier than it was. She wanted to also criticize the lauded 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives for what she interpreted as its negative presentation of the business world, but she was not allowed to testify about it. When asked after the hearings about her feelings on the effectiveness of the investigations, Rand described the process as "futile".

After several delays, the film version of The Fountainhead was released in 1949. Although it used Rand's screenplay with minimal alterations, she "disliked the movie from beginning to end", and complained about its editing, acting, and other elements.

Following the publication of The Fountainhead, Rand received numerous letters from readers, some of whom the book profoundly influenced.[85] In 1951, Rand moved from Los Angeles to New York City, where she gathered a group of these admirers around her. This group (jokingly designated "The Collective") included future Chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, a young psychology student named Nathan Blumenthal (later Nathaniel Branden) and his wife Barbara, and Barbara's cousin Leonard Peikoff. Initially the group was an informal gathering of friends who met with Rand on weekends at her apartment to discuss philosophy. She later began allowing them to read the drafts of her new novel, Atlas Shrugged, as the manuscript was written. In 1954, Rand's close relationship with Nathaniel Branden turned into a romantic affair, with the knowledge of their spouses.

Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, was considered Rand's magnum opus. Rand described the theme of the novel as "the role of the mind in man's existenceand, as a corollary, the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest".[90] It advocates the core tenets of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and expresses her concept of human achievement. The plot involves a dystopian United States in which the most creative industrialists, scientists, and artists respond to a welfare state government by going on strike and retreating to a hidden valley where they build an independent free economy. The novel's hero and leader of the strike, John Galt, describes the strike as "stopping the motor of the world" by withdrawing the minds of the individuals most contributing to the nation's wealth and achievement. With this fictional strike, Rand intended to illustrate that without the efforts of the rational and productive, the economy would collapse and society would fall apart. The novel includes elements of mystery, romance, and science fiction, and it contains an extended exposition of Objectivism in a lengthy monologue delivered by Galt.[93]

Despite many negative reviews, Atlas Shrugged became an international bestseller. However, Rand was discouraged and depressed by the reaction of intellectuals to the novel. Atlas Shrugged was Rand's last completed work of fiction; it marked the end of her career as a novelist and the beginning of her role as a popular philosopher.

In 1958, Nathaniel Branden established Nathaniel Branden Lectures, later incorporated as the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), to promote Rand's philosophy. Collective members gave lectures for NBI and wrote articles for Objectivist periodicals that Rand edited. She later published some of these articles in book form. Rand was unimpressed with many of the NBI students and held them to strict standards, sometimes reacting coldly or angrily to those who disagreed with her. Critics, including some former NBI students and Branden himself, later described the culture of NBI as one of intellectual conformity and excessive reverence for Rand. Some described NBI or the Objectivist movement generally as a cult or religion. Rand expressed opinions on a wide range of topics, from literature and music to sexuality and facial hair, and some of her followers mimicked her preferences, wearing clothes to match characters from her novels and buying furniture like hers. However, some former NBI students believed the extent of these behaviors was exaggerated, and the problem was concentrated among Rand's closest followers in New York.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Rand developed and promoted her Objectivist philosophy through her nonfiction works and by giving talks to students at institutions such as Yale, Princeton, Columbia,[105] Harvard, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also began delivering annual lectures at the Ford Hall Forum, responding afterwards to questions from the audience. During these appearances, she often took controversial stances on political and social issues of the day. These included supporting abortion rights, opposing the Vietnam War and the military draft (but condemning many draft dodgers as "bums"), supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 against a coalition of Arab nations as "civilized men fighting savages",[111] saying white colonists had the right to invade and take land inhabited by American Indians,[113] and calling homosexuality "immoral" and "disgusting", while also advocating the repeal of all laws about it. She also endorsed several Republican candidates for President of the United States, most strongly Barry Goldwater in 1964, whose candidacy she promoted in several articles for The Objectivist Newsletter.

In 1964, Nathaniel Branden began an affair with the young actress Patrecia Scott, whom he later married. Nathaniel and Barbara Branden kept the affair hidden from Rand. When she learned of it in 1968, though her romantic relationship with Branden had already ended, Rand terminated her relationship with both Brandens, and NBI was closed. Rand published an article in The Objectivist repudiating Nathaniel Branden for dishonesty and other "irrational behavior in his private life". In subsequent years, Rand and several more of her closest associates parted company.[120]

Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1974 after decades of heavy smoking. In 1976, she retired from writing her newsletter and, after her initial objections, she allowed an employee of her attorney to enroll her in Social Security and Medicare. During the late 1970s her activities within the Objectivist movement declined, especially after the death of her husband on November 9, 1979.[124] One of her final projects was work on a never-completed television adaptation of Atlas Shrugged.

Rand died of heart failure on March 6, 1982, at her home in New York City, and was interred in the Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York. At her funeral, a 6-foot (1.8m) floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign was placed near her casket. In her will, Rand named Peikoff to inherit her estate.

Rand described her approach to literature as "romantic realism". She wanted her fiction to present the world "as it could be and should be", rather than as it was.[131] This approach led her to create highly stylized situations and characters. Her fiction typically has protagonists who are heroic individualists and depicted as fit and attractive. The villains in her stories support duty and collectivist moral ideals. They are often described as unattractive and sometimes have names that suggest negative traits, such as Wesley Mouch in Atlas Shrugged.

Rand considered plot a critical element for literature, and her stories typically have what biographer Anne Heller described as "tight, elaborate, fast-paced plotting". Romantic triangles are a common plot element in Rand's fiction; in most of her novels and plays, the main female character is romantically involved with at least two different men.[137]

In school Rand read works by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, Edmond Rostand, and Friedrich Schiller, who became her favorites. She considered them to be among the "top rank" of Romantic writers because of their focus on moral themes and their skill at constructing plots. Hugo in particular was an important influence on her writing, especially her approach to plotting. She called him "the greatest novelist in world literature" in the introduction she wrote for an English-language edition of his novel Ninety-Three.

Although Rand disliked most Russian literature, her deptictions of her heroes show the influence of the Russian Symbolists and other nineteenth-century Russian writing, most notably the 1863 novel What Is to Be Done? by Nikolay Chernyshevsky. Rand's experience of the Russian Revolution and early Communist Russia influenced the portrayal of her villains. This is most apparent in We the Living, which is set in Russia, but it is also reflected in the ideas and rhetoric of Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead and the destruction of the economy by the looters in Atlas Shrugged.

Rand's descriptive style reflects her early career writing scenarios and scripts for movies; her novels have many narrative descriptions that resemble early Hollywood movie scenarios. They often follow common film editing conventions, such as having a broad establishing shot description of a scene followed by close-up details, and her descriptions of women characters often take a "male gaze" perspective.[147]

Rand called her philosophy "Objectivism", describing its essence as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute".[148] She considered Objectivism a systematic philosophy and laid out positions on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics.

In metaphysics, Rand supported philosophical realism, and opposed anything she regarded as mysticism or supernaturalism, including all forms of religion.[150]

In epistemology, she considered all knowledge to be based on sense perception, the validity of which she considered axiomatic, and reason, which she described as "the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses".[153] She rejected all claims of non-perceptual or a priori knowledge, including "'instinct,' 'intuition,' 'revelation,' or any form of 'just knowing'".[154] In her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Rand presented a theory of concept formation and rejected the analyticsynthetic dichotomy.

In ethics, Rand argued for rational and ethical egoism (rational self-interest), as the guiding moral principle. She said the individual should "exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself".[157] She referred to egoism as "the virtue of selfishness" in her book of that title, in which she presented her solution to the is-ought problem by describing a meta-ethical theory that based morality in the needs of "man's survival qua man".[158] She condemned ethical altruism as incompatible with the requirements of human life and happiness, and held that the initiation of force was evil and irrational, writing in Atlas Shrugged that "Force and mind are opposites."[159]

Rand's political philosophy emphasized individual rights (including property rights), and she considered laissez-faire capitalism the only moral social system because in her view it was the only system based on the protection of those rights. She opposed statism, which she understood to include theocracy, absolute monarchy, Nazism, fascism, communism, democratic socialism, and dictatorship. Rand believed that natural rights should be protected by a constitutionally limited government. Although her political views are often classified as conservative or libertarian, she preferred the term "radical for capitalism". She worked with conservatives on political projects, but disagreed with them over issues such as religion and ethics. She denounced libertarianism, which she associated with anarchism. She rejected anarchism as a nave theory based in subjectivism that could only lead to collectivism in practice.

In aesthetics, Rand defined art as a "selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments". According to her, art allows philosophical concepts to be presented in a concrete form that can be easily grasped, thereby fulfilling a need of human consciousness. As a writer, the art form Rand focused on most closely was literature, where she considered romanticism to be the approach that most accurately reflected the existence of human free will.

Rand said her most important contributions to philosophy were her "theory of concepts, ethics, and discovery in politics that evilthe violation of rightsconsists of the initiation of force".[169] She believed epistemology was a foundational branch of philosophy and considered the advocacy of reason to be the single most significant aspect of her philosophy,[170] stating: "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows."[171]

Rand's ethics and politics are the most criticized areas of her philosophy. Multiple authors, including Robert Nozick and William F. O'Neill in some of the earliest academic critiques of her ideas, said she failed in her attempt to solve the isought problem. Her definitions of egoism and altruism have been called biased and inconsistent with normal usage. Critics from religious traditions oppose her rejection of altruism in addition to her atheism.

Multiple critics, including Nozick, have said her attempt to justify individual rights on the basis of egoism fails.[177] Others, such as Michael Huemer, have gone further, saying that her support of egoism and her support of individual rights are fundamentally inconsistent positions.[178] Other critics, such as Roy Childs, have said that her opposition to the initiation of force should lead to support of anarchism, rather than limited government.

Rand's focus on the importance of reason has been criticized by commentators including Hazel Barnes, Albert Ellis, and Nathaniel Branden, who said this emphasis led her to denigrate emotions and created unrealistic expectations about how consistently rational human beings should be.

Rand was sharply critical of most philosophers and philosophical traditions known to her, except for Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and classical liberals. She acknowledged Aristotle as her greatest influence and remarked that in the history of philosophy she could only recommend "three A's"Aristotle, Aquinas, and Ayn Rand. In a 1959 interview with Mike Wallace, when asked where her philosophy came from she responded: "Out of my own mind, with the sole acknowledgement of a debt to Aristotle, the only philosopher who ever influenced me. I devised the rest of my philosophy myself."

In an article for the Claremont Review of Books, political scientist Charles Murray criticized her claim that her only "philosophical debt" was to Aristotle, instead asserting that her ideas were derivative of previous thinkers such as John Locke and Friedrich Nietzsche. Rand did find early inspiration from Nietzsche, and scholars have found indications of this in Rand's private journals. In 1928, she alluded to Nietzsche's idea of the "superman" in notes for an unwritten novel whose protagonist was inspired by the murderer William Edward Hickman. There are other indications of Nietzsche's influence in passages from the first edition of We the Living (which Rand later revised),[192] and in her overall writing style.[193] By the time she wrote The Fountainhead, Rand had turned against Nietzsche's ideas, and the extent of his influence on her even during her early years is disputed.[197]

Rand considered her philosophical opposite to be Immanuel Kant, whom she referred to as "the most evil man in mankind's history";[198] she believed his epistemology undermined reason and his ethics opposed self-interest.[199] Philosophers George Walsh and Fred Seddon have argued that she misinterpreted Kant and exaggerated their differences.

The first reviews Rand received were for Night of January 16th. Reviews of the Broadway production were largely positive, but Rand considered even positive reviews to be embarrassing because of significant changes made to her script by the producer.[202] Rand believed that her novel We the Living was not widely reviewed, but it received approximately 125 different reviews published in more than 200 publications. Overall these reviews were more positive than those she received for her later work.[203] Her 1938 novella Anthem received little attention from reviewers, both for its first publication in England and for subsequent re-issues.[204]

Rand's first bestseller, The Fountainhead, received far fewer reviews than We the Living, and reviewers' opinions were mixed.[205] Lorine Pruette's positive review in The New York Times was one that Rand greatly appreciated. Pruette called Rand "a writer of great power" who wrote "brilliantly, beautifully and bitterly", and stated that "you will not be able to read this masterful book without thinking through some of the basic concepts of our time". There were other positive reviews, but Rand dismissed most of them as either not understanding her message or as being from unimportant publications.[205] Some negative reviews focused on the length of the novel, such as one that called it "a whale of a book" and another that said "anyone who is taken in by it deserves a stern lecture on paper-rationing". Other negative reviews called the characters unsympathetic and Rand's style "offensively pedestrian".[205]

Atlas Shrugged was widely reviewed and many of the reviews were strongly negative.[208] In National Review, conservative author Whittaker Chambers called the book "sophomoric" and "remarkably silly". He described the tone of the book as "shrillness without reprieve" and accused Rand of supporting a godless system (which he related to that of the Soviets), claiming "From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chambergo!'". Atlas Shrugged received positive reviews from a few publications, including praise from the noted book reviewer John Chamberlain,[208] but Rand scholar Mimi Reisel Gladstein later wrote that "reviewers seemed to vie with each other in a contest to devise the cleverest put-downs", saying it was "execrable claptrap", "written out of hate", and showed "remorseless hectoring and prolixity".

Rand's nonfiction received far fewer reviews than her novels. The tenor of the criticism for her first nonfiction book, For the New Intellectual, was similar to that for Atlas Shrugged. Philosopher Sidney Hook likened her certainty to "the way philosophy is written in the Soviet Union", and author Gore Vidal called her viewpoint "nearly perfect in its immorality". Her subsequent books got progressively less attention from reviewers.

In 2005, on the 100th anniversary of Rand's birth, Edward Rothstein, writing for The New York Times, referred to her fictional writing as quaint utopian "retro fantasy" and programmatic neo-Romanticism of the misunderstood artist while criticizing her characters' "isolated rejection of democratic society".

Rand's books continue to be widely sold and read, with over 30million copies sold as of 2015[update].[g] In 1991, a survey conducted for the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club asked club members what the most influential book in the respondent's life was. Rand's Atlas Shrugged was the second most popular choice, after the Bible. Although Rand's influence has been greatest in the United States, there has been international interest in her work.

Rand's contemporary admirers included fellow novelists, such as Ira Levin, Kay Nolte Smith and L. Neil Smith; and later writers such as Erika Holzer and Terry Goodkind have been influenced by her. Other artists who have cited Rand as an important influence on their lives and thought include comic book artist Steve Ditko and musician Neil Peart of Rush, although he later distanced himself. Rand provided a positive view of business and subsequently many business executives and entrepreneurs have admired and promoted her work. John Allison of BB&T and Ed Snider of Comcast Spectacor have funded the promotion of Rand's ideas, while Mark Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks) as well as John P. Mackey (CEO of Whole Foods) among others have said they consider Rand crucial to their success.

Rand and her works have been referred to in a variety of media: on television shows including animated sitcoms, live-action comedies, dramas, and game shows, as well as in movies and video games. Throughout her life she was the subject of many articles in popular magazines, as well as book-length critiques from authors such as the psychologist Albert Ellis and Trinity Foundation president John W. Robbins. Rand or characters based on her figure prominently (in positive and negative lights) in literary and science fiction novels by prominent American authors. Nick Gillespie, former editor in chief of Reason, remarked that "Rand's is a tortured immortality, one in which she's as likely to be a punch line as a protagonist. Jibes at Rand as cold and inhuman run through the popular culture." Two movies have been made about Rand's life. A 1997 documentary film, Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The Passion of Ayn Rand, a 1999 television adaptation of the book of the same name, won several awards. Rand's image also appears on a 1999 U.S. postage stamp illustrated by artist Nick Gaetano.

Rand's works have also found a foothold in classrooms. Since 2002, the Ayn Rand Institute has provided free copies of Rand's novels to high school teachers who promise to include the books in their curriculums.[239] They had distributed 4.5million copies in the US and Canada by the end of 2020.[218] In 2017, Rand was added to the required reading list for the A Level Politics exam in the United Kingdom.[240]

Although she rejected the labels "conservative" and "libertarian", Rand has had continuing influence on right-wing politics and libertarianism. Jim Powell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, considers Rand one of the three most important women (along with Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson) of modern American libertarianism, and David Nolan, one of the founders of the Libertarian Party, stated that "without Ayn Rand, the libertarian movement would not exist".[244] In his history of the libertarian movement, journalist Brian Doherty described her as "the most influential libertarian of the twentieth century to the public at large" and historian Jennifer Burns referred to her as "the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right".

The political figures who cite Rand as an influence are usually conservatives (often members of the Republican Party), despite Rand taking some positions that are atypical for conservatives, such as being pro-choice and an atheist. She faced intense opposition from William F. Buckley Jr. and other contributors for the conservative National Review magazine, which published numerous criticisms of her writings and ideas. Nevertheless, a 1987 article in The New York Times referred to her as the Reagan administration's "novelist laureate". Republican Congressmen and conservative pundits have acknowledged her influence on their lives and have recommended her novels. She has also influenced some conservative politicians outside the US, such as Sajid Javid in the United Kingdom, Siv Jensen in Norway, and Ayelet Shaked in Israel.

The financial crisis of 20072008 spurred renewed interest in her works, especially Atlas Shrugged, which some saw as foreshadowing the crisis. Opinion articles compared real-world events with the plot of the novel. Signs mentioning Rand and her fictional hero John Galt appeared at Tea Party protests. There was also increased criticism of her ideas, especially from the political left, with critics blaming the economic crisis on her support of selfishness and free markets, particularly through her influence on Alan Greenspan. In 2015, Adam Weiner said that through Greenspan, "Rand had effectively chucked a ticking time bomb into the boiler room of the US economy". Lisa Duggan said that Rand's novels had "incalculable impact" in encouraging the spread of neoliberal political ideas. In 2021, Cass Sunstein said Rand's ideas could be seen in the tax and regulatory policies of the Trump administration, which he attributed to "Rand's enduring influence ... from her fiction".

During Rand's lifetime, her work received little attention from academic scholars. Since Rand's death, interest in her work has gradually increased. In 2009, historian Jennifer Burns identified "three overlapping waves" of scholarly interest in Rand, including "an explosion of scholarship" since the year 2000. However, as of that same year, few universities included Rand or Objectivism as a philosophical specialty or research area, with many literature and philosophy departments dismissing her as a pop culture phenomenon rather than a subject for serious study. From 2002 to 2012, more than 60 colleges and universities accepted grants from the charitable foundation of BB&T Corporation that required teaching Rand's ideas or works; in some cases the grants were controversial or even rejected because of the requirement to teach about Rand. In 2020, media critic Eric Burns said that "Rand is surely the most engaging philosopher of my lifetime", but "nobody in the academe pays any attention to her, neither as an author nor a philosopher". That same year, the editor of a collection of critical essays about Rand said academics who disapproved of her ideas had long held "a stubborn resolve to ignore or ridicule" her work, but he believed more academic critics were engaging with her work in recent years.

In 1967, John Hospers discussed Rand's ethical ideas in the second edition of his textbook An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. That same year, Hazel Barnes included a chapter critiquing Objectivism in her book An Existentialist Ethics. When the first full-length academic book about Rand's philosophy appeared in 1971, its author declared writing about Rand "a treacherous undertaking" that could lead to "guilt by association" for taking her seriously. A few articles about Rand's ideas appeared in academic journals before her death in 1982, many of them in The Personalist. One of these was "On the Randian Argument" by libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick, who criticized her meta-ethical arguments. Other philosophers, writing in the same publication, argued that Nozick misstated Rand's case. In an article responding to Nozick, Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen defended her positions, but described her style as "literary, hyperbolic and emotional".

The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand, a 1984 collection of essays about Objectivism edited by Den Uyl and Rasmussen, was the first academic book about Rand's ideas published after her death. In one of the essays, political writer Jack Wheeler wrote that despite "the incessant bombast and continuous venting of Randian rage", Rand's ethics are "a most immense achievement, the study of which is vastly more fruitful than any other in contemporary thought".[276] In 1987 Allan Gotthelf, George Walsh, and David Kelley co-founded the Ayn Rand Society, a group affiliated with the American Philosophical Association.

In a 1995 entry about Rand in Contemporary Women Philosophers, Jenny A. Heyl described a divergence in how Rand was viewed in different academic specialties. She said that Rand's philosophy "is regularly omitted from academic philosophy. Yet, throughout literary academia, Ayn Rand is considered a philosopher." Writing in the 1998 edition of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, political theorist Chandran Kukathas summarized the mainstream philosophical reception of her work in two parts. He said her ethical argument is viewed by most commentators as an unconvincing variant of Aristotle's ethics, and her political theory "is of little interest" because it is marred by an "ill-thought out and unsystematic" effort to reconcile her hostility to the state with her rejection of anarchism. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, a multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the study of Rand and her ideas, was established in 1999. R. W. Bradford, Stephen D. Cox, and Chris Matthew Sciabarra were its founding co-editors.

In a 2010 essay for the Cato Institute, libertarian philosopher Michael Huemer argued that very few people find Rand's ideas convincing, especially her ethics. He attributed the attention she receives to her being a "compelling writer", especially as a novelist, noting that Atlas Shrugged outsells Rand's non-fiction works as well as the works of other philosophers of classical liberalism. In 2012, the Pennsylvania State University Press agreed to take over publication of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, and the University of Pittsburgh Press launched an "Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Studies" series based on the proceedings of the Society. That same year, political scientist Alan Wolfe dismissed Rand as a "nonperson" among academics. The Fall 2020 update to the entry about Rand in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy said that "only a few professional philosophers have taken her work seriously".

Academic consideration of Rand as a literary figure during her life was even more limited than the discussion of her philosophy. Mimi Reisel Gladstein was unable to find any scholarly articles about Rand's novels when she began researching her in 1973, and only three such articles appeared during the rest of the 1970s. Since her death, scholars of English and American literature have continued to largely ignore her work, although attention to her literary work has increased since the 1990s. Rand and her works are covered in several academic book series about important authors, including Twayne's United States Authors (Ayn Rand by James T. Baker), Twayne's Masterwork Studies (The Fountainhead: An American Novel by Den Uyl and Atlas Shrugged: Manifesto of the Mind by Gladstein), and Re-reading the Canon (Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand, edited by Gladstein and Sciabarra), as well as in popular study guides such as CliffsNotes and SparkNotes. In the Literary Encyclopedia entry for Rand written in 2001, John David Lewis declared that "Rand wrote the most intellectually challenging fiction of her generation". In 2019, Lisa Duggan described Rand's fiction as popular and influential on many readers, despite being easy to criticize for "her cartoonish characters and melodramatic plots, her rigid moralizing, her middle- to lowbrow aesthetic preferences ... and philosophical strivings".

After the closure of the Nathaniel Branden Institute, the Objectivist movement continued in other forms. In the 1970s, Leonard Peikoff began delivering courses on Objectivism. In 1979, Objectivist writer Peter Schwartz started a newsletter called The Intellectual Activist, which Rand endorsed. She also endorsed The Objectivist Forum, a bimonthly magazine founded by Objectivist philosopher Harry Binswanger, which ran from 1980 to 1987.

In 1985, Peikoff worked with businessman Ed Snider to establish the Ayn Rand Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting Rand's ideas and works. In 1990, after an ideological disagreement with Peikoff, philosopher David Kelley founded the Institute for Objectivist Studies, now known as The Atlas Society. In 2001, historian John McCaskey organized the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship, which provides grants for scholarly work on Objectivism in academia.

Continue reading here:

Ayn Rand - Wikipedia

Sajid Javid has apologised for accusing the British people of cowering from Covid-19. But this was no slip of the thumb. The Health Secretary is a lifelong devotee of Ayn Rand, whose philosophy glorifies the selfish brutality of capitalism.

His twice-yearly ritual is to read a defiant speech from Rands The Fountainhead. You will get the drift of it from just one passage: The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself. The parasite lives second-hand... The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order to serve others. He preaches altruism...

In the lexicon of Rands philosophy, cowering before nature is what primitive peoples do (she classified Arabs and Native Americans among others as primitive). But in the 1960s, as the New Left challenged American conservatism, she extended the charge of primitivism to feminists, ecologists and multiculturalists. By fighting to protect nature, and against the US's white, militarist monoculture, she said, they too were akin to savages: irrational, fearful, reliant on group identities instead of on tough, self-centred amoralism.

Not all hedge-fund cowboys are Rand obsessives, but it helps. The mindset Rand advocates rely on no one, follow no morals but self-fulfilment, recognise no social obligations is perfect for the kind of person who will sit in New York, engaging in financial speculation that underminesMexico's economy, as Javid did at Chase Manhattan.

As soon as he got the chance to bring his world-view to the task of managing Englands health service, Javid did so with gusto. Learning to live with Covid, not to cower before it, is Javid-speak for unleashing the virus on a semi-vaccinated population, inviting further mutations, while declaring that the end of lockdown is irreversible.

It is not just that Javid is prepared to ignore the science. It is that he believes, philosophically to the core of his being, that the survival of the fittest is the surest route to human progress. The result is that we are all now part of a public health experiment that has left the worlds scientific community aghast. But the political experiment has only just begun.

On 24 Julya group of anti-vaxxers, Covid-deniers and far-right activists in London took part in a global day of action against both vaccines and lockdowns. From Sydney to Paris and Milan, protesters defied rules on public gatherings, clashed with policeand shared crazed, irrationaltheories from David Ickes lizard theory of global governance to the allegation that 5G telecoms spread the virus.

In Glogow, Poland, the crowd chanted: Every Pole can see today that behind the plandemic are the Jews.In both London and Paris, some protesters reportedly wore yellow stars, recalling the ones Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany.

On their ownsuch protests overthe past 18 months have been a dangerous irritant at worst. They have acted as a magnet, drawing people from diverse conspiracy theories and cults towards the generalised far-right ideology of QAnon. And they have knowingly spread the disease itself.

But from this summer onwards they have the potential to grow and merge with the much wider discontent among people who have borne the financial and social brunt of the lockdowns. Many young people, it turns out, are sceptical of vaccines: they dont want to risk three days off sick in a season when many of them have to work; or they believe any Covid-19 symptoms they suffer will be mild.

The Tory leadership, in response, is said to be livid and considering compulsory vaccine passports for students returning to lectures and halls of residence, and indeed vaccine passports for major events and venues.The logic is clear. Having decided to stake everything on herd immunity and having yet again abandoned the test, trace and isolate regime, the government needs mass uptake of the vaccine before it can declare any kind of decisive victory over the virus. It needs victory because, lurking within the Javid/Sunak wing of the cabinet is the deep desire to start slashing public spending and raising taxes.

What were left with are the competing philosophies within modern conservatism: libertarianism, which demands outright opposition to vaccine passports; authoritarianism, which demands passports for all; science scepticism, which has encouraged far-right conspiracists; and the Randian doctrine of self-preservation, which tells people to stop cowering and get out there. In the middle of it all, bobbing around ideologically like a cork, is Boris Johnson,staging inconsequential speeches and vapid policy announcements.

This is government by incoherence, but I doubt it can last. Keir Starmer has rightly understood that, while people will tolerate much harder lockdown restrictions than the Tories suspected, they will not put up with a permanent ID system based on epidemiological status. While venues may want the right to run their own temporary passport systems, any attempt to make this statutory and permanent outside conditions of lockdown would swell the ranks of the protesters way beyond cranks and fascists.

At worst, it could push the mood of complacency and fatalism among the 16- to 24-year-olds to breaking point. You can only return to normality if you have the virus under control. At present, Covid-19 is most definitely not under control even if deaths and hospitalisations have become detached from the case rate. And that is without any further variants emerging.

This autumn we will approach a crunch point. The right of the Tory party will demand spending cuts, the end of the furlough scheme, the reversal of the increase in Universal Credit and a return to the evict-at-will culture of the private rented sector. For a Labour Party still ideologically committed to fiscal expansion, that should be easy to oppose.

But fighting Johnson and Javids let-it-rip Covid policy will be more challenging. If the Tories were not so terminally reactionaryand culturally hostile to the values of young people, they might find ready allies among 16- to 21-year-oldsdesperate to go on clubbing, holidaymaking, dating and working in the face of Covid.

Rand is legendarily popular with teenagers because she promotes a world-view in which everything is possible, ambition limitless and social obligations irrelevant. Live for now, ignore the rules, revel in your own glory and forget the collapsing ecosystem is the message and its a tempting oneif we're faced with yet another winter of chaos, mutant strains and the reimposition of lockdown.

Throughout the pandemic, libertarian conservatism, right-wing populism and youthful anti-authoritarianism have never quite managed to be on the same page. We should be thankful for that, but it may not last.

The ultimate fight, during this pandemic, has been for social solidarity the recognition of mutual obligations between people and the practice of the very thing that Javid, through his ritual Rand readings, gets to sneer at twice a year: altruism.

See the article here:

The ghost of Ayn Rand lives on in the Conservatives' Covid-19 policy Sajid Javid has - New Statesman

As she was getting ready to pour, the young barista with the pink hair and the nose ring looked over at me and asked, Room for cream?

Just the coffee, please, I told her. And let me get a scone.

Stone Tower Brew in Buckhannon didnt have a whole lot in the baked goods case. They had a couple of muffins and a peanut butter and banana scone. It was the very last one, so I took it.

I love a coffee shop. I love a good scone.

Coffee doesnt need much of an explanation, but a scone is a crumbly quickbread, similar to a biscuit.

I buy most of mine at Charleston Bread.

You can get a sweet or savory scone. Sweet scones are made with raisins, berries and/or nuts. Savory scones can be made with cheese, spinach and/or bacon.

Over the summer, I have been to a lot of coffee houses and eaten a fair number of scones.

Many times, Ive started my day in a coffee shop or else taken a break in the middle of the afternoon just to get off the road.

Occasionally, Ive stood outside coffee shop doors after dinner, wishing they were still open, that they could sell me one more cup of coffee and let me use the Wi-Fi to check my messages.

One of the marks of a nice place to live, maybe, is that it can support at least one independent coffee house the kind of place where the daily specials get written on a chalkboard. If the handwriting is good enough, they can almost sell you a white chocolate pumpkin spice latte offered in the dead of summer.

Coffee shops are creative and social hubs.

Whenever I go into a coffee house, I look around for that space by the door or next to the restroom thats dedicated to flyers for the Tuesday night poetry slam, the show with the angsty teen singer/songwriter doing his/her originals or the nude figure drawing class.

Bring $20 cash and your own materials. Tips welcome.

It might be something about a vegan potluck, a local meeting for atheists, wiccans, or an Ayn Rand book club.

These are always for people looking to find others, for people trying to make friends or to share.

That these messages hang on the walls or windows here send a message: Youre not weird. You just havent found your people yet.

To me, a good coffee shop isnt too sunny, but is well-lit enough to read a newspaper, a book, or the cracked screen of a laptop. Most of them have music playing somewhere in the background. That can be anything from jazz and indie bands to bluegrass or classic rock.

You seldom hear top 40 country in a coffee shop. Most of that stuff is already loaded with sugar and caffeine, anyway.

I always order a black coffee a dark or medium roast, no sugar. In a pinch, if they only do espresso drinks, Ill take an Americano with an extra shot.

Over the summer, Ive gone into over 20 different coffee houses, doughnut shops or bakeries that also sell coffee.

A general (and not particularly surprising) rule of thumb is that the coffee is better in the coffee house and the baked goods are better in the bakeries or the doughnut shops.

There are always exceptions.

So far, my favorite cup of coffee was at Queens Point Coffee in Keyser. They serve Black Dog Coffee, a roaster based in Jefferson County. I got a large cup of the dark roast, which was rich, flavorful, and made me feel like I could wrestle a Buick.

The morning I went to Queens Point Coffee, they didnt have scones, just cupcakes left over from a beer and cupcake pairing event from the night before, and oats.

After some deliberation, I had the oats, which were loaded with berries. It was probably the most sensible breakfast Ive eaten while traveling around West Virginia.

My favorite blueberry scone came from The River House in Capon Bridge in Hampshire County. I bought it after lunch, intending to have it for breakfast in the morning after I spent the night tent camping at Cacapon Resort State Park.

I wound up making it part of dinner when my dinner plans fell through.

Also, I used a paper cup from The River House to start my campfire. It worked like a charm and was sort of like recycling.

The best tasting blueberry scone came from Fairfax Coffee House in Berkeley Springs. It had just the right crumbly texture, an ample number of blueberries and wasnt overly sweet.

I got it just after it had come out of the oven.

Not every coffee house or bakery serves scones or they dont always have them for sale. Occasionally, Ive made do with something else.

In Bridgeport, at Almost Heaven Desserts, I bought a pistachio cannoli to take with me on the drive to Grafton. It didnt make it out of the parking lot.

For those of you who havent had one, a cannoli is an Italian pastry made with fried pastry dough thats shaped into a tube and usually filled with some kind of cream.

In Charleston, I usually get them at Sarahs Bakery on Bridge Road or at Rock City Cake Company on Capitol Street.

That pistachio cannoli was probably the best cannoli Id ever eaten and regret eating in the front seat of my car. It deserved to be eaten at a table on a plate.

Thats how much I loved that cannoli.

At Crossings Coffee Bar in Elkins, they had cookies and brownies, but no scones, so I wound up taking my coffee and going a few blocks over to Byrds House of Donuts.

They didnt have scones either, but they did have an amazing banana split donut, which was maybe the best filled donut Ive ever eaten.

I love walking into a new coffee house. I love taking the place in and seeing what the room is about.

Some coffee houses are all business. Tables and chairs are uniform. Everything is very shiny, with plenty of plug-ins for computers.

The Wi-Fi password gets changed every day.

These places remind me of Starbucks, which isnt a bad thing. Ive been to Starbucks more times than I can count, though not once since I started traveling throughout the state, even when I couldnt find any other coffee shop.

On my trips, Ive tried very hard to eat at small, locally owned places. So far, Ive done pretty well. The only chain restaurant Ive had anything from was at a Dairy Queen in Keyser, but circumstances demanded that I get an M&M blizzard for dinner.

My favorite coffee shops this summer have looked like something in between a yard sale and a wizards living room.

The tables maybe wobble precariously. The chairs dont all match and the baristas are all writers, students, musicians, and aspiring tattoo artists.

Theyre unfailingly friendly to groggy strangers who may not entirely know where they are or where theyre going. They dont seem to mind answering a few questions, though when I say, Whats the one place I shouldnt miss while Im in town, they always tell me the same thing.

Youre already here.

Here is the original post:

55 in 55: Black coffee and blueberry scones on the road - Charleston Gazette-Mail

Climate scientists got it wrong. If we kept average global temperatures at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, they assured us, we would be safe from catastrophic results. Efforts to halt global warming were therefore discussed with a long timescale in mind. We should aim for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. For many political and business leaders, switching to greener lifestyles less air travel, less meat-eating, etc was an act of generational altruism, intended to keep our children and grandchildren safe.

Now, it seems, scientists and their computers underestimated the effects of rising temperatures. Wildfires devastate California and Oregon and the smoke haze they create takes the air in New York, 3,000 miles away, 50 per cent beyond safe breathing levels; in China, commuters drown on underground trains; in western Europe, towns and villages are all but destroyed by floods; in London, hospitals close because of flooding; in British Columbia, temperatures get close to 50C, breaking past records by an astounding 4.5C.

Concerned scientists are no longer concerned, Bryony Worthington, an architect of the UKs 2008 Climate Change Act, said. They are freaked out. I am not a scientist, just a chap trying to keep his garage dry. But the truth seems clear to me. Extinction Rebellion is right. Governments need to treat the climate as an emergency, just as they did Covid. By the year 2050, it will be too late. It may already be too late.

Im with Bonkers, says Boris Johnson, as reported by Dominic Cummings. My heart is with Bonkers.

He is allegedly referring, during an argument about the merits of lockdowns to slow the spread of Covid, to my old friend, the Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens who, as well as dismissing global warming as modish dogma, describes lockdowns as Maoist repression. As Hitchens explains in his latest column, fellow labour correspondents called him bonkers when he reported on trade unions in the 1980s. A sensitive soul, he disliked the nickname and the sneering that went with it (there was one of me and quite a few of them) but, now it has the prime ministerial imprimatur, he tweets that he may have a T-shirt made.

This is what we believe, Margaret Thatcher once told a Conservative meeting, extracting The Constitution of Liberty, a book by the economist and political philosopher FA Hayek, from her handbag. Will Johnson wear Hitchenss T-shirt as a similar declaration of faith?

The footballer Marcus Rashford, who successfully campaigned for the government to extend free school meals into school holidays during the pandemic, asks: Why cant we just do the right thing? Why has there got to be a motive? He was commenting on rumours that the right-wing Spectator magazine was preparing an article, which hasnt yet appeared, about how he benefits commercially fromcampaigning.

The answer lies in the right-wing view that theres no such thing as altruism, and that everyone acts rationally, trying to maximise personal and family advantage. And a good thing too, the right believes. Sajid Javids favourite novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand argued that the individual should exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others, nor sacrificing others to himself. Selfishness, she declared, was a virtue.

Do-gooders such as Rashford are therefore objects of suspicion. Either they are hypocrites, using charitable work as a front for self-interest, or they are fools, failing in their moral duty to become what Rand called heroic beings, who presumably convert penaltiessuccessfully.

I adore Rugby Union and rejoiced at the British and Irish Lions victory in South Africa. But at the end of the game, I realised that 27 of the 39 points scored came from penalties and I didnt know why any of them was awarded. Have I been watching the sport for all these years without understanding the rules? Probably, but, since most players and even some referees dont understand them either, I shant worryabout it.

[See also:First Thoughts: The classroom culture wars, GB News founders, and cricket gets an update]

See the rest here:

First Thoughts: Act now on the climate emergency, I'm with Bonkers, and the perils of altruism - New Statesman

Only nine days separated two billionaires who privately financed and enjoyed trips into space that will likely herald a new era of such travel.

Sir Richard Branson, backed by Arab oil wealth, took passengers on a two and a half hour journey that included six minutes of weightlessness 80km above Earth. Jeff Bezoss rocket experience lasted just 10 minutes but it went higher (100km) and faster, producing three minutes of weightlessness.

Needless to say, many considered this a waste of money and a demonstration of the limitless egos of the 1% class. Some would go further, saying it was further proof of capitalisms basest instincts that will bring about its eventual collapse.

In his recent historical survey of catastrophes, Niall Ferguson predicted climate change wouldnt be the cause of a future doomsday. Rather, it would probably be another deadly virus outbreak, a massive cyberattack, or the unintended consequences of a breakthrough in nanotechnology or genetic engineering. To that, Stephen Hawking would add an asteroid collision, nuclear war or an ill-fated effect of artificial intelligence.

Merchants of doom

Irish writer Mark OConnell, a prizewinner for his previous book, To be a Machine, has published a series of lively essays on his encounters with doom merchants called Notes From an Apocalypse. It devotes much attention to billionaires who are planning to survive an end-of-the-world scenario by going underground, including in New Zealand, or by colonising space.

In the first category are American survivalists, also known as preppers,buying former nuclear bunkers in remote areas of the Mid-West, and their rich Silicon Valley libertarian cousins who can afford hideaways in Central Otago.

OConnells writing has the lightness of George Orwells touch as well as a strong ideological slant. But where Orwell addressed the dangers to freedom in versions of socialism, OConnell sees the preppers as throwbacks to white male patriarchy with the logical extension of gated community of capitalism itself. Its your choice of whether an apocalypse will result from socialism or capitalism.

A foundation paid for OConnell to visit New Zealand, where he found no physical evidence of bunkers near Queenstown but it did allow him to spend a lot of time with like-minded people who oppose the sale of land to the likes of Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and one of Facebooks initial backers.

OConnell depicts Thiel as the Sauronesque figure at the centre of a Middle-earth society that is a libertarian alternative to a welfare state in which the individual is a mere cog. These ideas are the basis of The Sovereign Individual, an Ayn Rand-style book for the 21st century.

After checking out Thiels bare (except for a hayshed) bit of land at Damper Bay, OConnell is enamoured with a board game in Auckland called The Founders Paradox by installation artist Simon Denny and Anthony Byrt. This exposes the threats posed by Thiel and Silicon Valley: monopolycapitalism, personal data collection, life expansion through technology, bitcoin and cryptocurrency to avoid taxation, and opposition to big government.

That was the time, with Thiel fan John Key still in power, when academia started pushing Max Harriss The New Zealand Project, which promoted an alternative vision that is now being implemented to varying degrees by the Labour government.

Colonising space

But, back to space, where OConnell ropes in another billionaire, Elon Musk, with his post-apocalyptic vision of colonising Mars. Rather than just fly people into space like Branson and Bezos, Musk is much further down the track with his private venture, SpaceX, a major contractor to NASA with the Starship rocket.

OConnell likens a Musk lecture to the Mars Society, a group of enthusiasts for space exploration, to recapturing the white European spirit of colonial conquest and exploitation. Furthermore, OConnell says Musk mythologises America as a country of pioneers, pilgrims and founders of a new world while coming from South Africa, an inverted form of the United States.

OConnell then launches another broadside, saying this pining for a backup planet is a masculine fantasy and an example of patriarchal power a privilege that occurs at the expense of cultivating and sustaining conditions of collective autonomy.

This obscurantist quote is actually from a Canadian feminist, Sarah Sharma, who argues the space drive is a denial of maternal caring (for the planet Earth).

After linking the Mars Societys liking for cryptocurrencies back to the anti-capitalist thesis of The Founders Paradox board game, OConnell dives deeper into literary criticism. This time, Elizabeth Hardwick is quoted for her description of apocalyptic capitalism, which exists and thrives through expansion of its own frontiers, through a relentless force of deterritorialisation. And it is running out of boundaries to obliterate, nature to exploit.

Benefits of space

A different view of space exploration comes from Tim Marshall, a former foreign correspondent and diplomatic editor of the UKs Sky News. Prisoners of Geography showed how every nations choices are limited by physical resources and location. The Power of Geography is a follow-up and devotes a chapter on the foreign policy implications of space.

It emphasises the scientific advances and direct benefits that have flowed down into daily life. Products that only exist because of the research carried out for space exploration include: artificial limbs; the insulin pump; the polymers used in firefighters heat-resistant suits; shock absorbers to protect buildings during earthquakes; solar cells; water filtration technology; wireless headsets; camera phones; CAT scans; air purifiers; memory foam; home insulation; and LED devices that relieve pain.

But space isnt just about technological progress. It also concerns international rivalry, which has coalesced into two main groupings. The Artemis Accords have been signed by the worlds democratic states, led by the US, Europe, India and Japan in a commitment to enhance the welfare of all humankind by co-operating with others to maintain the freedom of space.

Although Russia and China have joined in various international initiatives, they have not signed the accords and generally see no role for private enterprises such as SpaceX. A legal system is being developed that sets out property and other rights for public and private sectors.

Marshall is hopeful that militarisation of space will be minimised, though the US has announced a Space Force and some are fearful that satellites will become targets in an Earth-based conflict. The positive future uses of space could include moon-based 3D printers making giant solar panels that feed energy back to Earth, and spaceships that can refuel in low-Earth orbit. This would cut the costs and time of long-distance space travel, such as to Mars, to months rather than years.

The mining of meteorites for no-longer rare earthminerals would be a top priority. An asteroid called 3554 Amun alone has such wealth valued at US$20 trillion, the same as the GDP of the US.

Apart from space, Marshall profiles the geographic strengths and weaknesses of nine countries or regions that rank below the major powers. His book has an index and a comprehensive bibliography. By contrast, OConnells essays are drawn mainly from his own observations and interviews, with no index or list of sources.

Notes From an Apocalypse, by Mark OConnell (Granta)

The Power of Geography, by Tim Marshall (Elliott & Thompson)

Nevil Gibson is a former editor at large forNBR. He has contributed film and book reviews to various publications.

This is supplied content and not paid for byNBR.

Read the original:

Space wars: Rival visions at the frontier - The National Business Review