Stuff cluttering the ole brain

[shadowkat]

First, I want to draw attention to a post on the ATPO board which in my humble opinion may be the best post that has appeared on a fan board or listserve in weeks. I truly love this post. It does a wonderful job of explaining the philosophical distinctions of eros and agape love and the journeys of Spike and Angel in S5 ATS. For someone who is unspoiled? Random comes very close to hitting the nail on the proverbial head. Ignore the threads leading up to it, and read it, before it disappears!

http://www.voy.com/14567/1914.html

Oh this next bit is basically me whining about being an absolute idiot and embarrassing myself online. (which I've done before) Not that interesting, trust me.



Well, I got ambitious this week and I admit a little bored...so, in a moment of weakness decided to play devil's advocate and defend Ayn Rand. LOL!
I told my mother about this and she started to go into a lengthy explaination about why people online would love Rand, I interrupted and explained, uhm no - they actually despise the writer. This surprised her. My mother liked Rand in her 20s, hates her now that she's in her 60s. And she knows that I consider most of Rand's philosophy to be fairly ludicrous and eye-rolling.
So the idea that I'd defend her is well a tad funny. But I felt sorry for someone online and I also felt that people were dismissing a philosopher who had a huge effect on the 20th century out of hand. Plus, I'm a bit of an individualist myself, or I wouldn't be watching BTVS, I'd be watching whatever is in the top ten ratings wise... But this is beside the point.

The problem with attempting to defend Rand is you get torn to ribbons. People truly despise this writer. It's a bit like defending Hitler. Within minutes I found myself, going okay, I'm not a Rand enthusiast...I'm just...oh shit, why did I do this to myself and what on earth made me think that I could hide that post and no one would see it? Help! Help! In over my head here...must escape.
The craziest part? I don't even really like Rand that much. Oh her books can be quite entertaining if you ignore the philosophy, which is almost impossible to do in the longer ones. And I have to admit, I sort of like her whole - "more power to the individualist" creed, being a non-conformist, individualist myself - in the broadest possible sense of the term - ie. I walk to my own drummer. But the rest of it? Crap. But I do understand where it comes from - Rand grew up in horrible conditions which she barely escaped with her life - Stalinist Russia - she had no freedom, no individual rights, everything was owned by the state, and if you disagreed or did something non-conformist or not approved by the state - you were dead. Try to envision for a second what that would be like. Then envision the indoctrination that it's the collective and how it is better than a free market society, because everyone has shelter, everyone has food...etc. Rand had an extreem reaction and felt that the only solution was to do away with anything, anything that came close to socialism or collectivism. She basically threw the baby out with the bathwater...if you'll excuse the idiom. I remember watching part of a documentary on Ayn Rand a few years ago and being struck with how much she had to overcome and how her experiences really did warp her in certain ways. I can't judge her too harshly knowing all this, because truth is? I'm not really sure how I would have handled similar experiences. What's interesting about how people deal with Rand is that they either just take elements from her philosophy that they like or dismiss it in its entirety. Oh there are a few people out there who buy the whole thing, hook line and sinker. But most just pick and choose. I think Alan Greenspan picks and chooses. But isn't that what most of us do with philosophy? Pick and choose?

It's interesting - the other philosophers who seems to spark really negative emotions are Nietzche. Not all philosophers do, just a couple, here and there.

My uncle has a saying:"Never discuss politics or religion unless you want to get into a fist fight." I'm wondering if that could be extended to some philosophers? Perhaps there are some things that just can't be discussed objectively?

At any rate, I shouldn't try playing devil's advocate and I certainly won't do it with any philosophers ever again. There's nothing more embarrassing than getting in over your head online. Plus I'm horrible at the devil's advocate game...I do it all wrong and end up getting confused...and well. Ugh. And here I was doing so well, rarely posting...just lurking, keeping the shit to my live journal. Must go back to that.



Finished Disc 3 of Firefly DVDs today. Really enjoying Firefly. Watching complete series on DVD without commercials or anticipation for the next episode is a lot of fun and highly addictive.


My favorite episodes so far are: Out of Gas, Trash,
Ariel, and Bushwracked. Three of these were written by Tim Minear, which reminds me - I miss Tim Minear. No one does character stories better than he does, he can actually balance all the characters evenly throughout. I think Jeff Bell and Joss Whedon might come closest. The other thing that makes Firefly so enjoyable is I geniunely love all the characters. Not one I dislike. I love them all. And I equally love the actors playing them. Oh I miss Firefly. Someday I hope to meet the nit-wit who cancelled this series and decided to do Tru Calling and reality shows instead, give them a piece of my mind. Ugh. Sucks not having control over programming decisions. If I was Queen of the World...Firefly would still be on. Angel would get another Season. Reality shows would be a thing of the past...oh well.


Well, feeling contrary this week, been arguing with people mentally and deleting posts all week long...

Do you ever feel like you're walking in one direction and everyone else is going in the opposite one? Story of my life. When I was a little girl - a friend of my mothers, told her that I was walking to my own drummer, everybody would go left, I'd go right. Guess I haven't changed. Contrary. Yeah, that's it.

Comments

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

Keeping going the in opposite direction! We all need more contrarians.

I saved Random's post and your reply, they were excellent.

Have you watched Objects In Space on Firefly yet? I haven't bought the DVDs yet but I remember that episode as being my favourite, it certainly had my all time favourite Jossverse villian.

Thanks

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen Objects in Space yet, but I did read a transcript of the commentary - which is fascinating and says a lot about what Whedon is interested in exploring in his writing. Whedon unlike a lot of tv writers is fascinated by gray characters...murkiness, and the complexities of human nature. Makes it tough to analyze or construct formulas regarding his writing.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

Nice to know the board still inspires great (and researched!) posts like that.

My uncle has a saying:"Never discuss politics or religion unless you want to get into a fist fight."

That not only extends to certain philosophers, but to certain fictional characters as well. Which is why I run a discussion board, and don't spend much time posting on-topic on it.

Aiding and abetting philosophical heights of eloquence and the inevitable fist-fights as well....

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

M problem with Ayn Rand is exactly the same as my problem with John Grisham, Tom Clancy, and Dan Brown: they are terrible, cliche-ridden, tin-eared writers. I can't stand them, no matter what they say or believe.

Now, also, I've really offended some admirers of same, and had made up my mind this very afternoon not to be such a judgemental, opinionated bitca, so this is the very last time I'll fall. But just to get it out of my system--they're all three a waste of trees.

LOL!

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Doesn't help that they also seem to keep making the top of the New York Times best-seller list does it?

I picked up NY Times Book Review today, paged to the best seller list and at the number one and two spots? Guess who? Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and John Grisham's latest. Or is it James Patterson? Grisham is on the Paperback list. I get them confused. We also have Jayne Anne Krentz. It's frustrating isn't it? Particularly when one is a struggling writer, like myself. I was told to write more like Dan Brown - mentioned this to a Nick Kaufmann, explaining I'm a complicator, Brown's simplistic cliche ridden story bores me, I like a myraid of subplots and gray characters...Kaufman told me to write the way I do and not dummy it down for the masses.

Yet..an editor at Random House once told me - that the quick best-sellers make it possible for more literary works to be published. They actually pay for them.

But I keep wondering sometimes why it is that so many people like sugar when I prefer honey. Or prefer Hershey's when I like the deep bitter taste of Cadbury?
Why do they watch Reality shows, when I prefer Firefly?
It wouldn't grate so much if we had one Reality show and dozens of cool dramas like Firefly...but we don't.
And I think that may be why we become such intolerant bitcas at times.

Just want to put in an unnecessary, contentless 'Hear, hear'

[atpotch.livejournal.com]

I tried desperately to read a John Grisham book once, and gave up after fifteen pages, the unbearable lack of cadnce in his writing utterly defeating me.

TCH

[dherblay.livejournal.com]

I wrote a long reply to one of your posts on Rand last night, and then promptly deleted it because I didn't want to be seen as bashing either you or people who enjoy reading Rand (or, for that matter, people who enjoy reading Tolkien, which would be dangerous indeed on our board). I wanted to mention that the Modern Library list (http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html) to which you pointed is very strange. I think the popularity of Rand implied by her having four books in the top ten has to be called into question when one notes that L. Ron Hubbard has three. (I've never read Rand, but I've read Battlefield Earth, and it's certainly not the third best novel of the Twentieth Century -- to call it the third worst might be too generous by two degrees!) Now it's obvious to me that Hubbard has a large, well organized cult following interested in boosting his prominence as an artist: it's called Scientology. Accusations of ballot stuffing by Scientologists in the interest of raising Hubbard's literary profile (or just boosting his book sales) would not be unwelcomed by me.

We do not need to resort to metaphor to call Hubbard a "cult author," but several of the other books that did very well have what are called "cult followings," and it would not be outlandish to say that certain authors have larger but more poorly organized followings interested in boosting their literary prominences. Robert A. Heinlein (like Rand, a gateway writer for Libertarianism) has eight books on the list; Charles de Lint (?!) has nine. Indeed science fiction is extremely well-represented (though there is nothing by my favorite authors, Dick and Bester); mysteries, however, make no appearances at all. I like mysteries and science fiction about equally, but it's apparent that while mysteries get more grudging respect from academia (The Maltese Falcon and The Postman Always Rings Twice make the board's list), science fiction is the genre with the subcultural cred. (You never hear about people going to mystery conventions.)

One of the most dangerous aspects of real, non-metaphor cults is that they endeavor to separate their members from the larger world. To a certain extent, the same is true of cult books. To really get The Lord of the Rings, for example, you have to submerge yourself in a whole lot of ancillary material. One commentator once called serious Rings fandom the equivalent of a Ph.D. program. Another parallel is that real cultists tend to believe they've found the one true answer to all questions. This tends to make them unbearably self-satisfied. Science fiction fandom has in the past encouraged the same behavior; back in the forties and fifties it was common for sf fans to refer to themselves as "Slans," after A.E. Van Vogt's homo superior, and to non-sf readers as "mundanes." (A. E. Van Vogt, by the way, was a science fiction writer, a libertarian and a Scientologist; I'm surprised he didn't do better in the Modern Library poll.) Indeed, I think that what truly puts people off about Rand is not her writing style or her philosophy, but the obnoxiously smug self-satisfaction of a certain subset of her adherents. Not all, of course; but probably the ones that would vote four of her books into the top ten novels of the Twentieth Century.

Ummm, anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. It's not that surprising that cult books would do well in any reader's poll. The people who read the fewest books can most readily agree on which are the best. What I've been leaving out of my argument that Rand is a cult author is that to certain observers, Rand herself was a cult leader. Michael Shermer dedicates a chapter of Why People Believe Weird Things (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805070893/qid=1074403753/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-1587963-1416750?v=glance&s=books) to her, and Arthur Silber (http://coldfury.com/reason/weblog.php) has written movingly about his experiences living as a gay man under Rand's strict homophobia. For someone so concerned with individual liberty, she didn't allow very much to her inner circle.

Now that's an interesting reply

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I like that reply. And I wholeheartedly agree with it.

When I was reading Fountainhead for the first time a few years back, a friend of mine - who'd loaned it to me and asked me to read it, was telling me about the Rand cultists - also known as objectivists or followers of objectism. Most had grown out of it in time and become libertarians. I went to law school with quite a few of them, which uhm seems a bit of a contradiction in terms if you think about it. One guy I knew who was a libertarian believed in the death penalty. We successfully got him to rethink it when we suggested - "you are a libertarian because you don't believe the government should interfere in any way, right? So why do you want them to have control over executions?" You haven't met a libertarian until you've met someone who thinks left-turn signals shouldn't exist. And yep - they loved Rand.

Rand is incredibly ironic - her philosophy is a reaction against the fasicism she experienced in Russia, yet it becomes as fascist as the situation she was reacting against. I think it's an issue of control.
Rand reacted against a situation where she had none, so instead of fighting for individual rights per se, she fought for a world where she could be the one in control and everyone would follow her dictates. Reminds me a lot of Jasmine in S4 Angel actually. And to a smaller degree Angel himself. Manwitch and I were discussing how cruelty more often than not comes from the desire to control our universe, but it is control that lacks humility.

The amusing thing about Scientology and L.Ron Hubbard, a book I confess I have not been able to read although the same friend suggested I try it (this is the friend who reads Flannery O'Connor and other racists to figure out racism), is Hubbard meant it as a satire on religion. Poor Hubbard. LOL! I know a bit more than I want to about Scientology - did a report on it in High School, my friend had researched it, and my kid brother had several unpleasant experiences with them while working on Love Crimes with Kit Carson. Nasty group.
Don't blame Hubbard for them completely. Although maybe if he'd been a better writer?

What is it about these books? I much prefer Philip K. Dick, Asimov, Bester, Octavia Butler, Le Guinn, and that ilk. Looking at the bestseller lists - I realized I hadn't read any of the books on them. I've never read Gone With The Wind. I couldn't finish Atlas Shrugged. Fountainhead got on my nerves after a certain point, although I did like the characters at first glance. And Raymond Massey is cool in the film. Sorry, big Raymond Massy fan.

At any rate - I agree - the cultism is troubling. And seems counter to the individualism supposedly championed by Rand. I also hate the self-satisfied smugness. I wonder if part of Rand's failing is her need for the validation and the attention? Did Rand fall into the same trap as Lenin and Stalin did regarding their desire to set up the Marxist state? The idea of being the cult hero go to their heads? Possibly.

It's an odd thing to contemplate. At any rate, I'm not offended. I do feel a bit foolish for entering the debate, since I'm not really a fan of Rand. I find her characters entertaining at times. But I certainly wouldn't vote her books as the best of any century. My pick was James Joyce's Ulyssess. Actually I was sort of struggling between that and Toni Morrison's books at the time. Too damn hard to pick a ten best list in my opinion.