Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" In 5 Seconds

[lame54]

Run time: 00:15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8fkdBz2bds   Posted on YouTube: January 30, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: June 05, 2009 By DU Member: lame54 Views on DU: 2988

 

[walkaway]

1. Still too long. n/t

[WCGreen]

2. Very tedious and painful movie...

[sui generis]

3. I heard that Anthem has been picked up for a movie

It's interesting that one of the the core philosophies of Rand forms the basis of contract law, yet she is despised in liberal circles.

I've carved a figure eight around Rand - sometimes I think I agree with some of it, other times I realize it's foundational thinking, not a finished guidebook for how to construct a social order.

I am convinced that the individual is more important than the state, always, and forever. Citizenship 101; countries should compete to have you as a citizen, not the other way around. Everything else is a variation on the feudal state, especially when it comes to defending the interests of the state at war. You can be drafted. You can be punished for avoiding the draft. That's sooooo, erm, medieval.

[Taverner]

4. Well, she was right about religion

[dem mba]

7. yea I don't get the vitriol against her

I enjoyed the Fountainhead and thought Anthem was ok. I actually don't remember Anthem too well. Never got around to Atlas Shrugged. I don't remember reading anything that was that mentally scarring, as some of her critics have suggested.

[kenfrequed]

8. Vitriol?

Her ideas were vitriol. She backhandedly compared the working class, the labor movement, the new deal, and what not to parasites. Hardly someone a proper progressive would even look twice at.

The only liberals that are interested in her work are students that have not had to go to work and are overly concerned with sex and religion.

[dem mba]

16. the foundation of my progressive beliefs

is strong enough to handle the presentation of a few diametrically opposed ideas from time to time. Maybe yours isn't.

In my view, a proper progressive knows all sides of an issue. Think about Hitler's book Mein Kempf. Just because I read it once a few years ago doesn't mean I subscribe to the tenets of national socialism. It means I have a better understanding of how World War II started.

[kenfrequed]

22. Oh spare me.

I don't know what you are suggesting here. It should be quite obvious that I actually HAVE read her works. What the hell are you actually trying to defend here and how do you put Rand in sync with yoru supposed 'progressive beliefs.'

The vitriol agaisnt her ideas is deserved by virtue of the bullshit ideas she throws up and the absurd way she tries to defend them. She defends elitism, wealth, power, and greed. I don't know where you got your progressive ideals from, but for most progressives a person that defends those ideas is sort of on the opposing team.

Her characterizations of the poor, of labor unions, of state aid and institutions are insane. Her works practically suggest that any attempt to cajole people into giving money to the needy is a sin against objectavism.

Never mind the fact that the ideas are embraced by the last bastards on earth that really need to worry about being MORE greedy. Justifying naked power and the pursuit of more power is not the job of worthy philosopher but rather the job for sycophant to the powerful.

[dem mba]

24. I didn't get that from Fountainhead

and I was in high school when I read Anthem, so you may very well be right about her. However, using the term "proper progressive" is like fighting words for me and I'm sure for many other liberals. If you could drop that term from future conversations with other liberals I'm sure they'd appreciate it too.

I like to entertain ideas from a variety of sources and it seemed like you were inferring that there were only a few select sources that were acceptable for a "real" progressive to read.

[kenfrequed]

26. Oh right..

OK, for the thousandth time. I HAVE read Ayn Rand therefore I know of what I speak. Most progressives have some experience with her IDEAS and since know her ideas and we know the effect of her ideas we know that they are diametrically opposed to progressive economics.

Thus the source of the Vitriol and the answer to your question.

No, you are not magically more 'open minded' than I because you accept absurd propositions that are in complete opposition to progressive economic ideas, historical evidence, and reason.

You have not defended one specific claim made about her idiotic ideology and instead do this half-assed backwards 'your being close minded' or 'maybe my progressive beliefs are stronger than yours because...' Your argumentation fails about as much as her theories do. Are you sure you are on the right bloody board?

[dem mba]

27. ok, well

If you want me to defend her "idiotic ideology" in the Fountainhead, I'll take a stab at it. It's about being true to one's inner being. It's not that "selfishness is good", it's that "self-assuredness" is good. Toohey was made to be a monster and he was a collectivist, a liberal. Does Rand mean to say all liberals are monsters? Maybe. But Toohey is an especially odious character. I'm not sure it's fair to say he represents every liberal everywhere, perhaps just a certain stripe (look-down-their-nose-at-you limousine liberals?).

When I read this book I came away thinking, and agreeing, that being true to one's visions, thoughts and ideals is superior to one who submits oneself to the whims and fancies of other people and forces.

I did not come away thinking that altruism is evil, or that the working class are parasites or whatever. Maybe that's in Atlas Shrugged. Roark was a manual laborer for a time, wasn't he? I thought he was Rand's "ideal man"?

So the Fountainhead did not strike me as being "anti-progressive". It was "pro-individualist", but this does not strike me as being counter to progressive beliefs.

Let me know what I got wrong (I'm sure you will anyway, haha).

[kenfrequed]

28. Of course

Yeah because creating a strawman 'evil collectivist' as a villain in the novel during the close of FDR's administration doesn't have any political tones to it at all.

[dem mba]

29. I take your point

and I think our differences are because you're focusing on how Rand portrayed Toohey and collectivism/altruism and I was more focused on the Roark character and what he represented.

I guess I just disregarded her opinions on collectivism - although I would argue that pure collectivism in the way Toohey preferred is just as wrong as Wall Street's Gordon Gecko's pure greed model. Either extreme is inhumane and counter-effective to human progress.

[kenfrequed]

30. There is no argument

There is not an equivalency argument here. Ayn Rand was not interested in some economic Nicomachean mean. She would have trumpeted Gordon Gecko as a hero among men. All of her heroes are hyper-exceptional demigods of capitalism and individuality that have no place on the mortal plane.

One of the main characters most evil enemies seems as unimportant to you as the time in which the book was written in evaluating the meaning of the text.

Now I'm all for comic books but at least I know that they are comic books. Whereas crude attempts at realistic seeming hyper-capitalist parables masquerading as serious fiction cause me some consternation. And that describes the overwhelming majority of her work.

[dem mba]

31. isn't Wynand kind of like Gecko?

i wouldn't exactly call him a hero in the book.

Well, at least you recognize that the Fountainhead is fiction after all. What's funny to me is that you've read her books and yet you seem to really hate what she's saying. You're like the guy who listens to Howard Stern all day, every day just to get pissed off and complain to the FCC, haha.

Anyway, I think I should tackle Atlas Shrugged over the summer. Maybe then I'll understand your POV better. Cheers.

[kenfrequed]

32. One more tidbit

You seemed to be implying earlier that I might not have read her book by suggesting that your brand of progressivism was stronger because you were able to work with her ideas.

And now your acting as though I am some kind of curmudgeon because I DO read her work and get angry about what she says?


*sigh* very well.

But if you are going to read Atlas bear in mind that the further into her writing she gets the more offensive and direct she gets. (the rise of McCarthyism and 'anti-communism' makes her screeds more palatable)

[cabluedem]

12. You didnt miss anything with Atlas Shrugged. nt

[Junkdrawer]

21. .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5795238

[kenfrequed]

9. Kant

Uhm, using the categorical imperative as well as Kant's basic philosophical idea of 'Never using human beings as a means and that each person is a rational end unto themselves' you can write a far more eloquent and far more intelligent refutation of conscription.

Of course Rand, who had never really read Kant anyhow, shrieked at how horrible and evil his ideas were. Of course she could never confront the idea that you have to have a good motive. She didn't believe in good motives only in layers of selfishness. Personally I don't think humanity needs to be reminded of selfishness and encouraged to embrace philosphies that set greed on a pedistal.

And by the way as a syllogism A:A is meaningless and absurdly childish; Throughout history phiosophers had mostly accepted the idea of an objective and rational physical reality and the idea that Rand somehow rocked the boat about this would be like Henry Ford claiming credit for inventing the Wheel.

[onehandle]

5. Sorry, but it's still too complex for her simplistic Nazi ideals.

2 Seconds would be just about right.

[cabluedem]

13. Rand wasnt a Nazi. She was an "individualist" which is impossible since we depend on each other. nt

[onehandle]

14. She envisioned the individual as a master race of one.

Potato, potato.

[stlsaxman]

6. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

:rofl:

[Wednesdays]

10. K&R

:kick:

[Canuckistanian]

11. Reductio ad AynRandium

:rofl:

[progressoid]

15. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...!

[Mari333]

17. In the original movie, she wrote the screenplay

it was probably the worst steaming pile of shit screenplay I have ever heard in a movie.
the ending was a hoot tho.
Patricia Neal ascends on a lift , slowly, her scarf waving in the wind, as Gary Cooper stands at the top of his large penis, I mean, skyscraper, watching his woman rise up it slowly to meet him at the top.
I laughed and laughed.

[Democracyinkind]

18. Yeah Ayn and phallic symbology is like Ayn and violent sex

[tomreedtoon]

19. Where are the cute animated bunnies?

I thought this was going to be "The Fountainhead in 5 Seconds Performed by Bunnies." I feel cheated.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

20. LOL. Me too!

[lame54]

23. ,

[WonderGrunion]

25. Ayn Rand is Scientology for selfish pricks.

EOM