Objectivish

From Noodlefood: On Rand and Hickman

2011-10-13T08:21:00.000-07:00

Noodlefood's Diana Hsieh posted a video response about the Rand/Hickman thing; thorough, with many good points. Similarly to my own comparison of Rand's critics with Rand's accusations against sympathetic reviews of Seance on A Hot Afternoon, she points out the critic's own projections onto Rand's early, immature views.

Video Footage from Occupy Philadelphia

2011-10-09T12:11:00.000-07:00

"One Soviet flag at a rally is not indicative of the movement," or, so I'm told. Well, these people had no qualms about marching alongside it, or the banner from the Democratic Socialists of America, so, guilt by association, I say.

Here's my footage of what the mainstream media won't show you. See for yourself. Better yet, if you can, go see it live, and witness the socialist recruitment tables set up at City Hall. (Oh, and that last one, with that "goddamn Ayn Rand book"...well,don't get exited; that was just me.)

Ayn Rand vs. "Occupy Wall Street"

2011-10-08T19:49:00.000-07:00

It was a dirty job, taking those protest pictures...(literally; the New York situation is literally getting stinky and unsanitary.)

Fortunately, I brought some disinfectant:

Sorry, Roseanne; that "goddamn Ayn Rand book" is not going away.

"Occupy Philadelphia": The Pictures They Won't Show On Prime Time

2011-10-08T19:45:00.000-07:00

This is the image you'll likely see in the media coverage of "Occupy Wall Street," Philadelphia-style:

How adorable.

But it's bullshit.

Here is what I saw, in person. When Roseanne Barr says she wants a mix of capitalism and socialism ("people-ism), you may think she's thinking of those kids. But look at these pictures, and remember that she said that bankers should be "beheaded."

As has been said, "All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war."

Ayn Rand, Obama's "Jobs Speech," and the Hot Tub Time Machine

2011-09-09T10:51:00.000-07:00

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose..."

Join me in my hot tub time machine, as I travel back to 1974, the year of my birth, to witness Ayn Rand's original warning about last night's speech. (God, the woman was prescient; check out the shout-out to "Governer Romney," as well as "Warrior Nader" The more things change...If she had named Obama, well, that would have given her psychic powers away...) From her speech, "Egalitarianism and Inflation":

There is only one institution that can arrogate to itself the power legally to trade by means of rubber checks: the government. And it is the only institution that can mortgage your future without your knowledge or consent: government securities (and paper money) are promissory notes on future tax receipts, i.e., on your future production.

Now project the mentality of a savage, who can grasp nothing but the concretes of the immediate moment, and who finds himself transported into the midst of a modern, industrial smattering of knowledge, but there are two concepts he will not be able to grasp: “credit” and “market.”

He observes that people get food, clothes, and all sorts of objects simply by presenting pieces of paper called checks—and he observes that skyscrapers and gigantic factories spring out of the ground at the command of very rich men, whose bookkeepers keep switching magic figures from the ledgers of one to those of another and another and another. This seems to be done faster than he can follow, so he concludes that speed is the secret of the magic power of paper—and that everyone will work and produce and prosper, so long as those checks are passed from hand to hand fast enough. If that savage breaks into print with his discovery, he will find that he has been anticipated by John Maynard Keynes.

Then the savage observes that the department stores are full of wonderful goods, but people do not seem to buy them. “Why is that?” he asks a floorwalker. “We don’t have enough of a market,” his new teacher answers, “goods are produced for people to consume, it’s the consumers that make the world go round, but we don’t have enough consumers.” “Is that so?” says the savage, his eyes flashing with fire of a new idea. Next day, he obtains a check from a big educational foundation, he hires a plane, he flies away—and comes back, a while later, bringing his entire naked, barefoot tribe along. “You don’t know how good they are at consuming,” he tells his friend, the floorwalker, “and there’s plenty more where these come from. Pretty soon you’ll get a raise in pay.” But the store, pretty soon, goes bankrupt.

The poor savage is unable to understand it to this day—because he had made sure that many, many people agreed with his idea, among them many noble tribal chiefs, such as Governor Romney, who sang incantations to “consumerism,” and warrior Nader, who fought for the consumers’ rights, and big business chieftains who recited formulas about serving the consumers, and chiefs who sat in Congress, and chiefs in the White House, and chiefs in every government in Europe, and many more professors than he could count.

Perhaps it is harder for us to understand that the mentality of that savage has been ruling Western civilization for almost a century.

"Don't Let It Go"

2011-05-28T07:46:00.000-07:00

"It is a sin to write this."

"Sin" literally translates as "separation," and I am separating myself from this blog, indefinitely, to work on other projects I have going on.

It was the winter of '96 when I first discovered Ayn Rand, starting with Anthem (which is still my favorite of all her works.) I found her ideas so powerful that I spent the next 15 years reading, wrestling with, and discussing them. In that time, I've had much to hear, and much to say, though the ideas are certainly not exhausted. (Hopefully, I've contributed in a positive way, particularly in the discussion of the Objectivist theory of my primary passion, which is music.)

And since that winter of '96, a sea change has occurred in the world; where previously the conversation often seemed one-sided, Rand and Objectivism have now taken on a whole new life in the public consciousness (I wish it were for better reasons, as Objectivism is so much larger than politics...oh well, "who is John Galt?"). Anyway, with all the renewed interest, there will be plenty of discussions elsewhere. So, I'm going to step away for a bit, though I may pop in-and-out, here and there, as the mood (or current events) strike. And I'll certainly keep the spirit close by:

“In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.”

Don't let it go.

Understanding Superman Through Victor Hugo

2011-05-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

(Originally published at Superhero Babylon)

"You will believe that a man can fly."

The last episode of Smallville has aired. It was an epic sendoff to a show that's brought me much more than entertainment, so I'd like to offer my tribute and thank you to all those heroes, real and otherwise, with my thoughts on the future, if they are to survive.

Although my childhood favorite was Spiderman, perhaps no character in the 20th century has garnered so much recognition than Superman. It's fitting that so much recognition has been paid to him, and Smallville in particular, here at Superhero Babylon, both positive and negative. But the negative was always in the constructive spirit of what could be; as one of the greatest heroes in the popular imagination, we all want our vision to be the vision. No matter what version of him, Superman inspires in so many the same thing: the idea that we, in our own way, can fly. Even his enemies know this; as Lex Luthor quotes in the finale, villains are defined by their heroes, a reversal of the cliche that heroes are defined by their villains. Despite my philosophical differences with the explicit religious overtones, this one line made it all worth it.

The very existence of Superhero Babylon was a reaction to the hate towards heroism and values in general, as characterized by the "grim and gritty" school of comics. With the return of heroes in the popular media, however, the tone shifted toward the fight between conflicting claims over the ideas that make a hero, and Smallville has led the way. I had my disagreements with the show's philosophical premises. I take my disagreements seriously, but at its most antagonistic, I found it a worthy adversary. At its best, however, I found it an ally in its spirit. If this seems strange, especially in regards to cartoon characters, consider how Ayn Rand felt about the work of the Romantic writers, especially Victor Hugo:

The distinguishing characteristic of this top rank (apart from their purely literary genius) is their full commitment to the premise of volition in both of its fundamental areas: in regard to consciousness and to existence, in regard to man’s character and to his actions in the physical world. Maintaining a perfect integration of these two aspects, unmatched in the brilliant ingenuity of their plot structures, these writers are enormously concerned with man’s soul (i.e., his consciousness). They are moralists in the most profound sense of the word; their concern is not merely with values, but specifically with moral values and with the power of moral values in shaping human character. Their characters are “larger than life,” i.e., they are abstract projections in terms of essentials (not always successful projections, as we shall discuss later). In their stories, one will never find action for action’s sake, unrelated to moral values. The events of their plots are shaped, determined and motivated by the characters’ values (or treason to values), by their struggle in pursuit of spiritual goals and by profound value-conflicts. Their themes are fundamental, universal, timeless issues of man’s existence—and they are the only consistent creators of the rarest attribute of literature: the perfect integration of theme and plot, which they achieve with superlative virtuosity.

If philosophical significance is the criterion of what is to be taken seriously, then these are the most serious writers in world literature.

She also writes that

The Romanticists were far from Aristotelian in their avowed beliefs; but their sense of life was the beneficiary of his liberating power. The nineteenth century saw both the start and the culmination of an illustrious line of great Romantic novelists.

And the greatest of these was Victor Hugo.

Of his characters, Rand writes:

Do not say that the actions of these giants are "impossible" because they are heroic, noble, intelligent, beautiful–remember that the cowardly, the depraved, the mindless, the ugly are not all that is possible to man.

Of the charge of escapism:

Do not say that this glowing new universe is an "escape"–you will witness harder, more demanding, more tragic battle than you have seen on poolroom street corners; the difference is only this: these battles are not fought for penny ante.

Do not say that "life is not like that"–ask yourself: whose life?

That is how I feel about Superman, and superheroes, and, well, heroes in general.

Superman does not make people believe that they will fall, but fly. And when I criticize, it's because I know their importance; if they were simply kid's stuff, as many would have you believe, I wouldn't be outraged when they are forced to espouse ideas antithetical to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." You see, it's not the literal stories and characters, that matter, but the ideas they represent, not the powers and the primary colors, but the vision of what life might or ought to be. That antagonism is, again, paralleled by Rand's analysis of Hugo's contradictions:

"Grandeur" is the one word that names the leitmotif of Ninety-Three and of all of Hugo's novels–and of his sense of life. And perhaps his most tragic conflict is not in his novels, but in their author. With so magnificent a view of man and of existence, Hugo never discovered how to implement it in reality.

He never translated his sense of life into conceptual terms, he did not ask himself what ideas, premises, or psychological conditions were necessary to enable men to achieve the spiritual stature of his heroes....It is as if the wide emotional abstractions he handled as an artist made him too impatient for the task of rigorous defining and of identifying that which he sensed rather than knew–and so he reached for any available theories that seemed to connote, rather than denote, his values.

When I think of the Superman as the "Man of Tomorrow", I can't help but think that his ideals were full of contradictions of good and bad from the past. Rand noted a similar contradiction in Hugo that sums up the current "Superhero Babylon":

Hugo the thinker was archetypal of the virtues and the fatal errors of the nineteenth century. He believed in an unlimited, automatic human progress....Feeling an enormous, incoherent benevolence, he was impatiently eager to abolish any form of human suffering and he proclaimed ends, without thinking of means: he wanted to abolish poverty, with no idea of the source of wealth; he wanted the people to be free, with no idea of what is necessary to secure political freedom; he wanted to establish universal brotherhood, with no idea of what is necessary to secure political freedom, he wanted to establish universal brotherhood, with no idea that force and terror will not establish it. He took reason for granted and did not see the disastrous contradiction of attempting to combine it with faith–though his particular form of mysticism was...closer to the proud legends of the Greeks, and his God was a symbol of human perfection, whom he worshipped with a certain arrogant confidence, almost like an equal of a personal friend.

Gee, that sounds a lot like how generations viewed Superman, doesn't it? And that is why I write this tribute today; Superman, despite being an alien, inspires the same hope in this world that Hugo inspired in Rand:

A professed mystic in his conscious convictions, he was passionately in love with this earth; a professed altruist, he worshiped man's greatness, not his suffering, weaknesses or evils; a professed advocate of socialism, he was a fiercely intransigent individualist...he achieved the grandeur of his characters by making them all superbly conscious, fully aware of their motives and desires, fully focused on reality and acting accordingly....And this is the secret of their peculiar cleanliness, this is what gives a beggar the stature of a giant...this is the hallmark of all of Hugo's characters; it is also the hallmark of human self-esteem.

And that, above all else, is the value, and the danger, of the Superman mythos, and of heroism in general. A hero, by definition, is one who "defends" and "protects." A hero can be a blessing, but a curse, if allowed to become a crutch. The best heroes don't just save the day, they inspire and enable us to become our own heroes, so as not to require others to need to sacrifice themselves. Then and now, the idea of Superman has, time and time again, promised to unite America Babylon. That may be a job too big even for Superman, but should it ever come to be, his message that the greatness comes from within us, should we choose it, will have played no small part.

Perhaps the most important theme throughout Smallville has been the lesson for Clark to become a hero without sacrificing his own needs, to embrace his community, his humanity, without sacrificing his self. To say "I love you," someone must first say "I." The best thank-you one could offer a hero, a Superman, would be this, engraved over the Fortress of Solitude:

"I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

For those heroes among you, thank you, and shine on.

Action Comics 900: A Closer Look

2011-05-14T10:23:00.000-07:00

(Originally Published at Superhero Babylon)

In my previous post I discussed a story in Action Comics 900 (entitled "The Incident,"), which has Superman renouncing his citizenship in an out-of-continuity scenario, was vague enough to be read, in true Babylonian fashion, in different ways by different people. My own take, after an initial reading, was that it was pseudo-Libertarian:

If read out of focus, combined with the vagueness, different people can read and project different things into it, which only highlights how undivided we really stand. My personal take is that it could be seen as quasi-Libertarian, as Superman stands with the Iranian protesters against a theocratic government. But, again, that’s read out-of-focus. By its own internal logic, it seems to make sense, given that Superman, who has visited many worlds (and in this continuity, can see micro-universes, apparently), would see a "bigger picture" than us mere mortals. But as for the writers, they're bound by the same earth-bound, human philosophies, so it's presumptuous for them to inject their own politics into a god-like figure. In short, they limit Superman's metaphysical view to "Democracy." In one way, this is important, because it suggests a universal principle that guides Superman (and it is admirable that he stood on the side of the Iranian protesters when the U.S. Government did not); on the other hand, the "multiculturalism" extends beyond countries to planets and dimensions, and his "American Way is not enough" limits his understanding of America the idea to America as mob rules. (Never mind that America was not meant to be a democracy, but "a republic, if you can keep it...")

But what can we objectively gleam from it, based on the actual content? In concrete essentials, Superman stands with the Iranian protesters, in an act of passive civil disobedience. (It's important to note that he could have taken out the Iranian soldiers single-handedly, but didn't.) The U.S. government takes offense, and arranges a meeting with Superman (complete with snipers armed with Kryptonite bullets). The government is concerned that Superman has gone "rogue." Superman explains that he had been following the news, and the threats of violence against the protesters by the Iranian government, and yet, the protesters were ready to risk their lives for their freedom. Superman talks of all the tyrants he's fought, human and alien, and remarks that he's never been any good at fighting ideological battles, like "dying of thirst, hunger, and people being denied their basic human rights," but that he wants to be. His act of nonviolent resistance against an oppressive authority was an act of solidarity with the protesters. This, in turn, inspires others to join in. He details the varied reactions of the people, ranging from adoration to animosity.

Notably, the Iranian soldiers never fire a shot. As the rally peacefully ended, Superman wonders if his presence helped, noting that the regime did not institute democratic reform. The U.S. agent laments that his actions created an "international incident," and that the Iranian government considered it an "act of war." Superman concedes, and then withdraws his sanction…from the U.S. government, leading to the renunciation of his citizenship, and the now-infamous claim that truth, justice, and the American Way is "not enough anymore." He claims that the world is "too small, too connected," and that his alien origin and abilities help him see the "bigger picture." As a result, he believes that his actions, while not effective on a large scale, did make some small difference. He relates that, as he flew away, he witnessed a protester offer a flower to one of the soldiers, a gesture meant to mirror the famous incident of the Vietnam protests in the sixties. The soldier accepts the flower, suggesting that there is, indeed, hope.

"Moral" of the story?

• "Democracy" is offered as the answer. It is not defined, but it is associated here with the notion of freedom and representative government (incorrectly, I state, but this is a common misnomer promoted by our own statesmen.)

• Superman is presented as a "citizen of the world." It is unclear if his "American way" comment is meant literally or ironically, meaning that it's unclear whether or not he is acknowledging that the ideals are not enough, or that the ideals have been betrayed.

• The U.S. government is presented as being more concerned with politics and appearances, while Superman is presented as being concerned with truth and justice, and the American way, not just for American, but for the entire world.

Your ideological mileage may vary, but, despite the political lack of sophistication and the resulting contradictions, on a sense-of-life level, I have to sympathize with Superman here. If anyone is guilty of abandoning the American way, it's the government that chastises him for his actions.

I can offer two avenues to explore for further understanding of both the vagueness, and the specifics. I think that the seeming mix of political readings can be attributed to the way the story links the Iranian protests to the Summer of Love. In order to understand this, consider that the protests of the sixties, despite being commonly conceived as led by radical leftists, had a libertarian strain, as detailed in Jeff Riggenbach's In Praise of Decadence, which was informed by the Libertarian and Objectivist movements, and claims that the true American spirit is not to be found in the patriotic flag-waving of Father Knows Best-era jingoism, but in the radical spirit to "question authority." On this, many Objectivists and libertarians have found common cause with those on the left on social freedoms that many Conservatives and the Religious Right would claim are "anti-American." (While I don't accept all of Riggenbach's arguments, this aspect of his thesis goes a long way to understanding the current contradictions and schisms.)

The second, related avenue is the topic of civil disobedience and passive, non-violent resistance, which Superman practices before both the Iranian and American government. (I've already discussed this in relation to Captain America's own troubles with "the American Way.") Gandhi and Martin Luthor King, Jr. come immediately to mind, but it's an idea that has a history in early American politics, most notably in the writings of Henry David Thoreau. This passive resistance is at odds with the violence of the founding of the nation itself, and that is essential to understanding Superman's use of it, while rejecting "the American Way." It is said that America was the first nation founded not by conquest, but on an ideal of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," yet those principles were betrayed by the government, not only in the continuation of slavery or the exile and genocide of native Americans, but in the actions towards Americans via taxation and imprisonment that resulted in battles like the Shays and Whiskey Rebellions. This goes back to the Federalist/Anti Federalist debates, and the centralization of power that replaced the Bill of Rights with the Constitution. Bringing this back around to Superman, his actions in this story have roots in the ideas of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience and Lysander Spooner's No Treason. This debate tears apart, to this day, those would-be-allies of Libertarians, Objectivists, and Conservatives, who all would claim the path to the true "American Way."

I must stress that my take is certainly not meant to be definitive; not only do I not know the author's personal intent, but I also cannot ignore the recent trend in DC Comics to cater to Muslims, as anti-Jihadist comic book artist Bosch Fawstin has already discussed. (And, I have to wonder if the same writers would have Superman make a similar stand with the Tea Party protesters in our own country, in contrast to what happened with Captain America 603.) I only hope to explain the "Babylonian" aspect by explaining the history that makes such different interpretations of this standalone story possible. Like Superman, I don't know if my post will have an effect on the macro-scale. But hopefully, I've offered a flowering of knowledge to at least make things a little less vague.

Of course, it's always best to see for yourself:

(click images for larger view)

"The United States of Babylon," or, Truth and Justice, Hold the American Way

2011-05-13T22:25:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted at Superhero Babylon.)

As Superhero Babylon begins to wind down, it’s only fitting that the focus of the last posts should be on Superman; his ripped flag on our masthead represented, originally, the turning away towards heroes, but now, with the sea change back to celebrating them, the battle is over the "correct interpretation. "The original plan was to coincide the last post with the Smallville series finale, but now, with the publication of the now-infamous Action Comics 900, the point is brought home all-too-clear… Superman is considered one of the most iconic America characters ever created, known all over the world. So, then, when the Man of Tomorrow renounces his citizenship, the phrase "United, We Stand" threatens to become anachronistic, highlighting what I call “America Babylon,” the scattering of American ideals through the speaking of different ideological tongues…

As mentioned, the incident appeared in the 900th anniversary issue of Action Comics. For those living under a rock (or, who still think that the death of bin Laden has healed all wounds), here’s the synopsis:

When Superman drops in on an Iranian protest to stand with demonstrators in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience, the U.S. government takes him to task for acting as an instrument of national policy. Superman responds by renouncing his American citizenship and proclaiming himself a citizen of the universe.

It’s a short story, in itself, so there’s a lot either left out, or inferred. That vagueness, in true “Babylonian” fashion, allows for a few different readings, not just of the story, but of Superman himself, since he’s been written by many writers with disparate viewpoints throughout the years. (And although the Seduction of the Innocent scare created the Comics Code Authority and "sanitized" superheroes into "wholesome" all-Americans, the Superman comics of the seventies were already exploring controversial issues like this, too.) But more than that, it illustrates the “Babylonian” nature of America itself, the conflict of values that no longer allow for a monolithic definition of just what it means to be “American.” The story’s description has some worthy causes listed, and those worthy causes are what allow liberals to get away with a lot...and the Superman as “alien immigrant" angle can be a double-edged sword; an affirmation of the "melting pot," that America was an idea for all, or a warning against importing contradictory ideals into the mix in the name of "multiculturalism.” The outcry over the change in the Justice League cartoon (“Truth and Justice, not just for America, but for the whole world), or in Superman Returns of the phrase “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” to “Truth, Justice, and all that stuff” reveals the belief that Superman has always said that, and has always been a Reagan-esque puppet (well, if Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns is any indication). But a closer look reveals the opposite, and that the seed for today's news was there from the beginning...

To begin with, the phrase, as associated with Superman, did not originate in the comics, but on the television show. As detailed in a New York Times article after the Superman Returns movie:

In the first screen incarnation of Superman, the Max Fleischer cartoons that ran from 1941 to 1943, each episode's preamble informs us not only of the origin and powers of this relatively new creation (Krypton, speeding bullet, etc.), but also the kinds of things he fights for. It's a shorter list than you think. Before World War II, Superman fought "a never-ending battle for truth and justice." Back then, that was enough.
By the time the first live-action Superman hit the screen - Kirk Alyn, in a 1948 serial - the lessons of World War II, particularly in the gas chambers of Europe, were obvious. That's why Pa Kent tells young Clark he must always use his powers "in the interests of truth, tolerance and justice."

It wasn't until Superman came to television in the 1950s that the phrase became codified in the form most of us remember it: "a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way."

The original phrase “truth and justice,” without the American Way, leaves the field wide-open, without context. To get the full context, consider the motives of the original writers, Siegel and Shuster:

(From Wikipedia): An influence on early Superman stories is the context of the Great Depression. The left-leaning perspective of creators Shuster and Siegel is reflected in early storylines. Superman took on the role of social activist..., fighting crooked businessmen and politicians and demolishing run-down tenements. This is seen by comics scholar Roger Sabin as a reflection of "the liberal idealism of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal", with Shuster and Siegel initially portraying Superman as champion to a variety of social causes. In later Superman radio programs the character continued to take on such issues, tackling a version of the KKK in a 1946 broadcast. Siegel and Shuster's status as children of Jewish immigrants is also thought to have influenced their work. Timothy Aaron Pevey has argued that they crafted "an immigrant figure whose desire was to fit into American culture as an American", something which Pevey feels taps into an important aspect of American identity.

It is important to note the “Progressive” strain of politics here, and how they were at odds at what we know as “the American Way.” Franklin’s New Deal is associated, then and now, with the infiltration of communism into American life. Despite some worthy issues like fighting the KKK and women beaters, the “social causes” of the time were also associated with unions, trust-busting, you know…all that “stuff.” Tied up in “all that stuff” is the idea that America was a “democracy,” which does not mean “equality,” but mob rule, or the submission of one’s rights, if enough people vote on it.

Ok, then, but Superman eventually came to stand for “Truth, Justice, and the American Way,” so we should leave it at that, right? Well, not so fast there, speeding bullet…Let’s turn the x-ray vision to the intent behind that phrase:

(From Wikipedia): The American Way of life is individualistic, dynamic, pragmatic. It affirms the supreme value and dignity of the individual; it stresses incessant activity on his part, for he is never to rest but is always to be striving to "get ahead"; it defines an ethic of self-reliance, merit, and character, and judges by achievement: "deeds, not creeds" are what count. The "American Way of Life" is humanitarian, "forward-looking", optimistic. Americans are easily the most generous and philanthropic people in the world, in terms of their ready and unstinting response to suffering anywhere on the globe. The American believes in progress, in self-improvement, and quite fanatically in education. But above all, the American is idealistic. Americans cannot go on making money or achieving worldly success simply on its own merits; such "materialistic" things must, in the American mind, be justified in "higher" terms, in terms of "service" or "stewardship" or "general welfare"... And because they are so idealistic, Americans tend to be moralistic; they are inclined to see all issues as plain and simple, black and white, issues of morality.

You don’t need x-ray vision to see the contradiction there: “Individualism” versus the “General Welfare”; Spiritualism versus capitalism. Business versus religion. Profit versus service. “Idealism” versus “materialism”. (Hell, that one goes back to Plato versus Aristotle.) In other words, this world versus the afterlife…This goes to the root of American Babylon: the contradiction between the idea of “certain inalienable rights” being given by God, which resulted in the idea of Utilitarianism (capitalism is moral because it creates the greatest good for the greatest number) versus the notion, as identified by Ayn Rand, that rights come from the nature of man’s mind (and therefore, the good is what’s best for the individual), without the supernatural aspect (which, right there, defines the struggle between Superman as a Christ-figure and Lex Luthor as the Promethean scientist stealing fire from the gods.) These conflicting notions, then, have defined and divided the nation from the beginning, and, so, are found throughout the history of Superman, up and to the current incarnation on Smallville, which frequently highlights Clark’s quest for personal happiness versus his “duty” to mankind. With contradictions like that, even a man of steel can bend... (For Landon’s take, see his recent post, “E Tu, Lois?”.)

Back to the present, and to the Action Comics 900: If read out of focus, combined with the vagueness, different people can read and project different things into it, which only highlights how undivided we really stand. My personal take is that it could be seen as quasi-Libertarian, as Superman stands with the Iranian protesters against a theocratic government. But, again, that’s read out-of-focus. By its own internal logic, it seems to make sense, given that Superman, who has visited many worlds (and in this continuity, can see micro-universes, apparently), would see a "bigger picture" than us mere mortals. But as for the writers, they're bound by the same earth-bound, human philosophies, so it's presumptuous for them to inject their own politics into a god-like figure. In short, they limit Superman's metaphysical view to "Democracy." In one way, this is important, because it suggests a universal principle that guides Superman (and it is admirable that he stood on the side of the Iranian protesters when the U.S. Government did not); on the other hand, the "multiculturalism" extends beyond countries to planets and dimensions, and his "American Way is not enough" limits his understanding of America the idea to America as mob rules. (Never mind that America was not meant to be a democracy, but "a republic, if you can keep it...")

A libertarian-minded person, at that, could find common cause with the idea of not being associated with the U.S. government as it currently is, which is currently demanding its citizens give up more of their rights, with its "Patriot Acts," "mandatory" insurance requirements, and TSA screenings of children and babies, and now, unlawful police entry into one's home, while some opponents of that defense are stressing the distinction of the American ideals of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" versus the American statist government, and that Superman is renouncing the baby with the bathwater. Here, I'd submit that this issue is not a recent trend, but another built-in contradiction of our founding father's doing; witness the original debates by the Federalists and Anti-Federalists regarding the Bill of Rights versus the Constitution (it usually begins with Alexander Hamilton). In addition to all that, a libertarian-minded person, tempted to read their politics into the Iranian stand, would have to confront the fact that many of these protesters, despite the cries for "freedom," would potentially just as soon vote for another Islamic theocracy in some countries.

But among the warring factions over the meaning of America, there is still a large percent who stand for the “American Way” as conventionally understood, enough for DC Comics to “backtrack” on the premise:"This short story is just that, it will not be followed up upon. Superman will remain as American as Apple pie."

DC is known for their “Elseworlds” stories, alternate versions of characters that have no bearing on current continuity. I initially thought it was a stand-alone story, anyway, given that it was buried in the middle of the book among other stories, with no indication of continuity. This was not labeled as such, however, so it’s only fair to speculate that they were “testing the waters,” so to speak. And, for now, the appearance of Superman as the embodiment of all things American is maintained…at least, to those who haven’t read this blog posting…

"Dio Shrugged???"

2011-04-16T20:14:00.000-07:00

When heavy-metal singer Ronnie James Dio died of cancer last year, would-be Objectivist leader Lindsay Perigo, reveling in the occassion, had this to say:

Sandi

Submitted by Lindsay Perigo on Mon, 2010-05-17 10:40.

By the way, you must remember to have a listen to Ronnie James Dio. He was the rocker who passed away today and one of your younger callers really wanted you to have a listen to him.

As it happens, I *must* do no such thing. I did, however, and all I can say is I'm sorry he didn't pass away sooner. Horrible, anti-life garbage. A "singer" he ain't!! I don't begin to understand why you or anyone else would commend such shit to my attention.

????!!!!

Why indeed? From slate.com:

Atlas Shrugged: Part I, the new cinematic adaptation of Ayn Rand's multimillion-selling novel, ends with a long list of special thanks. The producers thank the Club for Growth, the organization that helps liberal Republicans spend more time with their families; FreedomWorks, the non-Koch-funded Tea Party group; the Atlas Society, a think tank that promotes Rand's ideas and legacy; and Ronnie James Dio. The late singer for Elf, Rainbow, and Black Sabbath, one of the founding banshees of heavy metal, was one of the people who kept the project alive.

Hrrm...I didn't see Perigo's name in the credits; it looks like Ronnie is having the last laugh, while Perigo is "the last in line..."

Ah, the irony...I personally had no idea of such a connection (move over, Neil Peart...), but as a fan of both Rand and Dio, it's a pleasant surprise; I'll have to learn more about this, now. I do have to kick myself, though, for not catching it as I sat through the credits...well, that's it, I'll have to go see it again...

Atlas Shrugged, Part 1

2011-04-16T16:44:00.000-07:00

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who know, and those who don't. To those who don't: No, I have nothing to say about this movie. God gave you eyes and a mind to use; if you fail to do so, the loss is yours, not mine.

To those who know:

I liked it. Considering the time constraints and the budget, well, it was not as good as the version in my head, but for someone else's vision, I enjoyed it, overall. Because I don't believe that the movie will "change the world" overnight (so I'm not counting on it as propaganda*), and because there are others already discussing the "objective" virtues and flaws of the production itself, I'll be content to indulge myself and simply register some of my own subjective, "Objectiv-ish" feelings...

-Owen Kellogg: Contrasts with my impression of the novel version; instead of seeming confident and resolute while resigning, the movie version was obviously feeling the pain of stepping away from what conventional society would consider a "golden opportunity." All that pain disappears, as he remembers something better: "Who Is John Galt?" As someone who's been there in real life, I could relate.

-Heroes and Villains: When I first read the book, I was coming at it from a perspective of a seeker of answers regarding religion. My initial reaction, during the early parts of the book, was that Dagny, Rearden, and co. were, in accordance with conventional ethics, "real bastards, while her villains initially appeared as the good guys. By the time got to the launch of the John Galt Line, however, I was cheering them; because Rand knew that she was "challenging 2000 years of Christianity," this was by design (she had a penchant for shocking the reader), and a testament to Rand's powers of persuasion. I did not feel that from the movie; my suspicion is that, because the movie was done in a climate foretold by the book, the protagonists were presented as heroes 'straight-up," and the antagonists felt like villains from the get-go. (I don't know if a newbie would get the same impression, though...but for those well-aware of the book, the element of surprise is gone...)

-The John Galt Line: By the time I got to this scene in the book, Rand had already won me over, and I was exited about the success of the John Galt Line. If that had been the end of the book, I would have been satisfied; a "normal" book would have ended there, I felt. But it was no ordinary book...Anyway, it was fitting that this scene comes towards the end of part, as a "false climax". Because of the lack of time in the movie to develop Rand's themes, and the "predetermined" nature of the heroes and villains (compared to my experience with the book), it would have been a mild victory, compared to the book version. Fortunately, because of the cliffhanger of the real climax ("Wyatt's Torch,"), what would have been a superficial ending become the start of the real conflict, which was only hinted at by this time in the movie.

-Ellis Wyatt: The main characters were not my ideal cast from my imagination (from my first reading, I imagined Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams (in their Poltergeist roles) as Rearden and Dagny, and Jimmy Smits as Franciso d'Anconia). But I thought most were ok, though I was disappointed with the choice for d'Anconia. But Ellis Wyatt, however, made me forget about my own mental version, and, dare I say it, stole the movie, which was fitting for the character who would light the inextinguishable fire of "Wyatt's Torch." So when Dagny screamed at the end, I really felt it (and for me, that's when her character finally came alive.)

If I had to compare, I'd say I personally get more mileage from the movie version of The Fountainhead, but I'd see this again, and I certainly hope to see the next two.

"Because it is STILL a sin to write this..."

2011-04-06T11:47:00.000-07:00

How do you know that Objectivism isn’t winning? Because, as I was reminded today, “it is STILL a sin to write this…”

So, I’ve already told you about Spiderman and Captain America meeting Obama, how Captain America and the Falcon took on those "racist Tea Party terrorists", and how Philadelphia comic book store Brave New Worlds honors the “Birthplace of Liberty” by selling Communist flag t-shirts. ("Brave New World", indeed...) So I wasn’t surprised when, during trip to Fat Jacks comics (also in Philly), as I picked up the new Anthem graphic novel, based on the novella by Ayn Rand, the clerk who replaced the empty spot with another copy said to the other clerk that Rand’s work was a “scary philosophy” that only appealed to teenagers (yes, this was said by a comic book store clerk.) The poor guy…yeah, I guess Rand is scary, with all that talk about individuality, reason, non-initiation of force and freedom; I’m sure it’s much more comforting to climb back into the womb of Mother Russia, and much more acceptable than "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" (because now it is a sin to write that, too...)

The clerk didn’t surprise me (welcome to the Endarkenment). No, to me, it was an ironic reminder of Anthem’s prescient opening line: “It is a sin to write this.” Meanwhile, Brave New Worlds still sells the commie-t’s (for when your brown shirts are in the wash, I guess), while the latest issue of Ultimate Captain America (#4) has the hero finally defeat his Tea-Party parallel (while telling the kiddies to “don’t grow up to be terrorists.")

As for the graphic novel itself, it’s simply an illustrated version of Anthem, illustrated by Charles Santino. If you’re a Rand newbie, or a fan of comics in general, pick it up before they’re gone. For those ready for the next step, though, I’d suggest A Show of Hands: A Cautionary Tale of Heroes in Exile. (pdf) A Show of Hands, a “graphic poem,” if you will, intertwines a certain "Star Spangled Patriot” with Rand’s prophetic tale. Why? Because, as the story, and today’s events remind us, “it is still a sin to write this.”

"Because It's Still a Sin to Write This..."

2011-04-06T10:52:00.000-07:00

How do you know that Objectivism is not winning? Because "it is STILL a sin to write this..."

A SHOW OF HANDS: A Cautionary Tale of Heroes in Exile (pdf)

The Atlas Shrugged Movie and Objectivism: "Winning?"

2011-04-02T09:56:00.000-07:00

"Objectivism is winning?" So is Charlie Sheen...

"You'll know Objectivism is winning when ... there is a big demand for the Atlas Shrugged movie." This was in reaction to the headline "Atlas Shrugged Fans Shock Theater Chains."

CULVER CITY, Calif., April 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on the film's recent fan-based grassroots uprising, "The Strike" Productions today announced it will be expanding the initial release of the Atlas Shrugged movie from 11 markets to over 50.

"AMC called directly to report their online contact system was being hit too hard. They requested we direct traffic to a specific address just to handle the volume," said producer Harmon Kaslow.

"While it's unusual for showtimes to be listed this early, the doors of the exhibitors have been thoroughly beaten down by Ayn's fans. Many of the theaters are now posting showtimes so tickets can be pre-purchased," continued Kaslow. "And, theaters and showtimes are now being reported as sold-out."

Fandango.com lists the 7:00pm showing at Regal Cinema's Union Square Theater in New York City as "sold out."

"Our online 'Demand Atlas!' service has been receiving an incredible amount of traffic since launch," said Scott DeSapio, Online Marketing Director of the film. "After toping the charts at another web site as the 'Hottest Demand Worldwide' for more than a week, we decided to build our own in-house 'Demand Atlas!' feature to better service Ayn Rand fans. We're completely blown away by the response."

"Our fans have spoken, and we have directed our booking agents to expand the release of Atlas Shrugged into the major theaters located in more than 80 cities across America," announced Kaslow. "Of course, until we're locked down, fans still need to let us know where the movie should play by coming to our website and demanding Atlas to their city."

"As a direct result of fans in Atlanta demanding Atlas, we immediately set about booking a theater. The current report is that the theater is already sold out for a number of shows on Friday, April 15, 2011 - opening day. We couldn't be more excited." concluded Kaslow.

I've been resolved not to comment on the upcoming movie until I actually see it; there are too many x-factors involved, from being a low-budget movie made to simply hold on to the rights, to the supposed "Roarkian" spark in the producer, for me to speculate on the movie's quality, let alone its cultural impact. That hasn't stopped others, of course. The above line, however, strikes me as the ultimate in high hopes.

Hope floats...

Putting the quality of the movie aside, the above just strikes me as severely naive. In the grand scheme of things, with the election of Obama, the passage of the universal health care law, and the Tea Parties threatened to be usurped by the religious right, this amounts to nothing more than dedicated fans saving their favorite cult T.V. show from cancellation. I've met people with copies of Atlas Shrugged on their bookshelves...as a "trophy" piece that's never been read. I've met people who've enjoyed The Fountainhead, but disagreed with the philosophy. Glenn Beck holds up Atlas Shrugged, which challenges 2000 years of Christianity, yet holds on to his Mormon faith. (And let's not forget the hype that surrounded the Fountainhead movie...). If non-Objectivists are forgiven for these things, however, that doesn't explain the Objectivist-minded who clamor for Chris Christie or Donald Trump as president...well, hell, to claim to be an Objectivist is no guarantee of rationality anyway, or even unity; with all the schisms and infighting, and fatwas (and let's not get started on Alan Greenspan), a nation swept up in Atlas fever doesn't necessarily float my hope. (Remember how the people celebrated after Rearden's acquittal in Atlas* (see the comments section), only to turn on him later? It's like that...). Again, Billy Beck's observation of "just how abjectly useless Objectivism has been in this fight" sums it up.

Sigh...I hate to be a killjoy, and just a few years ago, I might have had the same feeling. But to be that naive is to refuse to see just how far things have sunk. Rand's books and ideas have been around so long already, yet the coming civil war in this country is still between the Left and Right, with Objectivists/Libertarians barely a blip on the battlefield. C'mon; the book's been out since 1957, and already listed as the "second most influential book next to the Bible", and we still got Obama. If that didn't do it, are you really gonna bank on a movie premier? (And we all know that the book is usually better than the movie...)

Look, I'd love for this movie to have a major impact, and I'll be happy to be proven wrong. But the idea that somehow Objectivism is winning, whether through a growing awareness or by seeing the statist infrastructure crumble...well, that's a potential, not an actuality, at this point. Objectivism is winning? "Show, don't tell." You won't see it in a cult following for a movie, or in Amazon sales. Don't show me the name brand, show me the results.

President Trump? Such a Bad Idea...

2011-04-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

First, some Objectivist-minded people get all hot and bothered for Chris Christie as a presidential nominee, and now, Donald Trump?

From a threat at Objectivist Living: "President Trump? Maybe Not Such a Bad Idea"

Some "choice" quotes:

"He is far from perfect, but he is saying some things that no one else is saying--and doing so with eloquence and Reaganesque tenacity."

"He sounded very serious when I heard him on Hannity in January. He has two big plusses, personality and name recognition, and that he is not a middle of the road RINO like that bastard Romney."

"AND he has name recognition among libertarians..."

Cheesus H. Christ...I'm wondering how they would rationalize away this:

"We must have universal health care I’m a conservative on most issues but a liberal on health. It is an unacceptable but accurate fact that the number of uninsured Americans has risen to 42 million. Working out detailed plans will take time. But the goal should be clear: Our people are our greatest asset. We must take care of our own. We must have universal healthcare.

"Our objective [should be] to make reforms for the moment and, longer term, to find an equivalent of the single-payer plan that is affordable, well-administered, and provides freedom of choice. Possible? The good news is, yes. There is already a system in place-the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program-that can act as a guide for all healthcare reform. It operates through a centralized agency that offers considerable range of choice. While this is a government program, it is also very much market-based. It allows 620 private insurance companies to compete for this market. Once a year participants can choose from plans which vary in benefits and costs."

-Donald Trump, July 2, 2002

Well, at least the site's owner has some sense about all this:

Trump is a mixed premises kind of pragmatist with a tough-guy charisma who leans in favor of business. I believe he would work out pretty well as a President if the recent President's are used as a standard. But I'm not comfortable with him. He plays the system too much. For instance, for him, bankruptcy is a business tool to be used like, say, issuing stock. Give a guy like that power where he isn't ruled by the bottom line and the temptations become like crack cocaine to an addict.

If only Rand's stance towards conservatives were taken more seriously, but no; on another thread, there are those who believe that the Right will get behind the upcoming Atlas Shrugged movie, and change their ways, leading this well-deserved smackdown from Jeff Riggenbach:

"Oh, yes, oh, yes, indeed. Nothing could be more important that getting a bunch of statists who shout libertarian slogans during election campaigns to get behind the Atlas Shrugged movie. What would we do without the invaluable contribution of these contemptible statists?"

It's not as if Rand didn't address all this in her "Anatomy of Compromise," but whatever, right? We've got to be practical, and pragmatic, and-oh, wait...These kinds of political compromises are what prompts Billy Beck to point out "just how abjectly useless Objectivism has been in this fight." Me, I call it "Uncle Tom" Objectivism.

Such endorsements of statist would-be's just makes the Objectivist arguments for minarchy look like a joke. If politics is the solution, well, then, "make mine autarchy."

The Rand-Rush Connection: Coda

2011-02-07T10:02:00.000-08:00

After completing this, I recently came across online a Hold Your Fire "backstage" newsletter from 1998 (Transcribed by Kathy View). Included is a Q&A featuring a few of Rand-related questions:

Q. How do you feel about Ayn Rand and Objectivism?
Ted Tomaszewski,
Clark’s Summit, PA

A. Pretty good. How do you feel about them?

The answer's kind of flip, as if weary of the question, followed a few questions later by this more neutral, yet more characteristic answer:

Q. I would like to know what are some of the more interesting books you’ve read to inspire your song writing, as with "Anthem" by Ayn Rand and "Powers Of Mind" by Adam Smith.
Angelo DiPronio,
Fort Wayne, IN

A. Well, lately I’m never inspired by any one thing, and usually try to pour a bucketful of ideas and images into every song, so the actual inspirations can be pretty oblique and hard to track down. They come from conversations sometimes, or something in the newspaper or on TV, or more often just from watching the way people behave, and thinking about why!

Then there is this, which is more relevant to this blog entry. It's a little surprising to see Peart with some individualistic "bite" here; he comes out so strongly for individualism and so strongly against Live-Aid when contrasted with some of Peart's later, more "left-wing emphasis" Libertarianism quotes, but it does need to be considered in the totality of the Rand-Rush connection, as a bridge, at least:

Q. Do the more compassionate or worldly lyrics of recent material underline a shift away from your strong right wing views expressed in "2112" and "Anthem"? Would the band feel uncomfortable performing "Anthem" in the age of Live-Aid with "Live for yourself, there’s no one else, more worth living for, Begging hands and bleeding hearts will always cry out for more."
Ian Harris,
Kent, England

A. Oh boy! I’ve been saving this one for last, so anyone who’s bored already can go watch the TV news or something.

This one could only have come from England-I doubt if anybody over here knows (or cares) what "right wing" means.

As a matter of fact, the term dates from the French Revolution, when the Royalists sat on the right side of the French parliament, while the Republicans sat on the left. So, in that sense, I have never had any strong French Royalist views expressed in any song. Ha ha.

But really, my world-views have grown onward and outward over the years, but they haven’t changed. I still believe in the sanctity of the individual, in freedom of action without harming anyone else, in a person’s right to be charitable (or miserly) as they choose, and all that good stuff.

As to the second point, do you really believe that whole Live-Aid circus was an act of selfless concern for suffering humanity? If it were simply and truly that, it could have been done quietly, with all those sanctimonious and self-righteous people doing something good for the world without the attendant spotlights on their oh-so-humble and sentimental altruism.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no cynic, and I have no doubt that "Sir Bob’s" motives were honourable, but didn’t you notice that only the "In Crowd" were invited to participate? Or that anyone who resisted the "invitation", like "Tears For Fears", were publicly and viciously maligned for their lack of "charity"?

I can easily illustrate the reality with a story from my own experience. A year or so ago, I had the idea of getting rid of a few spare drumsets by means of an auction, and I wanted the proceeds to go to the "Foster Parents Plan." If you’re not familiar with that agency, it’s a self-help aid program started by an Englishman during the Spanish Civil War to help refugee children, and later spread to the world, helping children as well as their families and communities. You "adopt" a child in a poor country, contribute to their health and education, and write back and forth to them as penpals. It’s a wonderful thing.

I got excited about the idea, thinking that other musicians must have spare instruments sitting around that they might donate to such a cause. And then the little idea grew into a great big dream. I envisioned a satellite network across North America, tied into MTV and Canada’s MuchMusic, with people phoning in to bid on all this great stuff, and for a great cause. Why, it could even become a monthly affair, with the proceeds going to different worthy causes every time. Fantastic!

Getting really excited now, I started to contact people, and asked our office to try to turn the wheels of our great "Entertainment Industry". And what do you think happened?

Absolutely nothing. It just wasn’t hip anymore. So what’s new?

The Rand-Rush Connection: Dreaming in Middletown

2011-01-13T06:52:00.002-08:00

Rush has already been discussed in "the scholarly literature," as Chris Sciabarra outlined in his article "Rand, Rush, and Rock." Sciabarra has already discussed the previous books discussing Rush, including Edward Macan's Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture; Paul Stump's The Music's All That Matters: A History of Progressive Rock; Carol Selby Price and Robert M. Price's Mystic Rhythms: The Philosophical Vision of Rush; Bill Martin's Listening to the Future: The Time of Progressive Rock, 1968-1978; and Kevin Holm-Hudson's edited collection, Progressive Rock Reconsidered, which features an essay on Rush by Durrell S. Bowman. The most recent addition to the "canon” is Rush, Rock Music and the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown by Chris McDonald.

The thesis of McDonald's book is not about Rush and Rand per se, so this will not be a comprehensive book review; there are other topics discussed, such as musical analysis, that I found interesting, that are simply beyond the scope of this post. Rather, this will just serve to introduce the book into the discussion started by "Rand, Rush and Rock”. There is significant space dedicated to the topic, in the discussion of differing kinds of individualism, the comparison of "2112" and Rand’s novella Anthem, (upon which "2112" was based), heroism, maturity and civility, the “self-made” man, and public reaction towards the band as it relates to Objectivism.

The book centers on Rush's embodiment and representation of North American "middle-classness," looking at the complex relationship between the group's music, fandom, and middle-class subjectivity. Of course, Rush, as a rock band, is not unique in its suburban origins, but the case can be made that Rush is a perfect subject for exploring these themes, given the vividness and acuteness with which it represents and wrestles with its suburban, middle-class identity. The author’s own introduction is significant, in that the he wrestles with his own “middle-class identity” in regards to the themes of Rush, Rand, and individualism, as if to simultaneously defend and/or distance himself from those themes:

"I grew up in a politically conservative, secular, middle-class family with a generations-long tradition of small-business ownership, and I picked up a wide range of individualistic biases as a youth, some of which I carry to this day. I am sure that my upbringing as an only child who learned to work and play in abundant solitude only made Rush's (and to some degree, Rand's) individualism more compatible with my teenage worldview. However, as an adult, my training as a musician in the arts and as an academic ethno-musicologist forced me to contend with culture and society in ways that strongly challenged the assumptions that came with my upbringing. By learning how ideologies of many kinds can be deconstructed, I found myself questioning many things that once seemed like the concrete bases of my identity and the society in which I lived. I have come to understand individualism not as a natural, universal, or commonsense truth, but as an important, historically and socially grounded European idea that has led to a variety of both progressive and repressive outcomes in various places and times. My agenda is neither to discredit individualism and Rush's uses of it, nor to defend or glorify them. I want to uncover the social and historical backgrounds that make individualism important to Rush and many of its audience members, and I want to see how it fits into the story of rock music and the middle class. (65-66)

McDonald lays out his thesis:

By critically examining individualism, I am not denying that each of us has an individual consciousness and the agency to make choices….And I am also not suggesting that there is something necessarily wrong with various values (self-reliance, pro-activity, a rigorous work ethic) associated with middle-class individualism, or for that matter with Rush’s lyrics. But I am concerned that individualist ideology (and Rush’s use of it) be understood as part and parcel of a particular social and historical context. Though [Carol] Price…insisted that ‘there are no natural herd members,’ it is equally true that the individual she describes is not natural either; it is a post-Lockean, modern, Western idea, difficult to conceive of outside the history that gave rise to Protestentism, the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, and modern states. Morever, the individualism under discussion is inflicted in a distinctly American way….it is embedded in middle-class and white American identity in important ways. (83-84)

The Rand/Rush Connection

First, let’s look at how McDonald sees their connection:

“2112” and other Rush songs…that made political cases against collectivism and in favor of individualism are challenging to contextualize, because they intersect with both broad and specific contexts. On the one hand, such political statements resonate with the rising tensions of the Cold War during the 1970s and 1980s, which climaxed during the Reagan presidency. The economic crisis of the mid-1970s and the erosion of faith in the welfare state, Keynesian economics, and other progressive government programs are also certainly part of this political turn. But on the other hand, the explicit connections Rush made to Ayn Rand...and the implicit links apparent in numerous other songs….associated the band with a specific marginal political movement forged by Rand and her philosophers, known as Objectivism. Locating Rush between these two guideposts is tricky. Neil Peart’s much-publicized interest in Rand during those years left an indelible mark on Rush’s repertoire and became a frequent journalist touchstone in articles about the band, especially in the British press. This singular focus on Rand’s ideas, however, exaggerates her importance and fails to account for the precipitous decline in her influence on Rush’s lyrics after 1981. (91-92)

McDonald makes the conventional connection between Rand and conservatism (against Rand's protests to the contrary):

The choice of Rand as a literary and philosophical lodestar in Rush’s early years cast the band’s individualism as symptomatic of an extremely conservative political position. By refereeing Rand, Rush seemed to align itself with a politics that emphasized laissez-faire capitalism, individualism, and a decidedly pro-business posture, often associated with libertarianism, neoliberalism, and secular neoconservatism. Rand’s novels and nonfiction provide one of the best known expressions of this philosophy in popular culture, also represented in the writings of philosopher Robert Nozick, economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, novelist Robert A. Heinlein, and television journalist John Stossel. (92)

McDonald cites various people like C. Wright Mills, Theodor Adorno, Robert Bellah, Simon Frith, and Adrie Kusserow in his explanations of various kinds of individualism, and applies their theories to Rand and Rush and American/Canadian class values. I think it's safe to say that McDonald is seeing through a Marxist lens, and his sources will be found antagonistic to Objectivists (the first four listed are known for their socialism and/or Marxism; I don't know about Kusserow), but their importance is in the discussion of the very real phenomenon of how the American idea of individualism has shifted from a “rugged” ideal to “softened” one of “interdependence” (as witnessed in a phrase like “kind capitalism” used by businesses such as Ben and Jerry’s.) Two particular theories discussed by McDonald are the “hard/soft offensive from Kusserow, and Robert Belah’s “expressive-utilitarian” theory.

Kusserow’s “hard/soft” offensive has 3 variations of individualism that vary by class (an defensive “offensive” among the working class, a attitude of “upward mobility in the middle class, “soft offensive” among the upper class. (McDonald theorizes that these variations can relate to age.) Bellah’s theory centers on the middle-class. Expressive individualism is explained as “part of the individual’s engagement with culture, leisure, and family, “and the “utilitarian” as “overwhelmingly concerned with material success and attainment of career goals.”

McDonald takes these theories and applies them to the ideas put forth in Neil Peart’s lyrics, based on the group’s collective middle-class upbringing. There is this quote from Frith: "American class experience is mediated through historical images of individual achievement and failure; workers remember their past in terms of mobility rather than solidarity, self-sufficiency rather than socialism. Rock’n’roll accounts of loneliness and rebellion celebrated the conditions that produced them. (75) On this, McDonald says about Rush that their "hard" individualism, then, resonates across class lines in America, where slogans about self-sufficiency can be adapted to working- and middle-class sensibilities.(75)

McDonald goes on to trace the differing kinds of individualism in Peart’s lyrics throughout their albums, noting a shift from the “hard” to “soft” offensive and, ultimately, towards Peart’s current “left-leaning libertarian” position. McDonald denies the “defensive” position in Rush songs (despite the first album song “Working Man,” which was written before Peart joined the band). While not defensive, they are aggressive. McDonald notes the juxtaposition; he believes that Rush were primarily of the “hard, middle-class” offensive. A song like “Anthem” or “Something For Nothing” contain the Rand-inspired individualism, and McDonald also notes the “brash if optimistic expression of individuality” which “is hardly surprising given Rush’s hard rock orientation; such a hard-offensive approach to individualism suggests that Rush speaks of middle-class aspiration from a lower-middle-class or even working class point of view.” (74) But the lyrics reflect the “upward mobility” spirit of the middle class, as opposed to the lyrics of, say, Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan, which dwell on the plight of the working class.

The sharp divide between the working and middle class, as it relates to musical matters, was on display in Rush’s interview with Barry Miles in the New Music Express in the late 70’s. McDonald discusses the Objectivist angle, which I discuss here. But McDonald also mentions another article highlighting the divide:

Rush’s evocation of Rand in the early albums garnered relatively little attention in the American press, but in 1978 an article in the Canadian magazine Maclean’s positioned Rush at the vanguard of a new, more conservative, self-centered generation of rock fans. Entitled “To Hell with Bob Dylan-Meet Rush: They’re In It for the Money,” the article probed the band’s affirmative posture toward Rand, her version of capitalism, and the band’s self-congratulatory assessment of its perseverance and hard work ethic. As reported by Roy MaGregor, Rush "held no kindred love for the social conscience of a Bob Dylan or Phil Ochs, for that matter not even the street justice of a Mick Jagger. Rush was, on the average, a full decade younger than the ruling class of modern pop music. They found themselves speaking for a large group of young rockers without spokesman–a group who, despite their love of loud, violent music, were themselves non-revolutionary, highly conservative, and certainly self-centered." (93)

The members of Rush were so shaken by the “fascist” accusations by Miles of the NME (as McDonald notes, Geddy Lee’s mother was a concentration camp survivor, after all), and they started to distance themselves from the Objectivist label, illustrated by Peart, who claimed the Randian influence was “grossly overestimated”: “Most of us are independent enough to take a selection of different people’s ideas and meld them together into something of our own. It was just the simplistic labeling at the time, and thankfully it’s diet out.” (49) One could take issue with Peart for the term “simplistic labeling,” when he not only wrote a song called “Anthem,” but dedicated "2112" “to the genius of Ayn Rand.” But whether or not it was this incident or, as the theories claim, the “maturing” process, Peart’s emphasis began to shift from the “hard” offensive to the “soft offensive” on individualism.

That emphasis on middle-class values becomes more pronounced on the mid-80’s albums, which also reflected the musical shift away from hard rock towards more synthesized, new-wave rock. McDonald notes the shift from aggressive independence to a softer “interdependence” as well:

“Grand Designs” (1985) articulates the myth of personal uniqueness and “Mission” (1987) deals with individualist artistic expression, while “Open Secrets” (1987) and “Hand Over Fist” (1989) switch the emphasis from self-reliance to interdependence. This shift in register may reflect Peart’s advancing maturity as well as the band’s confidence following what had been more than a decade as a successful band. I suspect that Kusserow’s hard-offensive and soft-offensive individualism may be not only an effect of class but also of age, younger people seeking to prove themselves might adopt a relatively hard sort of individualism; more mature, established people might adopt a more nuanced, interdependent and softer form.” (75)

The above theory would also ring true with Peart’s interest at the time with Carl Jung’s ideas, which explore that evolution from independence to interdependence. (I deal with those ideas in relation to Objectivism here, while offering my own criticisms of Jung's hero cycle here.) Jung’s analysis of the hero cycle, for example, details a journey from adolescent discovery and independence to either a re-integration with society or the evolution into a monster or tyrant, the very thing the hero set out to fight in the first place. This idea influenced Peart, and can be seen in his lyrics concerning heroism. McDonald notes that “Heroic displays of virtuosity became obligatory on Rush’s albums”, but describes the difference between songs like “Tom Sawyer” and “Nobody’s Hero” as a maturing away from the Randian hero. Peart confirms in his own words:

“Nobody’s Hero,” as it existed in my notebook and in my thoughts, was really just about, ‘what is a hero, what is the Western idea of a hero, and is it good?’ And ultimately I decided that our idea of a hero is a superhuman being, whether it’s an athlete or an entertainer or a politician or whatever. …And I decided no ,it isn’t a good thing. It’s not good for people to think they are trying to measure themselves against perfect superhuman deities. Much better they should measure themselves against role models or the type of heroes that I outlined in the chorus, which are ordinary people doing extraordinary things…but at the same time in our Western way, they were nobody’s hero. (52)

Anthem vs. "2112"

Actually, when Peart discusses “ordinary heroes,” as opposed to "Randian supermen", it seems to supports his complaint about the “overestimation” of Rand’s influence. In McDonald’s comparison of Rand’s Anthem and Rush’s "2112", he points out that Unlike Equality 7-2521, the protaganist in “2112” is not distinguished from his peers in any particular way; in fact, in the extra narrative provided in the liner notes, he is portrayed as an average citizen who is happy with the status quo." (88)

The contrast is that the protagonist of Anthem was already defiant, or born different, one of Rand’s elite “prime movers”, while the hero of "2112" was one of the masses who experienced an “awakening,” via the discovery of the guitar and the rejection of his gift by the Priests. It could be argued that it’s a superficial comparison in light of the larger case of the theme of the individual versus the state. (It also ignores that Rand’s heroes are not supernatural, and she had made a comment that “In America, the common man is most uncommon.”) Two different heroes with different awakening circumstances, but both reach the same conclusion. And yet, it could be argued that the difference is substantial, if one considers just how Rush would move away from the Objectivist version of individualism; again, in 2112’s hero we see something closer to Jung’s analysis of the hero cycle, whereas in Rand’s stories, the heroes do not re-integrate themselves into an old society, but pave the way for a new one.

Unfortunately, I do have to take issue, at this point, with another part of the Anthem/"2112" comparison. McDonald claims that

Anthem was an alarmist work of fiction, best understood as part of the red scare of the 1930’s, when socialism was gaining political favor in the midst of the Great Depression…Rand’s polemic was clearly aimed at communism; “2112,” in contrast, casts a wider critical net. Peart’s society of the future is also collectivist, but the central control of the society is held through an elite body called the Priests, adding a theocratic element to the narrative. Their control of society is maintained through high technology…with their computers maintaining surveillance over the population and providing all aspects of culture, including literature, music, and art. (88-89)

McDonald reiterates this difference:

In contrast to Anthem, “2112” is not simply an anti-communist or anti-socialist polemic; Peart brings together in his dystopian future three things that have the capacity to massify: religion, technology, and ideology." (90) The problem with this distinction is that it is simply not true; Anthem is not simply an "anti-socialist polemic." Yes, those elements are there, but Rand made a point of explaining that her books were not simply aimed at communism, or fascism, but went to something deeper: "the meaning of man's ego." Besides, Rand made it a point to not define her work by the negatives, but by the positives, by what she stood for, hence the word "anthem" as a "hymn" to the self and life on Earth.

Regarding the “technocratic” regime in "2112", I will say that that McDonald is correct in noting the difference, because this is telling clue that Rush would depart from their Randian influence, since Rand made it a point in Anthem to differ that story from the use of technology by the dictatorships in the oft-compared 1984 and Brave New World, claiming that tyranny eventually leads to an “anti-industrial revolution.” (I’d add that the current “green movement,” and the recent “Climate-Gate” debacle supports that theory.)

McDonald goes on to read more into the themes of "2112", while continuing to stress the “limitations” of Anthem:

This interpretation, of course, does not exhaust the political criticism articulated by “2112.” The piece also treats political ideology as part of the massification of the society….The presumption that all the citizens are the same-that the same ideas and culture will suit everyone-is what makes the society so deadening and black. Thus, the piece retains the antisocialism that Peart drew from his Randian inspiration, and the red star emblem that adorns 2112’s album cover is no doubt the red star of communism….Just as Anthem reflects its 1930s red scare context, “2112” updates the anxiety about communism for the late Cold War period by merging political collectivism with an ominous, threatening technology (a reflection of the fact that the Soviet Union had beaten the United Stated in the first round of the space race, and had kept pace technologically with the capitalist West, at least until the 1980s). Peart’s collectivist state, with its priestly elite and malevolent, all-seeing technology, is a perfectly menacing threat, penetrating the physical, mental, and spiritual world of its subjects. (91)

This begs the question of why McDonald’s interpretation of Anthem should exhaust that book’s critique, while reading so much into a side-long song cycle. It would be superficial, at that, to call Rand’s philosophy “anti-social,” and indicates a lack of a deeper understanding (or simply ignores) her ideas that ideal social relations were best established not only on a voluntary basis, and not possible in a system that ignores or violates individual rights, but only the rationally selfish, as seen in this quote: “To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love—because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.”

Despite the contrasts in the analysis, McDonald seems to criticize the band when they are at their most “Randian,” challenging the image of Rush as an “uncompromising” band bent on preserving their artistic integrity against overwhelming odds. In one example, McDonald says that “Peart portrays Rush’s career as built on integrity. Rush’s artistic freedom at this time may have been due partly to the record company’s distraction and internal structural problems, not simply to Rush’s dogged tenacity.” The point is not to deny that Rush did fight, but that they received more support than the myth may convey, which would support an argument against “rugged individualism” and make the case for “interdependence.” (And this is a criticism often lobbed at Rand herself, who claimed that “no one helped her,” despite the support of her family in Russia and Chicago, or the break given to her by Cecil B. DeMille.)

Throughout the book, the most critical eye towards Rush is cast over their “hard offensive” period (meaning, at their most “Randian”, while their later lyrics are met with approval for their “maturity.” Ultimately, to the consternation of those Objectivists who are prone to cite the lyrics of Neil Peart, McDonald shows just how far Rush has come from the influence of Ayn Rand and the “virtue of selfishness” espoused by Objectivism:

“Through the 1980s and 1990s, Peart’s explorations of individualism become less Randian and idealistic, and more pragmatic and critical. As early as 1980, Rush came out with a song, “Natural Science,” that criticized the blind, solipsistic pursuit of individual agendas…Using tidal pools as a metaphor, the song describes people becoming so narrowly focused on themselves (their pool) that they forget that they are part of a bigger picture (the sea.) “Time after time we lose sight of the wave/our causes can’t see their effects,” Lee sings, in a song that markedly contrasts the “live only for yourself” ethos of “Anthem.” In “Open Secrets,” Peart deals with a similar theme, only in the context of a personal relationship. The song describes the inwardness and isolation that results from hiding feelings and keeping private secrets from one’s intimate circle; the relationship described is full of miscommunications and irritation, because the other parties are distracted by their own concerns, even as they try to open up to each other: “I was looking out the window….I should have looked at your face instead.” (97-98)

Again, I take issue, because Rand, who argued against solipsism, wouldn’t deny this, and it ignores her arguments in The Virtue of Selfishness that if one values another person, it would be in that person's selfish interest to do what one can for a loved one, as seen in the earlier quote. [This also continues on in Peikoff’s work, who quotes the Hegelian maxim that “the true is the whole.”] The band themselves, though, in distancing themselves from Rand, through various comments, seem to agree. For example, the previous quote from Peart about the “gross overestimation.” But Peart undercuts of his own understanding of Objectivism via a quote like this: …”it may sound a little ego-centric, but it’s not. It’s just dedication to values…” (107)

McDonald quotes Geddy Lee to further illustrate the divide:

Geddy Lee pointed out in some interviews that the interest in Rand he shared with Peart mostly involved drawing on her inspirational themes of self-esteem, unlocking of creativity, and moral integrity: “I found Ayn Rand’s work at a certain time in my life…to be a great liberator and a great relief because he artistic manifesto was so strong and inspiring. Her views on art and the sanctity of individuals were very inspiring to young musicians in a band, fighting for their own identity.” In the long run, it seemed that [Rush’] interest had ltitle to do with Rand’s hard-line capitalist economics and politics per se, and Rush’s repeated forays into the mass-culture critique suggested a great deal of suspicion toward music as big-business, a suspicion Rand likely would never have endorsed. Rush’s individualism, to the extent that it was conservative, sought to uphold and defend an old, entrepreneurial model of the individual,…Thus, the kind of individualism Rush and similar rock bands espoused looked back to a romantic, nineteenth-century entrepreneurial model, sustained as an alternative to a more postmodern, ideologically flexible, and other-directed self. (97)

Despite the support Rand had for business in general, she had plenty to say against the marriage between business and the state, and how businessmen are not immune from corruption (aptly dramatized in a chapter from Atlas Shrugged called “The Top and the Bottom.”) I would mention here that Rand may have sympathized with the band and their fight for artistic integrity versus “big business” (see her attitudes towards Hollywood, something McDonald doesn’t mention). This, I submit, is an important omission when coupled with the description of Rand as “conservative” (or “to the extent that she was”). McDonald does, however, touch on the important point in his last sentence, that the Rand/Rush connection was always tenuous, at best, for reasons similar to the Rand/Libertarian connection. These reasons are outlined already in my review of Jeff Riggenbach’s In Praise of Decadence, and in my post on Peart’s 1996 interview in Liberty magazine. While Rand did have an impact on the hippies, student protesters, and what would become the Libertarian party, the differences kept each from embracing the other fully, as Rand was seen as too “rigid” and the Libertarians “decadent,” or, eclectic “hippies of the right.”

McDonald summarizes the band’s break with Randian with seeming approval:

When viewed in the context of Rush’s…career, individualism stands as an important theme in its repertoire, but other themes and concerns became dominant as the band’s career progressed. Moreover, when the Canadian government awarded the members of Rush the Order of Canada in 1996, the dedication credited the band not with embodying Rand’s ‘virtue of selfishness,’ but quite the opposite: ‘these veterans of the stage have raised over a million dollars for charities such as food banks and the United Way. Their efforts have enhanced an awareness of the plight faced by society’s less fortunate, inspiring and awakening the social consciousness of an entire generation.” This strongly suggests that, in public perceptions of the band, Rush had managed to balance its ideology of individualistic self-interest with one of civic duty and responsibility. (188)

Again, based on various comments from the band members, this attitude is shared by the band themselves. Despite the reassurance that McDonald is “not suggesting that there is something necessarily wrong with various values (self-reliance, pro-activity, a rigorous work ethic,” both the McDonald, in the quote above, and the band members continue to qualify charitable actions as “unselfish,” and stress “interdependence” over independence, and seem to view individualism as “practical”, rather than moral in itself. Depending on which side of the fence one is on, it could be seen a band maturing into a “progressive” ideology, or a “compromise” by a band who couldn’t take the heat. (And I have to wonder if they would be getting such "academic" attention, had they not renounced the Objectivist influence.)

As for McDonald’s book, does he fulfill his thesis? If his agenda was neither to discredit individualism and Rush's uses of it, nor to defend or glorify them,” it doesn’t mean that his own opinion doesn’t come through (though I credit him for a better separation than what was achieved by Jennifer Burns, who made a similar claim in her Rand bio Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. For a specific example, McDonald does a better job of keeping separate his views from the quotations of the fans interviewed and quoted than Burns does.) Regarding his intent to “uncover the social and historical backgrounds that make individualism important to Rush and many of its audience members...to see how it fits into the story of rock music and the middle class”: because of the “leftist” theories used to back up his thesis (after reading Saul Alinksky’s Rules for Radicals, I wouldn’t trust them to tell me the time of day), and what I see as misinterpretations of Rand coupled with telling omissions, the best that I can grant him is the benefit of the doubt that he sincerely believes in the progressive ideology that mixes individualism with altruism. He does lay out the history of these different ideas well enough; and the introduction of the differing kinds of individualism is of note, even if they are at odds with Objectivism. That said, while my criticisms aren't aimed at the book as a whole, I can’t grant McDonald my agreement on his interpretations and conclusions. Where I can grant him unequivocal success is in the documentation of Rush as a band whose connection with Rand was tenuous at best, and for providing, in microcosm, a document of the philosophical and cultural divide of our world today.

Musical Anecdotes from 100 VOICES: AN ORAL HISTORY OF AYN RAND

2010-12-26T13:56:00.001-08:00

While others are looking to the recently-released 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand as a "vindication" of The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics (or not); I'm looking at it for something waaay more important...(why, the music, of course...)

A few re-occurring themes of importance to past musical topics at this blog (and at the strictly Objectivism/music-themed Orpheus Remembered) are discussed: the origin of the songs "Will-O-The-Wisp" and "The Song of Broken Glass" as they related to the unlikely friendship between "rebel rouser" Duane Eddy and Ayn Rand, and Rand's attitude towards pop, rock, and classical music. While there's nothing earth-shaking here, there is a discussion of the inspiration of Halley's Concerto of Deliverance [which I always thought was inspired by Rachmaninoff's third movement of his second piano concerto], it's interesting to see some themes elaborated, contradicted, or to hear some anecdotes that run counter to things we may have heard about Rand's attitudes in previous "hearsays" (not to mention her surprising appreciation of a certain Fab Four...)

First up: Duane Eddy. I discussed before the letter in Letters of Ayn Rand where she thanks Eddy for a recording of "Will-O-The-Wisp," a letter which had generated speculation on the song itself: Who wrote it? Was Ayn Rand a fan of a rock 'n roll song? It was actually one of Rand's "tiddlywink songs," the composer being Herbert Kuster, and the original title was "Irrlichter," and the song was the basis for "The Song of Broken Glass" from We The Living. The interview with Eddy from 100 Voices elaborates on the details of that letter, including his obtaining for her a cleaner copy from the BBC of the record that she mentions, and Rand's excitement of his identifying the piece as the inspiration for "Song of Broken Glass:

She played it and I listened carefully, then turned to her as it finished and asked, 'could that possibly be the "Song of Broken Glass" in We The Living?' She was startled for a moment and then she called out, 'Frank, Nathan! Come here! Come here! You won't believe this-Duane just guessed after hearing it once, what this music is.' She turned back to me, smiled warmly and said 'Of all the millions of people who read my books, I've always believed that I've got,; she paused, thought quickly, and then continued, 'approximately a hundred thousand readers out there who really understand what I'm saying.'...She was very exited and happy that I had been correct...

Harry Binswanger also asks Eddy if Rand had heard his own music and, if so, what her opinion was, to which he answered

Not that I knew of. After dinner, Nathan played her a couple of cuts from what I call my 'string albums'–recorded with a big orchestra. One album was Twangy Guitar, Silky Strings; the other was called Lonely Guitar. I don't remember which tracks he selected. She commented that she thought they were beautiful. Nathan wouldn't play her "Rebel Rouser" or any of the rock and roll songs. He said he didn't think she'd like those. She didn't like rock and roll particularly.

I've always regretted that I didn't just insist that Nathan play her a couple of my hits, even if she would have thrown me out. Well, I wouldn't have liked that, but she was too gracious to have done that anyway. I think she might have enjoyed the happy and carefree sounds of those recordings or simply said it wasn't her taste in music.

Eddy continues to discuss Rand and rock music in general:

We had a short conversation about that, and she said something to the effect that she supposed they were nice people and everything, but she didn't care for most of rock and roll music. She didn't say all of it. I know she's written things about Elvis [in "What is Capitalism?" from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal], and though she didn't care for his music, I don't recall her saying anything against him personally.

Binswanger commented that Rand "obviously didn't despise Elvis, but she meant what she said, that she doesn't get rock and roll herself", to which Eddy replied

She thought it was a bit on the mindless side, which in a way it was. Even though I was into doing rock and roll music, I've heard some of it that is mindless. At the same time there was attitude about most of it–though I never discussed this with her. I hadn't thought it through enough in those days to have successfully presented my side of it to her. But in rock and roll there was an attitude of happiness and fun. It wasn't necessarily mindless any more than dancing to the big bands would have been mindless.

An interview with Susan Ludel would seem to confirm the image of Rand as anti-rock and roller:

What did she think of rock and roll music?
She hated it. She thought it was loud and unmelodic.

Hmmm, maybe Eddy was too optimistic about Rand's potential interest in his rock songs. But Frederick Feingersh, an NBI student, had this to say:

[Rand] was asked about popular music and specifically The Beatles. She said that she did not particularly like popular music, but at least The Beatles were well-dressed.

Wow. First we hear that Rand hated rock music, then we hear she didn't like pop music, but was mild towards The Beatles. What's next, we'll hear that Rand preferred pop music to classical, and actually listened to The Beatles?

Hmmm...let's ask Harry Binswanger.

And “tiddlywink” music?

She shocked me by saying that she thought popular music that you loved gave you a bigger emotional response than the best classical music. I take it that tiddlywink music was a bigger emotional experience for her than she got even from Rachmaninoff or Chopin.
Rock and Roll?
She said to me in 1979 or 1980 that the last kind of rock that she could hear as music, as opposed to just noise, was The Beatles. I was surprised that she was that positive about The Beatles.

Well. Just when you thought you knew someone...

Binswanger has the most to say about Rand and music out of all the interviewees, including a bit about her theory on an objective standard of music, as proposed in The Romantic Manifesto:

"We had some discussions about music. One was about 'America the Beautiful,' which she liked. I noted that it has a phrase 'from sea to shining sea,' which sounds like the line in Atlas from about Taggart Transcontinental: "From ocean to ocean forever.' And she said that line was in fact based on "from sea to shining sea.' She also said 'America the Beautiful' has a good structural feature: it has stopping points but only one final stopping point. She said she thought that when the ultimate aesthetics of music was someday worked out, each song would be represented by an equation or a series of equations. The difficulty of the equation would be what made the complexity of the music.

Of course, there is still a lot of space given over to Rand and classical music. Binswanger describes their discussion of her favorite composers:

I had two conversations about who was her favorite composer, and she gave me different answers. In the late 1960's I asked her if Rachmaninoff was her favorite composer, and she said, 'No that's not exactly my sense of life. It's more Chopin.' Maybe she said Chopin's 'Butterfly Etude.' But the idea I came away with was that Rachmaninoff did not rank as high as Chopin for Ayn. I asked, 'Too much struggle in the Rachmaninoff?' And she said, 'Exactly.' But thirteen years later, Chopin came up in a discussion and she said, 'Oh, that's music for old ladies.'

Did she explain why?

No, but I think in the later comment, she was thinking of Chopin's dreamy nocturnes, but I just can't recall if she said that or I assumed it. I can’t believe her love of the “Butterfly Etude” ever changed. That was one of what she called her “top favorites.”
What about Mozart?
She was not a Mozart fan. I’m not either, but I happened once to play her the opening movement of his Piano Sonata no. 11 in A Major (Andante grazioso], and she remarked that that was one of his few good melodies.

Other interviews touch on Rand and classical music as well. Howard Odzer had this to say:

Anything else that you shared with Miss Rand?
She had a record collection. I was into classical music, and I was thumbing through her records one night and came across ones like Countess Maritza and The Gypsy Prince by Kalman, which was my first introduction to that kind of music.
Do you know which piece of music was her inspiration for the Halley Concerto? It was an orchestral recording of love music from Boris Gudanov, performed by Hands Kindler and the National Symphony Orchestra. That’s the record she said she played over and over and over again when she finished writing Atlas Shrugged. I found the record at Barry Meltzer’s Music Store. They had a slew of old 78 recordings from the 1910s, ‘20s, ‘30s, and I told Ayn about it, and she became a regular at Meltzer’s. Her favorite song was “Get Out and Get Under.” [The song was written by Maurice Abrams, Grant Clark, and Edgar Leslie.] They were these very, very, “up” kinds of things, like the “Circus March” and the introduction in the “Circus.”
What else did you discuss with her about music?
Favorite composers. Tchaikovsky was number one, and it was a toss-up between Rachmaninoff and Chopin for number two. One of her favorite pieces was the Rachmaninoff third piano concerto, with Witold Malcuzynski performing. She played that again and again. She loved that particular piece of music.

Of course, no discussion of Rand and musical taste would be complete without a discussion of Beethoven. I've discussed this theme already (see here and here.) While the interviews here don't deny that Rand found his music malevolent, what they do deny is the perception of Rand as esthetic fascist. Iris Bell has this story that counters the image of Rand as psychological-bully:

When Nathan’s two nephews stayed with him for a few months and I went to a party at the Blumenthals’, we were standing in line at a buffet, and the older boy--Johnny, I think--was standing beside Miss Rand. She was talking to him about his interests and things he cared about. He said he had psychological problems and would have to go into therapy. She asked him why, and he said he loved the music of Beethoven, and he had heard her say that if you like Beethoven there was something wrong. She said, “Oh, don’t worry about that. We know so little--just enjoy it.” He was quite relieved.

Jan Schulman has a similar experience:

I remember that my favorite composer was Beethoven, and he was clearly not hers, and we talked about that. I certainly did not feel I was in a position to defend my appreciation of Beethoven to her.
You told her that?
Yes. That’s how I felt at the time, that I had to justify it.
What did she say?
I remember her talking about his malevolent sense of life.
How did she react to you personally when you told her about your appreciation for Beethoven? Did she get angry?
No, no, no, no—she was very kind.

John Ridpath's story follows the same pattern:

Tell me about Beethoven.
We talked about him because I’d been very moved by Beethoven, and she hadn’t; she observed that he had a malevolent-universe premise. I told her that I’d gone to a symphony to listen to Beethoven, and I found it very deeply involving, and we talked a bit, because she was interested in that.
Did she ask questions to find out specifically what it was that you liked?
In every case, the common thread—as I recall—was what images, moods, responses I had, in connection with works of art.

Of course, we don't have Rand to verify any of this herself, but an interesting snapshot, nonetheless...

Timely Meditations for the Very Vigilant

2010-11-23T07:10:00.000-08:00

On the argument of the necessity for showing a "united front" at the ARI, the Hsiehs also say that

The range of views that ARI should support under its "one consistent position" policy is a separate question. We regard this policy as wholly proper for Objectivist principles and their public policy applications. Diana has serious concerns about applying it to new philosophic or other scholarly work, however good, including The Logical Leap.

Well, as far as principles go, there is the "metaphysical" and the "man-made," or, objective principles versus Objectivist principles. I certainly wouldn't want to hear the ARI supporting voodoo and communism, but then...well, here are some salient quotes from the "reason for the season" herself...

If you want to influence a country's intellectual trend, the first step is to bring order to your own ideas and integrate them into a consistent case, to the best of your knowledge and ability. This does not mean memorizing and recitingslogans and principles, Objectivist or otherwise; knowledge necessarily includes the ability to apply abstract principles to
concrete problems, to recognize theprinciples in specific issues, to demonstrate
them, and to advocate a consistent course of action.

But what about the need for an ARI in the first place?

Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to “do something.” By “ideological” (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals...The only groups one may properly join today are ad hoc committees, i.e., groups organized to achieve a single, specific, clearly defined goal, on which men of differing views can
agree. In such cases, no one may attempt to ascribe his views to the entire
membership, or to use the group to serve some hidden ideological purpose (and
this has to be watched very, very vigilantly).

Why does this even need to be reiterated among Objectivists? But I guess they can't have anarcho-vigilantes running around, second-guessing intellectual heirs...

And so, I reiterate...

Open Thoughts on "Closing Thoughts"

2010-11-23T05:41:00.000-08:00

After being chastened by Yaron Brook, the Hsieh's at Noodlefood have concluded their "fact-finding" mission regarding "Anthemgate":

Now that ARI has explained recent events and its future policies, we do not regard further debate on those matters as fruitful.

Exactly! "It doesn't fit the plan." After all, they are the priests of the Temples of Syrinx. We need solidarity here. What is not done collectively cannot be good. After all, many men in the Homes of the Scholars have had strange new ideas in the past, but when the majority of their borther Scholars voted against them, they abandoned their ideas, as all men must. I mean, should it be what McCaskey claims of it, then it would bring ruin to the Department of Induction. Induction is a great boon to mankind, as approved by all ARI. Therefore, it cannot be destroyed by the whim of one. I mean, that would wreck the plans of the council, and without the Plans of the Council the sun cannot rise. It took years to secure the approval of all the councils...this touched upon thousands and thousands of men working in scores...we cannot alter the Plans again so soon...You thrice-damned fools...

Whatever; I think the Ph.D with a Podcast should have told Peikoff, Brook, and co. to piss off, personally. If I wasn't going to submit to Operation: Mindcrime from diabolical dialecticians, I certainly don't need no re-education in the form of "loyalty oaths" and conference calls from fearless leader. (While two wrongs don't make a right, it, admittedly, does lend credence to the claims made by Chris Sciabarra, Neil Peart, and countless others about Orthodox Objectivism.) If we're talking about scientific inquiry, we're talking about free scientific inquiry...which was supposed to be redundant...

Anyway...Say what you want, but, to be fair to the Hsiehs, they do stand by their initial criticisms (in a guarded manner, anyway), and, whatever their motives for their apologies, they do make the point that "Donors, students, and intellectuals can and should decide for themselves the nature and scope of their future support for and involvement with ARI based on their individual context of knowledge and values."

Yes, they should. So as the Hsieh's close their thoughts (and blog) on the matter, let that not be taken as the final word. In the ever-ringin' true words of Isabel Paterson, "Leadership is obliged to justify itself daily."

The Rand-Rush Connection: No, Neil, Hold YOUR Fire…

2010-10-20T20:45:00.000-07:00

So, after seeing how Neil Peart asked for a “cease fire” from Objectivism (while lobbing a few grenades of his own against it) via Rush’s 12th studio album, Hold Your Fire, it’s only fair for the Objectivish to fire back by questioning Peart’s own understanding Rand's ideas. And since everything he’s said about Objectivism has been not arguments, but assertions, all I'm obligated to do is nothing more than to point that out.

And if Peart had simply moved on, that’s all that I would do. As Chris McDonald points out in his book, Rush, Rock and the Middle Class, Peart and Geddy Lee have since distinguished the Randian influnce as being more about her "inspirational themes of self-esteem," rather than anything political. But the whole point of integrity demands that one's political beliefs be integrated to one's views on individualism. When Peart, via his eclecticism, rents his mind to god or government (as he does on Hold Your Fire), his "argumentum ad Randroidism" cannot go unchallenged...

Given that he not only used Rand’s name on 2112, only to “retreat” after the NME "fascist" fiasco (and feeling the need to correct her publicly), he gives the impression that his “mature” views are superior to his younger, “naive” years, and those of Rand:

[I was] like many people getting labeled with an influence like that...Most of
us are independent enough to take a selection of different people’s ideas and
meld them together into something of our own. It was just the simplistic
labeling at the time, and thankfully it’s died out.

But a deeper look at his assertions begs the question of his fairness towards Rand, so, "judge...and prepare to be judged." How well do the Professor's accusations stand up scrutiny?

As I discussed in the previous post, Peart revealed himself to be a “child of the 60’s,” which put him at odds with Rand.

I always loved machines, and I always loved the workings of mankind in making
things. I stayed up all night to watch the Apollo moon landing, and at the same
time I was just as excited by Woodstock. There is in fact no division there. In
both cases you're talking about the things that people make and do. So I didn't
see any division, but of course Rand did, in seeing us all as the unwashed
Bohemian hordes.
Although Peart is now inclined to write off Rand's
hostility toward the Woodstock kids as a "generational thing," it was her essay
on Woodstock and rock music that forced him to realize that he did not agree
with Rand on every issue. “That was when I started to not become a Randroid, and
started to part from being a true believer. I realized that there were certain
elements of her thinking and work that were affirming for me, and others that
weren't. That's an important thing for any young idealist to discover -that you
are still your own person.”

First, let’s get to Peart’s method of argument here, the “ad hominem” argument of Rand’s hostility as “generational.” Let's get to the surface impression: Rand's an old lady who doesn't like that "sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll." Keeping in mind Rand's celebration of sex as good, for instance, and not ignoring her chain smoking or the alleged alcoholism of her husband, Peart's jibe ignores Rand's full contextual arguments against hedonism, and the idea that happiness is not the standard of value ("whatever feels good"):

But the relationship of cause to effect cannot be reversed.
It is only by accepting “man’s life” as one’s primary and by pursuing the
rational values it requires that one can achieve happiness—not by taking
“happiness” as some undefined, irreducible primary and then attempting to live
by its guidance. If you achieve that which is the good by a rational standard of
value, it will necessarily make you happy; but that which makes you happy, by
some undefined emotional standard, is not necessarily the good. To take
“whatever makes one happy” as a guide to action means: to be guided by nothing
but one’s emotional whims.

Peart's suggestion here is familiar to anyone who's aware of the Branden biographies or online forums with people discussing their personal experiences with Rand firsthand: the suggestion is that Rand created an atmosphere antithetical to "being one's self." Whatever one believes about this claim, it's still important to separate the idea that Rand created "true believers" from the idea that Objectivism creates true believers. Peart does not make that distinction; rather, he implicates both with the lyric "I find no absolution/in my rational point of view." Nor did he mention that Rand held that one could agree with the fundamentals but differ in applications. Well, then, what did Rand say?

If you want to influence a country's intellectual trend, the first step is to
bring order to your own ideas and integrate them into a consistent case, to the
best of your knowledge and ability. This does not mean memorizing and reciting
slogans and principles, Objectivist or otherwise; knowledge necessarily includes
the ability to apply abstract principles to concrete problems, to recognize the
principles in specific issues, to demonstrate them, and to advocate a consistent
course of action. -"What Can One Do?" in Philosophy: Who Needs It.

Peart, with his "Randroid" comments, forgets the fact that Objectivism rejects the "appeal to authority," that the final arbiter in ethics is not a guru, but objective reality itself. So, With that distinction made...

Rand’s arguments in “Apollo and Dionysus” were not “generational,” but based on her ideas regarding reason and logic, which are stated very clearly. Using Rand’s age only acts as a smokescreen to avoid discussing the behavior she depicted as mindless at the event he claims to be inspired by. Quoting a Newsweek article from that time, Rand points out the reality of the Dionysian lovefest:

"Festival food supplies were almost immediately exhausted...and water coming
from wells dug into the area stopped flowing or came up impure....Throngs of
wet, sick and wounded hippies trekked to impromptu hospital tents suffering from
colds, sore throats, broken bones, barbed-wire cuts and nail-puncture wounds.
Festival doctors called it a 'health emergency...'.

Is this what they call "doing your own thing?" If this were a "victimless crime," it'd be one thing. But Rand highlights behavior that calls into question the other half of Peart and the hippie's credo about "as long as you don't hurt anyone else":

Who paid for this love-feast?...The citizens of Bethel, the nearest community,
were the victims, abandoned by their law-enforcing agencies. These victims were
neither bums nor millionares; they were farmers and small businessmen...Their
stories...sound like those of the survivors of a foreign invasion.

Peart claims that Rand was wrong, that there was "no division there." What would Peart say to those affected, as quoted in Rand's essay?

Richard C. Joyner, the operator of the local post office and general store on
Route 17B, 'said that the youngsters at the festival had virtually taken over
his property––camping on his lawn, making fires on his patio and using the
backyard as a latrine..."

Clarence W. Townsend, who runs a 150-acre
dairy farm...was shaken by the ordeal. "We had thousands of cars all over our
fields," he said. There were kids all over the place. They made a human cesspool
of our property and drove through the cornfields. There's not a fence left on
the place. They just tore them up and used them for firewood."

"My pond
is a swamp [said Royden Gabriele, another farmer]. I've got no fences and they
used my field as a latrine. They picked corn and camped all over the place. They
just landed wherever they could....If they come back next year I don't know what
I'll do," Mr. Gabriele said. "If I can't sell, I'll just burn the place down."

But back to Peart's "generational" argument: Rand shows that this has nothing to do with age; she traced the roots of Woodstock from Kant through Charles Lindbergh, leveling the same accusations against them. Quoting Lindbergh, she wrote that Lindbergh was a hero who betrayed his rationality in favor of intuition: "I found the mechanics of life less interesting than the mystical qualities they manifest." He's also quoted as saying "a perspective that drove into my bones, as well as into my mind, the fact that in instinct rather than in intellect is manifest the cosmic plan of life." (Sounds suspiciously like the lyrics on Hold Your Fire; no wonder Peart would be hostile to Rand at that point...)

As for the common cross-generational denominator , Rand writes that "Kant was the first hippie in history":

Such are the Dionysian followers. But who are the leaders? These are not always
obvious or immediately identifiable. For instance, the greatest Dionysian in
history was a shriveled little "square," well past thirty, who never drank or
smoked pot, who took a daily walk with such precise, monotonous regularity that
the townspeople set their clocks by him..."

Peart claims to contradict Rand's view of the Apollo flight and the Woodstock concert: "There is, in fact, no division there." This does not just apply to the two events, but the idea of reason and emotion. Again, what did Rand actually say? After describing Nietzsche's preference for emotion over reason, she writes

It is not true that reason and emotion are irreconcilable antagonists or that
emotions are a wild, unknowable, ineffable element in men. But this is what
emotions become for those who do not care to know what they feel, and who
attempt to subordinate reason to their emotions. For every variant of such
attempts–as well as for their consequences–the image of Dionysus is an
appropriate symbol.

She then goes on to describe the emotional experiences of those present at the Apollo launch, compared to the those of the Woodstock audience, I get the impression that Peart didn't truly understand Rand's complaint against the "Dionysian" elements of Woodstock. (As a rock musician, I will confess some sympathy with Peart here. But as a rock musician, I will confess sympathy with Rand's view as well, because I've seen, firsthand, what she was talking about, including losing a band member and friend to a drug overdose.) In the case of Rush, however, I will qualify my claim by pointing out Peart and Rush's own reputation as being "untypical" for rock musicians; they may have smoked some hash ("A Passage to Bangkok," anyone?), and, yes, they like that crazy rock 'n' roll...but they aren't known for the wild excesses of, say, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. And Peart has discussed that while he had an affinity for Keith Moon, but found that he did not enjoy imitating Moon's wild playing style, preferring a more logical approach...clearly, they are not the sort to for decadence...

The 60’s provide insight into other aspects of Peart’s differences with Objectivism, like his proclaimed interests in other thinkers besides Rand, such as Carl Jung, who was influenced by Plato and Kant, and Camille Paglia who, while herself a fan of Rand, was also influenced by Freud as well as rock and roll, and what she labels “the Chthonic,” or the Dionysian. There is also Peart’s concerns with some of the “darker” sides of capitalism (see songs like “The Spirit of Radio” and “The Big Money”) and its effects on the environment (expressed in “Natural Science” and “Red Tide.”) Peart distances himself from Rand by celebrating his individuality via his eclecticism, an idea itself hostile to Objectivism. At first, one might wonder how Peart became influenced by Rand in the first place. Could it be that Peart, after the NME debacle, is trying to ingratiate himself with those same leftists of the Woodstock generation? The answer is more nuanced than that. Though Peart never explains why eclecticism is to be celebrated, merely asserting it as a given, an explanation can be found via Riggenbach’s In Praise of Decadence.

I know, I just said that Rush wasn't the kind of band to embrace decadence... but just hold your fire, there's an explanation...

The central thesis of Riggenbach’s book is that the conception of the fall of great empires being caused by decadence is not only common knowledge, but wrong. He argues that decadence refers to the decay of authoritarianism, and that the periods thought of as decadent, such as ancient Rome, the “Roaring 20’s”, or the Berlin years of the Weimar Republic, were, in actuality, booming periods of creativity that upheld individuality while creating vibrant new works of art and changing scientific paradigms. Riggenbach traces these precedents as they led to the Woodstock generation and spawned, again against common knowledge, not the dominance of the “New Left” that Rand warned against (Riggenbach argues that the actual leftists were not as dominant as thought in the 60's movements, just the loudest), but the Libertarian movement, which took Rand as one of its influences, while simultaneously rejecting the “authoritarian” accusations claimed of her philosophy that clashed with the more “freewheeling,” bohemian aspects.

The attraction of Rand to the Woodstock generation, and her rejection of it, is explained by Riggenbach in-depth in chapter 7. I will also note, for the record, that Riggenbach, like Peart, has made clear his view of Rand's assessment of the New Left:

To the extent that I attempt to turn people on to Ayn
Rand, I tend to try to avoid mentioning [For The New Intellectual] myself,
though I'd guess my reasons are rather different from the ones that motivate ARI
(whatever they may be). I think FTNI is absolutely the worst of Rand's books
(though The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution certainly comes close). Her
caricature of Kant's significance in the history of philosophy is absurd. Her
summary of the history of Western civilization (basically half-understood,
warmed over Burckhardt) is only
slightly less absurd. To anyone who knows how astute Rand could be, how
insightful and ingenious she could be, the title essay is an awful
embarrassment.

(Riggenbach, echoing other critics of Objectivism like George Walsh, takes issue with Rand's aforementioned depiction of Kant as well. I am not an expert on Kant, so I can't help you there...but anyway...)

Riggenbach discusses how the decadence of the 60’s was embraced via “eclectism,” its celebration of different ideas and religions manifested in the maxim “do your own thing.” And since we’re dealing with rock music, Riggenbach notes that the hippies adopted rock ‘n’ roll as “their favorite kind of music-rock, a hybrid genre which had been created by freely mixing elements borrowed from black blues with still other elements borrowed from country music…."

This spirit is reflected in Peart’s comments on the Classic Albums 2112 DVD: “I grew up a child of the 60’s, and I was a strong individualist, and believed in the sanctity of… you should be able to do what you want to do, you know, without hurting anyone…”

Pit this attitude against his statements from 1997 against Objectivism:

That was when I started to not become a Randroid, and started to part from being
a true believer. I realized that there were certain elements of her thinking and
work that were affirming for me, and others that weren't. That's an important
thing for any young idealist to discover -that you are still your own person.

With Riggenbach’s argument that decadence works against dogmatism and authoritarianism, it’s easy to see why Peart would say such a thing, and go on to make claims about the organized movement.

Now, in Peart’s defense, the recent events surrounding Leonard Peikoff qualify Peart’s 1997 statement. And it would be fair to question whether or not it was the ideas or the betrayal of those ideas that caused this. But strictly speaking about the ideas, is it true to say that to agree with Rand equates with dogmatism?

The question should be, then, does adherence to Objectivism equal to dogmatism? The distinction is lost with Peart’s use of the word “Randroid,” but this also works to cover the fact that Peart’s eclecticism is at odds with the Objectivist idea of integration, and its dismissal of the “open/closed-minded” dichotomy in favor of “active-mindedness”, as well as dismissing “hedonism” in favor of the Aristotelian “eudaimonia.” This is essential because Rand’s idea of integrity, a word Peart writes so much about, is dependent on the idea of integration, and Peart’s eclecticism works to undermine that very integrity. Peart would have to be aware of this, given his reading of The Fountainhead. In that novel, Roark’s work has integrity, while “eclectic” architects like Jon Eric Snyte produce mongrel works of art, borrowing bits of ideas from different architects for the sake of eclecticism. Rand’s description of Snyte almost reads as if to preemptively “fire back” at Peart “cure-all” against dogmatism:

“John Eric Snyte was fifty years old…He considered Guy Francon an impractical
idealist; he was not restrained by an Classic dogma; he was much more skillful
and liberal; he built anything. He had no distaste for modern architecture and
built cheerfully, when a rare client asked for it, bare boxes with flat roofs,
which he called progressive; he built Roman mansions which he called fastidious;
he built Gothic churches which he called spiritual. He saw no difference among
any of them. He never became angry, except when somebody called him eclectic.”

Does this sound like an “integrated” man who stands independent, or bends to the whims of others? Such “eclecticism,” Rand would argue, is really “pseudo-individualism,” which can be seen in the decadent “artists” Rand pokes fun at, like Lancelot Clokely and Lois Cook, whose “pseudo-independence” is summarily built up and destroyed by Ellsworth Toohey:

“A few friends pointed out to Ellsworth Toohey that he seemed guilty of
inconsistency; he was so deeply opposed to individualism, they said, and here
were all these writers and artists of his, and every one of them was a rabid
individualist. ‘Do you really think so?’ said Toohey, smiling blandly.”

While eclecticism in art may be “harmless,” in a “do your own thing” sort of way, like clashing color schemes, it ignores the personal effects, how contradictory ideas can lead not to integration but to dis-integration. Riggenbach makes the argument that decadence can lead to the fall of authority, but while that approach tears down a negative ("The State"), it does not always translate into a positive. Even as Riggenbach documents the spirit of eclecticism, he also points out the pitfalls:

It is also true that one reason the conventional wisdom is the conventional
wisdom is that is has proved itself workable over time. The general loosening of
the rules…leads to widespread experimentation with all sorts of theories which,
in normal, authoritarian times, would be regarded as foolish, silly, ‘off the
wall, already discredited, or for some other reason(s) unworthy of
investigation. And, in fact, most such theories are unworthy, just as the
conventional wisdom would have us believe.

Riggenbach sees the common denominator of side-by-side developments of scientific advancements with pseudo-science “not accuracy or truth, but decadence, the overall decay of traditional authority.” Fair enough, from an Objectivist viewpoint. As far as it goes, freedom doesn’t guarantee success, only the right to pursue happiness, and it doesn’t proclaim to grant omniscience; errors are to be expected. But when Peart, via the lyrics on Hold Your Fire undercuts the means to determine accuracy or truth by upholding instinct, the eclecticism threatens to become dangerous to the ideas of individual liberty, as evidenced…

Peart himself points out the pitfalls of abandoning reason in favor of wild abandon in these lyrics from Hemispheres:

The cities were abandoned/
And the forests echoed song/
They danced and
lived as brothers/
They knew love could not be wrong/

Food and wine
they had aplenty/
And they slept beneath the stars/
The people were
contented/
And the Gods watched from afar/

But the winter fell upon
them/
And it caught them unprepared/
Bringing wolves and cold
starvation/
And the hearts of men despaired .../

In the lyrical conclusion, Peart claims the solution to the mind-body dichotomy to be “balance,” a conclusion similar to Rand’s in her essay “Apollo and Dionysus”, the same essay Peart takes Rand to task for her division between the Woodstock generation and the achievement of Apollo 13. But I submit that Peart has set up a straw man. In his attempt to paint Rand as a “square,” by ignoring the similarities between Hemispheres and her arguments, he ignores the hedonistic, “Dionysian” elements of Woodstock and the resulting personal sickness and injury of the crowd, not to mention the destruction of property of the neighboring area. (Or were those people’s complaints merely “generational,” as well?) And Peart doesn’t mention how the “Summer of Love” ended, not with Woodstock, but with the murder at Altamont. What happened to “Do your own thing as long as it’s not hurting anyone?" But for Peart to acknowledge the dark side of that Dionysian element would cast a shadow on his lyrics regarding instinct on the Hold Your Fire album.

(Incidentally, on this point, I wonder if Peart’s defense of Woodstock isn’t just a case of romanticizing from a distance, given his comments the influence of Keith Moon...)

Leonard Peikoff, anticipates Peart’s “left-wing libertarian” objection to Rand’s opposition to welfare; contra Riggenbach and Peart, he links how eclecticism can lead to more dire consequences than bad artistic taste:

Some unphilosophical, eclectic altruists, invoking such concepts as “inalienable
rights,” “personal freedom,” “private choice,” have claimed that service to
others, though morally obligatory, should not be compulsory. The committed,
philosophical altruists, however, are consistent: recognizing that such concepts
represent an individualist approach to ethics and that this is incompatible with
the altruist morality, they declare that there is nothing wrong with compulsion
in a good cause—that the use of force to counteract selfishness is ethically
justified—and more: that it is ethically mandatory.)

Compare this to Peart’s disagreement with Rand regarding government welfare, as stated in Liberty: “Contrary to Rand's rejection of any form of government welfare, Peart supports a safety net for those in need. Although he would prefer that welfare be funded voluntarily, he is not convinced that private charity alone could support the truly needy.”

We've see the “Professor” become “unphilosophic” on Hold Your Fire, when he writes “I find no absolution/in my rational point of view/maybe some things are instinctive.” This is the Platonic/Kantian view that leads to “revelation” over reason, and to philosopher kings and dictatorships.

(Wow, no matter which direction Peart turns, he just can't escape the "

Reductio ad Hitlerum," can he? I hate to think this of Peart, and prefer to think that he simply hasn't thought it through. But it doesn't matter how benevolent his intentions; the fact is, once one starts pulling in the state to redistribute wealth, even in the name of charity, the political implications have to be followed to their logical conclusions. Just how does he hold to his libertarian sentiment of "not hurting anyone" when the government method of redistribution necessarily, by definition, involves the use of force?)

Statements like Peart's lend justification to Peikoff’s observation, and the observation that eclecticism of Peart’s kind undermines the very integrity he writes about. My personal view is that some Objectivists, like Peter Schwartz, go too far in their condemnation of libertarianism, even as they support the Republicans, despite Rand's own assertion that Objectivists are not conservatives (see his "Perversion of Liberty" essay and the various responses to it), well...even if Peart was right to suspect the "dogmatism" surrounding Objectivism, this doesn't excuse libertarians from the opposite flaw, and just lends credence to Rand’s complaint about libertarians being too eclectic, starting from politics rather than an integrated philosophic base. With that, I will submit that it is Peart, not Rand, who is wrong: the answer to the "battle for heart and mind" is not to see it as an eclectic battle for balance for "cold reason" versus "wild emotion." The answer is to first correctly define reason and emotion and achieve an integration of their proper functions.

Here, I'd like to say that I admire and respect Neil Peart as a drummer and lyricist, he was a primary influence on me. At the same time, I, like Peart, am "no one's disciple." For such a meticulous musician, I wish his arguments were not so sloppy.The next time he decides to take a shot at Objectivism, he might want to hold his fire and make sure his aim is true.

To All You Objectivist Apologists for Conservatives Politicians

2010-10-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

...who claim that that New Jersey governer Chris Christie should run for President because of the way he stood up to the teacher's unions: "Christie Pushes Plan for State Takeover of Gambling and Tourism." Or, for those who claim that the conservatives are the answer this election season because it is not about religion, but fundamental American principles, that Glenn Beck is your hero, and that the Tea Parties are proof of a "Second Renaissance": "O'Donnell Questions Separation of Church, State." (Whatever else I might think about him and his fatwa, Peikoff was right to be concerned about that.)

"Meet the new boss...same as the old boss." Who's next?

David Harriman and the Dean

2010-10-13T15:10:00.000-07:00

In "The Resignation of John McCaskey: The Facts" by Paul and Diana Hsieh at Noodlefood, David Harriman weighs in on "Anthemgate" with this: "In short, I ask you which is more believable--that Isaac Newton was fundementally confused about the difference between 'impetus' and 'momentum,' or that John McCaskey is confused about this issue?"

Hmmm...why does this sound familiar?

"But, I don't understand. Why do you want me to think that this is great architecture?" He pointed to a picture of the Parthenon.
"That," said the Dean, "is the Parthenon."
"So it is."
"I haven't the time to waste on silly questions."
"All right, then." Roark got up, he took a long ruler from the desk, he walked to the picture. "Shall I tell you what's wrong about it?"
"It's the Parthenon!" said the Dean.
"Yes, God damn it, the Parthenon!"
The ruler struck the glass over the picture.

I hope the irony isn't lost on Dean Harriman...

The Rand-Rush Connection: Hold Your Fire

2010-10-06T22:01:00.000-07:00

"Having enjoyed writing around the central theme of 'Power' last time, I decided to try something like that again, this time working with the theme of 'Time'…. But as I set that one aside after a while, and went on to work on other ideas, it was strange to see that what I had thought was my theme suddenly turned itself into something else -- without even asking me!...the theme suddenly changed to 'Instinct', or perhaps 'Temperament' -- the idea of primeval or subconscious drives. Well okay, I thought, if that's what my brain wants to work on -- go ahead!

"'Hey Brain -- I don't care what you get fired up about -- as long as you (you guessed it!) Hold Your Fire.'

"Well."

-"Fireworks: The Making of Hold Your Fire" by Neil Peart

I first read the work of Ayn Rand in 1996, and soon devoured everything I could find in print, either by her or about her. Of particular interest to me, as a artist and musician, was The Romantic Manifesto, especially her sections on music. This book spurred me on to look at my own aesthetic choices in a whole new way, and so I re-evaluated my cd collection, which consisted mostly of rock music. (The horror, right?) I must have had some bad premises, I thought back then...

But surely Rush was ok, right? I looked to their back catalog with high expectations, and all was going well...until I got to Hold Your Fire.

Hold Your Fire, released almost 10 years earlier, in 1987, while I was still in high school, and not yet familiar with Ayn Rand. It wasn't my favorite Rush album, but I did like it better than Power Windows, which took me a long time to warm up to. I found them both to be a bit too "poppy" for me (The opening to the song "Mission" is just plain schmaltzy), but Hold Your Fire at least had a bit more "bite" in places. However, both were "optimistic" in the "benevolent sense-of-life" way celebrated in The Romantic Manifesto. And gone was the "metal" sound of 2112, in favor of pop beats, major keys, and even classical music samples (Vladimir Horowitz, to be exact.) You know, everything a good Objectivist is supposed to like...(yes, that attitude is out there; and I, myself, almost threw out my Pink Floyd collection.) So, to be a good Objectivist, I gave this album a listen with new "ears," and read the lyrics with an "active mind." Surely, they would be reasonable...

At first, there was no problem; the lyrics to "Mission" are still quoted favorably among Objectivists (and even caught the attention of Barbara Branden on one web forum).

Hold your fire/
keep it burning bright/
hold the flame til the dream ignites/
a spirit with a vision is a dream with a mission/

"Hold Your Fire..." Inspiring enough...But there's a double entendre, isn't there? "Hold your fire, men..."

To the surprise of that newly-minted "student of Objectivism," the shock was upon reading the lyrics to "Second Nature" or "Open Secrets." The drummer known as "the Professor" who penned the Rand-inspired "Anthem" and "2112" was now writing this:

I find no absolution /
In my rational point of view /
Maybe some things are instinctive/
But there's one thing you could do/
You could try to understand me/
I could try to understand you/

And with that, the double-meaning comes to the forefront; hold your fire, good Objectivist, hold back your reason, and your logic...(actually, there's some foreshadowing of this on the preview album, Power Windows, with the closing song, "Mystic Rhythms." That theme is continued on "Tai Shan": "I stood there, like a mystic/Lost in the atmosphere..."

As a newly-minted "student of Objectivism," all I could ask was, "Why?" It was around this time, as well, that I was discovering the Branden biographies and their claims about Ayn Rand promoting dogmatism, emotional repression, while others were calling her fascist. This wasn't just her enemies, mind you, like Barry Miles's accusations of fascism against Rush in the New Musical Express, but her former fans, friends, and lovers. I'd learn about the schism soon enough, but to stay on topic, what was Neil Peart's beef? Well, fast-forward to when Liberty magazine published an article title "A Rebel and a Drummer" for a clue. The author notes that "For long-time observers of Rush, it is clear that Peart has drifted from his more obvious attachments to Objectivism. The more overtly Randian references in Peart's lyrics have dwindled."

“Dwindled?” Not surprising, as Peart tells Bullock why he distances himself from the Objectivist "movement": "I tend to stay away from it [now]. It's in the nature of the individualist ethos that you don't want to be co-opted." (A sentiment echoing his 1994 comment in The Rush Backstage Newsletter: "the extent of my influence by the writings of Ayn Rand should not be overestimated -- I am no one's disciple.") He then goes on to mention the influence of other thinkers like Jon Dos Passos and Carl Jung. Peart (who also used the word "Randroid" in the article) claims his eclecticism as a badge of honor, and understanding that eclecticism is important to understanding the Rand-Rush connection, and the lyrical themes on Hold Your Fire.

The articles addresses the ambivalence found in Peart's lyrics long before Hold Your Fire. One such area of disagreement revolves around art versus commerce ("The Spirit of Radio," "Big Money,"):"The dilemma faced by Rush in the mid-1970s reflects a certain tension in Rand's philosophy -between her insistence on integrity and individualism on the one hand,· and the demands of the marketplace on the other."

Peart is described as having only "two specific areas of disagreement." Ah, but what disagreements they are! Contrasting with the Peart of the NME article, who argued against government intervention, we now have the "left-wing Libertarian": "Contrary to Rand's rejection of any form of government welfare, Peart supports a safety net for those in need. Although he would prefer that welfare be funded voluntarily, he is not convinced that private charity alone could support the truly needy."

Was the lyricist who wrote "No, his mind is not for rent/to any god or government/" now endorsing forced charity? The answer lies in the song "Second Nature":

A memo to a higher office/
Open letter to the powers that be/
To a god, a king, a head of state/
A captain of industry/
To the movers and the shakers.../
Can't everybody see?/

Before long, the bleeding heart is on the sleeve:

It ought to be second nature/
I mean, the places where we live/
Let's talk about this sensibly/
We're not insensitive/
I know progress has no patience/
But something's got to give/

The song supports Peart's turn towards government welfare when he writes:

I'd like some changes/
But you don't have the time/
We can't go on thinking/
It's a victimless crime/
No one is blameless/
But we're all without shame/

Not only that, but the Peart who once claimed to hate compromise has now "grown up":

It ought to be second nature/
At least, that's what I feel/
Now I lay me down in Dreamland/
I know perfect's not for real/
I thought we might get closer/
But I'm ready to make a deal/

That new found maturity seems to have a religious overtone, along with another theme at odds with Objectivism, "original sin":

The balance can sometimes fail/
Strong emotions can tip the scale/
I don't want to face the killer instinct/
Face it in you or me/
So we keep it under lock and key/

Peart goes on to say that

It's not a matter of conscience/
A search for probable cause/
It's just a matter of instinct/
A matter of fatal flaws/

And then, perhaps most "offensive" to Objectivist ears, there's the aforementioned mysticism of "Tai-Shan," speaking of a mystical experience in China:

Somewhere in my instincts/
The primitive took hold/

Even while rebuking reason for instinct, Peart's lyrics have an Objectivist irony:

I thought of time and distance/
The hardships of history/
I heard the hope and the hunger/
When China sang to me...When China sang to me/

Were these "hardships and hunger" due to a lack of reason, while primitive mysticism ruled, perchance?

The album ends with "High Water," taking the return to primitive instinct to its logical conclusion:"

When the waters rose in the darkness/
In the wake of the endless flood/
It flowed into our memory/
It flowed into our blood/

Waves that crash on the shoreline/
Torrents of tropical rain/
streaming down Beyond our memory/
Streaming down inside our veins/

Peart paints a scene of evolution here:

When something broke the surface/
Just to see the starry dome/

and

When something left the ocean/
To crawl high above the foam/
We still feel that elation/
When the water takes us home/
In a driving rain of redemption/
The water takes me home.../

This religious overtone is at odds with the other explanation in Peart’s left-wing libertarianism, as Bullock notes that Peart “could never be a conservative due to the right’s intolerance and support of censorship.” Adding to the confusion, Bullock adds that “Moreover, the rise of religious fundamentalism in America and throught the globe ‘terrifies’ him. But, as if emphasizing the “libertarian” over the “left wing,” Bullocks also adds that Peart “also sees rising intolerance coming from the left, exemplified by a Toronto law ‘forbidding smoking in any bar, restaurant, coffee shop, doughnut shop, anywhere.’ Thus, though he believes that economic freedom is generally increasing, Peart also observes that ‘socially it seems to be the opposite-there is actually more oppression.’”

(Given that this article came 10 years after “Second Nature,” and that those freedoms have eroded even more since then, I wonder if Peart is still ready to “make that deal?”)

This theme of mysticism seems to be linked to a greater theme of reason versus emotion, or logic versus instinct. This isn't the first time Peart used this theme, indeed, it was the theme of Hemispheres, which used Nietzsche's and Rand's discussion of Apollo and Dionysus as metaphors for "the battle for heart and mind," with the answer being (on Hemispheres) a need for "balance." (With Nietzsche, the answer layed with Dionysus, Rand sided with integration, but with a heavy dose of Apollo.) Peart follows up on this theme strongly on Hold Your Fire, with frequent appeals to "instinct." It's no wonder, either, if you listen closely in interviews; he often describes himself as a "child of the sixties" and a "romantic mystic."

If all this weren’t enough, the “making of” essay from the tour book has Peart joking that

It really is hard to believe that Hold Your Fire is our twelfth studio album -- in thirteen years together. But then it's also hard to believe in the expanding universe, superconductors, indoor baseball, 3-D movies, artificial sweetener, offensive weapons, objective reality [emphasis mine], rock music ...

Really? Objective reality is hard to believe? Talk about your Kantian overtones; Platonic, even…but that’s what happens when you accentuate instinct over “the evidence of the senses…”

Despite Peart’s joke, and the marginalizing of logic for instinct, reason is not totally dismissed; in the aptly named “Prime Mover”, Peart intermingles the “Platonic” with the “Aristotelian”. Peart identifies the “prime mover” in our “animal” nature:

Basic elemental instinct to survive/
Stirs the higher passions/
Thrill to be alive/

In a seemingly “Kantian” moment, Peart addresses the subjective interpretation of sensory input:

Basic temperamental/
Filters on our eyes/
Alter our perceptions/
Lenses polarize/

But from there, we see the evolution from instinct to logic:

Alternating currents force a show of hands/
Rational responses force a change of plans/

And the evolution turns technological:

I set the wheels in motion/
Turn up all the machines/
Activate the programs/
And run behind the scene/

This leads to Peart’s other “specific disagreement” with Ayn Rand; as her attitude towards the Woodstock generation (see her essay "Apollo and Dionysus" in The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution) rankled with “child of the 60’s” Peart:

I always loved machines, and I always loved the workings of mankind in making things. I stayed up all night to watch the Apollo moon landing, and at the same time I was just as excited by Woodstock. There is in fact no division there. In both cases you're talking about the things that people make and do. So I didn't see any division, but of course Rand did, in seeing us all as the unwashed Bohemian hordes.

With that statement, Peart contradicts the Objectivist notion of the "dual between Plato and Aristotle." How to explain all this? It could be said that the "evolutionary" aspect counters the "mystical" aspect, except for the allusion to the Christian baptism ("driving rain of redemption). This lyric also evokes memories of another literary on early Rush, Tolkien's Lord Of the Rings; (there's a beautifully written moment where Legolas the elf stands on the shoreline, reflecting on the ocean as the common birthplace of all life, and how there's a collective longing to return among the species.) However, in an ironic turn of the cards, a hard-core Objectivist might pull a “Barry Miles” follow the precedent set by Leonard Peikoff in his book The Ominous Parallels, and connect Peart’s talk of “instinct” that “streams down inside our veins” to his neo-Jungian Platonism to the Nazi idea of racial purity, Aryan blood, and the Nietzschean idea of the Ubermensch…

Perhaps, if taken to the ideological root, those ideas would find their common origin, but I hardly believe this to be Peart’s intent. No, The best way to understand Peart's eclecticism and the contradictions between his Objectivist-influenced lyrics and his about-face is to understand the how the hippie movement intersected with the Libertarian movement, well-documented in Jeff Riggenbach's In Praise of Decadence. Riggenbach argues that the student movement of the sixties was not predominantly leftist, but libertarian, and his arguments and research do explain the situation well. For example, he explores how members of the Woodstock generation that Rand wrote off as Dionysian savages who explored psychedelics, Eastern philosophies and "alternative lifestyles" could produce technological wonders such as the personal computer, the iPod, and Spaceship One. Not only that, but in tracing the history of the Libertarian movement, he explores the influence of Objectivism on the Baby Boomer generation. Riggenbach’s defines “decadence” as, contary to the consensus, a rebellion against authority and tradition that results not in decay, but in vitality and creativity. He also claims to identify contradictions in Rand and Objectivism that pit her defense of individualism against her own strand of authoritarianism that Peart claims turned him off. Riggenbach’s explanation goes a long way to understand the impulse to juxtapose the “Platonic” with the “Aristotelian” in Peart’s lyrics, while explaining the love-hate relationship between Objectivists and Libertarians.

But all that was beyond the knowledge of that newly-minted "student of Objectivism" of the class of '96, and while I learned of the charges against Rand, it would be some time before I learned of the various motives. But the friendly-fire towards Rand would lead me to questions and heretical questioning of my own. Would the answers prove critics like the Brandens, Riggenbach, and Peart right? Does Peart's rejection of "Randroids" in favor of eclecticism support or undermine the idea of individualism? Was it time to “hold my fire?” Or would I have to fire back?

A Farewell to Kings...

2010-09-30T20:25:00.000-07:00

...or, "The ARI is dead...long live the ARI." (I would have said "the Pope," or "the Heir," but I didn't want people thinking that Peikoff actually died...) Remember the flap about Peikoff's letter to the board of ARI for the criticisms over The Logical Leap? I wrote, "If this is official Objectivism, then make mine anarchy."

Well, I must be an anarchist, then (though I prefer autarchist), because, apparently, this is official Objectivism...

I was being kind, compared to what Robert Tracinski has to say, which is that "The Objectivist Movement Commits Suicide." Read it for yourself (settle in and grab a Snickers, because you won't be going anywhere for a while)...

I'm not even going to quote from it; you really need to read it for yourself. I will, however, take this moment to explain this post's title, which comes from a Rush album. I haven't yet finished my "Rand-Rush Connection" series of posts dealing with Neil Peart's comments, printed in a 1997 article of Liberty magazine, about official Objectivism and "Randroids." In my planned posts, I am critical of Peart, though I hope I am being fair. But upon reading Tracinski's comments, I will say that, when it comes to the organized movement, Peart's comments have been vindicated:

In the late seventies I subscribed to the Objectivist Forum for awhile. And it could be such a beautiful thing, it could be like a breath of fresh air coming in the mailbox. But it became petty and divisive and also factionalized.... I tend to stay away from it [now]. It's in the nature of the individualist ethos that you don't want to be co-opted.

[Also], the ones most devoted to the cause are the ones with least of a life. A friend of mine who was involved in the Ayn Rand estate and the initial institutes and so on noticed that all of the coteries surrounding her didn't do anything.... The whole philosophy is about doing things ... with an eye towards excellence and beauty. And that was the one thing that was lacking in any of the coteries surrounding her. So that's another reason people stay away from [the official Objectivist movement], saying, "Well, I have a life and I'm living the philosophy -so why do I want to stop and talk about it with other people who aren't doing it?"

Why, indeed...to quote from "A Farewell to Kings":

Cities full of hatred, fear and lies/
Withered hearts and cruel, tormented eyes/
Scheming demons dressed in kingly guise/
Beating down the multitude and/
Scoffing at the wise/

The hypocrites are slandering/
The sacred halls of Truth/
Ancient nobles showering/
Their bitterness on youth/
Can't we find the minds that made us strong?/
Can't we learn to feel what's right/
And what's wrong?/

The Rand-Rush Connection, Interlude: Making of 2112

2010-09-28T19:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, so yesterday, I published my post on Rush and the New Music Express's 1978 hatchet job, and today the Classic Albums series released their 2112/Moving Pictures edition. I already knew about the release...what I wasn't expecting was how much time they would spend on...the NME hatchet job and the Randian influence. This was during discussion of the recording of "2112." Even more unexpected was the appearance of the ARI's John Ridpath (What? He's Canadian, too...) to summarize the history of Anthem. There was even Neil's revelation re: the ambigous closing statement, "We have assumed control..."

From the making of "2112":

Geddy: "Well, he (Peart) was a huge fan of Ann (sic) Rand’s writing, and he introduced her writing to us…"

Alex: "Not exclusively that…a very, very broad reader…"

Neil: "I had read, certainly,a lot of science fiction at that time…and Samuel R. Delany was an big influence on me…and around the same time I found a copy of The Fountainhead and said “Oh…all the smart kids at school used to carry that around…”

Geddy: "

We all liked the book Anthem, which is the thing that kinda inspired "2112"..."

Introducing John Ridpath: "

Anthem was a novellete that Ayn Rand wrote, I would say, roughly around 1939-1940 wrote when she was in the middle of writing The Fountainhead…

And so, Anthem is basically the story of a society taken over by a priesthood of totalitarian dictators who used mysticism to try and subdue all the people in society that is so collectivistic and so totalitarian that the concept I has been eliminated from people’s minds.

They don’t even have the concept I which means they can’t even conceive of themselves as individuals.

Alex: "That whole idea of the individual and that …sort of libertarian values…played a big role in how that album shaped up…"

Neil: "I dreamed up this story about music being invented against a dystopian totalitarian society…"

"

I felt this great sense of injustice that this mass was coming down on us telling us to compromise, and compromise was the word that I couldn't deal with…I grew up a child of the sixties, and I was a strong individualist, and believed in the sanctity of… you should be able to do what you want to do, you know, without hurting anyone…

"When I realized that the story was paralleling Anthem, I thought I had to say something about Ayn Rand and the association with "2112", and so, at the bottom of the lyrics, just put 'with acknowledgement to the genius of Ayn Rand…'

"Well, how that came back onto us afterwards…"

Alex: "

Yeah, we got in trouble with the NME in Britian around that time…this journalist, you know, wrote it up like we were Nazis, ultra right-wing maniacs…

Geddy: "Growing up as the son of Holocaust survivors, I found that just..you know...just so offensive..."

Cliff Burnstein (manager): The connection with Ayn Rand definitely was a media turnoff...there was certainly a...kind of association with the 50's, conservatism, the McCarthy years...all this stuff probably made the media think, 'well, this is just not my kind of band..."

David Fricke (Rolling Stone): "And even though Rand was, and still is, to this day, a controversial figure, it doesn’t mean that Neil believes everything she says...you don't have to believe everything she says to understand there are points in those books that are worth serious consideration..."

Geddy: "It’s about creative, freedom, it’s about belief...believing in yourself…"

Neil: "And I did not think of politics, and I did not think of global oppression...I was thinking "these people are messing with me!"

Geddy: "You can say what you want about Ann (sic) Rand, and all the other implications of her work, but her artistic manifesto, for lack of a better term, was the one that struck home with the three of us…"

Ed Robertson (Barenaked Ladies): "The focus on "2112" is about the loss of individuality and kinda....state rule and the oppression of expression to the extent of the extinction of music, basically…"

Terry Brown (Producer): "A pretty dark character is Neil, there's no telling what was going on in his mind at that time...I certainly don’t think he would want to just recreate the Ayn Rand story…living 'happily ever after' in the mountains, I think, it would have meant a much less dramatic ending for us on record..."

Geddy: "That ending of that story is a little ambigious…and there's obviously some sort of a war going on…"

Neil: "That’s the good guys, that’s the cavalry, you know, coming in at the end…so it actually, to me, had a happy ending, as it were…that the solar federation was going to be shut down by the vision that our hero has of this other way of living…they’re the people coming at the end…that’s how I intended it."