Monday, February 02, 2004
Now, Brightski my love, I believe the following assertion will not surprise you at all: Rand is one of the greatest romantics I know of. (In response to: Christine, you are such a romantic at heart that I find it hard to believe that you're a Randoid. ;0)
“She thought: To find a feeling that would hold, as their sum, as their final expression, the purpose of all the things she loved on earth…To find a consciousness like her own, who would be the meaning of her world, as she would be of his…A man who existed only in her knowledge of her capacity for an emotion she had never felt, but would have given her life to experience…” Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
It is true that Rand advocated selfishness; however, her definition of selfishness is not the one mainstreamed in society. “Selfishness entails: a) a hierarchy of values set by the standard of one’s self-interest, and b) the refusal to sacrifice a higher value to a lower one or a nonvalue” (“Isn’t Everyone Selfish?” Nathaniel Branden). To connect this back to the romance you mentioned: “To make this principle fully clear, let us consider an extreme example of an action which, in fact, is selfish, but which conventionally might be called self-sacrificial: a man’s willingness to die to save the life of the woman he loves…If a man loves a woman so much that he does not wish to survive her death, if life can have nothing more to offer him at that price, then his dying to save her is not a sacrifice. The same principle applies to a man, caught in a dictatorship, who willingly risks death to achieve freedom. To call his act a “self-sacrifice,” one would have to assume that he preferred to live as a slave” (“Isn’t Everyone Selfish?” Nathaniel Branden). Rand’s definitions run contrary to society’s on many fronts, so reading the summary can leave you with a mistaken picture of her beliefs. But her belief in love that special and perfect is present in all her work.
I hope to eventually taunt you into reading the books so you can argue with me, but I’ll bide my time. :-) But at the center of each is a proud, strong woman who meets her match: intellectually, physically, and emotionally. And knowing your penchant for romance, my dear, I will swear that the romance is far hotter than any of the terrible books next to the fireplace in Ireland. It’s not sappy mystery…it’s the deeply intense union of two people in all the ways there are: the emotional connection makes the physical and intellectual better, the intellectual equality creates the playing field for emotional and physical joining, and the physical is so magnificently steamy because the emotional and intellectual exist.
Yes, dearheart, I am a romantic through and through, and Rand only helps me to believe that Mr. Right might be out there!
Kisses,
Chris
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“She thought: To find a feeling that would hold, as their sum, as their final expression, the purpose of all the things she loved on earth…To find a consciousness like her own, who would be the meaning of her world, as she would be of his…A man who existed only in her knowledge of her capacity for an emotion she had never felt, but would have given her life to experience…” Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
It is true that Rand advocated selfishness; however, her definition of selfishness is not the one mainstreamed in society. “Selfishness entails: a) a hierarchy of values set by the standard of one’s self-interest, and b) the refusal to sacrifice a higher value to a lower one or a nonvalue” (“Isn’t Everyone Selfish?” Nathaniel Branden). To connect this back to the romance you mentioned: “To make this principle fully clear, let us consider an extreme example of an action which, in fact, is selfish, but which conventionally might be called self-sacrificial: a man’s willingness to die to save the life of the woman he loves…If a man loves a woman so much that he does not wish to survive her death, if life can have nothing more to offer him at that price, then his dying to save her is not a sacrifice. The same principle applies to a man, caught in a dictatorship, who willingly risks death to achieve freedom. To call his act a “self-sacrifice,” one would have to assume that he preferred to live as a slave” (“Isn’t Everyone Selfish?” Nathaniel Branden). Rand’s definitions run contrary to society’s on many fronts, so reading the summary can leave you with a mistaken picture of her beliefs. But her belief in love that special and perfect is present in all her work.
I hope to eventually taunt you into reading the books so you can argue with me, but I’ll bide my time. :-) But at the center of each is a proud, strong woman who meets her match: intellectually, physically, and emotionally. And knowing your penchant for romance, my dear, I will swear that the romance is far hotter than any of the terrible books next to the fireplace in Ireland. It’s not sappy mystery…it’s the deeply intense union of two people in all the ways there are: the emotional connection makes the physical and intellectual better, the intellectual equality creates the playing field for emotional and physical joining, and the physical is so magnificently steamy because the emotional and intellectual exist.
Yes, dearheart, I am a romantic through and through, and Rand only helps me to believe that Mr. Right might be out there!
Kisses,
Chris
