Great comment to this video "Jordan Peterson: IQ, Race & The Jewish Question" quoting Ayn Rand:
He is understandably dodging the intent of the question. But by conceding that "human intelligence does not equate to human value" and that "there doesn't seem to be any relationship between intelligence and virtue", he is uncovering the presupposition of the interviewer and affirming the counterfactual, for which I will quote Rand, "Even if it were proved — which it is not — that the incidence of men of potentially superior brain power is greater among the members of certain races than among the members of others, it would still tell us nothing about any given individual and it would be irrelevant to one’s judgment of him. A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race — and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin. It is hard to say which is the more outrageous injustice: the claim of Southern racists that a Negro genius should be treated as an inferior because his race has “produced” some brutes — or the claim of a German brute to the status of a superior because his race has “produced” Goethe, Schiller and Brahms." - Ayn Rand
Thank you Turee Cook for that.
So I can see where Ayn Rand's supporters get off on her thinking. But I've always disliked the way people almost worship her. Surely she would dislike such a profile, wouldn't she be happier for people to think for themselves rather than copy and quote the ideas of other people. Famously satirised by Monty Python in Life of Brian...
And yet it seems almost no one who endlessly quotes this (even Monty Python?) realises that there is an irony that while we joke about people reciting Brian's demands for them to be "all individuals" in the West we adopt the mantra of "being individuals" in exactly the same way. Even Monty Python adopted this meme and mantra in the movie... who exactly is the joke on? Brian? That film is very much a product of its time and age, very much embedded in the rise of "individualism" in the post 1960s. Monty Python aren't stupid, perhaps they were mocking the hollow mantra chanting "individualism" that has arisen, but no-one takes it that way. Its as bad as people quoting Ayn Rand as though she was a prophet.
What is an "individual"? Well the quote is excellent. It points out that "race" and "individuals" are different things. When we say that a race is intelligent, for example as Peterson says the Ashkenazi Jews are a standard deviation smarter on average than the European populations as a whole, this does not tell us how smart a particular Ashkenazi Jew or European is, it just tells us that given a random Ashkenazi Jew and a random European the Jew will on average have a higher IQ. But there are genius Europeans and idiot Jews.
Ayn Rand makes a religion of this notion of the "individual" being different from the group. Really what we are talking about here is what the Greeks would have called the difference between existence and essence. Cups may have handles, but it doesn't tell us about this particular cup: this one may be broken, or it fell part on the potters wheel, or maybe its a goblet being called a cup. And the mystery of the connection between existence and essence is well documented... how "broken" does it need to be before it isn't a cup anymore, and is a goblet a type of cup... and so on. Regardless what it is, we know we have something.
The "essence" of Human Rights is the recognition that regardless what someone is, under lying it all is the fact that they exist. It is upon that human existence that everything else is worn. This is the sacred antidote to prejudice and oppression that the world sort after the horrors of the Holocaust. Mankind was no longer happy to tolerate indifference to itself, and sort a common brotherhood and underlying recognition of the existence of each individual in their own right regardless what they were.
Ayn Rand originating from Soviet Russia had seen the monolithic Soviet machine bulldoze over the lives of people, people sacrificed for the greater good and the State and she hated it. To her the antidote is a sacred individual and the rejection of the State.
I'm not in any way disagreeing with this, but I don't think its that black and white. Ironically its the grey that has been the essence of the diversity movement and freedom of the individual. This whole topic is steeped in irony and that is what makes it interesting to me.
We have Ayn Rand being held up as a champion of individuals by people who respect the right of the individual to chose and think for themselves.
We have individuals joining forces to fight the tyranny of collectivists.
Ayn Rand's followers don't say this, but there is the idea of fellowship between all people and races - the brotherhood of peoplekind. As much as Ayn Rand uses individual freedom to fight off the tyranny of collectivism, Collectivists use brotherhood to unify mankind and eliminate exclusion and prejudice. Opposite ends with the same goal.
At root the irony is that because we are all individuals we share in one body. (Copying from the Communion liturgy).
I prefer to leave that contradiction as it is because the issue of being an individual is a contradiction. Ayn Rand goes all the way one way, and Stateists can go all the way the other.
Before Marx there was Hegel. And like Marx his system progresses like a dialectical machine toward a great unity in diversity with the famous quote "I that is We, and We that is I" (Ich, dass Wir, und Wir, dass). My favourite philosopher Kierkegaard took exception to this type of massive system philosophy. What of those who break the mould and step beyond such a mechanism, those who break the system. He was searching for an individual freedom that deified rational definition. He found it in the story of Abraham and the divine madness that was his attempted sacrifice of his son. Madness yes, but not chaos but rather madness governed by laws beyond those of worldly society: a direct connection been soul and God accessible only by the self. This is the pinnacle of the Lutherian church movement to remove the Vatican from ones relationship with God. God knows each one of us, and we stand before God as an individual to be counted and pay for our own sins. Ayn Rand stands simply upon the shoulders of this great movement. It goes far back into the mists of time in fact, as it seems mankind has always (since the Bronze Age anyway) believed they will stand individual trial for their sins. In India the god Yama serves this role, so the individual is at least as old as Yama.
But in some ways Hegel has a march on Kierkegaard because while I love and hold very dear Kierkegaards struggle to break out of logic and see the world with immediate and fresh eyes, Hegel captures the irony at the heart of this problem. We are both individual and group at the same time. Its not controversial these days to believe "I" am after all just a collection of atoms! And I wonder what Ayn Rand thinks of that? In her atomic system of indivisible selves which atom am I?
But at the same time individuals being bound up into systems so that they say ridiculous things like "I was only following orders", which appears to have held sway at the Nuremberg trials, is complete nonsense. At this point the establishment shudders and cracks down, because this is where the cracks start to show in feudal capitalist society. Capitalists need law and order to protect their capital, and they need armies to both defend their wealth and attack the wealth of others. And Armies need people who will obey orders and do the bidding of their commanders to protect the society's wealthy elite.
If Ayn Rand and her followers really have an axe to grind it is not really at the altar of the collective, it is at the altar of the elite. The elite gain power and promote a mindless collective of drones to protect them, but the collective alone are harmless. They need to be led to achieve anything. If there is one battle to be had then it is simply that we must never take orders, and must always act from personal conscience. But this not Ayn Rand it's the oldest belief there is: that we will all stand before God before we are done and have to answer for what we have and have not done.
And yet I can't really leave this here because it is a false conclusion. A nurse working alongside a surgeon trained on a particular operation takes orders. Not because they are brainless and without conscience but because they accept that the surgeon has become skilled in this operation, and they are trained at different things. Let emotively a trumpet player take time from the conductor, not because they are mindless drone but because they have accepted they are a part of this performance. At what point does the trumpet player decide that the conductor is playing too fast and starts plays at their own tempo? Sometime it is better to do something wrong for group cohesion, than to be strictly correct and break the whole thing. At the end of the day the conflict between self and group is a complex compromise with no other answer than you must work it out yourself.
And then we are at real individualism. Granting people the freedom to join armies and become mindless drones as they individually see fit. Yet now I swing to the other extreme of complete laissez faire, and remove myself from the picture. The real truth of this matter is that there is no fixed answer. It is something to puzzle and decide upon continuously throughout our lives. This indeed is Life, having to make decisions on whether to join in, or stay outside, of whether to get involved, or let things carry on without us.
In Soviet Russia Ayn Rand decided to get out and come to America. That was her freedom. But she could have stayed and joined the Soviet machine also. That was her freedom. Perhaps working in Russia which needed to hear the message of individuality she might have achieved more than coming to the West were the lesson was already learned. But then in Soviet Russia she probably would not have become as famous as she would have met resistance from the Communist Party. But that makes a life also. Swings or round-about?
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