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Maria Bustillos: The failures of Ayn Rand (Popula)
Maria Bustillos: The failures of Ayn Rand (Popula)
For those who are inclined to find such ideas ludicrous, the book will fail, and utterly; its premises betray a bottomless ignorance of the deep interconnectedness of humankind, the needs — economic, social, emotional, intellectual — of human beings for one another, and of the ultimate inalienable reality of life on Earth as a whole, the totality of which each is a part, and our need to live in this wholeness. Rand is 100% pro-inequality; she preaches the intellectual and moral superiority of wealth, and scorn and hatred of those who have “less.” Objectivism actively praises inequality. But nobody has “less,” because all have the same, of the only thing that matters—life, for a moment, and then?—something, nothing, nobody knows. Equality is not a fantasy, nor even a goal; it is just a fact. […] Rand’s books have sold nonstop from the moment they were published because people love hearing how not only can they get away with being totally selfish, it’s absolutely the right way to be. The best way to be, as in, morally the best. […] The real looters, it increasingly appears, are the self-styled Objectivist “elites,” rabidly pursuing their own “happiness” at the cost of our social safety net, the prosperity and well-being of the world’s people and even, quite possibly, of this planet’s capacity to sustain life. So much for the triumph of individualism.
·popula.com·
Maria Bustillos: The failures of Ayn Rand (Popula)
Woke
Woke
An Amazon.com Wishlist by Erica Joy (@ericajoy) with books about black America. Added to GoodReads here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3519627-matthew-mcvickar?shelf=erica-joy-woke-list&view=table
·amazon.com·
Woke
John Gray: H.P. Lovecraft Invented a Horrific World to Escape a Nihilistic Universe (The New Republic)
John Gray: H.P. Lovecraft Invented a Horrific World to Escape a Nihilistic Universe (The New Republic)
The weird realism that runs through his writings undermines any belief system—religious or humanist—in which the human mind is the center of the universe. There is a tendency nowadays to think of the world in which we live as an artefact of mind or language: a human construction. For Lovecraft, human beings are too feeble to shape a coherent view of the universe. Our minds are specks tossed about in the cosmic melee; though we look for secure foundations, we live in perpetual free fall. With its emphasis on the radical contingency of the human world, this is a refreshing alternative to the anthropocentric philosophies in which so many find intellectual reassurance. It may seem an unsettling view of things; but an inhuman cosmos need not be as horrific as Lovecraft seems to have found it. He is often described as misanthropic, but this isn’t quite right—a true misanthrope would find the inhumanity of the universe liberating. There is no intrinsic reason why a universe in which people are marginal should be a horror-inducing place. A world vastly larger and stranger than any the human mind can contain could just as well evoke a sense of excitement or an acceptance of mystery.
·newrepublic.com·
John Gray: H.P. Lovecraft Invented a Horrific World to Escape a Nihilistic Universe (The New Republic)