So my husband and I have been beset by MySpace drama. Actually, the drama has nothing to do with MySpace, per se, but it was the medium used to deliver a couple of nasty letters.
The situation itself is really not worth writing about at this point; he and I have both blogged it out in our private journals on separate sites. The philosophy of Objectivism, however, shed a bit of light on the subject for me.
It’s been years since I picked up anything by Ayn Rand. Honestly, I tried reading The Fountainhead for a class and ended up going to the cliff’s notes just to get through in-class discussions. The class I was taking was run by the chair of the philosophy department, and we had differing philosophies on a number of topics. Some professors really have convinced themselves that no other interpretation of a text can be accepted but that which they’ve decided to teach.
But recently I looked into a scholarship which would require me to write an essay on Atlas Shrugged, and I realized too late that I lent out my (unfinished) copy.
I think I’ll seek out a used copy and maybe try again at reading the whole thing. I do have The Fountainhead, and a book of short essays, entitled The Virtue Of Selfishness. Basically each essay answers a question, which is used as the title of the piece. One, Rational Life in an Irrational Society? seems to really address -on some levels- the situation at hand.
See, I don’t believe that it’s “gossip” to state the truth about someone, especially when asked a direct question. If you’re passing judgment on someone, then so be it. Judge, and prepare to be judged based on your own alignment. That’s basically what Rand says in the essay. My husband and I, by passing judgment on someone we know and condemning their actions, have offended them.
Frankly, I think that people who do bad things deserve to be talked about. If no one ever objects to evil, and everyone just quietly stands by, then we’re all accomplices to evil. Ayn Rand agrees with me.
I’m going to be doing more reading, I think, on rational selfishness and objectivism. Of course, I’m not willing to become an atheist -but Rand’s writings and philosophies were always very one-sided and uninformed when it came to the subject of belief in a divinity. She seems only to address (and condemn) the judeo-Christian dogma.
In any case, she makes a lot of sense on a lot of other subjects. I, for one, place a helluva lot of importance in both my personal and professional experiences on individual responsibility. Perhaps we should all consider this quote around voting time in our next election:
“An irrational society is a society of moral cowards –of men paralyzed by the loss of moral standards, principles, and goals. But since men have to act, so long as they live, such a society is ready to be taken over by anyone willing to set it’s direction. The initiative can come from only two types of men: either from the man who is willing to assume the responsibility of asserting rational values -or from the thug who is not troubled by questions of responsibility.
No matter how hard the struggle, there is only one choice that a rational man can make in the face of such an alternative.”
-Ayn Rand, April 1962
