Toward the end of a recent Bloggingheads between Timothy Noah of Slate and Megan McArdle of the Atlantic, they discussed whether Ted Kennedy would be remembered 100 years from now and whether Ayn Rand would be remember (around the 50 minute mark). McArdle is a fan of Rand, but referred to her novels as “beach reading.” (Although I believe she was a better philosopher than novelist, I do believe she was a writer of tremendous power) I’d like to make the case for why I believe Ayn Rand will be more remembered 100 years from now than Ted Kennedy, or least more remembered than 99% of Members of Congress from this era.
Looking back at any era in history, the writers, artists and poets always have a more enduring legacy than the politicians. Michelangelo is far more renowned today than the Popes who commissioned his works. Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone are two of the most famous British Prime Ministers, but neither is as famous as Charles Dickens. With the exception of Lincoln, Walt Whitman is more famous than any American President from his era. This isn’t to say that Rand will be as an enduring a figure as Michelangelo, Dickens or Whitman, but the fact that Atlas Shrugged sold 200,000 copies in 2008 shows that Rand already has endured the test of time. Outside of Rand’s circle, I’m sure that very few people in the late 1950s thought her popularity would sustain itself for more than half a century.
In the introduction to 25th anniversary edition of The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand wrote:
Many people have asked me how I feel about the fact that The Fountainhead has been in print for twenty-five years. I cannot say that feel anything in particular, except a kind of quiet satisfaction. In this respect, my attitude toward writing is expressed by a statement of Victor Hugo: “If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away” Certain writers, of whom I am one, do not live, think or write on the range of the moment. Novel, in the proper sense of the word, are not written to vanish in a month or a year. That most of them do, today, that they are written and published as if they were magazines, to fade as rapidly, is one of the sorriest aspects of today’s literature, and one of the clearest indictments of its dominant esthetic philosophy: concrete-bound, journalistic Naturalism which has now reached its dead end in the inarticulate sounds of panic.
Almost all politicians are exclusively focused on the immediate, i.e. “What’s going to help me win the next election?” This is the reason why almost all of them are quickly forgotten. A proper novelist (one not writing for immediate profit) is writing for all of time. Whatever Ted Kennedy accomplishments were in civil rights, womens’ right, etc., they will be added onto and altered by future legislators, but a novel can never be altered. (Hipster trends like “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” be damned.)
In the past, I’ve seen Rep. Joe Barton of Texas and Senator Orrin Hatch’s efforts to crack down on the BCS as a quixotic effort to appease their constituents that would never go anywhere. But somewhat surprising to me, Barton’s bill which would prohibit a bowl game from calling itself a “national championship unless it was through a playoff, advanced through a House Subcommittee on Wednesday.
Barton’s BCS bill provides an example of exactly what’s wrong with the Republican Party. They’re against intrusive government regulation, except when they are. They denounce a government take-over of health care, but don’t seem to have much of a problem with a government take-over college football. Barton’s bill isn’t exactly that, but I have feeling that a lot of “small-government conservatives” in Congress wouldn’t mind the government mandating an eight or sixteen playoff that the major conferences and college presidents have refused to implement.
Michael Wilbon and others frequently call the BCS a cartel. But who does this cartel consist of? The major conferences, the conferences that bring in the most money, get the highest TV ratings and send the most fans to bowl games. Why then shouldn’t they get the biggest slice of the pie? What has the inclusion of the minor conferences into the BCS done anything to improve it economically? Nothing, the four BCS bowl games involving minor conference teams have all been among the eight lowest rated BCS games since the inception of the system. If anything, the minor conferences should be grateful for the BCS’s existence because it’s given them access where there previously was none. Under the old bowl system, the bowls selected whatever teams would get them the most money, regardless of how good they were. When BYU won the National Championship in 1984, they were stuck with a mediocre Michigan team in the lesser-paying Holiday Bowl. Now, they would have been guaranteed access to one of the major games, such has been the case for Utah, Boise State, Hawaii and now TCU.
It’s been often pointed out that the major conference and schools would stand to make more money with a playoff system. If that’s true, then why do we need the government to force a playoff? I would argue that the mediocre ratings for the lower-tier BCS bowl games might also give a pretty good free market incentive for a “plus one” system or a playoff. The Capital One Bowl, which features teams from the TV-friendly SEC and Big 10, has received higher ratings than the Orange Bowl two years in a row and considering the Capital One’s match-up of Penn State and LSU versus the Orange’s Georgia Tech and Iowa, I’d say it’s a pretty good bet that it will happen again. However, if the second tier BCS games where to become national semi-finals, the interest of casual sports fans would be much higher. Personally, I’m in favor of a “plus-one” system where the top four teams play in a first round bowl game and then the winner play for the National Championship. But if the BCS wants to continue in an irrational direction that limits their profits, that’s their business, not the government’s.
It doesn’t take much to become a household name. Just be drop-dead gorgeous and be willing to express a controversial opinion. That’s how it worked for Carrie Prejean. When she was asked by Perez Hilton whether she thought gay marriage should be legalized in all fifty states, she responded with this gem:
“Well I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And, you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman.”
Taking Robert Stacy McCain’s advice, here’s a gratuitous glamour show of the lovely Prejean:
Now regardless of your opinion on gay marriage, you have to agree that this is a confusing, contradictory answer that should not be taken as a substantive policy statement . So then, what was the reaction of opponents of gay marriage, particularly those in the conservative media? They made her into a hero. She was given frequent appearances on the Fox News Channel. She was given a book deal at the tender age of 22. She was even given a speaking spot at the FRC Action Values Voter Summit, the top annual conference for social conservatism whose slate of speakers included senators, congressmen and potential presidential candidates like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Tim Pawlenty. Continue Reading »
My dad used to tell me that gambling was only thing that made him interested in mathematics. His desire to succeed at a vice required to pick up some virtues of intelligence. In a similar vein, becoming involved in Game gave me a interest in evolutionary psychology that I otherwise would not have. I absorbed books like “The Red Queen” and “Sperm Wars,” both going into fascinating detail about what men and women are attracted to and why. (I might also recommend “Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters”) It wasn’t just for my own selfish motivation of figuring out what the aspects of a natural alpha, I was legitimately interested in understanding the basis of our desires. The talk of early single-celled blobs bored me, I was more interested in human interactions and how we screen others for health, success and other factors.
It’s quite striking that someone like Richard Dawkins, far from the classic definition of alpha, would become such a hero within the Community. But he provides an important narrative to those who would like to believe it. Sexual desire is encoded into our DNA and we have been blessed a tremendous system to detect what sexual partners are best for us. The complexities of humanity are truly a wonder to behold.
We as humans should know as much about ourselves as we can discover. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “there is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world.” If man is going fully prosper, he must know what his tendencies are, and then use his rational faculties to make the right decisions to guide his life. If he just goes on his basest instincts, he’ll be denying his humanity and suffer greatly for it. “Nature to be commanded, must be observed,” Francis Bacon stated centuries ago. That would seem to imply that is man is capable of commanding nature. (Subduing and conquering the earth if you’re the religious type).
Evolutionary psychology should not be an excuse to default into our animal past, it should be an attempt to show how man how he came to be. Too often, I’m afraid EvoPsych provides a convenient excuse to escape responsibility for our humanity and deny the existence of free will. A man who enjoys sleeping with sluts and uses the excuse, “I can’t help it! I’m only acting in accordance with my nature” is a coward who evades morality. A woman who sleeps with two men in order to have a “sperm war” is even worse. EvoPsych is a fascinating look of how gender roles, but it’s not a moral defense of them. (Although there can be a moral defense of gender differences as I looked at in a previous post) Is it any wonder then why so many people are so desperate to discredit evolution? They’ve been led to believe that backers of evolutionary theory are indifferent to morality. Wholesale acceptance of EvoPsych without regard for a system of morality is a step away from nihilism.
Biomechanics are not god, we are. We are the powerful beings in the world, and in a sense, we are swifter than nature. Evolution is an extremely slow process, yet man was able to achieve more in the last 10,000 than he did in the previous 100,000. Even backers of EvoPsych acknowledge this by saying even though we live in extremely advanced times, we largely have the same brains we did in prehistoric times. But then if the prehistoric brain was capable of building the Empire State Building and putting a man on the moon, is it really that bad? For instance, agriculture is what made all civilization possible, and it could have only been put into practice by a rational mind. Let us not pretend now, that we are merely slaves to our evolutionary whims. We are far stronger and far more capable.
“An Answer to Readers (About a Woman President),” is one of Ayn Rand’s most argued-about pieces among her fans. Her basic thrust is while that she believes a woman could competently serve as President of the United States, a “rational” woman would not want to have the job because she would be surrendering her femininity. While I don’t agree with that specific point, her essay offers a very powerful vision of femininity:
For a woman qua woman, the essence of femininity is hero-worship—the desire to look up to man. “To look up” does not mean dependence, obedience or anything implying inferiority. It means an intense kind of admiration; and admiration is an emotion that can be experienced only by a person of strong character and independent value-judgments. A “clinging vine” type of woman is not an admirer, but an exploiter of men. Hero-worship is a demanding virtue: a woman has to be worthy of it and of the hero she worships. Intellectually and morally, i.e., as a human being, she has to be his equal; then the object of her worship is specifically his masculinity, not any human virtue she might lack.
This does not mean that a feminine woman feels or projects hero-worship for any and every individual man; as human beings, many of them may, in fact, be her inferiors. Her worship is an abstract emotion for the metaphysical concept of masculinity as such—which she experiences fully and concretely only for the man she loves, but which colors her attitude toward all men. This does not mean that there is a romantic or sexual intention in her attitude toward all men; quite the contrary: the higher her view of masculinity, the more severely demanding her standards. It means that she never loses the awareness of her own sexual identity and theirs. It means that a properly feminine woman does not treat men as if she were their pal, sister, mother—or leader.
Men looking to improve their standing with women should take note of this. Women want to look up to men to the men in their lives. The seeming trend of women falling for player-types is largely because there are so few men who stack up to the standards of heroism that women have. Men as a whole have lost their sense of adventure and their desire for achievement. While I found the nihilism of Fight Club horrifying, the basic message of men refusing to be masculine still has great power and seductive appeal.
The women of today may want their independent pursuits; they don’t expect you provide for them and they don’t want you to be an overbearing asshole, but they want you to be man who lives for his sake and doesn’t expect anyone to live for his. The most powerful woman especially wants to be seduced by even more powerful man just as Dagny Taggart was taken by John Galt in Atlas Shrugged and Dominique Francon was taken by Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. Ignore the last sentence of Rand’s second paragraph, a woman does not have to be a man’s equal for the two of them to have a successful relationship. For as great a woman as Dangy was, she was not the equal of John Galt and she knew it. So long as both partners have sufficient appreciation for each others values, they can have a happy relationship. Continue Reading »
How did a come to where I am? It started in DC working for an organization that I’ll leave nameless for the protection of the innocent. I was surrounded by attractive young women who had no fucking clue what they where doing. That’s not to say they were incompetent, it’s that they had no principles or values to guide their actions. Somehow, I was disgusted by their near amorality, their constant chattering about boys in a work environment and was I desperate for refuge. Despite their religion making no sense, I believed that Mormons where the most moral people on Earth and I was seriously thinking about going to a service just to surround myself with these moral people. Eventually, I left. “This will never happen again,” was my refrain, determined to make myself attractive to women. How would I ensure that? Just before my dismissal, I starting searching for information on women, found these weird websites talking about “AFCs.” I had no idea what AFC stood for, but it seemed like a pretty good description of me.
The more information I came across, the more hungry I became for new knowledge. How was I to make myself more appealing to women? The basic answer was to stop doing what I had been doing: being the “nice guy” and instead be an assertive jerk who raises his value by lowering the value of the woman he’s talking. I found a lair, came across guys who willing to help me out and with practice, I honed my abilities. For really the first time in my life, I could open conservations, hold a woman’s interest, get a phone number. It felt good. I had accomplished something, I was capable of self-improvement and not doomed to stay in a permanent position of being alone. But despite my hard work, I received a high percentage of flakes. I became frustrated, I had improved to a certain point and crashed into a ceiling and I lost interest in going out.
I wasn’t chasing skirts so much as I was chasing happiness. I was desperate to find someone to share my experiences with. Are women the key to happiness? The opening chapter of “The Game” provides a stark “no.” Mystery, a man who can seeming bed any woman he has, is fucking miserable and tries to kill himself. Many people would call Mystery a selfish jerk who only cares about himself. but the reality is that Mystery is completely selfless. That is, he’s completely dependent on having other people validate his value as a human being. He’s arranged his entire life to maximize his appeal to women in the mistaken belief that satisfying them will somehow satisfy himself. When a man has everything he thought he ever wanted and he still has no idea what to do with himself, it must feel like that happiness is an elusive concept that he will never grasp and death is the only way to escape his misery.
I’m a huge fan of Ayn Rand and I was blown away with one line she had about men and sex: “The man who despises himself tries to gain self-esteem from sexual adventures—which can’t be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man’s sense of his own value.” What is the Community other than a bunch of guys (it’s a stretch to call them men) trying to gain self-esteem through sex? Some the more grounded ones who talk about “inner game” help guys find their self-esteem so that they can go out and seduce women, but even then the motivations are flawed. Productive achievement, not mindless hedonism, should be the product of self-esteem.
“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window – no, I don’t feel how small I am – but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.” – Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead”
Sarah Palin has officially become the crazy ex-girlfriend of the Republican Party. The first two weeks, you’re in love with her. Then some of her weird quirks start coming out, your friends are making fun of her, and you’re trying to defending her even though in the back of your mind you’re wondering if this is going to work. Eventually, you break it off on reasonably amiable terms and you hope she can get her act together. Then you see her a few months later doing something REALLY crazy and you wonder “Why was I ever attracted to her?”
“Before, we had too much greed and too little fear. Now, we have too much fear and too little greed.”
Those where the words of Obama’s chief economic advisor Larry Summers and they are perhaps the most refreshing words to come out of Obama official in some time.
But there is of course, a better term than the one Summers and Gekko use, it’s “rational self interest.” The current economic situation was caused by an irrational version of self interest.
Kay Hymowitz has written an article called “Love in the Time of Darwinism” got has some play within the blogosphere. Hymowitz, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute is opining on today’s fucked-up dating world and how many single males are resistent to marriage because they it is against their interests. The extremely cynical but brilliant Roissy replied with his, “Love in the Time of Game.”
I recognize the current romance environment and I’m taking active steps to adjust myself to it. But it’s unfortunate that we’ve reached the point in society where it would even be necessary for someone like myself to make these adjustments. Shouldn’t good guys be rewarded and jerks be punished? I’m very much reminded of a powerful scene from one my favorite movies, “In the Line of Fire”:
Mitch : It doesn’t work, Frank. God doesn’t punish the wicked and reward the righteous. Everyone dies. Some die because they deserve to; others die simply because they come from Minneapolis. It’s random and it’s meaningless. Frank : Well, if none of this means anything… why kill the President? Mitch : To punctuate the dreariness.
A minute later:
Mitch : There’s no cause left worth fighting for, Frank. All we have is the game. I’m on offense, you’re on defense. Frank : Well, when do we start playing the game? Mitch : The clock’s ticking, Frank.
Of course, Frank ends up saving the President from Leary’s bullet at the last second. This allows Frank to know that there indeed purpose to his life and gives the audience a typical Hollywood happy ending. Personally, I believe the movie’s ending would have been better had Leary been successful in his assassination, proving the determined man can win even when he has no rational reason for doing what he does.
“I am smart and willing, and that is all it takes,” Leary tells Frank. Who knows, maybe Leary could have made one hell of a pick-up artist.
