"Where are the thinking people?"

Did anyone else watch JK's Merry Christmas video with Larry Kudlow interviewing Don Luskin and CNBC business correspondent Jerry Bowyer on the significance of Ayn Rand's resurgence in the Obamanomics era? It really is quite revealing. [Better quality audio and video here.] You see, Bowyer is a Chief Economist and a Christian though not necessarily in that order. He says that Ayn Rand's philosophy actually "handicaps our message. The American people will not be persuaded by that case for capitalism."

Later he said, "The Randians have never been able to really make the sale because Americans have an inherent sense that selfishness is not a good thing. So the Rand case that says selfishness really is good and embrace capitalism because it's selfish probably hurts us more than it helps us." This statement, however, and Jerry's meaning of "selfish" must be put into context by Bowyer's later assertion that "freedom is not a selfish thing."

Probably worse that the true-believer Bowyer is Kudlow. After saying that he "totally regards himself as a free-market capitalist" he conducts the entire interview from a sort of "Rand was half-right" point of view.

"Can one agree to like Rand on her free-market capitalism and at the same time put away, put aside her atheism? I personally have a lot of problems with that part. I don't see how you run a country, I don't see how you run a society, I don't see how you run your life, and I draw on my own life, without some spiritual, moral and religious rules of the road. I think that's what God teaches us. I think that's what the New and the Old Testament teaches us and that's why I think charity and helping others is so important. (...) On the other hand Jerry I hope that I am open enough to realize her ideas on free-market capitalism, we need a bigger dose of that right now in American history."

[The sound you hear is me pulling my hair out.]

I think I need to send my Rand on Capitalism vs. Altruism post to Kudlow. Check your premises Larry!

Noted Objectivist philosopher Dr. Harry Binswanger saw the program and forwarded it to his subscription email list with a long analysis (reprinted in whole below the fold).

What I want to know is where are the thinking people? Thinking in regard to being pro-reason and pro-independence. That is, why isn't a frequent reaction: "She's an atheist--that's good; she was for radical selfishness? How interesting! I've never heard of anyone taking that position. Maybe Nietzsche (but maybe not). Let me hear more."

Harry feels my pain. Heinlein, help us!

"The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it — once you can honestly say, "I don't know", then it becomes possible to get at the truth." -The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, 1985

Subject: HBL You want bitter? I'll give you bitter.
December 24, 2009

From Harry Binswanger

You've got to watch this CNBC show on Ayn Rand. It's about 10 minutes out of
the Larry Kudlow show. Kudlow and a creep named Jerry Bowyer are critical of
Ayn Rand for her atheism and selfishness. Her defender is Donald Luskin, a
name that's vaguely familiar, but whom I don't know. Luskin does try to make
some points, but he is not deep and he is not given enough time.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?play=1&video=1367652591

But here comes the bitter part. In the mounting publicity about Ayn Rand,
I've seen commentator after commentator make these same
criticisms: she's an atheist and she's for selfish greed. What the hell is
wrong with these people? Those are not criticisms: those are her virtues.

What I want to know is where are the thinking people? Thinking in regard to
being pro-reason and pro-independence. That is, why isn't a frequent
reaction: "She's an atheist--that's good; she was for radical selfishness?
How interesting! I've never heard of anyone taking that position. Maybe
Nietzsche (but maybe not). Let me hear more."

A thinking person would then pursue some further thoughts along the lines of
"What reasons have ever been offered for unselfishness? I know Ancient Greek
culture was not inclined toward that 'meek shall inherit the earth' stuff.
Were the Ancient Greeks pro-altruism, or did that begin with Christianity?
Is the drivel I always hear about unselfishness something that's just a
leftover of Christian nonsense?"

I can only go by what *my* reaction was when I first encountered Ayn Rand's
atheism and pro-selfishness. When I came to her talk on the Objectivist
ethics my Freshman year at MIT (Spring, 1962), I had slid back from an
earlier atheism into speculating as to if maybe there was a (non-conscious)
"something"--like a basic law of the universe (e.g., that all processes move
toward equilibrium) that was God in an impersonal sense. When I say I was
"speculating," I mean I was indulging in absurd, arbitrary, "what if's?"

At any rate, in the Q&A following her lecture, she was asked whether she was
an atheist, and she answered, in a tone of some surprise at even being
asked, "Of course." It was as if she had been asked whether she wore a coat
when she went out in cold weather. I heard an answering "Of course" in my
own mind, and that was that. To be sure, she went on to explain that she
accepted only reason and that there had never been any reason given to
believe in God. That solidified my "Of course," but all that had been really
necessary was what she did by her tone: to indicate that this was not an
occasion for fantasy but a question of fact--like whether or not there
gravity holds the moon in orbit. Once the issue had been put into that
rational, factual, scientific context, there was nothing to consider. "Of
course."

Now my reaction to her selfishness. Within days of her speech, I bought a
copy of Atlas Shrugged and began reading. I think it was this passage, from
page 51, that caused the mental light bulb to turn
on:

> "You're unbearably conceited," was one of the two
> sentences she heard throughout her childhood, even
> though she never spoke of her own ability. The
> other sentence was: "You're selfish." She asked
> what was meant, but never received an answer. She
> looked at the adults, wondering how they could
> imagine that she would feel guilt from an undefined accusation.

That had been exactly my reaction to my mother's nagging along the same
lines. It was either then or a few pages further on that I thought to
myself, "I had never bought into the idea that I should feel guilty for
being selfish, but this lady goes me one better: she thinks it's actually a
virtue to be selfish!" My reaction was one of admiration. Mixed with a vague
chagrin that I hadn't taken that step myself.

My purpose is not to brag. Alright, maybe a little--but only in retrospect.
At the time, I didn't think there was anything special about me in this
regard: it was just a matter of common sense and personal honesty. I thought
that half to a third of the population was in the same situation as I was.
Yes, there were the self-deceivers and the sheep, but there were also, I
thought, a goodly number of people just waiting to be told that
unselfishness makes no more sense than religion.

So where are those people? You can say they have been destroyed by the
comprachicos of our educational system--except that the comprachicos weren't
that numerous until the 70s, and there are amazingly few people among the
older population who are open to atheism and selfishness. Lawrence Kudlow
looks to be just a little younger than I am, and yet there he is taking his
belief in nomadic tribal tales as if it were the solid finding of science.

Is it that it's too hard to go back on a lifetime of accepting and acting on
altruism? Well, there were about a million copies of Atlas and hundreds of
thousands of copies of The Virtue of Selfishness sold to people who were
young in the pre-comprachio era.

My bitterness (probably temporary) is fueled by seeing *everyone* now raving
about Atlas Shrugged while missing the whole point of the novel, treating it
as if it were essentially a condemnation of over-regulation. I'm reading
dozens and dozens of articles on the web, pro and con, on the rising
interest in Ayn Rand. They are all depressing.

And what about the philosophic content of her non-fiction? What about the
incredible outpouring of knowledge, from the nature of existence to the
theory of concepts, to the theory of free will, and on and on? Sure, I can
understand why professional philosophers have tremendous difficulty in
grasping any of it, because of their automatized methodology (though that
took me decades to appreciate). But where are the thinking readers among the
non- philosophers?

Where are the people who are *at least intrigued* by ideas like:
"Psycho-epistemology is the study of man's cognitive processes from the
aspect of the interaction between the conscious mind and the automatic
functions of the subconscious"? Or, "Art is a selective re-creation of
reality according to an artist's metaphysical value- judgments"? Or,
"Emotions are the automatic results of man's value judgments integrated by
his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man's values
or threatens them, that which is
*for* him or *against* him"? Or, "Sacrifice is the surrender of a greater
value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue"? Where are the people
who, even if they have questions or doubts, can recognize the power of such
ideas?

I guess most of them are on HBL.

Economics and Markets Philosophy Posted by JohnGalt at January 1, 2010 5:53 PM