From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Wed Jun 15 2005 - 07:10:59 BST
Greetings JoVo, and welcome to the discussion --
> just to pose an inconvenient question: I do not know anything about Ayn
> Rand, except that Alan Greenspan considered himself influenced by her
> (him?), but do you really believe that Robert M.Pirsig instead of living
> in the USA almost his whole life living on a sunny island, like for
> instance the bahamas, from his very youth would have come to anything
> like the MOQ?
Your question is not so much an inconvenience as it is disturbing to me.
When did people ever get the idea that a person is nothing but a product of
his environment and culture? Have the egalitarians and collectivists of the
20th century had such a profound influence on our younger generation that
the individual is seen as having no value?
For your information, Ayn Rand was born Alissa Rosenbaum in Marxist Russia
in 1905, and decided to become a writer by age nine. She left her family in
St. Petersburg and emigrated to the US in 1926 with only $50 in her purse.
After a brief stay with her Chicago relatives-where she selected the pen
name of Ayn Rand-she moved to Hollywood to work at odd jobs, mastering
English and churning out screenplays and short stories in her spare time.
The book that made her famous was "The Fountainhead", published in 1943 and
considered the great novel of American individualism. It was made into
movie with Gary Cooper in the role of architect Howard Roark. "Atlas
Shrugged", her second major novel, raised controversy by dramatizing
elements of her philosophy of "reason, individualism, and capitalism," which
she called "Objectivism." Following on the success of "Atlas Shrugged" in
1957, Rand turned to nonfiction, elaborating her philosophy in essays,
columns, and public appearances. Her tumultuous life ended on March 6, 1982
at her New York apartment, but her philosophy is still very much alive
through the work of the Ayn Rand Institute which was founded by her
life-long associate Nathaniel Branden.
Even though you apparently do not subscribe to Individualism, I would
recommend that you read "For the New Intellectual", a small paperback on
Rand's philosophy of "rational self-interest" which she published in 1960,
or Nathaniel Branden's "Who is Ayn Rand?" which is an analysis of her
novels. To give you a taste of Rand's values and the power of her writing,
this quote is from "The New Intellectual":
"Americans have known how to erect a superlative material achievement in the
midst of an untouched wilderness, against the resistance of savage tribes.
What we need today is to erect a corresponding *philosophical* structure,
without which the material greatness cannot survive. A skyscraper cannot
stand on crackerbarrels, nor on wall mottoes, nor on full-page ads, nor on
prayers, nor on meta-language. The new wilderness to reclaim is philosophy,
now all but deserted, with the weeds of prehistoric doctrines rising again
to swallow the ruins. To support a culture, nothing less than a new
philosophical foundation will do. The present state of the world is not
proof of philosophy's impotence, but the proof of philosophy's power. It is
philosophy that has brought men to this state -- it is only philosophy that
can lead them out." (Incidentally, I second that motion.)
As for your question whether, if Robert Pirsig had lived his life in the
Bahamas, he would have been able to produce the MoQ, I'm probably the last
person you should ask. My personal opinion is that he would have had a
better opportunity to do it properly. Instead of motorcycling about the
countryside, dodging the responsibilities of his teaching profession,
failing to attain a degree in his chosen field, and ending up reclusively as
a peripatetic sailor with little if any demonstrated interest in this
dedicated forum, he might well have resolved the issues you see being
debated here.
There are numerous examples of individuals of modest means -- country
bumpkins as well as those raised in squalor -- who've made significant
contributions to society. Our new Secretary of State is one. Let me cite
an illustrious ancester for another.
Alexander Hamilton was born the bastard son of James Hamilton, a struggling
businessman from Scotland, on the small island of Nevis in the West Indies.
He never had a middle name and the actual date of his birth was never
recorded. As a teenager he was an impoverished orphan with no family
connections, working as a clerk on the island of St. Croix in the Caribbean.
By the close of his teenage years, he was a university graduate in America,
General George Washington's most trusted aide-de-camp, an accomplished
artillery captain, and a published pamphleteer renowned in New York. It was
while on the battlefield that Hamilton began formulating ideas on government
and economics that would secure America's financial future and make him an
historic figure.
Believing that the Continental Congress needed to be strengthened or
overthrown in favor a more imposing federal government that could legislate
within the states, Hamilton became the figurehead for responsible
government. He left Washington to take command of an infantry regiment that
took part in the siege of Yorktown and, after the war, served as a member of
the Continental Congress (1782-1783), attended the Annapolis Convention as a
delegate in 1786, served in the New York State Legislature, and attended the
Philadelphia Convention in 1787. Although the U.S. Constitution produced by
the convention was less centrist than Hamilton wanted, he was active in the
successful campaign for its ratification in New York and was the major
contributor to the Federalist Papers. President Washington appointed
Hamilton the first Secretary of the Treasury when the first Congress passed
an act establishing the Treasury Department. It is for his tenure as
Treasury Secretary that Hamilton is considered one of America's greatest
statesmen. All of this was achieved in less than half a century: Hamilton
was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr at the age of 49.
> Do you believe that any inventor during recent history would have gotten
> to any technical invention whatsoever, if he had lived in a rural place
> instead of living in heavily crowded places like New York, London,
> Vienna, Berlin, Paris or Amsterdam?
Why not? Thomas Edison grew up in the backwoods of Orange, New Jersey --
hardly a metropolitan area -- to become the inventor of the electric light
and the phonograph. What is there about a crowded bustling city that you
suppose adds something to original thought or creativity? Do you believe
ideas "rub off" of the people you bump into on the street? I'm truly
mystified.
> Well, it is not about taking away anybodys claim to his/her
> invention/discovering. It's more about seeing the soil on which their
> findings grow.
Why is "seeing the soil" more important than the contribution itself? Why
is the social milieu more important than the individual contributor? Please
tell me how a culture can survive and flourish without the innovative ideas
of the individual.
Regards,
Ham
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