On Rand as a Totalitarian:

“Objectivism can be a wonderfully appealing religion substitute for disaffiliated Jews and Catholics from the middle class who turn to it with mania formerly reserved for their ancestoral religion–and also to the sons and daughters of Old American WASPS, brought up in the Protestant ethic of hard work and self-sufficiency. It is a closed system of ideas, even more so than the conservative Catholicism in vogue until the middle sixties. Under the most doctrinaire of Catholic upbringings there is a certain margin for flexibility. The boundaries are clearly defined, but you are permitted an area of deviation from the straight and narrow before stepping onto the wild shores of heresy. To a lesser extent the same holds true for Judaism.

Not so under the tutelage of the Rand.

Objectivism is an inflexible package deal. Ayn Rand, having established herself as a radical individualist, an uncompromising mudracker and free thinker by the 1950’s, then proceeded to ereect a tight system of logic embracing every conceivable area of human endeavor. Economics, politics, psychology, child-rearing, sex, literature, even cigarette-smoking–Rand has written about them all, issuing her pronouncements on each subject in turn. Curiously enough, for a woman who started out as a champion of the independent mind, she began to consider her own ideas as natural corollaries of truth and objectivity.

‘Objective reality’ was what Rand said it was.

‘Morality’ was conformity to the ethic of Ayn Rand.

‘Rationality’ was synonymous with the thinking of Ayn Rand.

To be in disagreement with the ideas of Ayn Rand was to be, by definition, irrational and immoral.”

(from It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand by Jerome Tuccille p.15-16)

On The Place of Humor in Objectivism:

“Smiling, when it happened at all, was indulged in surrepitiously, since humor in the Objectivist handbook was considered immoral and anti-life, a device contrived to destroy man’s capacity of greatness”

(from It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand by Jerome Tuccille p.22)

On The Objectivist Theory of Litearture

“My second crisis of conscience revolved around the Randian theory of literature. For someone whose tastes in literature ran the gamut from Hemingway to Maugham to Fitzgerald to Steinbeck to Duerrenmatt to Cheever to Mailer to Salinger to Evelyn Waugh to Perelman to Vonnegut, naturalists and satirists to the last, it was a bit difficult to accept the theory that naturalism and comedy were immoral and anti-life, or that Mickey Spillane and Ian Fleming were the greatest living practitioners of the romanticism of Victor Hugo”

(from It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand by Jerome Tuccille p.23)

The excommunication of Murray Rothbard:

“The falling away of Murray Rothbard began..Shortly afterward it became known that Rothbard’s wife, Joey, was a devout Protestant, a practicing Christian who actually believed that faith an altruism had a positive moral value. When the last tremours caused by this revelation finally faded away, a pall of silence fell over the living room. There was a Christian in the house…a real, live, breathing Protestant who admitted belief in the existence of a Supreme Being! A heretic such as this was occupying the armchair in Ayn Rand’s living room. And was married to one of Rand’s most gifted protoges [Murray Rothbard], no less, who now sat beside her with a look of villainous unconcern on his face.

Well, if Murray Rothbard’s wife was a Christian there could only be one logical explanation for it: she had obviously never read Ayn Rand’s proof that a Supreme Being does not, did not, will not, and could not exist. Ever

…This incident marked the beginning of the end of Murray Rothbard’s eminent position in the Objectivist hierarchy…[h]e…had begun to question the wisdom of many Randian attitudes on political, and particularly, historical affairs. He compounded his crime of being happily married to a practicing altruist at the following meeting when he refused to leave his wife and take a more rational mate.

…Shortly afterward there was a meeting at which he found himself denounced for not smoking cigarettes.

…Since it was unthinkable for anyone to leave the Randian nest of his own accord, and emergency meeting of meeting of the Senior Collective was called to hear the various charges of deviationism that had been compiled against Rothbard over the past six months.”

(from It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand by Jerome Tuccille p.29-33)

Here’s a summary:

• Socrates would have programmed in Assembly language
• Aristotle would have chosen C
• Plato would prefer C++
• The Stoics would have gone for PERL
• Descartes would be a Java guru.
• Kant would have chosen Python (my choice also)
• Wittgenstein would be a Haskell programmer.

The author also provides some interesting reasoning for these selections. It’s definitely worth a read.

Now, the first judgment of the reason, the preamble of every
political constitution seeking a sanction and a principle, is
necessarily this:  THERE IS A GOD; which means that society is
governed with design, premeditation, intelligence.  This
judgment, which excludes chance, is, then, the foundation of the
possibility of a social science; and every historical and
positive study of social facts, undertaken with a view to
amelioration and progress, must suppose, with the people, the
existence of God, reserving the right to account for this
judgment at a later period.

(J.P. Proudhon in The Philosophy of Misery)

Psychologically, Pragmatism lobotomized the country’s intellectuals: John Dewey’s theory of “Progressive” education (which has dominated the schools for close to half a century), established a method of crippling a child’s conceptual faculty and replacing cognition with “social adjustment”. It was and is a systematic attempt to manufacture tribal mentalities.

(Philosophy: Who Needs It, Ayn Rand, Signet, 1994, p43)

Non-Christian thinkers have also recognized the importance of the Garden of Eden. Individually, they have assessed it in different ways, some ridiculing it and others outlining its importance and yet reinterpreting it allegorically. In effect both of these poles entail rejecting its meaning as defined by Christianity.  But one way or the other, these thinkers have rightly understood how crucial the Garden and The Fall are in the Christian understanding of history.

First, I wish to refer to what Arthur Schopenhauer has to say about it. He simultaneously gives it credit as being a uniquely important part of the Old Testament, and yet  simultaneously frames it allegorically:

Accordingly, the sole thing that reconciles me to the Old Testament is the story of the Fall. In my eyes, it is the only metaphysical truth in that book, even though it appears in the form of an allegory. There seems to me no better explanation of our existence than that it is the result of some false step, some sin of which we are paying the penalty.

(The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism, )

Next, I will refer to Alan Watts (for an explanation as to why I am venturing into studying some of his thought, please read this post), who is far more overtly flippant and careless with interpreting the story.

This is, of course, what happened to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and perhaps it was an unripe apple that made Eve ill. It is not usually understood that she was a little girl and Adam a little boy, because they are always portrayed as mature adults, but they were obviously a couple of kids scrounging around Big Daddy’s garden. Having thoroughly satisfied themselves on gooseberries, raw peas, and green apples, they hid between the tomato parts and began to examine each other’s private parts. But just then Big Daddy came along and said, “God damn it, get the hell out of here, you little bastards!”

(In My Own Way: An Autobiography, Alan Watts, 1972, p22)

As you can see, Schopenhauer’s approach avoids the vulgarity and flippancy of that of Watts. And Watts makes a number of inferences that are pretty far out there, probably mainly tounge-in-cheek..I don’t think he’s that ignorant of the details of the Garden Narrative.

However, when it comes down to it, the truth is that both are playing fast and loose with God’s revelation, and ultimately picking out parts that they want.  Just because Schopenhauer frames his terms in a less confrontational manner, does he mean he is ultimately treating God’s revelation with any more reverence than Watts.  In fact, while Watts may seem rather sacriligous, it appears that if anything, Watts for all his unbelief better understood the theological impact of the garden narrative than Schopenhauer.  He understood it could not be simply explained away by making it allegorical.

Schopenhauer thought he could affirm The Fall’s importance (while relegating the rest of Old Testament revelation to uselessness) by relegating it to the allegorical. Alan Watts seemed to better understand the interconnectedness, and rather takes a skewed interpretation of the narrative, which is ultimately wrong but retains the seriousness of it. In a footnote, Watts also explains his vulgar language in describing the narrative with the following statement:

The vulgar language is, as always, soundly grounded in theology. In the Catholic and Christian scheme of things we are sons of God by adoption and grace, not by nature, since God has only one Son, rendering the rest of us bastards essentially damned and in hell.

(In My Own Way: An Autobiography, Alan Watts, 1972, p22)

So, while both Schopenhauer and Watts present The Fall framed in a context of unbelief, the “less overt” unbelief (of Schopenhauer)  is in some limited ways less insidious than the “more overt” unbelief (Watts).  Schopenhauer couches his unbelief in feigned respect for the narrative and appeals to allegory, while Watts is more direct and clear in his unbelief.  And it appears to me that this signals that Watts is actually the one who better understands (but of course, rejects) the real meaning of The Fall. I would say that the unbelief of Schopenhauer has done more damage, simply because it is couched in language that by nature appeals more to the Christian church and people with Christian language.  In Alan Watts’ assesment, there is a stark contrast between belief unbelief, but in Schopenhauer there is a dangerous ambivalence which mirrors the way the modernists of “liberal Christianity” have similarily done much damage by making their unbelief “more palpable”.