Ayn Rand is way too comfortable with assuming that an apt description of her
issues is appropriate for a human race which could no better than to follow
her example.
It's an unfortunate habit, also shared by her devotees, that leads to the
narrow, ego-centric, ethno-centric world in which they live.
But if we substitute the word "Ayn" for the word "Man" in her text, I think we
will find it to be clearly written and quite revealing about herself.
**************
She begins by defining a "sense of life" as "a pre-conceptual equivalent of
metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of
existence. It sets the nature of man's emotional responses and the essence of
his character"
And then she goes on to tell us that:
"Every choice and value judgment implies some estimate of himself and of the
world around him -- most particularly , of his capacity to deal with the
world. His subconscious mechanism sums up his psychological activities ,
integrating his conclusions, reactions, or evasions into an emotional sum
that establishes an habitual pattern and becomes his automatic response to
the world around him."
Actually, I feel the same way about my habitual patterns, so Ayn is also
speaking for me, here.
But then, she bares her fangs, and goes on the attack:
"To the extent to which a man is mentally active, ie. motivated by the desire
to know, to understand, his mind works as the programmer of his emotional
computer and his sense of life develops into a bright counterpart of rational
philosophy. To the extent to which a man evades , the programming of his
emotional computer is done by
chance influences: random impressions, associations, imitations, by undigested
snatches of environmental bromides, by cultural osmosis." (Page 32)
And what can I say?
That's me.
God knows how my emotional computer is programmed, but rational philosophy
has very little to do with it, and chance influences, like meeting someone who
loves light Classical music, or going to the Ukrainian museum, or reading
the Tales of Genji, can be very important.
"If evasion or lethargy is a man's predominant method of mental functioning ,
the result is a sense of life dominated by fear - a soul like a shapeless
piece of clay stamped by footprints going in all directions. In later years,
such a man cries that he has lost his sense of identity; the fact is that he
never acquired it)"
OK -- I love the sculpture metaphor -- and will happily agree that a
shapeless lump of clay represents a shapeless soul -- but there are other
kinds of mental functioning besides rationality, evasion, or lethargy. And I
can also report that my life is not dominated by fear, despite my certain,
rational knowledge that eventually I will lose everything that I know and
love.
"Man by his nature cannot refrain from generalizing, he cannot live moment to
moment , without context, without past or future, he cannot eliminate his
integrating capacity"
Replace this with "Ayn, by her nature, cannot refrain from generalizing , etc"
and I think we have an accurate self portrait of a mind that froze up around
the age of 16, as one of those youth who know everything.
But curiously, despite her demand that "sense of life" should be subjugated to
rational philosophy, in her introduction she tells us that she will be a
bridge to the future from the "sense of life" of the pre-World War I world, as
expressed by it's best art.
Why didn't she tell us that she would be a bridge from that period's rational
philosophy ?
Perhaps because that would suggest that the following chapters would be
wonkish and boring?
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