My reply:

I’ve heard that something like 80% of serious libertarians originally came to these ideas via Ayn Rand’s novels — though their intellectual development hardly stopped there, of course — so perhaps it’s not surprising that many people, especially those who aren’t familiar with the genre, associate her ideas with libertarianism.

The Hickman criticism is unfortunately a case of critics dropping any semblance of intellectual context. Her journal entries about Hickman were written during an early period in her development as a philosopher, when she was going through a Nietzschean phase. So she admired the radical strengths of an Übermensch, while acknowledging his faults? How scandalous! Presumably Nietzsche would come in for even more criticism on this front, but somehow he remains perfectly respectable.

Interestingly, as Ronald Merrill observes in The Ideas of Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead is at root a dramatization of the female protagonist Dominique’s (and thus Rand’s own) progression from nihilism (loving Keating) to Nietzscheanism (loving Wynand) to Objectivism (loving Howard Roark) — culminating in the portrayal of an ideal man who “neither sacrifices himself to others nor others to himself.”

And so the criticism of Rand as a Hickman “admirer” amounts to saying her philosophy is too Neitzschean when, in fact, she explicitly grew to reject Neitzscheanism in favor of her own philosophy which eschews sacrifices in any form. Her two primary novels are quite explicit about this — which the Hickman criticism ignores entirely. Could one be any less fair in one’s criticism of a philosopher?

I do believe Rand had some bat-shit moments, to use your phrase. I also think it’s a mistake to give in too easily in our defense of her. Sometimes simply restoring a little intellectual context, and reading her actual words, is enough to reveal her as far more thoughtful than her critics would suggest. Given her truly massive role in promoting libertarian ideas, we do ourselves a disservice if we are too quick to push her to the back of — or throw her under — the intellectual bus.

I truly believe we undermine our cause if we’re too quick to allow some of the more ridiculous criticisms to take root.

With that in mind, Robert Bidinotto‘s novel Hunter: A Thriller hit the spot. I found the writing crisp, the characters interesting, and the interplay of plot and theme to be tight and compelling. I was far more moved than I expected to be, particularly by the love relationship between Dylan Hunter and Annie Woods. They wrestled with real challenges, and seeing how they resolved them reminded me why I like romantic realism so much: it inspires you to want to live your own life as fully and heroically as possible.

Bidinotto’s mastery of his craft is evident. As a sometimes-writer myself, I got the feeling a few times that he must have really enjoyed the writing process, because in certain passages I got the distinct sense of a sharp mind at work and at play. I think he must’ve loved writing this book.

Ayn Rand wrote, “Don’t work for my happiness, my brothers — show me yours — show me that it is possible — show me your achievement — and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.” I read the novel intermittently over the course of about three days, and on the last morning, as I finished the final chapter, my feeling toward the author was: Thank you for showing us your achievement.

It has given me courage for mine.

As told by Aristoxenus, and after him Cicero (De Offic. 3.45), Diodorus Siculus (10.4), and others, around the 4th century BC, Pythias and his friend Damon, both followers of the philosopher Pythagoras, traveled to Syracuse. Pythias was accused of plotting against the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius I. As punishment for this crime, Pythias was sentenced to death.

Accepting his sentence, Pythias asked to be allowed to return home one last time, to settle his affairs and bid his family farewell. Not wanting to be taken for a fool, Dionysius refused, believing that once released, Pythias would flee and never return.

Pythias called for Damon and asked him to take his spot while he went. Dionysius agreed, on the condition that, should Pythias not return when promised, Damon would be put to death in his place. Damon agreed, and Pythias was released.

Dionysius was convinced that Pythias would never return, and as the day Pythias promised to return came and went, Dionysius prepared to execute Damon. But just as the executioner was about to kill Damon, Pythias returned.

Apologizing to his friend for his delay, Pythias told of how pirates had captured his ship on the passage back to Syracuse and thrown him overboard. Dionysius listened to Pythias as he described how he swam to shore and made his way back to Syracuse as quickly as possible, arriving just in the nick of time to save his friend.

Dionysius was so taken with the friends’ trust and loyalty, that he freed both Damon and Pythias, and kept them on as counsel to his court.

Tonight I find myself clarifying several of the key ideas that Ayn Rand developed that were expressed in the movie. Here are the four key ideas I see in ASM:

1. Innovation and the joy of creation
2. The importance of industrial production
3. Egoism and reason vs. altruism, faith, and force
4. The distinction between the productive class and the political class

Each of these points emerges from time to time as the theme of Atlas Shrugged comes forward: That theme is “What happens to society when the ‘men of the mind,’ the men of honest ability in any field, go on strike?” By the way, the movie does a 10-star job of getting across the theme and the related key ideas within its artistic format limits.

And later:

Without a doubt, ASM is a sterling movie of ideas, and the four I mention above—however vaguely grasped by a general public misled by decades of government schools and the advent of “TV Planet”—will play their way into the public consciousness. Perhaps slowly at first. Americans are not accustomed to movies illuminating big ideas in conceptual terms. Moreover, this is a movie that stands up for the good guys—which are all of us who insist on critical thought and on our rights to live as we choose for our own sakes. The average fellow has never heard a movie character state categorically that he intends to seek his own joy and abundance in life, neither sacrificing himself to others nor others to himself. It’s nice to see these good guys win, even when still relatively few people understand how good these good guys are.

When I walked out of the theater, there was a newfound spring in my step and confidence in my voice and bearing. On the most profound level, it made me feel as if I were “right,” and have been all along. Certainly others who have fond familiarity with the Randian oeuvre felt the same. And I speculate that those who are innocent of the book ideas, who may never have even heard of Ayn Rand, will experience a similar—yet not so intense—boost in authentic self-esteem. The movie, the ideas so well expressed by believable artists and artistry, makes me feel young again. That we’re going to turn our country around and throw out the evildoers. A natural high like no other: also, that the “great masses” will ultimately throw off their chains along with their externally contrived ignorance and rise to the occasion. Can’t wait for ASM 2 and 3.

What do you think of his presentations?

An entire nation was freed from Soviet occupation, without a single person being killed. (Think about that for a moment… Why haven’t you heard about this before?)

See the trailer here. And more information about the movie (including reviews) is available from Amazon.

I originally learned about the movie from my friend Stephen Browne, when he wrote about it on his blog.

Commentary on the movie (via Amazon.com) from filmmakers James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty:

Most people don’t think about singing when they think about revolutions. But in Estonia song was the weapon of choice when, between 1987 and 1991, Estonians sought to free themselves from decades of Soviet occupation. During those years, hundreds of thousands gathered in fields to sing forbidden patriotic songs and to rally for independence. The Singing Revolution documents how the Estonian people regained their freedom and helped topple the Soviet Union along the way.

We learned of the Singing Revolution while teaching filmmaking at an Estonian university in 1999. We not only were amazed by the story itself, we were amazed that we knew virtually nothing about it. Unarmed people facing down tanks; 300,000 people singing forbidden songs under the eyes of Soviet authorities (even the Soviets couldn’t figure out how to arrest people for simply singing); incredibly clever parliamentary and street theater maneuvers that vexed Moscow at every turn (including working within the Soviet system to officially make the hammer and sickle an illegal symbol in Estonia, implemented while still occupied by the Soviet Union!).

We called all our friends to ask if they had ever heard of the Singing Revolution. Virtually no one had. And even those who had heard the phrase knew close to nothing about what had actually happened.

We looked at each other as husband and wife (which we are as well as filmmakers) and said, “This story has to be told.” And if not us, who? If not now, when? And so we embarked on a four year journey trying to understand what was behind the miracle of this bloodless revolution.

This is not a history film. It is not even an Estonian film. It is an inspirational film. Although Estonia’s occupation began under the most murderous and oppressive means by both Soviets and Nazis, not a single person was killed during this 4-year revolution, and the strategies used to achieve this were just brilliant. David vanquished Goliath without even the use of a slingshot, and yet no one knows about it. Ironically, had people been killed during this revolution, it probably would have received press attention. We think the fact that no one was killed kept the story out of the international news.

From 1940-1946…in just six short years…Estonia lost more than 20% of its population through successive brutal occupations by Stalin, then Hitler, and then Stalin again. They suffered a persistent attempt at genocide…by direct executions at first, by population dilution second, and then by an attempt to wipe out all symbols of the nation of Estonia.

And yet, the people survived…and when their moment came, they seized it. They seized it and won a victory for all of humankind.

If this were fiction, you wouldn’t believe it. But we have the footage to prove it. The Singing Revolution took place in the late 1980s, and it was documented. There is no argument.

Creating “The Singing Revolution” changed our lives. We learned a lot about what humans are capable of enduring, and what they are capable of achieving, under the most horrible of circumstances.

We hope you consider watching “The Singing Revolution”. It might change your mind about how to change the world, and it might open your eyes to much greater and higher possibilities than you now think are possible. And as dark as some of the above history is, your faith in humankind will be uplifted and energized after viewing this film.

I definitely think her novels provide the best introduction to her ideas. They’re easier, so they’re more accessible to many people. They’re best sellers over the last 40 to 50 years, so obviously they’ve appealed to many people. But also, they set her ideas in the context of the real world and, if you read The Fountainhead first, you’re really treated to a beautiful introduction to her thinking. It’s the way she came to her ideas.

She was originally very interested in the notion of how do people maintain their independence and integrity in the face of a world that demands compromise and The Fountainhead is about that. And you read that book and you really, you get a personal introduction to her ideas. Then you can read Atlas Shrugged and she shows how that same idea plays out in aesthetics and romantic love and politics and ethics and, by the time you get to Galt’s speech, you’ve pretty much got it all laid out in front of you.

There are few places where she really distills it down to a crystal clear formulation quite the way she did in Galt’s speech. On the one hand, it’s the intellectual climax of the novel, it’s the place where the plot tension that’s been going on through the whole novel is finally explained. You understand why the producers have gone on strike. On the other hand, it’s the opportunity for Rand to lay out her philosophy as a system for the first time in the world.

The part of the speech that bowled me over the most and continued to impress me for years as I was re-reading it was her derivation of ‘ought’ from ‘is’. And I continue to think that’s one of the most valuable things that Rand did as a philosopher, is helping people understand in a clear, lucid way how you can derive principles of what you ought to do in your life from factual information about the nature of human life. So she was identifying, you know, requirements of biological life and how those lead to the need of a system of ethics and guidelines for leading the good life. And that connection which she outlined, I think first in Galt’s speech, is — it’s brilliant. You know I’ve heard philosophers complain that it’s not rigorous or they disagree with it in one way or another, but I don’t know anybody else who has provided — for everybody — a lucid, easy-to-understand explanation of why ethics is ultimately rooted in reality and in our nature as biological beings.

As a novelist, she was doing something very radical in trying to portray an ideal human being. There are very few novelists now or, I think you have to go back pretty far in history to find novelists who were comfortable with the idea that their role as an artist was to uphold an ideal. Rand was not only trying to create that ideal but she had enough of a good vision of what that ideal consisted of that often you can tell a lot about people by how they react to it. For example, some people find it hopelessly corny that she was trying to paint a picture of the ideal person and other people find the very idea of a novel extolling selfishness to be, you know, just ridiculous beyond belief.

When people ridicule Ayn Rand, I often sense that there’s something at a deeper level, there’s something about idealism itself, that’s a little uncomfortable to them. And, in that sense, her novels can be a very useful touchstone for understanding: To what extent do people share my belief that human beings can be noble? To what extent do people share my belief that thinking for yourself is really important? I find when people are uncomfortable at a visceral level with Rand’s characters … they can still be good people, but they’re probably not people who I’m going to be able to hit it off with as easily or as deeply.

Rand’s ethical teaching that I personally found the most useful is, I think, a line from the introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness. She says “the basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that every man is an end in himself” — and it’s a good razor, ethically, if you’re sizing up a situation politically or in your personal life, to ask yourself the question, “Are we creating a solution here where everybody’s treated as an end in himself, where their own happiness is the most important thing for each person — or are we creating a situation where some people are expected to sacrifice to others, where some people’s interests are subordinated to others?”

Rand’s ethical vision was really one where we want to create a win-win world for everybody and that there shouldn’t be conflicts of interest among rational people if you’re using an ethical system where everyone’s treated as an end in himself.

When Rand was writing, selfishness was really a dirty word. You know, you almost couldn’t talk about it in polite company. In the years since then, we’ve had … the hippies have grown up, the 60′s culture has matured, they’re now, you know, running the world. And selfishness, it’s really different to talk about selfishness now.

In our age, in contrast to Rand’s age, it’s a much bigger problem, people who are stuck on narcissism. I think one of the dangers of Rand’s philosophy at this point is that if you are disposed towards narcissism, Rand’s going to give you all the justification that you need to keep doing that, maybe even become worse.

So, in today’s culture, I think it’s important to point out that it really is about treating people as ends in themselves. You know, when you talk about selfishness, if you take that ideal to the extreme, depending on how you interpret it, you can end up with a lot of bad behavior. But if you take an ideal like treating people as ends in themselves, it’s hard to go wrong with it.

And I think if you really want to realize the potential that Rand outlined in her philosophy and her writings, I think you need to keep an open mind, learn from a lot of different places, even in unsuspecting places like Buddhism. One thing that Buddhism, at it’s best, and Objectivism have in common is a great respect and emphasis on fidelity with reality. And in Objectivism, that fidelity with reality takes the form of logic and making sure that what you believe matches what’s really true. So it’s intellectual. And in Buddhism the emphasis on fidelity with reality takes the form more of emotional fidelity and learning to identify your own emotional resistance to the way things are. So the Buddhists have emphasized acceptance, meditation, sometimes a sort of strategic mental detachment so that you can maintain more objectivity about your emotions and your thought processes.

Sometimes I see Buddhism as a set of practices in search of a philosophy in an analogous way that Objectivism could be seen as a philosophy in search of a set of practices for doing things like raising your level of consciousness, being more productive, having a happier life, having more harmonious relationships.

So what would it look like if you combined the ideas of Objectivism with the practices of Buddhism and the kind of personality that that creates? You know what that would look like? I think it would look like Howard Roark. And I think it would look like John Galt, too. If you want to look at a face without pain or fear or guilt, look at Buddhists. Those are people who’ve learned, they’ve learned to interact with their own mind and their own emotions in ways that lead to the kind of serenity that Rand advocated in her novels.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon… I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals, or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness, and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Thank you, Johann.

I particularly like what he conveys in the first few minutes. I’m more ambivalent about the idea of businesses having “responsibilities” to the community, since it seems one-sided to me; it is not clear to me that businesses have any more obligation to the community than communities have to businesses. So why emphasize one over the other?

At the same time, I do think that if I owned a business such as Whole Foods, I would be looking for ways to use our massive influence to have a good impact not only within the direct sphere of our business (our customers, employees, owners, etc.), but also on the communities in which we operate.

What do you think?

From Reason TV’s summary:

Joshua Zader’s intellectual relationship with Ayn Rand began as it does for so many, during his college years. He then blazed a trail uniquely his own among Rand admirers by creating The Atlasphere—an online networking and dating site for the fans of Rand’s novels with particular emphasis on The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Zader found inspiration in Rand’s portrayals of independence and integrity, saying: “Rand’s ethical vision was really one where we want to create a win-win world for everybody, and that there shouldn’t be conflicts of interest among rational people if you’re using an ethical system where everybody is treated as an end in himself.” Zader has seen the real life impact of Rand’s ideas through his work on The Atlasphere, which currently boasts over 19,000 members.

Zader discusses the some finer points of Rand’s thought and novels, her supporters, her detractors, and her continuing impact. As a student of Buddhism, Zader explores how her ideas relate to what may seem like a conflicting view of the world. Zader: “Sometimes I see Buddhism as a set of practices in search of a philosophy, in an analogous way that Objectivism could be seen as a philosophy in search of a set of practices.” Joshua Zader blogs at Mudita Journal.

Approximately 10 minutes. Joshua Zader was interviewed by Ryan Seals, filmed by Alex Manning and edited by Hawk Jensen.

I felt Ryan Seals did a good job of coming up with interview questions. I remain grateful for his creativity in suggesting topics to explore.

I will be very interested to hear how other Objectivists respond to my comments about Objectivism and Buddhism, which are bound to be controversial, at least in some circles.

What do you think?

UPDATE: I now have a transcription of most of the interview, for those who would like a text version.