Tuesday, March 5, 2019

The Fountainhead, also known as 'smh', in the parlance of our time.

The Fountainhead, or smh, in the parlance of our time.

After more than a year of persistence and determination, putting it down and picking it back up again, I have finished reading Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Some friends and I, disillusioned with the current state of affairs in the United States, wanted to know what exactly it was about this book that makes it the unofficial manifesto of the Republican Party, or Paul Ryan at least. (I wrote this back when this was the case, and it seemed like there was some sort of cohesion and forethought behind the GOP’s message. I've been sitting on this for a while.)

For a bit of background, normally for something that I have spent so many long hours reading, I might just say, “yea, it was ok.” Like a film I’ve just paid £20 to see. I don’t want to feel that I’ve wasted £20 on something terrible. So I pick out the good parts and that’s it. With this book, I don’t want my efforts over the past year to be for something I deem to be bad, especially after enduring and persevering through 680 pages of Ayn Rand.

That said, I have never felt such a visceral aversion to a story, especially the ending. I wanted to drop-kick this book and hte characters to feel it. The main characters have no regard for anyone other than themselves and face no consequences for any of their actions: someone kills someone, there are affairs, someone demolishes a building, they sacrifice all integrity, they lie. There are many obvious parts that a reader can spot in current political and social life, but the parallels in how some characters plot to mold society into something to their own liking so that one person/social class can do whatever they want only comes out at the end. In the following passage, lots of truths are revealed about how characters are using the general public as pawns for the gain of others. These few sentences summarise quite clearly what seems to underpin many of the issues that are spreading globally, not just in the US.

p. 623 “Men have a weapon against you. Reason. So you must be very sure to take it away from them. Cut the props from under it. But be careful. Don’t deny outright. Never deny anything outright, you give your hand away. Don’t say reason is evil – though some have gone that far and with astonishing success. Just say that reason is limited. That there’s something above it. What? You don’t have to be clear about it either. The field’s inexhaustible. ‘Instinct’ – ‘Feeling’ – ‘Revelation’ – ‘Divine Intuition’ – ‘Dialectic Materialism.’ If you get caught at some crucial point and somebody tells you that your doctrine doesn’t make sense – you’re ready for him. You tell him that there’s something above sense. That here he must not try to think, he must feel. He must believe. Suspend reason and you play it deuces wild. Anything goes in any manner you wish whenever you need it. You’ve got him. Can you rule a thinking man? We don’t want any thinking men.”

My question is: how do we still work to maintain a society that has the values that we want to see? Can we still be reasonable and listen to facts to make informed decisions? How do we discuss these topics with people who rely on their feelings and beliefs to make their decisions instead of facts? Especially when these decisions have such a profound impact on the current state of society and the future we want to create for ourselves and those who come after us.



(If you’re commenting on this and you’re being rude, I’ll delete it. What’s ‘rude’? It depends on how I feel. ;) )