Before we get any further, I want to let you know that my aim is not to offend.  I’ve read several of her books and enjoyed them well enough (although I will admit to being much more of a Tolkeiniac).  However, if you are a “true believer” in her “philosophy” I really recommend that you read a little more philosophy and biology and, maybe, get over yourself a little.  But, really, I’m more in awe of the results of her writing than anything else.  That’s why while I don’t consider her a philosopher and think that following the prescriptions in her books leads to destruction and misery (for all even, maybe especially, “Gault” – a funny – though not “ha, ha” funny aside, interesting how many “Gauliacs” are feeding at the public trough), that she was one of the important people of the 20th century.  Her, Schmitt, Hyack all put a gloss on selfishness and lying that truly was/is indicative of the age.  Unbelievably destructive (and really against our natures as social animals) but popular in times of change and fear.

Let’s start with a definition of terms.  I’ve found that’s usually the main cause of disagreements.  People associate different values (either quantitative or qualitative) to a term and assume that others associate the same value to the term.  So, let’s be careful here.  As you may have been able to tell, I don’t think much of Ayn Rand’s “philosophy”, but merely saying that she sold a bunch of juvenile drivel as a “philosophy” is to assume that’s what her goal was: to be a “serious philosopher”.  I contend that wasn’t her goal.

Think about her.  Her writing reflects, accurately, I think, a bitter dispossessed spoiled rich girl with a daddy complex.  So, why was she a genius?  She had the ability to recognize this and to make it work for her.  Made it work for her in a couple of interesting ways.  She got money, fame, sycophants, power, and revenge.  Was she a genius as a philosopher? No, of course not.  But, she wrote some simplistic books designed to feed on bookish (her format), hard working (length), members of the in-crowd (white males), who feel alienated (her “characters” are “great men who are taken advantage of by “lessers”). By using these books, she became the grand dame of a circle that came to worship and fuck her (not metaphorically, but actually and physically – check out her biography, pretty wild) and take over and destroy the world financial system.

I am not contending that the destruction of the financial system was her goal, I don’t think that she cared about the result of the adoption of her stories.  No, I think that was the result of people actually taking her seriously and following her advice.  Her goal, or result anyway, was to feed the ego of the white boys and get love, money, and fuck over the commies.  I don’t think that she was able to view the result of the adoption of her stories by the financial “elite”.  I could well be wrong.  I may not be giving her enough credit.  Maybe she knew that following the advice that her books gave would lead to destruction, maybe it was another final way that she could fuck over the men she used.  I don’t really know enough about her to make that decisions, and I’m not interested enough to learn enough about her to get there.  But, it is interesting to watch her greatest disciple and sycophant and fuck-buddy (literally) twisting in the wind in the ruins of the destruction that he wrought.  What is hysterical (and what shows the amazing power of the mind not to accept what it doesn’t want to learn) is that the people who are designed to be made to feel better by her books are still unable to learn anything and are still “going Gault”.

By these books, she was able to attain her goals (revenge on the proletariat who took away her “right” to her daddy’s rich Russian existence, money, fame, accollates (see Alan Greenspan), and weird sex.  Pretty fucking genius to recognize what would turn on disgruntled white boys who, while not super-geniuses (or at least not very self-aware), were smart enough to get ahead, and hard working enough as well and feed them some drivel and keep it going for generations.

She is sometimes compared to Tolkein because they both appealed to a similar group: somewhat alienated white male teens.  But, Rand was much more of a genius.  Tolkein merely updated, and told fairly well, the types of stories that have been popular with people for thousands of years.  You can see homages to Beowulf and other stories throughout his stories as well as the basic battles with good and evil.  Rand, though, appeals not to the near universal good/evil, hero ethos, but rather to a sense of entitlement and superiority that has rarely been tapped in such “popular” fora.  Christ, they made Hollywood movies of her stuff within years of publication.  It took half a century for Tolkein to really make it to the silver screen and Beowulf hasn’t (successfully) yet.

No, Ayn Rand was the result of the 20th century as well as one of it’s most important and destructive figures.  Not bad for a nasty spoiled rich girl.

A couple of days ago I say a video clip tweeted by William Gibson of a Brit chat show with Bryan Cox as the guest.  Bryan Cox, an eminent astrophysicist was talking about “before the big bang”, “god”, etc with the host.  Cox said something that I think gets to my philosophical issue.  He said that he is intrigued by the questions, and is comfortable not knowing the answers (or, indeed, never knowing the answers).

This fits into my question because he is staking himself as one of the people who cares and thinks about the big issues: he’s not one of those who don’t think about a philosophy and he is searching for the answers (he isn’t one who “knows” the answer), but, what is different is that he is comfortable about not knowing.

Are all scientists like that?  Is that a difference between philosophy and science?  Philosophers think that they can have all the answers and many (some) think that they have the answers but scientists are less likely to think that they have the answer?  Or does everyone think that what they “know” is true?  A lot of scientists seem to “know” a lot.  However, when I hear scientists say what they know, careful scientists say they “know” what isn’t right, not necessarily what is.  That’s how they can be certain that there is no “biblical-style” god, but do not know (and don’t care) whether there is a god outside of the universe.

I feel a need to know what preceded the big bang, Cox, as a representative of scientists, seems interested in the question, but is happy to see/know that it may be/is an impossible thing to know.

Is it that scientists can see better what is an “impossible” thing to know and are comfortable not knowing and philosophers want to know the unknowable?

Here is a not big idea.  We are completely limited by our perceptions of  ”reality”.  This came to me this morning when I was thinking about dimensions.  I’m not smart enough or educated enough to conceptualize those more than the fourth.  But, as you think about the dimensions, the ability to move around increases with each additional dimension.  With one, you can move two ways, with two you can move throughout 360 degrees, with three anyway within a spherical direction.  And, we perceive that.  But, when we get to the fourth dimension, we are limited to see it move in only one direction!  We see is as more limited that even the first dimension.

Is the fourth dimension  merely an affect of/on the three spacial dimensions?  Or, is it our inability to really see the reality of the dimensions?  This is important because, at least outside of some of the sciences, we limit our philosophy and vision to only our perceptions including a one “dimension” unidirectional time.

Is our inability to find an acceptable/comfortable philosophy merely a recognition that our perceptions divorce us from reality to such an important and fundamental way that we really can’t “know” anything.  Indeed, are the scientists right that we can only “know” that which is “wrong”.

So, today I’ve got work and then the girl’s conferences.  Ah, well.  More tomorrow. Today I’m not writing enough!

Getting ready for dinner out (sushi and chocolate fondue) with some friends. The dinner is to thank us for watching their two eldest kids while the baby was being born a couple of months ago. The dinner and thanks are totally unnecessary, it was a pleasure watching Rowan and Miran, they are very sweet and Jordan and Micayla love them. But, sushi and chocolate fondue, who can argue? I can’t.

Fun day today, had a nice swim and then some crossword puzzle time, yard work, and reading philosophy. Am I a weirdo? I think not. The yard work was especially nice to do. More tomorrow.

Also, the kids and the neighbor kids were playing over here all afternoon. Nice, I think that they are all at the age where they can run around with only a little parental supervision.

Hmm, how am I feeling today? Very tense all morning and still pretty tense. I know that I’ll miss it, but geez, the kids never shut the f up !!!!

I still have to work with Jordan on meditating and maybe it will get me meditating again. I need to do something. I do have to say that writing this post on the iPhone has been easier than I expected. Maybe more real blogging soon.

Emailed Anne yesterday. If she got it(there was some issue sending it) then I think our discussion has reached a good point and an end. We’re basically agreeing to disagree. I think that she is suffering from baby boomer racism. The racism that was so “natural” and “noncontroversial” when the boomers were growing up that even liberals have it and don’t even notice it.

She thinks that I don’t live in the real world and have all of this condecending liberal guilt.

Well, off to dinner. Ta.

Whew, today is why I wanted to pay attention to how I am doing and how productive I am every day.

Today I’ve felt very tense and ill at ease.  I feel like I’ve been very unproductive, but I see a lot of things accomplished (ok, not that many – but the students and faculty are happy, so who’s to complain).

I’m not sure what’s holding me back, I have interest and energy, but I’m very very unfocused.  Tense and unfocused – fun.  Sometimes this hits me, I just can’t do anything, but if it has to get done, it does.  Is this normal and am I being overly harsh?  Does this happen to everyone?  Or is this unique to me.  I tend to think that it’s the former, but what do I know?

Anyhow, saw an interesting piece on Colbert yesterday (don’t know when it was from exactly, this week, though) and apropos my conversation with Anne, an historian who looked African American was on pitching her book on the history of white people, the history of the idea of the white race.  So, Stephen starts the interview, as is his wont, by asking her what race she is since he “doesn’t see race.”  ”She said, well, I have a PhD.”  Exactly my point.

Marlena said that it sounded like and interesting book, and I agree.

So, this weekend I’ll work on relaxing, being happier with myself (smiling, feel good about me), yard work, meditating, working out.  In short yard work and hanging out.  Oh, and maybe a little basketball.

I’ve been thinking about my emotional control, or lack of it.  I’ve been emailing with Anne and talking about race and such.  I’ve been getting very pissed off and it shows.  This is a constant refrain in my life, I have trouble with emotions, at least with regulating them.  That’s it, actually, it’s the regulation of them that is my problem.

So, what can I do to better regulate my emotions?

What I’ve done in my life so far: suppress.  I know that’s not healthy and when the emotions get strong they pop out.  This is not to say, of course, that one should never have or never show strong emotions, rather that one should have what society has deemed “proper emotional responses” and keep them within proper bounds and at proper times.

Is this why folks go nuts?  Is it that we all feel differently and are all supposed to fit in a one size fits all box?

Well, I would like to fit in the box or at least be able to discuss things without getting very emotional.  On yet a third hand, I also strongly feel that it makes not sense to discuss anything with anyone especially once you have stated a position.  People in our society do not change their minds.  Once they’ve staked to something, they own it and can not change their minds without admitting to deeper things about themselves.  This is not to say that these opinions are actually indicative of deeper things or really, necessarily mean much, often they are positions adopted in a blink and in response to some minor, usually emotional, cue.  But, once adopted or owned, people make a commitment to it and will not be convinced.

That is a major problem in this society.  Another, that I’m sure that I’ll get to some time is the fact that people feel like they are owed what has existed in their memory.  Once one method works, it is supposed to work forever.  This is the basis of the fear of change.  That might have been ok for much of history, but not any more.

Now, work

So, I’m listening to Howlin’ Wolf on my employer’s Naxos Account.  Wonderful.

I’ve been having a conversation about race recently and it’s put me in mind of a couple of things.  First, here’s where I’m starting.  Biologically, race doesn’t exist.  Of course it exists socially.  We can’t say anything meaningful about a group as large and diverse as a “race”.  Also, genetics plays a huge role in determining the skills abilities, and personality that a person has.  So, while we can’t say anything meaningful about a race, we can about a small group of people with common ancestry.  (for example, we can’t say (and be accurate) that black people are good long distance runners, but we can say that east Africans produce more highly skilled long distance runners than the size of the population would lead one to believe.  See, a difference – this small group with a fairly homogeneous gene pool produces long distance runners.  Why? Probably culture, circumstance, and genetics.  But this is a small enough group and a homogeneous enough gene pool so that a statement like that is probably true enough as to have some meaning.)   Also, when I say that we can’t say anything meaningful about race, that isn’t quite true.  Insofar as nurture affects someone, then the treatment that they and their forebears experienced does create a culture that certainly has a major impact on the behavior of the individual.

What I think is really interesting is the strength with which people hold onto race.  Not their own, no judging others by race.  We have defined race, this otherness by features that are obvious at first glance.  Since the “race differences” are obvious at first glance and since race has played such a central role in US history, we think of it as immutable and natural.

However, differentiation of others (attributing common skills, abilities, etc) to others based on skin color is a relatively recent phenomenon.  It dates only from the late seventeenth century.  That is obviously not to say that people before then didn’t notice that other people looked different, no what was new was defining people who looked certain ways as being all alike and as sharing much more than skin color.  Why did people start to make this differentiation?

Like most things in the modern world it has to do with money.  The habit started with the Atlantic slave trade to the sugar islands.  When the British started to run the Caribbean islands as major sugar operations (a process that is very, very strenuous and uses a lot of human power), they rounded up the native population and worked them.  Unfortunately, for the British, they died quickly (mainly due to susceptibility to new diseases but also by being worked to death).  So, in looking for new workers, the British (and other Europeans who were also finding that their easily available workforce of natives was dying too fast) looked to Africa.  Here were people who had been exposed to the same diseases and were therefore less likely to die from disease and who were available to buy fairly cheaply.  So they started importing them.  The treatment was so bad and protestantism highlighted the value of the individual too much, so that some planters and other British civilians began to get cold feet.  Thus, “race” was invented.  All of the old saws used later come from this period.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, South Carolina was founded by British sugar islanders and they set up the exact same system there as in the islands.  As the nineteenth century was dawning, sugar production in South Carolina was in a decline and there was the beginning of a recognition of the humanity of the slave.  Many, even in the deep south were expecting emancipation (with understandable fear based on the demographics and the horrible past treatment of the slaves).  But, from the slave-owners perspective, at the nick of time, Eli Whitney developed the cotton gin and cotton farming (another enterprise that required huge labor pool and that would be unprofitable if people had to be paid) picked up and spread throughout what we now think of as the deep south.

So, race as a meaningful social caste is recent.  So is nationality.  Nationality dates from about the same time as race (the late seventeenth century).  As people began to have more say in the operation of the “state” they began to connect to others who lived in the same place and shared some other habits.  Prior to this time, people were the subject of some person and maybe shared religion, language, food, and other cultural connections.  As a state developed and as it grew (all capitalist enterprises must keep growing or they die) to include other religions, languages, etc. those in power were looking for another identity that could draw people together.  So, instead of being a Breton, you were French and so were the Gascons, etc.  As with race, many groups plopped into a nation didn’t share much (though of course race differentiates by an obviously visible difference), but the idea of “nation” brought them together and created another “other”.

Really, that’s what all of this is about, the creation of “others” to keep people in line.  If you want to control people, the easiest way is to unite them against the “other” and to tell them that they are superior.  All religions have been doing this since time immemorial.  Slave-owners did this as an excuse for enslaving people and as a weapon against the emancipating religious movements.  Nations do this as well.

The reason that different nations pursue a national identity can differ from one nation to another.  Often the group in power uses it to maintain power, fight the common enemy.  Other times, often in capitalist societies, it is used to weaken cross-border cooperation among people with similar economic or social interests.

Basically, whenever you hear about an “other” or that some group is different, look for whomever will benefit by the division.  They are creating and manipulating the differences to advance their specific interests at the cost of the interest of those being divided.

Clearly this habit of division is very very old.  It has been going on for at least all of recorded human history and probably longer.  What we aren’t amazed enough about is how easily “differences” can be created and used.  The idea of race or nationality as being something that leads to a meaningful difference among people is very, very recent, and yet, in 350 years it becomes so ingrained that people think that it is TRUTH.

Weird.