Feb
24th
2013
Writing tip: Know whom you're taking advice from · 6:30am Feb 24th, 2013
Some years back, I was fussing to [Lester del Rey] about finding an idea for a story that hadn't been used before. I wanted something new and original. He gave me one of his patented smiles--the ones that always made him look like a cross between your kindly uncle and Jack Nicholson in The Shining--and told me in no uncertain terms that new ideas did not come along that often and that when they did, they came in disguise. It was better to take old, established ideas and just turn them over and over in your mind until you found a new way to look at them.
- Terry Brooks, author of The Lord of the Rings The Sword of Shannara
(You are currently taking writing advice from an evil talking horse.)
I have a very large salt shaker, but I'm always careful to count the individual grains I put inside it.
Also, that advice is bullshit.
Yeah Sword of Shannara. I read every book.
Now, The Word and Void / Genesis of Shannara... Fuck me sideways. That was an EXPERIENCE.
Yes, but it's good advice. After all, we write in an environment where my favorite stories include watching paint dry, making travel reservations, making tea , and disliking tea. Why not take writing advice from an evil talking horse? Nothing can go wrong.
Fate played chess with Destiny. Normal mortals played a game they called chess, but it compared to Fate’s game much like a candle can be compared to the sun. Several wealthy or noble ponies had giant chessboards in their gardens with life-sized pieces for entertainment; Fate preferred to play with larger-than-life pieces, preferably nobles with giant chessboards in their gardens. Their games tended to blur together; Destiny was a strong but fickle opponent with a powerful ground game and grand long-reaching strategy, but Fate had an unpredictable streak that tended to make Destiny throw the board and scatter the pieces in frustration.
“...nothing can go wrong.”
Both immortal entities turned their attentions to a remote corner of their board in contemplation.
“Again? Is that one of your pieces this time?” asked Destiny.
“No,” said Fate with a frown. “Would you terribly mind if I were to...” She paused over the board and glanced back at her opponent.
Hey, listening to an evil talking horse made me into the writer I am today!
Endorsement or dire warning? And why can't it be both?
But regarding the advice, while it did lead to the Sword of Shannara[1] which is...yeah, it does make you wonder what constitutes an original idea? It's not a rhetorical question -- I honestly don't know. Lifting the plot, setting, and characters wholesale, that's plagiarism, and is a fairly simple affair to spot. But how much must be new to be original? Is juxtaposing two old ideas in a new way original? How about writing an old tale using a new technique?
[1] Fun[2] fact: as a young lad of but a dozen summers I thought epic fantasy to be just about the finest thing that could be written and I read it all voraciously. Good stuff[3], okay-ish stuff[4], and some fairly horrible stuff[5], but even then, even then my literary sense was evolved enough to know that the Sword of Shannara was, shall we say, derivative.
[2] Warning: Fun not guaranteed. Offer void in Nebraska. May contain nuts.
[3] Tolkien, Ursula K. LeGuin, that sort of thing.
[4] David Eddings. Hey I was--what's the felicitous phrase--"in my younger and more vulnerable years."
[5] D&D novels. Why yes, the shame does burn.
860599 Also, that advice is bullshit.
That's the point.
860653
t.qkme.me/368n9h.jpg
860652
This tale is familiar to me. I also read Terry Brooks, David Eddings, Ursula K. LeGuin, etc. Sadly, I was apparently more vulnerable if no younger. I thought Terry Brooks and David Eddings were great. Same for... um... Piers Anthony and Terry Goodkind. Then, at about 16, someone made me read Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" and it changed my life.
By which I mean, I finally cottoned onto the fact that people were telling me to read things best left on the second-hand bookstore shelf. Or in cast-off refrigerator carcasses left by the side of the road. Now I read Iain M. Banks.
860670
Terry Goodkind made me break out in hives.
But I, uh...I read a fair bit of Piers Anthony.
Uh-oh.
I once contemplated writing a Culture/MLP crossover, you'd be pleased to know. Based on a single line in the Dramatis Personae section of Consider Phlebias, no less.
Oh my. Ponies + The Culture.
I suspect the demand for that is very low. But the potential for awesomeness is very, very high. I can imagine recasting Rarity as the lead in The Player of Games, with Robo-Spike as Sprant Flere-Imsaho Wu-Handrahen Xato Trabiti.
860691, 860670
No matter what you say, I thoroughly enjoyed Piers Anthony. Terry Goodkind made me want to stab things.
These days it's Jim Butcher, Laurel K. Hamilton, Peter Hamilton, Issac Asimov, Spider Robinson, etc.
And don't harp too hard on D&D novels. Some of them had decent paragraphs.
860652
I own no less than ten Dragonlance books. Tears of the Night Sky and The Silver Stair are on a shelf four feet away. Shame, contrarily, is camped out off the New Jersey Turnpike; take from what what you will.
860670
Oh, I like you. Yes indeed.
And yes, that is terrible advice. I mean, damn. Someone needs to have been smacked for that.
860747
I just want an excuse to name a Psychopath-class Rapid Offensive Unit, the ROU Love And Tolerance. I'm easy to amuse, sometimes.
860756
Finder's Stone was readable, as I recall. The rest...less so.
860797
Then you, sir, are a better man than yours truly. I remember my younger ever-so-fanboyish days and I swear, I cringe.
Regarding Ayn Rand, well, there's always that old old quote: "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves Orcs."
860797 860830
Odd as this is, I am actually going to speak up in (partial) defense of Ayn Rand...
I was in a pretty bad place at the time it got recommended to me, and I quite enjoyed Anthem when I read it in school (books you're assigned in school that turn out to be entertaining are rare creatures). And the fact of the matter is, it DID change my life, and not only by teaching me to be more careful with what I read. At the time, I actually quite enjoyed it, and there were some good things I took away from it. The value of individual initiative and pursuing your own goals, whether or not society agrees with you.
But – and for this, I think I probably have to credit my parents for raising me well – I found parts of it so wildly illogical that I had to acknowledge, early on, that reading Ayn Rand was a bit like panning for nuggets of gold in the sewers of New York. I mean, when you don't pick and choose, the overarching message isn't so much, "believe in yourself and follow your dreams". It's more, "all social organization is evil, only the individual is good, and individualism can be laid down in a precisely point-by-point manner which I've handily provided for you; and if you don't think individualism means fierce adherence to my dogma, then you're not really an individual and you should be thrown on the scrap heap of history."
Possibly offensive message to follow in tiny-text. If you don't agree with my views on Ayn Rand and Objectivism, please don't bother with the following.
Perhaps unsurprisingly (and to risk open mention of politics on the interwebs: oh no, Hitler!), all of this made me horrified at the idea of Paul Ryan as Vice President. He's effectively an avowed sociopath and intellectual lightweight.
860853 I can agree with a lot of that. I end up talking about Ayn Rand a lot more than I ever would have expected these days, mostly in regard to deconstructing her arguments on the simple basis that their legitimacy is predicated on a dystopian world of tyrannical government. Under such conditions, her ideas have some merit. But under reality, they're basically sociopathy.
Also, hoorah to small text. Yes, a few months ago, there was some eye-twitching "they can't...that can't really be that dumb. These people can't get elected. ...Can they?" Thankfully, that turned out.
860853
Your ability to be even-handed about this does you credit. You are right, of course, while the message woven throughout the books is hideous beyond reckoning, it is entirely possible to glean something of worth from it. If only a negative example. And that you have managed to do so is, again, to your credit.
My own bile regarding the books is, as such things often are, born of an obscure sort of fear. I was once a bookish teenage nerd, without many friends, and much taken with my own cleverness[1]. And had I found those books, as some of my friends did, and if I had found them at a particularly low point in my life...well. The phrase "There but for the grace of God go I" comes to mind.
[1] I am now a bookish twentysomething nerd without many friends and with the entrenched belief that I'm dumber than a box of rocks. Some may call this an improvement.
860898
I follow USA politics. Religiously. Partly because it is useful to know what the planetary hegemon is up to, partly out of a morbid fascination. This last election season was fascinating.
I have to admit a fondness for Eddings. He may have spent his career writing the same three books over and over again, but at least they were reasonably skilfully done. The dialogue was snappy (the first time I read it) and the characters, while entirely two dimensional, were at least interesting enough to watch.
Brooks is just painful.
860652
The fact that the Bible says that there is nothing new under the sun is somewhat telling.
Also, I clearly don't read enough. I only recognize half the mentioned authors and I have read NONE of this. Even my knowledge of Atlas Shrugged is second hand. Although I do know that Ayn Rand's philosophy runs totally counter to my own, so I will likely not read it.
I have read Raymond E. Feist.
Granted, I didn't start until AFTER playing the game Betrayal at Krondor....
Yeah, video games have had a, perhaps, inordinate influence on my development....
860951
I have to agree there. I read the Belgariad and the prequels and they really did manage to remain very readable. I suspect the deadpan-snarking by everyone (including the entity that was fate of the universe) helped. But by the end of them, I felt myself wishing he would have something actually bad happen to these characters. They never, ever seemed to face up against anyone who was in their league.
I guess what I learned was sometimes, you gotta hate on your characters, even if you like them. Though love, baby.
PS: Fun Eddings anti-drinking game. Drink whenever a female character is described as being unattractive in any way. Tragic disfigurement of a former beauty doesn't count.
You'll be stone cold sober.
860830
That's true. A couple of the Elminster books were good, if only passably.
860998
You have to spend 10 chapters making the character miserable before it feels right say that they are finally happy (at which point you push back from the keyboard and cheer). I think if an author could have the opportunity to step into the book and meet their character the author should decline. Upon meeting your creation you will have some 'splainin' to do.
Getting back to the topic of ideas, why are we obsessed with the ideas? Ideas are the easy part.
To be fair, Brooks' world building was pretty good (not all that original, but good); it was mostly his plots and characters which were utterly derivative.
860998
The Eddings books used to be a guilty pleasure (I love me some snark) but they soon came to grate on me for a thousand reasons. Those you say, of course, are a big part[1] but I also really hated the way the books described relationships: The woman chases the man who is comically oblivious. Always. And the men must act as children so that the women may tut disapprovingly and clean up their whoopsies.
This is not a healthy view of relationships.
That being said I've read the Belgariad, the Malloreon, Ellenium, and Tamuli three times. That's sixteen books. No, I don't know why either. I'm just sick, I guess.
[1] I'm ridiculously soft-hearted. I still feel like a bastard for writing Twilight Sparkle Makes a Cup of Tea
860988
Well some of the names we've bandied about are not bad. Do give 'em a look. Feist...well. He's not bad, actually. And the game's pretty good, too.
861173
Have you read Kobalstromo's "Author?"
Regarding ideas, it's because we've been fed a wildly inaccurate vision of what writing is. You are supposed to be inspired and then writing the damned thing is trivial -- you just hammer away at an ancient looking typewriter[1] pausing from time to time to look tormented.
The fact that stories are built, frequently with revisions and rewrites, and frequently while arguing with your pre-readers, apparently doesn't make good cinema. You are either inspired, and write like a demon, or you aren't and you have writer's block. That's the popular-media spectrum of writing.
[1] Or scribble madly in a moleskin notebook.
860830 860670 860691 860756 Piers Anthony wrote one book which at the time (I was a teenager, so YMMV) I thought was one of the best I'd read: On a Pale Horse. I strongly suspect it was the inspiration for Pratchett's funnier, less-thought-provoking version of Death. I didn't have luck with his other books, but that one really stuck in my head.
860988 860670 860830 I have kinder feelings for Rand, because I'm
a sociopatha naturally sympathetic person. You're judging her works as if you were asking whether to adopt them as your personal philosophy. Actually implementing a society as she wished would have some bad consequences. Yet this kind of judgement is never applied in an even-handed way to utopian philosophies that seem "nice", such as (say) My Little Pony. No one rants about how Equestria lacks the proper infrastructure and motivations for economic and scientific development, because we feel Faust's intention was to be nice. Woman on the Edge of Time presented a utopia that would be far less workable and more hellish than Rand's, but no one speaks nearly as viciously of it as they do of Rand.(This is because we rarely evaluate people's ideas. We evaluate people. We don't ask whether their ideas would work; we ask whether we would like them over for dinner. All the criticism I've seen of Rand is some variation of "I don't like her" or "I don't like her values." No critic has ever asked whether Rand's ideas would work well to promote Rand's values, or tried to argue why Rand's values are bad.)
Democracy doesn't work by having reasonable people hammer out reasonable solutions. Reasonable people don't make good press and can't get elected. Democracy works by balancing one extremist group of crazy screaming morons against another extremist group of crazy screaming morons. Ayn Rand's ideas are the rallying point for a necessary and under-represented group.
861493
Well said, and this is something I've actually run across a bit. There are a couple people I know from high school who are unapologetic objectivists, to the hilt, and early on I realized that there was just no common ground for us to talk across and no reason to discuss things like politics. I tend to be naturally sympathetic to the human condition, and so I'm morally opposed to Rand's philosophy. But within a framework where one believes that the vast majority of humanity represents a kind of base, unthinking evil (or as 860898 put it, in scenarios "predicated on a dystopian world of tyrannical government"), they seem (do I feel comfortable with this characterization?) fairly sensible. As to whether her ideas are practicable, I don't know, but increasing levels of automation certainly make them more practicable.
I think your point on how we judge philosophies is very well taken. We do usually give more of a pass to utopian visions. But at the same time, I don't think My Little Pony is trying to force its viewpoint on us quite as strenuously as Rand does in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I think it is fair to judge her works as if we're being asked to adopt the philosophy they outline, because that was kind of the impetus behind them. My memory is that it took Rand more than a year to write John Galt's "A is A" speech, because she wanted to make it the clearest possible statement of her philosophy.
But let's turn the tables a bit and look at My Little Pony, because there certainly are people in this community who want to adopt it as a personal philosophy (e.g. "A Long Way from Equestria"). Actually, I'll go a bit further and even lump myself in with those people. I have similar feelings about the utopian ideas behind Doctor Who and Star Trek. Now certainly, there are lots of people who would just like to have a utopia and will jump on any utopian vision without considering what it entails. But I think instead of looking at the utopia, we're better off looking at the guiding principles behind various social visions. MLP has its elements of harmony. Doctor Who is strongly predicated on adventure and compassion. Star Trek, I feel, deals with a somewhat ill-defined notion of civilization and democratism.
For me, I like to look at these principles and think of how they would act as a reward structure. What if, instead of rewarding and celebrating the wealthiest and the most competitive, we turned our attention to those who are most adventuresome and compassionate? Or who exemplify ideals like kindness, generosity, loyalty, honesty, and... um... okay, fine, laughter and magic. What if those were the things our societies prized?
Well, as much as I like MLP, I have to admit that a culture-wide focus on the ideas behind the elements of harmony would probably result in some serious scientific and cultural stagnation. I'm not convinced it would make for a worse world, though. Adventure and compassion, on the other hand, do seem like they could be good motivating forces for scientific and social progress. Civilization and democratism could at least lead to some good art and culture, I'd think – and perhaps that's exactly why Star Trek is so enduring as an artistic and cultural artifact.
In general, though, I think none of the priniciples I've mentioned gets a big enough place in our current reward structure. And I think, very seriously, that we'd do well to sublimate our appreciation for aggressiveness and competitiveness a little in the way it has been for sports, and treat business more as sport in general. The great engine of capitalism is supposed to be competition, and yet capitalism is naturally inimical to competition. It's steady-state point is monopoly. I think we'd be much better off if we did more to balance the playing field for economic actors and tried to encourage competition rather than domination.
Anyway, it's a topic I find very interesting, so those are my... substantially more than two cents.
> The great engine of capitalism is supposed to be competition, and yet capitalism is naturally inimical to competition. It's steady-state point is monopoly.
Rand doesn't address the question of monopoly, and possibly considers it virtue rather than a problem. But is it capitalism that's inimical to competition, or libertarianism? Or just the opposite, a governmental regulatory system? In biotechnology, which is my field at the moment, government regulation is the main force preventing small startups. The actual startup cost for doing groundbreaking work in biotechnology and medical research is ridiculously small, tens of thousands of dollars; the cost of satisfying the necessary governmental regulations before you can sell your product and make money runs into the billions.
861493
I think you're wrong. I think you underestimate the allure of political strict-daddy fantasies, the aching need to feel 'savvy', the appeal of just world ideas and the guiltless pleasures of hippie punching. Maybe we gloss over it in our fiction, but IRL we're ruled by people who think we live in the best of all possible worlds, that economics is a morality play and that 'no pain no gain' is the great political slogan of our times.
Also, you're very wrong about criticism of Ayn Rand. I mean sure, it's fun to bring up the fact that she was a lunatic who lusted after one of the most horrific child murderers in America, but plenty of people have gone into great detail about why her values are awful and why her books are terrible vehicles for these values.
The more I think about it the more I find myself sympathizing with Brooks'. The Lord of the Rings is such a great tale, who wouldn't want to write that? But you mustn't ignore the voice in the back of your head screaming "It's been done, don't do it again unless you can write the best version ever!" Brooks' seems to have been unable to even hear that voice.
This should be very near and dear to us, as we have a similar, and similarly compelling, epic of our own. Haven't any of you thought about how cool it would be to gather a new group of pony friends and send them on another quest to gather the Elements of Harmony? Of all the story ideas our fandom has generated that should trigger the screaming "It's been done, don't do it unless you can do it best!!!" this is the only idea that even tempts me. Luckily, I have the self discipline not to write it. So far.
If you ever see one of my characters in danger of having to bear the Element of Magic you will know I've jumped the shark.
861636 You're right if we include politics. I've seen lots of bashing of Obama's health-care plan. In literature, not so much. I don't think the people at Fox News read the same books that I do. I'm confused, though; Rand's central idea is that the political strict daddy is a bad thing. That's her whole libertarian schtick in a nutshell. And "savvy" is ideologically neutral. Everybody wants to be savvy.
On the other hand, Lord of the Rings is horrifically conservative, and gets a free pass on everything, even playing unapologetically on the notion of a "rightful king".
I don't think I've read any written critiques of Rand; I've just talked to a lot of people and heard their opinions. When talking about Rand, everyone races each other to say the nastiest things they can about her first, to prove that they're nice people. You're not allowed to give Rand's ideas a fair shake in a university or a research lab (unless it's in the economics department at Harvard or George Mason). Doing so proves you're a bad person. People will stare at you if you merely fail to chime in with a derogatory comment. It reminds me of stories of show trials during the days of the Red Guard.
Nobody ever really argues, formally, for or against someone's values. Political arguments generally amount to saying that your opponents are bad people who want bad things. To argue that a set of values is good, you need to tell a story. That's why Rand wrote fiction. LeGuin's story "The Ones who Walked Away from Omelas" (and my disappointing ponification of it) is a counter-argument.
861493
Well, as I said, the bulk of my knowledge about Ms. Rand and Atlas is second hand.
The thing is, despite the fact I tend to identify myself as a deeply bitter and cynical old man, in all honesty I have never quite let go of the, admittedly battered, core of my youthful idealism. Whereas Ms. Rand kind of strikes me as someone who wants to be idealistic, but is at core, deeply bitter and cynical. Though not for good reason considering the environment she grew up in.
Also, I would say Pratchett's death can be pretty thought provoking at times. I spent a good deal of time lost in introspection after reading Reaper Man.
861354
That and Ultima Underworld.
BaK is one of my all time favorite western RPGs.
861635
I do think that capitalism is itself inimical to competition, though I don't consider libertarianism or authoritarianism to be so in any direct sense. I think libertarianism often winds up being anti-competitive, simply by way of letting capitalism do its thing, but I think you make a good case for authoritarianism discouraging it by providing barriers to entry.
My point, though, was grounded on the fact that any purely capitalistic actor necessarily seeks to maximize profits, and there is no better way to maximize profits than to have total control of an industry, with the ability to set prices at whatever the market will bear instead of being forced to lower prices to compete with other, potentially more efficient, actors. Even in an ideal world where all consumers have perfect information and choose to vote with their money, monopoly is still the best strategy everywhere except in sectors where spending is truly elective (cf. if Hasbro gets a monopoly, people can stop buying toys; if Exxon-Mobil gets a monopoly, people have to pay them or the entire economy collapses), simply because it allows an economic actor to create its own barriers to entry with economies of scale. Consumers would have to overwhelmingly take a long-term anti-monopolistic strategy to keep competitors in business.
In any case, my point with the discussion of capitalism was primarily to highlight that what's widely seen as the great boon of the system is something the system itself opposes, thanks to the reward structure capitalism creates. I believe we'd be better off working to reward behaviors we actually want to encourage, rather than proxies which might get us close. So I find encouraging competitiveness uniformly preferable to encouraging greed.
That's all a little afield from the Ayn Rand discussion, of course. So to get back to that...
I also find this deeply disturbing, and it matches my own experience well. I'm perfectly happy to trash-talk Rand, because I personally think that the behaviors she would have us reward lead to a vision of society that, while perhaps appealing to her, is pretty antithetical to my world-view. But the idea that her ideas are somehow beyond debate? No, I think they're very debatable, but not on terms most people seem comfortable debating.
I'm not trying to disagree with you here, I'm pointing out that I think a large part of the reason there's such a drive to attack her personally, such a drive for conformity in disapproval, is because many people don't feel comfortable with the idea that we can sit down and say one person's idea of morality is better than another's. I disagree. I think morality is a topic that desperately needs more discussion: issues of what it is we want from our world and our societies. It's civically irresponsible not to have those sorts of discussions. It's also why I try not to hit Ayn Rand with ad hominems. To me, there's really nothing worse that can be said about her than that she'll forever be tarred with her own ideas.
But the notion that we should just shun her? That her ideas are so far beyond the pale that they don't merit reasoned debate? Among intelligent people, everything should merit reasoned debate. Refusing to take an idea seriously is a way of giving that idea its own power, acknowledging that you don't know how to fight it. Science and religion arguments are replete with this sort of problem. "Oh, global warming's just a hoax; we don't need to actually think about the data." "Oh, Christianity's just a bunch of otherwise-murderous-crusadey people pretending there's a sky daddy who will grant their wishes."
I don't think it's true that nobody ever argues for or against someone else's values, but I do think there's a real dearth of it, especially given that in many contexts, those are the only arguments that really make any sense. I think we're always better off saying, "Let's game out what would happen if we followed these ideas through and looked at where we'd likely wind up as a result, then evaluate the degree to which we approve of that state." Which is probably why I keep typing on about this, because I think it was excellent of you to point out that we don't do enough of this, with Ayn Rand, or My Little Pony, or whatever else comes up.
861493
Regarding Piers Anthony -- I suspect I only read what might be considered his lesser work. Certainly the Apprentice-Adept series isn't...isn't very good, let's say.
Regarding Ayn Rand, ah, damn, what a can of worms. Let's take it from the top:
1. My Little Pony isn't taken by anyone on Earth as a reasonable way to describe a functioning society. And, besides, step one in putting it into practice is 'turn everyone into cartoon horses' and step two is 'gain control of the Sun and Moon.' I'm always suspicious of any utopia presented to me -- especially in literature where the power to gloss over details is tremendous. One of the reason I like Banks so much is that he paints a near-utopia and then spends book after book poking holes in it.
2. I don't actually know that much about Ayn Rand the person. By all accounts she was dreadful in her personal life, but that's not really all that relevant to the matter at hand.
3. I don't like her books. I've never managed to power through one entirely (I am weak, I admit) but they make me bristle. I hate books that try to convert me to anything. I'm left-leaning myself[1] but I've come into contact with all manner of literature that tried to sell me the idea of communism[2] and from an early age it made me bare my teeth and hiss. It feels manipulative and false, as do all such books. It's easy to be right, after all, when as a writer you control the universe completely, as a God would.
4. I think her ideas are corrosive. Any Total Solution to the human condition, even variants of socialism I'm personally partial to, are at best hideously dangerous. Humanity is complex and trying to hammer through any one model of economics and morality is going to cause serious trouble. That being said, her ideas, strike me as particularly foul. Not only do I find them morally repugnant[3], but I suspect they are intellectually bankrupt, too. It demands a state[4] and a strong one, too, but it circumscribes its function in a very curious way creating something that's half-anarchism and half-minarchism.
5. More importantly, I think the proponents of her ideas are corrosive. I can see the necessity for a voice in the general discussion opposing the endless expansion of state power[5], and that this voice can come from a number of perspectives some of which I do not share[6]. That's no problem. Democracy demands a plurality of ideas -- and some of those ideas must come from people ranting in the streets, as it were. But that's not what the average Rand supporter is like, at all. So when people rail against Rand, what provokes a majority of their ire is, in fact, the various libertarians they've met and been annoyed by. The common interpretation of Rand's views[7] appears to be "I've got mine, and you can go to hell."
6. Rand's supporters exist and have clout. Woman on the Edge of Time presents as utopian an absolutely hideous future for humanity[8] but I really don't think there's very many people who think that is a reasonable blueprint for the future of humanity. And what there is of such people has absolutely zero power. Rand fans, on the other hand, do exist[9] and some wield incredible power. Rand's Collective gave us Alan Greenspan, after all, and a very-nearly-Vice President.
7. I think I understand where you are coming from. I think I know you, at least a little bit. You've an instinct[10] to, whenever some notion is universally despised for chiefly emotional reasons, step up to its defense. You fear, and rightly so, may I add, that instinctual revulsion may deprive us of some good ideas or interesting insights. And that is a good way of looking at things, one that smacks of intellectual courage, but I feel compelled to point out that while Randian ideas are rejected for less than rational reasons, this does not make them instantly good. I think there's plenty of entirely reasonable ways to object to Randian ideas. Allow me to elaborate:
7a. Commonplace Objectivism is a term I'll use to describe the, often quite incoherent, beliefs of people who claim to be inspired by Ayn Rand. This is what this philosophy, in practice, is. And, I think it's not a point of contention that this Commonplace Objectivism is a fairly hideous prospect. This is what gave us Alan Greenspan and his ilk -- preaching a holy sort of capitalism while engaging in the most depraved forms of cronyism imaginable. It's also the intellectual opiate of choice for self-obsessed white cis-gendered heterosexual males of a certain worldview, based chiefly on a sort of holy selfishness and considering not a whit the demands of infrastructure or actually maintaining a civilization. These are ill-thought out, and not really worth discussing.
7b. Let Strict Objectivism be the version of the philosophy as described and that, I'll grant you, is at least a system with a level of cohesion and that might, in practice, be employed. Now firstly, there's the problem of goal. What is the end-goal of Objectivism? What does its utopia look like? The society I want is one in which every human being on Earth is as healthy, and as well fed as they can be under the circumstances, and where they are all equal in dignity and free to pursue their own personal growth and happiness as best they can. This society should also prevent people from harming each other in significant ways and should be so constructed as to provide long-term survival of humanity or an acceptable successor-form. This is a very very fuzzy definition but it suffices, I think. Now does Objectivism even want this? That's the first hurdle. If it doesn't, and wants something quite different[11] then it is a problem of personal moral philosophy and is quite difficult to reconcile. The second hurdle is to see what Objectivism does want and what it will actually accomplish? How does it deal with ecology? Infrastructure? As you can see, one could make a reasoned debate about this without calling upon niceness at all.
7c. Implemented Objectivism can be a catch-all for objectivist-inspired notions to be implemented here and now, not in some hypothetically organized semi-utopian society. These can be discussed on a case-by-case basis and are actually the most interesting. Especially since here, at long last, I can make common cause with certain branches of objectivist thought. Legalizing certain drugs? Probably a good idea. Ending foreign adventurism? Capital![12] Eliminating the state from the negotiation for and payment for healthcare? I am skeptical in the extreme. Eliminating Social Security? Why? And so on.
My point is that I think you can have a reasonable discussion about Randian thought should you take care to find a proponent who's in any way reasonable. I'd gladly have such a discussion, in fact.
[1] By European standards, I mean. American political parlance doesn't really have a word for me.
[2] My country used to be communist, as you may imagine.
[3] I must point out that this is a factor of emotion. They feel wrong. It can also be demonstrated that they don't work, but that's not what I'm talking about.
[4] No property -- no capitalism, and all property is a state-guaranteed monopoly on a certain resource.
[5] There was a subvariant of communism, actually, that saw as it goal the dissolution of the sate to the barest minimum, replacing as much of its functions with local autogestion and democracy.
[6] I'm disinclined to believe that economic freedoms are fundamental human rights, or at least, as fundamental as, say, healthcare.
[7] Which she may, or may not have shared.
[8] I've a sneaking suspicion that the people who promote an agrarian utopia don't seem to understand what subsistence farming looks like and what that means for society.
[9] And if you hang out on the 'net, appear to be present in droves.
[10] Well, more like a habit you've trained yourself to adopt.
[11] I never understood -- what are the non-Supermen supposed to do in a Randian society? Find happiness in service? Die?
[12] Pun intended. Sorry. Things were getting a wee bit too serious.
861606
Regarding your first point, yes, it is tricky sometimes to talk in such circumstances -- there doesn't appear to be any common moral ground between certain proponents of objectivism and, say, me.
862236
The background for TLOTR is horrible, this is true. It's conservative, monarchist, anti-enlightenment piffle. But the book doesn't try to convert you and that is one of its best features. You can read it as an artifact of its time and its author, a conservative, prudish Oxford don without any conception of his own privilege. Much like you can read Greek myths where slavery was, say, an accepted fact.
Books like Rand's are almost tracts and are built to convert you to a certain way of thinking -- they aren't fiction that's merely informed (as all fiction is) by the environment that created it, viz. the inside of some poor writer's head.
862762
I agree with you, regarding your central point. Conformity of thought is dangerous, but I don't think discussing Ayn Rand is something that never happens. It is rare, of course, but it's rare as much as because of a reprehensible automatic shunning, as because most people who'd debate her ideas just don't want to pay taxes. I've heard some reasonable arguments for certain variants of capitalism even though I, personally, am not a fan.
862236
See, I think Rand's work is fundamentally built around the concept of an authoritarian daddy figure, though not in the usual sense.
Batman is a classic authoritarian father archtype. Batman knows best, so much so that he's near omnipotent. In the Batverse, society is composed of moral and social children: people are either vicious children who must be disciplined for their transgressions, callous and lazy children who allow the vicious ones to roam free (and must be chastised by Batman, and have their moral weakness made bright and clear), and the fragile children who must be sheltered from the predations of the first group and the neglect of the second. In The Dark Knight Returns, the seminal Batman work, Gotham fell into chaos when Batman was away. When he comes back to restore discipline, the rowdy children fight him and get their spankings. The lazy uncaring ones bitch and moan about 'civil rights,' like a twelve year old whining that he can't vote for more ice cream and later bed times. The fragile ones, though, they know that Batman is good and right and will protect them. The children can whine and kick and bite and scream, but Daddy Batman will bring them to heel no matter how much work it takes, because Daddy will never abandon his kids, even if they're cranky and push him away.
John Galt (and architect john galt and copper baron john galt) are fathers too, but not like Batman. John Galt has no love for his children, for they are stupid, venial sprogs of questionable parentage who understand nothing and act like entitled shits. Now, if Daddy Galt is not interrupted while he's in the study, he'll let the children stay in the house. Hell, he'll even let them raid the fridge and order from Netflix; he's got his own things going on, booting them out would take effort, and as long as they toe the line he'll let them mooch.
But — but — Daddy Galt does not love you, little children. He dislikes you, and barely tolerates you. If you push too hard, whine too loud or loot too much; if you disrupt his work or worst of all, if you dare get in his way, he no longer take your shit. He won't kick you out. He'll move house and take all his stuff, leave you without food or utilities or your comforts that you took from him. Your whining and mooching will not stop the sheriffs from kicking you out of the foreclosed house, nor the cold seeping through your clothes as you sleep rough like you deserve to. Fuck with Daddy Galt, and Daddy Galt will abandon you.
Remember that you are a child, and that Daddy Galt is all powerful. If you try to protest his 'unfairness', if you band together in stupid clubs and play Calvinball with petty laws, he will simply ignore it. He does what he wants and takes what he wants. If he lusts after a woman, he rapes her; this is how he shows his love. When Daddy Galt finally stands up and says he's not going to take it any more, you have two choices: either be a Randian Superman yourself, or, well, who cares? You are a moocher who produces nothing of value. Produce a free-static-electricity-energy-machine or starve on the street like the hound you are.
Still, if you're not a superman and the producers haven't gone Galt yet, there may be hope for you yet. Please the supermen. Stay out of their way, obey their commands and do not displease them. You are still a wretch, but you might be allowed to bask in their glory a little longer.
TL; DR: I don't think Ayn Rand had any problem with the idea of a totalitarian, authoritarian government; only what it was called and who was on top.
862838
I'm not sure I agree with you. The reading you showcase is certainly possible, but I think it's not the intended one. There's an implication in the book and in the notion of Objectivism that we're supposed to identify with Galt, not the amorphous mass of parasites that make up the rest of humanity. In this wise, the non-supermen aren't fully human in the book, not really. They are a plot device. Spear-carriers. There to be vaguely antagonistic and then fade away. It sounds reprehensible, I know, but it's not uncommon in literature where you have the main cast, the supporting cast, and the others who are materially less important. Real life, of course, isn't like that, which is a big problem when you try to make an argument-by-novel.
862864
And I think that cuts to the heart of it. If your moral philosophy discounts the vast majority of the human race as worthless parasites whose lives are no more valuable than mold spores, it's not something really worth debating. I don't have all the time in the world. I don't feel the need to explain to Pre-millenial dispensationalists why the concept of god putting 99.9% of the population of the world ever into eternal hellfire is a bad thing, I don't feel the need to tell Khmer Rouge fanboys that agrarian societies suck balls, and I don't feel the need to take the 'moral' 'foundations' of randian sophistry with any level of seriousness.
Fimfiction:
Where a highly-trained writer who enjoys pony stories can come to tell others to be careful who they listen to, and precipitate a completely unrelated and protracted argument between other writers who like pony stories about the relative value of moral systems proposed by (celebrated?) authors who know nothing of pony stories. All in a civil, friendly, and thorough manner.
My god... what have we created?
862887
Of all the people I met online, the cleverest and the most polite were from the pony fandom. I'm not sure what that says about me, or, indeed, humanity in general.
862876
Don't get me wrong, I suspect I find the idea behind Objectivism as repugnant as you do, but I maintain that discounting the vast majority of humanity as foul parasites is not a necessary facet of Ojectivism as such. Much like the implicit fascism, it's just a deeply unfortunate side-effect of the way it is argued for and the moral limitations of the author. You could argue for Objectivism and claim that all people require is a bracing liberation from the shackles of state control to become a whole nation of Randian supermen. Or that education, rightly conducted, will create Randian supermen out of just about anyone. You'd still be wrong (I think) but you'd be arguing from a point of lesser moral bankruptcy.
862236
Personally, the instinctual revulsion I feel at the mention of Objectivism is simply because Objectivism has been used as a buzzword and catchphrase, by people who are very fond of picking and choosing what parts of Rand's philosophy to believe in (by which I mean, they're lockstep right-wingers who are trying to convince themselves that they have some intellectually honest basis for advocating social darwinism) as a codeworded excuse to implement social-Darwinistic economic policies here and now regardless of how well the rest of the current political framework fits in with Rand's philosophical ideals. I tend to have instinctual negative reactions to terms I've seen used so dishonestly by so many (this is also why I have a hard time taking the so-called "men's rights movement" seriously, even on the handful of issues where they have valid points).
However, if you claim to have not read any written critiques of Rand's philosophy, I can only point out that you can find some if you do a fifteen-second Google search.
862838
Yes, that's the Frank Miller Batman, an expression of Frank Miller's values and ideology. Except you forgot there is no such thing as "moral" weakness to Miller; there is only weakness. Moral, physical, it's all the same. Weakness is bad. Strength is good.
I'm pretty sure she'd have a serious problem with any totalitarian government. The "supermen" are not to have a legal monopoly on force. But all this talk made me realize I no longer remember what Objectivism is. I consulted the Ayn Rand Institute. Its intro page has 4 points. One stands out:
Sounds... nonsensical, at first glance. Doesn't "moral" mean, by definition, something like "things done not out of self-interest"? But this philosophical rabbit hole goes deep. From John Galt's speech:
This suggests Rand's starting point was that morality, whatever it is, can be derived by reason. If I'm reading this right, Rand is one of the only representatives of the third of the three possible fundamental philosophical views of morality:
1. Relativism: Values are final goals. They're like mathematical postulates. You can't argue values; you take whatever values you personally have and work with them. No values are better than any other values; it's just that some are yours and some are not. There is no more point in reasoning with people with different values than in trying to prove a geometry theorem to someone who doesn't believe in Euclid's postulates. You just foom faster than them and eliminate them if you can, or compromise with them if you can't. This is Yudkowsky's view. Sam Harris does a prettty good job of working within this view, where he restricts values to the intersection of human values across cultures in order to sound like an absolutist.
2. Absolutism: There is some true and correct set of absolute moral values, but you can't arrive at them by reason. In some variations, you can arrive at them through your feelings, although on the other hand morality is by definition what you naturally don't want to do, so your feelings somehow lead you naturally to both morality and immorality. Or maybe some God can sum them up for you and hand them to you, though where He gets them from, and what gives His opinion moral authority other than brute force, is a mystery. This is the view of practically everybody on the planet, and is in most cases a confused mess of contradictions and illogic. The only saving grace of this view is when you step back and realize that it is the working out of a practical morality, but by species, races, and cultures, not by individual humans. No human operating under the dead hand of an imaginary god is a moral agent. Morality evolves via group selection. Humans should not concern themselves with morality; it's too complicated. They should keep on doing what worked for their parents. An interesting flaw is that this means that immortality would necessarily lead to social moral collapse, as individual humans can't adapt their morality to the circumstances, and can't act morally in new circumstances because the true goals of their morality are invisible to them.
Both of these first two viewpoints inevitably lead to conflict and war, because there's in principle no way to resolve differences between people with different values.
3. Objectivism: The concept of "morality" has meaning; there actually /is such a thing/ as objectively moral behavior, not just behaving in accordance with your innate programming, or your feelings, or according to the arbitrary dictates of some God. Rand is the degenerate case of this view: An organism's moral obligation is to reproduce and spread its genes/memes, so "morality" is to do that. I call this the degenerate case because, although she tried to believe in morality, it shrank to an invisible point of zero measure which has no effect other than to dismiss alternative moralities.
If I give her the most-friendly-possible interpretation, I would say she's claiming that our attempts at centrally planning good are so bad, and the world so confusing, that the natural, messy process of evolution, with intelligent humans as agents, is better at improving things than any central committee or democratic majority. That's... possibly correct, in the very long run.
TL;DR: Rand's morality is horrible, just for different reasons than everyone else's morality is horrible.
863179
I'm sorry, are we talking Objectivism-as-political-ideology, Objectivism-as-ethics, or Objectivism-as-epistemiology? I assumed the first, but from your take on the matter I see you assumed the second.
Incidentally, which philosophy of morality do you cleave to?
863319 I think we're each talking about whatever we want to talk about. We were talking about Rand's books. I thought they were overly long.
Incidentally, which philosophy of morality do you cleave to?
You think I'd leave incriminating evidence like that on the internet? Nice try.
863179
Assuming that was Rand's actual line of reasoning rather than something corrupted in summary (which is reasonable, since I've read much the same elsewhere), then she's kicked out her foundations before she even starts building.
Mathematician here. When dealing with formal systems of proof, there are two types of statements. You have axioms: things which must be assumed prior to the deductive process. Then you have the things which you deduce based on those axioms. (Note that "mathematical postulates" are axioms; if morals are "final goals", you might have wanted to use "theories".)
Rand claims that moral values are strictly rationally deducible, using a system of formal logic essentially equivalent to that used for mathematical proof. Any system of formal logic obeys one of two cases: 1) there exist one or more axioms that sit at the foundation of our system of deduction; or 2) there are no axioms. (Otherwise, we're in the wrong argument altogether, because now we're getting into weird theoretical mathematical systems where we reject P V ~P as an axiom and the rules of logic themselves change.)
1) is tautologically equivalent to what she has already described as "moral relativism" (if you meant that values == postulates), or "absolutism" (if not, as I suspect). So she has rejected this case.
But 2) is prima facie silly. In LW-speak, it's "not even wrong." When you have no axioms from which to derive your premises, you have no rules or relationships for logic to manipulate. You can't deductively manipulate raw symbols into meaningful patterns. Logical deduction is the process of building more complex rules from basic rules. Case 2) is the equivalent of throwing a bunch of letter blocks on the ground and trying to rearrange them into coherent writing, except that you don't even know what a "word" is. If you disagree with this, stop reading Rand and go read some mathematics textbooks. It's the basic foundation of deductive reasoning.
So before she even starts, she's already poisoned the debate by hiding her axioms and then calling axioms the problem. How do you have a rational argument against someone who has rejected the process by which rational arguments are created?
The fact that most non-Randians view her ideas as leading to increased human suffering is the icing on the cake. If they were simply incoherent, they'd be tragic but ignorable. Since they're incoherent and damaging, they're a threat.
Incidentally, this is exactly why I and many others reacted so strongly to And I Asked Why. You may recall the immense debate in comments there (and slightly less so, in Serious Stories upon its inclusion).
It's been shown over and over again that ideas that seize the mind can carry a poorly written story. (Witness Dashie, and outside the fandom, Left Behind, Twilight, etc. All of those have been the subject of detailed analysis showing the hideous lack of craft that went into the actual writing — the disregard for plausibility, self-consistency, characterization, word use, etc. I have to stop and recommend Fred Clark's exhaustive, detailed takedown of Left Behind here, because you will learn more about good writing from that blog series than you will from most writing textbooks. Chuckfinley will back me up on this.)
But anyone who has already been immunized to the Rand meme sees the core idea of the story as an intellectually dishonest defense of a dangerous ethic. What's left once the exploration of idea falls away? The writing isn't enough to carry it (both the story's ideological defenders and I agreed in comments there on the sloppiness and suggested similar fixes). I couldn't finish the story. That's remarkably rare for me.
Now, even stories you morally disagree with can be enjoyable and done well. For instance, Quantum Vibe is shot through with hard-libertarian soapboxing, but makes good use of the comic medium and tells an entertaining story with vivid characters, so it's worlds beyond AIAW. The difference is, it's not about the libertarian thesis; it uses its politics as a backdrop to the story.
863908 Rand claims that moral values are strictly rationally deducible, using a system of formal logic essentially equivalent to that used for mathematical proof. Any system of formal logic obeys one of two cases: 1) there exist one or more axioms that sit at the foundation of our system of deduction; or 2) there are no axioms.
The questions, though, are whether morality is analogous to formal logic, and if so, whether the axioms are values, or something different, like the laws of physics. You can easily argue that morality is simply that element of fitness that evolves via group rather than individual selection. That maps pretty well onto what we call ethics, and provides an objective definition of, and methods for evaluating, ethics, that does not start from values, but from facts about evolution.
866389
But if your only starting point is facts about evolution, you can't talk about ethics (the way humans should act), you can only talk about how well our behaviors match those that we were evolved for. Evolution has no built-in value judgments, only "things that make you more adapted to your environment will increase your survival." One, that has no meaning for a race that changes its environment, and more importantly, two, if you have no priors at all you can't even make the declaration that survival is good. ("Survival is good" is a value judgment. It is an axiom[1]. If you try to derive "good" from "in line with evolution's design," then you are taking "evolution's morality is superior to any constructed system of priors" itself as a prior. And it's turtles, etc.)
I feel my point against Rand's formulation stands: Whether our evolved behaviors are "good" or "bad" is necessarily an axiom. Rand's claims to the contrary fly in the face of the way formal logic works. It's the exact same problem, one meta-level down, and you're going to keep hitting the same problem no matter how far you dig. You can't make deductions in a system of symbolic logic, any system, without relationships (axioms) to manipulate.
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[1] As would be "Evolution is designed to make our lives hell and the only sane response is to break its cycle as quickly as possible" (to pick a trivial negation that is equally undeducible).
866389
Also, did you edit the post I originally responded to? I went back to map "The questions, though, are whether morality is analogous to formal logic, and if so, whether the axioms are values, or something different, like the laws of physics." to the three cases you outlined and it's now got more (and clearer) information in there I don't remember reading.
867906 I probably changed it within a few minutes of writing it, but haven't changed it lately.
>But if your only starting point is facts about evolution, you can't talk about ethics (the way humans should act), you can only talk about how well our behaviors match those that we were evolved for. Evolution has no built-in value judgments, only "things that make you more adapted to your environment will increase your survival."
You could say that about any approach to ethics. One person says "should" is what they feel in their gut. Another says it's what's written on this stone tablet he brought down from a mountain. And a third says it is whatever increases some objective value function. None of them have anything that stands up under close scrutiny. No one has a simple, satisfying source for their "shoulds".
> None of them have anything that stands up under close scrutiny. No one has a simple, satisfying source for their "shoulds".
Yes! Exactly. That's the nature of an axiom. It reduces to "because."
Now see, if the Rand camp simply admitted exactly what you just said, I'd be cool with 'em. The universe is full of unprovables and the human condition requires learning to cope with the ones which don't match your mental maps. I am comfortable with having priors; it gives us something to argue about, or reflect and refine, or struggle to overcome.
But they're staking their entire claim for legitimacy on the notion that they don't have priors because they can derive them out of the empty set. They don't see that the third category as they define it can't exist, and the "should" which they place within it actually goes into one of the other categories they defined.
Hmm.
I think I see what you're getting at with your third category[1] — people willing to choose axioms based on logical analysis — but Rand doesn't belong there. Rand's actually confusing the issue here, because the first two examples you gave above are people asserting "All ethics are axioms" (gut or god, it's all the same). Rand asserts "Ethics do not require axioms" (augh). The hair she was trying to split, and the way that actual rational people arrive at actual considered ethics, is "Starting with an arbitrary set of ethical value axioms, a set of ethics can be logically derived from them that maximizes fulfillment of those values and minimizes contradictions." Change the starting axioms and you don't end up in the same place, but because human priors tend to follow consistent sets of patterns, you can approach maximal utility across all reasonable configurations reasonably well. It's a messy process, but applying reason to something so squirmy has to be.
So the point I'm trying to make is: The actual proponents of the "approach ethics rationally" approach aren't Rand. She's a degenerate case of group 2 (sub "evolution" for god), with a coat of #3 paint. I was going to say actual #3 is Yudkowsky et.al., except you don't seem to classify him that way and I'll defer to your judgment because you read a lot more of him than I do. Ironically, I can't name any names of people taking the synthetic approach of ethical derivation, but it's what happens in practice when ethics undergo nonviolent collision in situations like politics. The closest I can get to something genuinely fulfilling your group #3 is "the legal regulations of a modern constitutional democracy."
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[1] Which I'd appreciate discussing under the name of "ethical synthesis" or something. "Objectivism" IS Rand. Labeling group #3 "Objectivism" means that by definition Rand is not a degenerate case of it, she's its exemplar.
868787 Is what you're saying about Rand based on Rand's writings? You're going beyond what I know about what she said, so I can't respond.
> I was going to say actual #3 is Yudkowsky et.al., except you don't seem to classify him that way and I'll defer to your judgment because you read a lot more of him than I do.
Yudkowsky presents as type 1, but in private admits to having some sort of belief in objective value on a meta-level--at least, that's my interpretation of Michael Vassar's verbal summary of things Yudkowsky has said but not yet written up anywhere. I wish I could remember the exact phrase he used.
868996
It is a necessary implication of their claim that there is only one possible logically derivable ethic (i.e. theirs).