Ayn Rand and me – why my homework is late…

I am dilatory, plainly. More than a year since I’ve written anything here, and that story’s horrors bloom like mold spores. For two years and more, I’ve been stuck with a book I clearly do not want to write and yet can’t stop thinking about – so here I am, waiting to find out how I’ll do.

I am caught out, too, in that I am not comprehensively defended. I’ve been leaping on a lot of new lily pads in the past ten years, and I’ve only glossed that work.

This was brought home to me by a contact-me email, basically asking how my approach to egoism differs from Ayn Rand’s. As if to illustrate how much I have addressed without adequately defending, this is my reply:

I’m delighted you’re there.

I give you four egoists and their objectives:

Nietzsche – domination
Stirner – predation
Rand – independence
Swann – thriving

By thriving I mean achieving mankind’s maximum potential throughout life, which means leading a whole and appropriate human life: Not being a boss or a crook or an obsessive celibate genius, but instead being a man, a husband, a father – and therefore being an uninterrupted and impeccable example of thriving for everyone to see.

Rand and I diverge a lot at love, sex, marriage and family, but the bigger split owes to DISC: Rand was a champion of Dc, but she and her enduring influences are all Ci – hideously the opposite of independence. I am Di, but my philosophical goals are all Ds – where Ds is the actual ideal man and the actual means of achieving universal human thriving. It’s how we did it the last time, the Golden Age now being smelted away.

There’s more where I am now, and I have not written much of it: We do what we see others doing, so the Middle Class can create a virtuous circle – that Golden Age – simply by ongoing social contact. This used to happen by neighborhoods, but by now we are too isolated. Now you find moral growth in churches and in private and charter schools: Parents aware of each-others’ efforts, gradually and progressively out-doing each other. Dads deliver the goods better, moms make everything prettier and tastier – and the kids grow up normal and productive, learning and growing along with their prospective spouses. To the extent that egoism has been atomism – and here Rand is by far the worst – it entirely misses this process.

Abortion is huge, of course, and Rand’s position is absurd and indefensible, given her excoriation or every other human atrocity. And I discovered yesterday that the Ayn Rand Institute took and then skated on government loans during the pandemic, so I’m pretty sure we’re at odds on rent-seeking. If other things pop out at you, speak up.

Man Alive is free on the site and covers a lot of this ground. Nine Empathies picks up from there, with the underlying biology of DISC. The actual etiology of DISC is here: The Origin of Character.

Thanks again for being there.

Greg Swann