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Friday, February 19, 2010

Middlemarch a Finer Atlas of Human Possibility By Far Than Rand's Bodice-Ripper

One of the students in my market polemics course, Ryan, pointed to one of the most (deservedly) famous sentences in English literature for the response to Atlas Shrugged, this beautiful passage from Middlemarch
[T]he growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.


For me, the texts in the market polemics class are about those who fall for (and those who resist falling for) the metaphor of "spontaneous order" as a way to deny the reality of society and history, and also often as a way to defend the unearned privileges of incumbent elites among whom they are members or with whom they identify.

What Ryan's quotes suggests, I think, is that the class is more about those who fall for (or resist falling for) the metaphor of the "independent possessive individual" as a way to deny the reality of human precariousness and interdependence, and also often as a way to defend the unearned prerogatives of "sovereign" and "authorial" conceptions of agency.

Needless to say, these two conceptions of the distinction the texts in the course is highlighting are profoundly complementary.

In my little blogthology of anti-libertopian aphorisms I write:
XXIII. In a world in which we are all of us beholden to accomplishments and problems we are heir to but unequal to, as well as implicated in the facilitative and frustrating efforts of the diversity of peers with whom we share the world, it is delusive in the extreme to imagine oneself the singular author of one's fortunes, whether good or ill. And so, only in a world in which the precarious are first insulated from the catastrophic consequences of ill-fortune in which we all play our parts can we then celebrate or even tolerate the spectacle in which the successful indulge in the copious consequences of good fortune in which we all, too, have played our parts.

That is an argument that directly bespeaks the influence of Middlemarch on me, as it happens, and does indeed explain at least part of what I find so deeply disrespectful about the whole Randian viewpoint.

4 comments:

jimf said...

> . . .only in a world in which the precarious are first insulated
> from the catastrophic consequences of ill-fortune in which we all
> play our parts. . .

Rand, of course, would have considered the suggestion that anyone
should be "insulated from. . . consequences" as the height of
evil. Much like the fundamentalist Christians whom she
scorned, she was keen on **judgment**, on separating humanity
into the (deservedly) saved -- the few, and the (deservedly) damned --
the many.

In fact, she considered withholding that judgment itself a form
of immorality, a deliberate suppression of rationality, or
"blanking out" as the Objectivists called it.
“The precept: ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged,’
is an abdication of moral responsibility. . . . The moral principle
to adopt in this issue, is: ‘Judge, and be prepared to be judged.’”

For Rand, nobody deserved to be considered a human being simply
by virtue of having been born of human parents. One's humanity,
and the right to be treated as human by one's fellows, is
something that has to be **earned**, that has to be wrested
out of lower animality by the application of rational thought
(Frank Herbert has the Bene Gesserit "pain box" test echo this
principle in _Dune_).

I think this is a temperamental preference. Rand thought she
was pretty hot stuff, an unsung heroine, and was filled
with contempt for the great majority of the human race.
The folks who are attracted to her feel the same way.
(Of course, the folks who got **really** close to her,
thinking that she **and** they were unsung heroes, were
all too likely to find out in the end that she really did
believe that **she** was the only true hero, after she
unmasked them as the disappointing trash they were
after all. Nasty stuff.)

Dale Carrico said...

Re-reading Atlas as an adult for my market polemics course I must say that I have found few texts more relentlessly hackneyed, hyperbolic, fundamentalist, deluded, brain-deadening, and death-dealing in all my acquaintance. It is a testament to the self-congratulatory conformism of American "individualism" and consumerism of American "rebelliousness" and insulation from consequences of American "exceptionalism" and eager brutality of American "culture" that La Rand has managed never to be anything less than a bestseller here, even years after her death.

jimf said...

> Re-reading Atlas as an adult. . . I have found few texts more
> relentlessly hackneyed, hyperbolic, fundamentalist, deluded,
> brain-deadening, and death-dealing in all my acquaintance.

Something that perplexes (and rather frightens!) me is that
more than a few people who identify Ayn Rand as one of the
formative authors of their lives **also** identify
J. R. R. Tolkien as being another such formative author.

How does **that** work?

http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/people/bios/space/hill.html
------------------------------
I am a Flight Director. I'm in charge of space shuttle
and space station mission control and responsible for the
safe conduct of space shuttle and space station missions. . .

As a kid, I liked to read. My 5th grade teacher Mrs. Martin
brought reading to life for me and introduced me to J.R.R. Tolkien,
both of which made me an avid reader for life. I love anything from
Ayn Rand, [to] Tolkien and Hugo. I read every Tom Clancy novel,
as they come out. I have also read much of John Keegan's
military history.

My standout favorites in fiction are Lord of the Rings,
J.R.R. Tolkien; Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand; and
The Man Who Laughs, Victor Hugo.
------------------------------

http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html
------------------------------
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.
------------------------------

jimf said...

> [T]he growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts. . .

And, of course, speaking of Tolkien:

"The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength
nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the
weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds
that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must,
while the eyes of the great are elsewhere."

-- _The Fellowship of the Ring_, "The Council of Elrond".


Dennis Gerrolt, BBC interviewer: Let me turn to another subject
for a moment. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo accepts the
burden of the Ring. . .

Tolkien: Yes. . .

Gerrolt: . . .and he embodies, as a character, the virtues of
long-suffering and perseverance, and by his actions, one might
almost say, in the Buddhist sense he acquires merit. He becomes,
in fact, almost a Christ figure. Why did you choose a Halfling,
a Hobbit, for this role?

. . .

Tolkien: I shouldn't say that he was Christ-like, personally, but
he of course has some of the features of Christ. I can say accepting of
a burden. . .

Gerrolt: But in the face of the most appalling danger, he struggles
on, and wins through. . .

Tolkien: . . .Well, I should've thought he was more like an allegory
of the human race. I've always been impressed. . . We're here, surviving,
because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against
impossible odds -- jungles, volcanoes, wild beasts. . . They struggle on.
Almost blindly in a way. Frodo had very little idea, really. . .
Of course he. . . by the time he'd come to the end of the quest
he was beginning to understand things very much more. I thought the
wisest remark in the whole book was that where Elrond says that the
wheels of the world are turned by the small hands while the Great
are looking elsewhere. And they're turned because they have to,
because it's the daily job.

-- BBC interview of J. R. R. Tolkien by Dennis Gerrolt