AYN RAND AND SEX
(this one'll kill ya -- Ayn Rand and Sex)
Perhaps the easiest way to demonstrate the lunacy of the Objectivists is to discuss their attitudes on sex.
Despite the fact -- on the contrary, precisely BECAUSE of the fact -- that Ayn Rand personally was a seething cauldron -- nay, an erupting volcano -- of kinky sexual impulses for which she willingly destroyed the entire Objectivist movement, discrediting both herself and her so-called "philosophy" to boot, and probably costing her a great deal of money -- at least in terms of lost income -- the Objectivists believed that Man has no instincts! This includes the sex drive.
Man has no sex drive! (Sorry about all those spontaneous erections; perhaps it's because you're not "rational enough").
In becoming sexually attracted to someone, we are "worshipping that person's rationality". The "worship" may take rather oblique forms, such as the sadomasochistic rape scene in The Fountainhead, but that's only for starters.
The argument goes this way: Man is a "rational animal". Aristotle said so, and we say so, too -- indeed Man is defined as a rational animal, which means that "reason" is man's "quintessence" or "essential quality", "that which makes a thing that which it is"-- so it must be true! (More about this elsewhere).
Now, as "rational animals", it is utterly unthinkable -- inconceivable -- preposterous-- that we should be influenced, even in the slightest, by a load of goofy juices burbling around in our bloodstream, released by a load of "glands" and stuff like that; impossible! Everything has got to be a matter of purely cerebral ratiocination and "choice"!
In the mid-60s, the NBI (Rand's publishing mouthpiece, run by Nathaniel Branden), published a brochure entitled "Does Man Have Instincts?"
(I don't know whether it has ever been released in book form; most likely not -- I will explain why [see footnote *]. Nor do I recall whether it was written by Rand or Branden, probably the latter).
It opened by saying that the reason a salmon swims upstream to spawn is because it has "sensors" on the side of its body, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah -- big huge pseudo-scientific discussion, etc. -- so the word "instinct" is a meaningless tautology! To say that the reason why a child does not drink milk is because he lacks a "milk-drinking instinct", is like saying that the reason he does not drink milk is because "he is just not a milk drinker"! It took the writer between 8 and 16 pages to say this; it was a stapled brochure.
I read this in June or July of 1966, when I was 19 years old. It was not clear to me then -- and it is not clear to me now -- whether this meant that Man has no instincts, but animals do; or that neither Man nor animals possess instincts; or that we still possess them anyway, nonetheless, but we simply choose to call them something different.
("Your guess'', as Rand would say, "is as good as mine".)
An instinct by any other name would cause spontaneous erections just the same. Non? Pas vrai? Sans blague?
This is typical of Jewish intellectual argument at all times and under all circumstances: they create confusion and then claim to have solved some tremendously complex problem or to have actually proven something. A man confused against his will, is of the same opinion still.
It seems to me that whether it's a chemical reaction or a hormone or a sensor, it's still an instinct, whatever you call it, just as whether you're pitching or catching, you're still playing ball.
For example, you narrowly miss being killed by a speeding car; do you remain cool, calm and collected, like an ice cube, figuring, oh well, it missed me?
Or do you stand there trembling, with your heart pounding until you can calm down? Why do you react this way? It's because self-preservation is an instinct.
What the Objectivists are describing is the state of mind of a psychopath: psychopaths lack the physiological responses associated with the emotion of fear. They understand what danger is, but only intellectually. They can pass lie detector tests. Similarly, psychopaths possess a sex drive, but use it solely to manipulate and exploit people.
Baby turtles, alligators and crocodiles head for the nearest water the moment they hatch from the egg; how do they know where the nearest water is? But they're never wrong.
Interestingly, instinct is not a substitute for intelligence. Many of the animals with the most highly developed instincts are also the most intelligent.
In Objectivism, if you find a grain of truth the size of a grain of sand, it is always anchor-chained to a boulder of lies the size of Hoover Dam.
For example, it is true that the type of women we are attracted to reveals something about what kind of person we are. Would you marry a woman you were ashamed to introduce to your mother?
A man who was incapable of an attraction to any but the sleaziest, trashiest sluts might be said to be lacking a certain emotional maturity, or, possibly, as Nathaniel Branden would have put it, "self esteem". This notion is developed at great length in Atlas Shrugged. As always with Ayn Rand, you swallow a gnat of truth, and end up swallowing a whole camel of lies -- indeed, a whole caravan-load of them.
It's easy to discern the self-serving psychological mechanism at work here:
a) Since we are "rational" (and remember, all you have to do to be "rational" is agree with Ayn Rand), sexual attraction is a "worship of rationality".
b) Since sexual attraction is our "worship of rationality", physical attraction has nothing to do with it! It doesn't exist! Forget about beautiful girls; forget about movie stars, models, and all the rest of it; forget about that cute girl with the pretty hair and eyes next door; forget about Marilyn Monroe (with whom Rand openly identified, to the intense embarrassment of anyone with a bit of sense), we're interested in rational girls!
c) Since sexual attraction is purely a matter of "worshipping the rationality" of the other person, there is no reason why a 63-year old hag like Ayn Rand -- the undisputed Supreme Rational Being of the Universe -- shouldn't be the sexiest, most sublimely beautiful feminine critter on two wheels (to mix a metaphor) -- particularly, to Nathaniel Branden, who was 25 years younger and had an inexplicable, and obviously "irrational", tendency to prefer younger women (a regular slew of them, in actual fact).
Indeed, by the very nature of things, Ayn Rand had to have been -- and was, according to this theory -- the most beautiful woman in the Universe!
It's like the "Emperor's New Clothes". She may look like an old crone to you, but that's because you're not "rational"! If you were "rational", you would be dying to "worship her rationality" with your penis!
(Sorry to be so crude, but Rand literally believed this. How did she escape confinement in an insane asylum?)
This seems to be a recurring fantasy in Jewish literature. For example, the Biblical patriarchesse Sarah is supposed to have been ravishingly beautiful at the age of 65 -- so sexy as to permit her husband Abraham (who was 75 years old at the time, Gen. 12:4) to pimp her out to the Pharaoh for "sheep, oxen, asses, menservants, she-asses, and camels" (Gen. 12:16), becoming "very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold" (Gen. 13:2) -- when she was only 10 years younger than he was (Gen. 17:17)!
Did you ever hear of a Jewish woman who didn't consider herself fabulously young and beautiful, even at age 85? Impossible. This was what destroyed the Objectivist movement. Too bad something (or somebody) didn't destroy it (or her) 40 years earlier.
Seeing themselves as others see them -- objectivity, to borrow a word -- is not a Jewish virtue.
--
Naturally, a full understanding of the lunacy of Rand's ideas on sex will be impossible without an understanding of the lunacy of her views on the family, which seem -- quite coincidentally, I'm sure -- to coincide 100% with that of the Marxists, cultural Marxists, and "Frankfurt School", not to mention the pre-Marxist nihilist and radical Leftist movements described by Dostoevsky in THE DEVILS (written in the early 1870s -- in my view, the greatet novel ever written; make sure you get the Michael R. Katz translation).
More to come...