How Ayn Rand Inluenced Me

By Steve Gillman

A subscriber to my radical thinking course emailed me to ask, "How much of an influence did Ayn Rand have on your ideas and writing?" Here is my reply.

Ayn Rand had a big impact on me more than 20 years ago. Although her books remain popular, I think she has been largely ignored by mainstream or "academic" philosophers. This is too bad, because she really was a powerful thinker.

I didn't write much until many years after reading her books, but my thinking was affected. Also, because of her I came to see the power of putting ideas into fiction. I hope to do more fiction in the future.

What I like about objectivism is it's attempt to keep philosophy rooted in reality. Ideas are seen not as "mere" theories, but as either applicable to life or without value. At the time I read Rand's books and other works, her heroic sense of life was attractive, but her own life was very tragic (which you'll see if you read any of the biographies out there). It would have been nice to see her learn how to be happy, and how to keep evolving. I think once she gained recognition she did nothing but defend what she had already created.

I think I have a much broader definition or sense of self interest than she did. I also think there things that can be called "spiritual experiences" for lack of better words. That she dismissed these kinds of experiences may be due to her not having them. If you could never taste, you might think that such a sense did not exist. On the other hand, I have no belief in a god, and what we call "spirituality" could be seen as a form of psychological phenomenon.

Capitalism is something I was attracted to before I read Rand, but she was one of the strongest defenders of the ideals, and also one of the clearest writers on the moral aspects of a free market system. I would only differ in that I don't see any verbally-formulated values as absolute.

Now that I think of it, this points up a flaw in objectivist reasoning. They often start with certain premises and try to derive absolute rules or principles from these. Property rights are good for individuals and for human life, for example, so they tend to make the principle absolute: you can own anything and do anything you want with it.

The flaw here is in not allowing for a reference back to values that are further up in the hierarchy. For example, if there is a case where property rights conflict with the value of human life, property rights have to yield. We can own guns, for example, or large areas of land, but we can't own nuclear bombs (too dangerous) or use our land in ways that affect others (pollution that runs off, using all the water that passes through, etc).

A more general problem is the intolerance that Rand had for those who didn't agree with her, and the sense among objectivists that they can't be wrong. My experience tells me that honest people can often reach different conclusions, and we are all wrong at times. Ignoring these two facts makes it very difficult to learn new things and grow in wisdom.

In any case, yes, she did influence my thinking, but I am glad to have (hopefully) gone far beyond those influences.

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