Ayn Rand: just a hot mess of emotions

 So yesterday I talked about Dr Sue Johnson's theory about love attachment, and said I'd talk about Ayn Rand. Joseph Campbell warned that if you believe the brain is running everything, and ignore the emotions, you get Darth Vader, and Rand is a perfect example. Sorry if this looks long, but it's a damn good story I promise. Rand's life was way more interesting than her books!

Ayn (rhymes with pine) was a woman who valued thought and intellect and logic above everything else, and believed real emotion flowed out of perfect logic. You loved a great work of music because it elevated Man, so art could be objectively judged by what it said about human beings. Ridiculous even by her own standard, of course. For example, she disliked jazz--she had some "reason" but of course she just disliked it for aesthetic reasons she didn't admit to. Because logically she *should* have loved it since jazz is independence personified, and she valued independence above all else. This was the mind of Ayn Rand.

Since she was such a logical person, if she felt something, it must be based on logic! (As opposed to other people's messy feelings.) So as far as I can tell she built an entire philosophy based on her own personal preferences. When she laid eyes on her husband, she knew he was the perfect logical hero of her girlish dreams. Really because he looked the way she imagined her perfect hero should look. Sort of like Gary Cooper, who ended up playing the hero of Rand's Fountainhead (one of the great Mary Sue's of all time)

 (Gary above, Frank below)

Not that Frank was a bad choice of husband--he was a beta male, and she an ambitious woman. But she talked about him like he was one of the cool, masterly heroes of her novels, whereas he seems to have been a quiet, unassuming man, happy to sit in her shadow and support her. So when the real alpha male came along she fell for him like a brick through a soufflé.

Nathaniel Branden--future father of the self help movement--was part of her inner circle, along with a woman named Barbara, and let's-ruin-the-economy Alan Greenspan. Her inner circle would gather at her apartment to read her works and debate her ideas, but not really because she could demolish any argument with one simple trick which forms the backbone of The Fountainhead: If you don't agree with my ideas then you're still in The Matrix, and you wouldn't want that! (These kind of arguments work on modern day teenagers, which is why she's considered one of the most influential authors to this day.) If you still disagreed then you were kicked out of the Ayny Rand Club. They jokingly called themselves The Collective. Jokingly.

"Two novels 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 involves orcs."

Nathaniel was the intellectual equal Ayn hadn't actually found in Frank, so of course she couldn't (a) divorce Frank, cause that would admit she'd made a mistake in Frank, or (b) just have a crush and eventually get over it and be friends with the guy, cause actually she was a pretty passionate woman. So she decided it was logically imperative that they have an affair--they were intellectual soul mates, and therefore should be physical soul mates (you gotta read the sex scenes in Fountainhead, my days.)

I seem to recall in all this that she even convinced Nathaniel and Barbara to marry each other though their feelings for each other weren't sure, or weren't mutual. I don't even remember why.

Then she logically argued Nathaniel into having the affair with her. Though blown away by her mind, he wasn't able to sustain hotness for her for long. I don't think men develop the same Hot for My Older Mentor Professor thing like young women do. Less so in the 1950s.

Then she logically argued Frank and Barbara to agree. Nathaniel and Barbara both felt sorry for Frank. The affair went on for awhile, but Nathaniel eventually broke it off. He met another woman and fell in love. He and Barbara hid it from Ayn, but when she found out she kicked them both out of the collective. They (or at least Nathaniel) were prevented from going to her funeral. Meanwhile Ayn's poor Frank locked himself in his studio and drank himself into a stupor throughout the whole thing.

It was the biggest, saddest fiasco you can imagine. She broke Frank's heart, broke her own heart, made Barbara miserable, lost two of her best friends, and though Nathaniel wasn't an innocent pawn, I think she took advantage of him as much as we'd say that of any male professor-mentor figure having an affair with a young student who looks up to him. All because she couldn't admit to herself one little crush.*

When you ignore your feelings, they don't go away, the opposite happens--they become more powerful and out of control. I know most people who read my blog are women and most women don't usually need to learn this. But I've known some guys, usually young idealistic guys in their 20s, who didn't. There are probably some perfectly innocent geeks (think Big Bang Theory) who don't either. Ayn Rand's love life is a good morality play--tuck it away in case you need it one day.

If you don't want your emotions to rule you, 

the worst thing you can do is deny having any.

Ooh! Tomorrow I have a little example from Dr Johnson's book that shows this too. It's very sweet. :-)

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* Just reading an interview with a new biographer of Rand, and her account is just the way I remember it being in Barbara and Nathaniel's books: In my view, Rand engineered the Brandens' disastrous marriage so that she could safely take Nathaniel, then 24, as her lover. She was 49. She browbeat Barbara and her own husband, Frank O'Connor, a passive, gentle man, into agreeing to the affair and keeping it a secret. It lasted 14 years. And when finally, at 38, Nathaniel fell in love with a 23-year-old artists' model and Rand devotee, Rand ousted him, the model, and Barbara from her Objectivist cult and tried to sabotage his career. The Brandens, now divorced and living in L.A., argued to me that her moral absolutism, her appetite for admiration, and her strong cruel streak had damaged them and ruined many others' lives.