S5E5 - The Collective's Legacy (Objectivism's reception & effects)

0:00 Kayla: Criminals should be able to commit crimes because they're hot. Chris: A criminal that was relatively famous at the time, since, you know, Americans love good trial. So this is like a national news thing briefly here in the late 1920s. And the name of this guy was William Hickman. Kayla: I don't know him. Chris: Do you want to know what crimes Mister Hickman was convicted for? Kayla: No. Chris: It wasn't for protecting his artistic vision. Kayla: What was it? Chris: Unless his artistic vision was incredibly fucked up. Cause he was a serial killer.

0:50 Kayla: Going, we're live now. Chris: Okay. Is the cat going to interrupt, or are we going to. She's on your lap right now? Yes, she likes to talk to us. Kayla: She's probably going to interrupt sometimes. Probably not. Too bad. I'll just keep petting her. Chris: I mean, if she has input, that's fine. Kayla: I'm sure she has lots to say about today's topic. Oh, there might be fireworks interrupting us today. Chris: I also have a lot to say about today's topic because it's my episode. Kayla: Wow, really? Chris: I'm Chris. Kayla: What are you? Chris: I'm a guy that does things. I do game design sometimes. And sometimes I do data analytics, as I do data science.

1:33 Kayla: Those are very applicable skills. Chris: Really? I'm a Zelda player. Honestly, that's my main profession. Kayla: All applicable skills in the quest to evaluate cults are just weirds. Chris: I'm a amateur cult appreciator. Kayla: I am Kayla. I am a television writer. I am currently on strike. Support the WGA and all striking labor unions. And I, too, am extremely qualified to talk about this topic. Chris: Yeah, we're very qualified. Much like our subject matter these last few episodes. Okay. Do you have any business other than, I guess, support the WGA strike? I don't. Kayla: You know, I don't think I do no business. I don't think I do have any banter. I don't think I have any banter. I mean, I can come up with some.

2:17 Chris: Can you? Kayla: I know that half our audience. Chris: I don't think you can. Kayla: I know half our audience likes the banter, and half our audiences get to the. Get to the point. Chris: Yeah, we've done a lot of get to the point. Kayla: I was just looking. I happened to be signed into Facebook, unfortunately, and I saw somebody in, like, a podcasting group say, what is something that would get you to turn off a podcast? And somebody said, laughing. Chris: Oh, shit. Whoops. What about laughing at my own jokes? Kayla: That was. Chris: What about nervous self laughter? Kayla: It was specifically that. It was specifically like, oh, the things that in the podcast host thinks are funny. Are never nearly as funny as they think, as their gratuitous laughter implies. Chris: Yeah, they're right. Yeah, they're super right. Like, we've talked about this. Like, when I edit and I tell a joke or I say something that is, you know, whatever. Funny in the moment, and then I hear myself laugh afterwards.

3:04 Kayla: Bullet in the brain. Chris: Yeah, it makes me want to kill myself. And it's like, it's never cuttable either. Kayla: No, it's always, like. Because it's always me. Chris: Yeah, no, it's me laughing. And then, like, you'll react or something, and it's, like, impossible to cut out because we don't do. Maybe we should, like, do the dual recording thing where, like, we're each recording a separate track. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: So then I can just, like, cut out my stupid self laughter. Kayla: You know what it does? I do my other podcast like that, and it does make things a lot easier. Cause I can sit here and go while my host is like, you know, other microphones. Chris: You're recording an ASMR thing while your other host is doing. Okay. Kayla: And I can cut out all the lip smacking. Sorry. To any listener who has misophonia. I should have done a trigger warning. Kayla. Chris: That's just efficient, though. You know, you're doing your side hustle while your partner is in the middle of carrying your other side hustle. That's what you gotta do these days to get by. I'm sorry.

3:51 Kayla: Was that a sufficient amount of banter? Chris: I think so. I think so. It's like. I think that was an optimal amount. Right, because you don't want to go too long. Because then you offend the people that don't like. Yeah. Kayla: Right. Chris: So moving on to new patrons. None. No, there's none. Kayla: None. Chris: We don't have any. Not in the last two weeks. Nil. Kayla: That's fine. We have a nut. We have plenty of patrons, and we love each and every one of them. Chris: We love our existing patrons so much that it makes up for having no new patrons. But we did publish that. Kayla: There you go. Chris: That episode, finally, about whether capitalism is a cult or not. Kayla: If you guys want a true bonus episode for these episodes, we basically recorded episode number four and published it on our patreon, where we discussed whether or not capitalism itself is a cult. So head on over.

4:38 Chris: This has been so much work. Remember how were like, oh, let's only do one episode a month, and now in this past month, we've done four. Kayla: Yeah, yeah. We kind of have a problem. Chris: Like, we decided to cut in half, and then instead we doubled. Yeah, that was not smart. Kayla: No, we're very dumb and bad. Chris: All right. Yes. Now that we've established our dumbness and. Kayla: Dumbness, you know what? We are titans of podcasting. Chris: Titans. Kayla: Titans. Titans. Titans. Chris: We're definitely not tite. Kayla: Podcasting titans. Titans of podcasting. Ayn Rand would be very proud of our entrepreneurial spirits. Chris: Titanic sized podcasts. Yeah. Podcasts. Kayla: Podcasts.

5:18 Chris: Podcasts. All right, let's get to it. Actually, before we get to it, I do have. Well, this isn't really business. This is actually pretty related. I just wanted to upfront talk a little tiny bit about Mary's room because it kind of, like, resonated with her. Like, we got a couple of messages from you guys about it, and I know, like, you and I had this, like, big, long discussion about it. Kayla: Please don't get me started again. I'm gonna scream and shout. Chris: No, it's just. It's such an interesting thing. I just. I don't know. It's just to recap what that is, in case this is. You're just jumping into this here. Mary's room is a thought experiment of. There's a super scientist who, like, lives in a room who never experiences color, for whatever reason. You can also conceptualize it as, like, maybe she's just colorblind her whole life. And then, you know, when she turns 30, they give her surgery. Now she can see color, right? But the key point is that she is a scientist who studies color, and she knows every intellectual thing there is to know about color. She's read about how it affects brains and how it processes through the retina, yada. Everything. She knows everything. So the question is, does she learn anything new when she experiences color for the first time?

6:27 Chris: And that's the thought experiment. And it kind of tries to get at the heart of, like, what is knowledge? And, like, how do we. Like, is it possible to have. Is knowledge possible that isn't communicable somehow? Kayla: And I think that's something that must be experienced. A qualia, if you will. Chris: Yeah, I think that's. I don't know. I think it's profound. Like, I. You know, I know. It's not like we sort of agreed that, like, maybe it's not surprising, but is profound and sort of like, that's where I landed. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I also think that there's, like, a. One of the key. I think the key thing is, like, does she learn anything? Cause, like, I think the part that's maybe tripping us up on, like, the obviousness is like, yeah, obviously she has a brand new experience, right? Obviously something brand new happens to her, and she experiences something in a way that she never has before. I think that's without question. I think the question is, like, if you really drill down on the word learn, right? Is there a fact?

7:26 Chris: Is there something that constitutes a learned piece of knowledge that comes from that novel experience? And I think that's maybe something worth discussing. I don't know. I'm kind of paraphrasing, like, the Wikipedia article. Kayla: Yeah. I think all you have to do is you go on the Wikipedia and you spend 10 hours because. Cause that is the length of the Wikipedia article, specifically the criticisms section, which it goes down a rabbit hole, my friends. Chris: Yeah. I mean, it goes back and forth on different people's reactions to it. And here's how I think it goes down. And here's what I think the meaning of it is, like, other philosophers and whatnot. But I think that makes it a good thought experiment, though, right? Cause it generates discussion. Even if that discussion is critical.

8:06 Kayla: I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna let you in a little secret here. Chris: I love secrets. Kayla: I think the term thought experiment. Chris: Oh, okay. Kayla: What misnomer. Chris: Here's a little thought experiment. Thought experiment is a misnomer. Kayla: It's not an experiment. Chris: Well, what is it then? Kayla: Just a thought. Chris: Nobody's gonna be like, I did this idle navel gazing earlier today. Like, you have to give it some air of authority by calling it a thought experiment. Kayla: I don't think it needs. I don't think that it's a misnomer. Chris: I think that. I disagree with you on this, but let's move on, because we still do. Even though this is part three, we still do have a lot to cover. Kayla: Let's go on this episode of our podcast. Cult or just weird?

8:50 Chris: Cult or just weird or just Mary's room. Yeah, I think that just to sum up on the Mary's room thing, I think that it's good to have the discussion. We just said, even if the discussion is critical of the initial proposal, the fact that the proposal generated discussion is good. Right. And it's sort of opposite of what Ayn Rand thought objectivism was. It's like, here's what this is, and you better not talk about it. Kayla: Also, it's so extraordinarily lame to be like, I came up with this idea, and I don't want anybody else to talk about it except listen to what. Chris: I say you can talk about it. Kayla: Yeah, but in a term, in the capacity of listening to what I say.

9:32 Chris: Right. Right. Kayla: You can talk about what I said. Chris: You can't disagree with it. You can't change it. Kayla: Like, it's. Chris: As long as you obey. Kayla: It's very indicative when a person does not want to be in conversation on something. And I don't mean that, even in a negative way, but it just. If a person does not want to be in conversation about something, it just. I think it says a lot about how they view themselves in the fabric of community. That is, they don't. Chris: Right. Kayla: And she didn't. Chris: Right. Right. And we'll get to that a bit. For sure. But first, my intro question to you today, since we always do that, is, what would you say are some of your top, tippity top takeaways from doing this show for the last five years? Like, if you had to.

10:19 Kayla: Oh, God, why do you always do this to me? You're always like, what are your most important values? What? Chris: Like, what is the fundamental nature of. Kayla: Kayla? Chris: Can you answer that for me? Quick, quick. All right. Kayla: What is it? What are my favorites? Chris: If you had to pick, like, one or two or whatever, like, your biggest. Like, this is. I've. You know, this is, like, if I. Like, I think it's a takeaway or. Kayla: My biggest thing that I, like. Chris: I don't know. I'll let you decide. But, like, if we stop doing the show tomorrow or, you know, like, a year from now, someone's like, you know, what did you. What did you get out of that? Like, what did you. Aside from any sort of, like, obviously, we're not really getting any monetary gain at this moment, really. And I would say don't include the, oh, well, I got this sense of, like, community with our audience. I mean, more like learnings.

11:04 Kayla: Oh, well, I mean, I was gonna say my biggest takeaway is. The thing that I would miss the most is. Yeah. The moments of, like, connection with people listening, and just any time somebody is like, oh, this made me feel less alone, or, oh, this. You know, this resonated with me. But if I can't pick that. Chris: No, you can't pick that because we dislike our audience intensely. Kayla: I guess my biggest takeaway is a deeper understanding of how little I know. A deeper understanding of. Chris: Oh, man, you went deeper than I thought. That's good. Kayla: I mean, I've learned so much by doing this podcast, and when I say I learned so much, it's not just like, oh, I learned that tulpas were different than I thought, or, oh, I learned that phrase. Are different than I thought. But it's the gestalt of, oh, I have a lot of preconceived notions, and I. If I just kind of, like, just look under the hood, even for a minute, there's so much that I don't know, and that's so cool and great and beautiful that, like, it doesn't matter how much learning you do, there's always gonna be more.

12:03 Chris: Yeah. For sure. And, like, well, there you go. Theme of the episode. We're done. Like, that's very good. Very good answer. And I agree with you. Like, obviously, the. You know, the thing I would miss the most. Yeah. Would be the. I don't even know if it's missed the most, but the thing that gives me the most fulfillment, I think, is the connection with. With our audience. Kayla: Right. Chris: I hate seeing our audience listeners, the people that listen to the show. Like, I think that's the biggest thing. But if I'm. Yeah. Limiting it to, like, knowledge gained, then I think your answer is maybe the best. But there's, like, there's a couple, like, big contenders, and one of the big ones, for me, too, is, like, the utter inadequacy of, like, a binary perspective for understanding things. So, like, we have to understand people, places, things, and ideas as either a or b, as either red, yellow, or green. Nothing in between as left or right or north or south.

13:03 Kayla: What you're saying is that context goes all the way down. It's context all the way down. Chris: Context all the way down. And actually, as I was writing this, I was thinking, you know what? North or south is? Like, not that bad of an example, now that I think about it. Because, like, it's helpful to have the categories north, south, east, and west to orient us. Like, it's helpful to at least have those on the compass. But in reality, you're never actually traveling in, like, one of those specific directions. Right. There's, like, an infinite number of ways to point yourself on the circular compass. And for us on the show, honestly, I think it comes up so much because it's right there in the title. Cult are just weird, right? Kayla: We binaried. Chris: We've binary hard. We've binary hard on, like, at the very inception, the very name of our podcast. Podcast begs for a binary categorization, which is why we always say there's no such thing as a cult, and we only do the categorization exercise as just that. Sort of, like, having a compass, right? Like, it's just a fun exercise. That helps us understand things, but it lacks any real definitional authority or power, right? Is best friends animal society a cult? What about Zumba? What about Qanon? Or long term capital management or empty spaces? None of them are because the binary is inherently illusory. But the thing that I've learned is that it goes even deeper than just the cult label. Like, it's not just like, well, you can't label things, cult or not. It's also like the content of things.

14:33 Chris: It's also like the meat of what we've talked about. Like, where folks who participated in twin flames universe, that self help cult, were they entirely swindled and manipulated? Were they on that one side of a binary, or was there actually some value there? Even if the only silver lining is, like, I learned from that experience, then that's still something, right? Like, if you remember Jatar, the ex QAnon guy we talked to? Like, that sucked for him when he was addicted to Q message boards and he was down a deep, dark conspiracy hole. And also, now he has wisdom that comes from that experience. Doing cultures weird has really hammered home for me the notion that groups of human beings are just extremely nuanced and complex.

15:15 Chris: Far more so than just the simple idea of this thing is a cult, which is bad, and if you were in it, you were brainwashed. These groups fulfill needs. People have often very deep needs. And I think it's important to reject the binary of I'm an occult and everyone outside is bad. And also, I was in a cult and I got out, and now everyone inside is bad. So why do I say all this? Well, basically I'm trying to, like, back justify my participation in the objectivist cult. So that's the main thing. Kayla: That's what this whole exercise really is. This entire show is just, okay. What cults of iron. And how is that okay? Chris: Yeah, yeah. Can I, can I somehow finagle it? That's fine. But seriously, like, I've mentioned a couple times how long I've been meaning to do these episodes since the beginning of the first season. And now that we've actually done them, I realize that I'm actually glad that we've waited, because all the context and learnings I have now from having hosted this show for five years, has really helped me process and analyze my own experience with objectivism in a way that, like, I just didn't have five years ago. Right. Like, the mishmash of good and bad that I've gotten from it, from objectivism, rings very true to me. In regards to the other groups that we've covered that are also mishmashes of good and bad. And I never felt like, personally, I was brainwashed.

16:36 Chris: In fact, that feels kind of like, absurd to even say what I did and do feel like still. Is that objectivism fulfilled a need. It filled a need. I had to have a different philosophical framework and perspective other than Christianity and Catholicism. It filled a need. I had to seek something spiritual outside of a supernatural context. It filled a need. I had to not feel guilt or shame about living for my own happiness on earth. And even if we call it a cult later, all of these things are true regardless. And I think that's, it feels to me like a healthier perspective than I would have had if we tackled this in like the third or fourth episode ever. And I just viewed my whole experience through the lens of like, haha, listen to this dumb shit that I was into.

17:21 Chris: I was so brainwashed when I was 20. Jeeze. So yeah, that's why I asked you that question, is because I wanted to kind of. Kayla: You wanted to say your thing. Chris: Yeah, I did. I wanted to say, yeah, you said a thing and then I said a thing. It's like podcasting. You just say things back and forth. Kayla: Not if you're Ayn Rand. Chris: But yeah, I mean, that was, I want to lead off with that notion because it was a thought that I had while we've been doing these episodes. Like, I started off kind of saying like, I wish I had done this earlier, we're finally doing it, but now I'm like, no, I think we're doing it at the right time. Kayla: I think that's an extremely valuable insight. And I think that. I think it's really easy to kind of look at our experiences and see maybe the negative ways that they impacted us and things like that. But it might be a little tougher sometimes to go back and look at things and figure out the positive ways they impacted us, especially if they are something that's explicitly bad, quote unquote. But it doesn't have to be. It's just that stupid fucking saying, take what you like and leave the rest. God, if that is not just the truer and truer every day, like, take what you like, leave the rest. Yeah, which is not always true, obviously. Don't, you know, take what you like from nazis? Obviously not. But in general, nazi uniforms, take what you like, leave the rest.

18:38 Chris: Yeah, I agree. And like, I think that also, it's, you know, just that again, the binary is harmful, right? The binary of, like, I was in a thing, and when I was in the thing, were right and everybody else was wrong. Kayla: Right. Chris: And then I got out of the thing, and then I just switched that to be the opposite. Like, neither of those things are true. Kayla: I mean, this is, it was a much shorter and less impactful experience for me, but, like, very similar to my experience with, like, DSA democratic socialists. Like, it very much felt like when I got in, which was just before the pandemic of, like, this is the thing that I need. This is the thing that's going to save us. This is the real work, and this is what I truly believe in. And now I'm, like, chewed up and spat out on the other side. And I can look back at all of the negatives, and there are a lot of negatives, biggest one being that they are not as revolutionary as they present themselves to be. Maybe we'll do them on the podcast one day. They do get accused of being a cult all the time.

19:34 Chris: Hell yeah, we should do that next. Cause then we'll do the uber capitalist fascist cult, and then we'll do the leftist fascist cult. Kayla: That's not a bad idea. I have a lot of people to talk to, but even though I can easily look back and go, here's fucked up. This is fucked up. They're doing this now. This is fucked up. I can also look back at a lot of value that I extracted from my time there and a lot of the people that I met and a lot of the organizations I'm now involved with, and it pushed me further left on the political spectrum, which I'm happy about. Chris: DSA pushed you further left? Kayla: Yes. Chris: DSA radicalized you as a leftist. Kayla: Yes, to the point where I hate them, but it's fine. It's fine. Anyway, I relate to what you're talking about.

20:18 Chris: All right, so this episode, as we mentioned, is part of three of this series, I guess we can call it, on objectivism and Ayn Rand. So if you haven't listened to part one and two, you're probably better off doing that, although you're not going to miss out on a narrative thread, just like a bunch of context. So if you want to go back and listen to those episodes, now's a good time to do that. But to recap, in the first of those three, we discussed the objectivist philosophy as a whole. In the second, we talked about Ayn Rand's life and times and about some of the more important people in her life, including people like Leonard Peekoff, Alan Greenspan and the Brandons. Oh, you'll know why I did that if you listened to the second episode.

21:03 Kayla: I'm gonna interrupt you very quickly just because we got an email from a listener who, if you are on our Patreon, you'll remember Nicole, who I talked to for empty spaces. She emailed us and had a little more tea, potentially, to spill about the renaming of the Brandons. Nathaniel Brandon. Brandon was not his original last name. Chris: It was. Kayla: What was it? Do you remember? Chris: Blumenthal. Kayla: Blumenthal, she said, and I did not confirm this, so, you know, do not bring this into your body of knowledge yet before you independently verify. But tea was too good to share. She said that the name Brandon was specifically chosen because it translates to the hebrew son of Rand. Chris: Ben Rand.

21:43 Kayla: Right, Ben Rand. It was like an acronym. Not an acronym. What is that called? Chris: Portmento. Kayla: It combined. It combined. Chris: I think it's a portmanteau. Kayla: It's not a portmanteau. Chris: You're a portmanteau. Kayla: It combined Ben and Rand. Chris: Right. Kayla: To make Brandon son of Rand. And then he fucked his spiritual mommy, I guess. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Don't fuck your parents. Even if it's. I don't know, whatever. Kayla: Thank you for that insight, Nicole. I really hope it's true. Chris: Look, I've heard a similar thing. I never actually heard the hebrew interpretation of Ben Rand. Kayla: Right. Chris: But I definitely had read some stuff suggesting that the rand in Brandon was from Ayn Rand. But I also didn't see any smoking gun from that, so I'm not sure, but I do. Nicole's in the trust network. Also. It was interesting that she also had a rand phase. We'll come back to that. So for today's episode, we are wrapping up by talking about the larger context around Ayn Rand, critical and popular reception of her works. And of course, whether or not objectivism is a cult or just weird cannot wait. But before we do those things, we're gonna play a quick game. No, because this game will be a nice transition between last episode about Mizrand herself and this episode about how people felt and feel about her.

23:03 Kayla: Okay. Chris: It's a game I call good take, bad take. Kayla: I don't want to. Chris: The rules are simple. I'll tell you an Ayn Rand quote or statement, either from one of her works or conversation or interview or speech, and you tell me if that take is good or bad. It's gonna be real tough to tell. Kayla: Okay. Okay. So these are all Ayn Rand. I'm not happy to say if it's Ayn Rand or him. Chris: No, no. This is all her. This is all her specifically. That's why it's the transition from the. Her bio episode to the. What do people think about her? Kayla: Okay. Chris: Okay, so, yeah, so this, by the way, might get a little spicy. So. Kayla: So trigger warning for all of the. Chris: Pulled onto your butts. Yeah, a little bit of a trigger warning for, like, colonialism. I don't know. Like, it just. There's some offensive stuff in here, so just FYI.

23:51 Kayla: Okay. Chris: All right. First quote. Kayla: No. Chris: Okay, good. You're right. No, you got it. You're nailing it so far. Kayla: I'm just scared. Chris: Okay, how about this one? A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. Good take or bad take? Kayla: Good take? Chris: Yeah, I think so. I think it's a good take. You know, I have these color coded. Kayla: That's good. Chris: On my script. I colored them. Cause it's like, there's no. There's no gray area in these. It's gonna be very easy. Gotcha. Just FYI. Okay, how about this one? Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. Kayla: Good take. Chris: I think that's a good take. How about this one? Learn to value yourself, which means fight for your happiness.

24:38 Kayla: Good take. Chris: Good take. Okay, now, all these won't be just, like, direct quotes. Those were direct quotes. Those are from, like, her books or whatever. Some of these will be, like, she is reporting. So she said this or whatever. Okay, so here's this one. In one of her later lectures, she called homosexuality immoral and disgusting, despite advocating the repeal of all laws concerning it. Kayla: Bad take. Chris: Yeah, that's not a great take. No, that's not a great take. But, you know, it's up front, so we're gonna escalate, but, yeah, like, that was like. She's like. It's disgusting, but, like, you know, the government shouldn't be in it, which, like, I'll. You know. Okay. Kayla: There are worse takes to have. I guess you don't get too much credit for being like.

25:21 Chris: No, you don't get a cookie for. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, that's, like, the bare. It's like, below the bare minimum. It's like, whatever the rung below bare minimum is. That's that. Okay, next one. Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world to do what we want, and it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we truly want. Kayla: I can tell by the way you read it, you could have said nothing. You could have said gobbledygook. You would have been like, if you read it in that way, I would. Chris: Have been like, the referential way. Kayla: Clearly. Clearly. You think it's a good take. Chris: Okay, well, what do you think? Kayla: Sure. Chris: Yeah, that's the correct answer.

26:02 Kayla: The problem is that I know who is saying it, and some of these things I'm like, it's not a good take coming from you. Chris: Yeah, good take. The reasoning behind this whole game is just to illustrate, like, this is why people get into Ayn Rand. And here are reasons. Here are the things that they eventually. This is why. This is why Ayn Rands has people that are. Have a phase. Right? Kayla: Sure. Chris: Because you read the good takes, and you're like, that's inspiring. You know what it is? It does take courage to, like, really, you know, seize the day. Right. To carpe the DM. You know? You know how it is. Like, it's hard to, like, with the blank page is so hard to start writing. And that's because it's hard. It takes courage to do the things that you. That are truly fulfilling for you, and you just have the craziest look on your face. You need to talk right now, please.

26:56 Kayla: The cat was gonna go stick her head in the cat food bag. Chris: Oh, that's fine. Kayla: That's what I wanted to say. One thing about this game. You can probably play this game with anyone. Chris: Yeah, yeah. Kayla: Including, like, well, not the gays. Chris: They're moral and disgusting. Kayla: Kayla, you could play this game with Hitler. You could play this game with Stalin. You could play this game, actually. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: You can play any. Anybody who's had any sort of, like, achieved an influential position by their public speaking or their thought leadership. You can play this game with. You can pull quotes out of context. You can find those nuggets that fulfill a need that put people on a path towards fascism. Like, you can generally, you don't start the pipeline with the most extreme views. We found that with QAnon. We found that you see that time and time again. You do nothing on ramp people with the most extreme views. You unramp them with the. It is noble to be this, that, and the other. And then it's like, oh. It's like you give something kind of, like, vague enough as to be a horoscope, and then eventually you start introducing the bad stuff.

28:05 Kayla: Not that Ayn Rand is Hitler, but I know that some of the quotes that are coming are really unforgivable and unfortunately, taint the rest of her philosophy. No, but you've hinted. Chris: I've told you. Kayla: I can put. I can use my imagination. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Don't, though. It sucks. No, but I'm glad you said that because I actually didn't have that in the script here. And I think that's a really insightful point that this does kind of follow that similar model of, like, I don't know, like, even, like, Scientology does that. Right. Like, on the surface, it's like, are you feeling sad? We can help you not feel sad. And then, like, you know, a few years later, you've given them, like, $50,000 and you're in a compound and, like, Xenu is coming to get you or whatever. So, like, got that same sort of feel to it. I hadn't really. I didn't have that in here, so I appreciate you bringing that up. Yeah, you're. You're awesome. Yep. Sit over there. Okay. All right, next quote. Do not let.

29:04 Chris: Now I kind of feel like we've just sort of. We've, like, taken the wind out of all these. Kayla: Sorry. Chris: Like, pre explained them. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the. Not quite. The. Not yet, and then not at all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be one. It exists. It is real. It is possible. It is yours. Kayla: Okay. This is why people have a phase. Because she's a fucking idiot. This is terrible writing. But it's 6th grade reading level. Chris: Come on. Live, laugh love, Caleb. Kayla: It's the live laugh love of philosophy. I'm sorry. I don't want to be that person. But it is.

29:44 Chris: Well, you are. Kayla: Whatever. Good take. Good. Fine. Fine take. Chris: Cringy, but good take. Kayla: So's live, laugh love. Chris: All right, how about this one? She once said of feminists that they complained about the sexual objectification of women when those who complained the loudest were clearly in no such danger. Kayla: I think Ayn Rand should maybe take a little look in the mirror. Chris: Well, don't be Ayn Rand about this. Kayla: I'm gonna. Ayn Rand. Chris: Like, that's clearly a bad take because, like. Shut the fuck up. Kayla: Feminists aren't feminists because they're ugly. Chris: Right. That's basically. That's. Yeah, it's like, oh, feminists are stupid. They're all uggos like, shut up, Ayn Rand. She also apparently said, no woman should aspire to be president of the United States. Good take or bad take?

30:30 Kayla: Bad take. Ayn Rand. Chris: Okay. Yeah. All right. How about this one? Kayla: You know what? I want to say one another. Chris: Yeah, go ahead. Kayla: Sometimes we have the tendency to go like, oh, but there's a product of their time. And this is a good take of the time, and this is just what people thought, and this is just what people did. And that. That while there is some truth to that, it is also important to remember that there were plenty of people at the time who were not saying, oh, feminists are only feminists because they're ugly. Oh, women should never be present. Like, there are plenty of people in any given time. It's funny that you're saying this, that are saying the. That have better takes than this. It is not just like, oh, we can't expect more of the people of our past. You can. To a certain degree, you can.

31:10 Chris: So the context for how I ran into that quote was that Nathaniel Brandon was, like, disagreeing with her about this. So not only was there a better take at the time, it was also from her favorite student whom she was fucking. It was as close to her as you can possibly. Like, a different perspective was as close to her as you can possibly get. Kayla: This is a really good example of the thing that we talked to with Daenery Grace in our fat liberation episode of, like, in terms of justice, in terms of social justice, in terms of liberatory justice, your lived experience is not enough. Generally, it must be paired with critical liberatory thought.

31:51 Chris: Yeah. Ayn Rand, I think, is an extreme example of that. Kayla: For Ayn Rand to be antifeminist is bizarre. Chris: Right, right. I didn't put this in here, but this year there was like. I think it was Ludwig von Mises. Mises. Mises. I don't know, like uber supply side capitalist economics guy who, like, she loved and all the libertarians fucking love. Okay. And he said something good about her once. It was like. It was something like the most intellectually honest man in the western hemisphere or something. And she just loved the fact that he referenced her, called her a man. She loved it, apparently. Bee's knees. Kayla: This is a certain form of, quote unquote feminist, who's not, you know, up with the feminist critical theory, who finds that proximity to maleness is the pinnacle rather than, like, equity between the sexes.

32:47 Chris: Yeah. I wouldn't even call her feminist. Kayla: I think she's kind of like, well, she's feminist. For me and not for thee. She's. I get to have power. I get to have. Chris: Yes. Kayla: I get to be president. I get to be this. I'm a woman, and I get all these things that I say women shouldn't have. Chris: Mm. Yeah, yeah. She. I feel like she's kind of like the life of Brian for, like, feminists, where just like, you know, you can kind of be like, oh, man, she was such a feminist. But she's like, no, fuck you. Get out of here. Kayla: I hate women. Chris: I hate women. All right. Kayla: Didn't you read my books? Chris: Here's another take. Yeah, let's get back to good take, bad take. Here's another direct quote. Here we go. But if you ask me. Well, now, should America have tolerated slavery? I would say certainly not. And why did they? Well, at the time of the constitutional convention or the debates about the constitution, the best theoreticians at the time wanted to abolish slavery right then and there, and they should have. The fact that they compromised with other members of the debate and their compromise has caused this country a dreadful catastrophe which had to happen, and that's the civil war. You could not have slavery existing in a country which proclaims the inalienable rights of Mandev.

33:52 Kayla: Good take. Chris: Yeah, pretty good cake. Kayla: See? Chris: Cake. Kayla: Good, good cake. Good cake. Bad cake. Chris: All right, how about this one? But now, as to the Indians. Kayla: Bad take. Stop. Done. We don't need it. I know it's a bad take. Chris: I don't even care to discuss that kind of alleged complaints that they have against this country. I do believe, with serious scientific reasons. The worst kind of movie that you've probably seen. Worst from the indian viewpoint as to what they did to the white man, I do not think they have any right to live in a country merely because they were born here and acted like, and lived like savages. Americans didn't conquer. Americans did not conquer this country. I will go further. Let's suppose they were all beautifully innocent savages, which they certainly were not.

34:41 Chris: What was it they were fighting for if they opposed white men on this continent for their wish to continue a primitive existence, their right to keep part of the earth untouched, unused, and not even as property, but just to keep everybody out so that you live practically like animal or maybe a few caves about. Any white person who brings the elements of civilization had the right to take over this continent. And it is great that some people did and discovered here what they couldn't do anywhere else in the world. And what the Indians, if there are any racist. Indians today do not believe to this day respect for individual rights. Kayla: See, something like that. Chris: That's what the trigger warning was for. Mainly for. Kayla: That makes it erases everything else that she has to say.

35:26 Chris: Yeah, it's. Kayla: If this is part of your philosophical viewpoint is null and void. Chris: I saw it presented as, like, she's totally against government oppression, except when you murder indians, then it's okay otherwise, no government oppression, you guys. But that one's okay. Kayla: But that one's okay because it meant that I could come here. Chris: Right. And also, I think there's, like, some willful denial, and this is just me, like, you know, armchair psychologist. But, like, I think there's some willful denial that takes place here, and that takes place with some folks on, you know, on the right. On the, like, rah, America side. You know, America. Sure. Kayla: Rah rah. Chris: But, like, there's this. There's this concept that, like, you can't be critical at all. And if you're critical, like, if you love America, then you have to whitewash everything, and everything has to be perfect. And so this kind of. It just feels like that to me, where it's like.

36:20 Kayla: But she can acknowledge slavery. Chris: Yeah. Okay, so those last two quotes were. Kayla: Part of the same speech. I figured they sounded like they were same speech, and it sounds like part of her. The problem for her is that she. She views the lifestyles and the communities and the societies built by the indigenous population here as less than. Rather than. There's this idea that, well, western progress is progress, and anything else is not progress. It's primitivism and slavery. We're all on the same timeline. It's just different. Chris: Right. And so slavery was happening within. To her, within that western context. So that was like, ooh, that's bad. Whereas, like, you know, native populations were outside of that western context. And so you can kind of, like, dismiss that, I guess. She also, you know, mentions here, like, property rights. Like, she's. Property rights are so huge for, like, everything kind of come. Derives from property rights. And so when you have a society that, like, doesn't have that concept.

37:23 Kayla: I don't even know if I would say that, though. I think that's. Chris: Sorry. Individual property rights. Kayla: Okay. Chris: Right. Kayla: I don't even know. I think that this is. I think that everything that she has to say does not come from some sort of knowledge or understanding of how indigenous populations lived here. Sure. It is a projection. So just because her view of individual property rights is not reflected in that culture, I don't know. Chris: Okay, well, then let me say it this way. They don't have the same western concept of property rights that Ayn Rand has in her own head. Kayla: Right? Chris: So therefore not valid, objectively speaking. Kayla: It's just shocking to me when somebody can experience what she experienced and, like, she shapes her entire worldview off of her oppression. Her oppression. And then to not be able to identify with a group experiencing that times a million is so gross.

38:18 Chris: Yeah. And it's also. She just willfully ignores history, too, because Native Americans were the first slaves that the colonists had. Over here, it was mostly native american slaves. And then because we brutalized them too much, they died, and we're like, shit, we need a new supply of slaves. And then african slaves came. So those two different statements are actually about the same thing, but this just betrays a lack of understanding of history. Kayla: We enslaved indigenous populations, we put them into concentration camps. We removed all of their individual liberty in huge, huge ways. To be Ayn Rand and have her philosophy and side against that population is not only is it philosophically inconsistent, it's morally reprehensible.

39:04 Chris: So that one's been coming down the pipe a while. I didn't want to start with it because it would just be like, okay, well, fuck everything else she has, you know? Kayla: Yeah. I mean, but, yeah, fuck everything else she has to say. Chris: So there's one more take to go. You'll really like this one. Kayla: I won't. Chris: This one was actually new to me when doing the research for these episodes. So, you know, in the fountainhead and, like, spoilers for the Fountainhead if you guys haven't read it, but you know how it ends with a criminal trial with the protagonist having committed a crime, and then all of the big ideas in the book about artistic integrity and the glowing, exalted one guy versus society stuff, all of those ideas kind of come to a head in this big courtroom criminal trial at the end of the book.

39:46 Kayla: Yeah. Artists should have. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: Control over their art. Chris: Right? They should have control over their art to the exclusion of everyone else who participated in that art. Anyway, keep that in mind. So here's some quotes from Miss Rand. Quote, the first thing that impresses me about the case is the ferocious rage of a whole society against one man. No matter what the man did, there's always something loathsome in the virtuous, and she put some scare quotes. Virtuous. This is from her journals, by the way. Kayla: Okay. Chris: Personal journals. Kayla: Ugh. Don't keep a journal. Chris: Virtuous indignation and mass hatred of the majority is repulsive. To see all these beings with worse sins and crimes in their own lives, virtuously condemning a criminal. This is not just the case of a terrible crime. It is not the crime alone that has raised the fury of public hatred. It is the case of a daring challenge to society. It is the fact that a crime has been committed by one man alone, that this man knew it was against all laws of humanity and intended that way, that he does not want to recognize it as a crime, and that he feels superior to all. It is the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own, a man who really stands alone in action and in soul.

41:02 Kayla: She continues, and that man was the unabomber. Chris: The fact that he looks like a bad boy with a winning grin, quote unquote, that he makes you like him the whole time you're in his presence. She says she has a involuntary. In the. In her writings here, she said that she has an involuntary, irresistible sympathy for him, which I cannot help feeling just because of his antisocial nature and in spite of everything else. And regarding his credo, the full statement of which is, I am like the state. What is good for me is right. Rand writes, even if he wasn't big enough to live by that attitude, he deserves credit for saying it so brilliantly. I'm afraid that I idealize him and that he might not be this at all. In fact, he probably isn't. But it does not make any difference if he isn't. He could be, and that's enough. End quote.

41:51 Kayla: I don't want to know who this is about. Chris: You definitely don't. Kayla: I don't want to. Can we just end? Can we be done? Chris: So, good take or bad take? Kayla: Not about Rourke without even knowing who it's about. Extraordinarily bad take. Oh, I like him because he's good. He's good. Smile. Chris: So, just for context. Kayla: Oh, my God. Ayn Rand. Chris: That's her writing, like I said, in her personal notes and journals back when she was just a youth, that was in her twenties, when she was in America. Kayla: Feminists are feminists because no one wants to fuck them. Chris: She's crazy. Kayla: Criminal to commit crimes because they're hot. Chris: A criminal that was relatively famous at the time, since, you know, Americans love good trial. So this is like a national news thing briefly here in the late 1920s. And the name of this guy was William Hickmandhe.

42:35 Kayla: I don't know him. Chris: Do you want to know what crimes Mister Hickman was convicted for? No, it wasn't for protecting his artistic vision. Kayla: What was it? Chris: Unless his artistic vision was incredibly fucked up. No, it wasn't because he was a serial killer. Okay, I won't go into all the crimes that he was. Kayla: Is Ayn Rand the original true crime baddie? Chris: I think so. Kayla: Oh, my God. She was. She'd love Ted Bundy. She'd be like, she. Chris: Oh, yes. Kayla: Gross. Chris: Yes. I won't go into all the crimes that he was convicted for, but I'll give you enough of a picture of who this guy was. His most high profile crime was kidnapping a twelve year old girl from school. Kayla: Trigger warning. Chris: By impersonating a family friend, making ransom demands on the parents, often in cruel or taunting language. The father brought the $1,500 ransom demand to an agreed upon location. And I'll quote this bit here from crimelibrary.com. And yes, definitely content warning here for some pretty horrific stuff. At the rendezvous, Mister Parker handed over the money to a young man who was waiting for him in a parked car. When Mister Parker paid the ransom, he could see his daughter Marion, sitting in the passenger seat next to the suspect. As soon as the money was exchanged, the subject drove off, with the victim still in the car at the end of the street, Marian's corpse was dumped onto the pavement. She was dead. Her legs had been chopped off, and her eyes had been wired open to appear as if she was still alive.

44:00 Chris: Her internal organs had been cut out, and pieces of her body were later found strewn all over the Los Angeles area. End quote. Kayla: I think Ayn Rand should go to therapy. Chris: That's so. Kayla: What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? Chris: Now, I'm obviously pulling some selected stuff from her journals, right? Like, there are parts of it where she's like, yeah, yeah, he shouldn't have done that crime for sure. But, you know, like, that, like, why? Kayla: Can't help but be, why is there a but? Chris: Like, why is this guy. Kayla: I can't help but be sympathetic and what the fuck is wrong with human nature? What the fuck is wrong with us that we see a good looking smile and we can, in our heads, erase the crimes? Like, unless you're analyzing that, like, go one step further, Ayn Rand, go. Just go one step further. You can't control your reactions, but you can definitely look at them and go, huh?

44:54 Chris: Yeah, yeah. And it's not just the, like, the good looking, this thing. It's that, like, she clearly had, like, this gigantic bee in her bonnet. For the, like, one versus many narrative so much that, like, even though if the one is somebody who, like, chopped up an innocent little girl, right. That she's like, yeah, but like. Like, in the quote, she says in her inner journal, she says something like, you know, look at all these, you know, the mob looking on and, like, judging him when their crimes are worse. And it's like, I don't think they are. Like, I don't know, maybe somebody's broke the speed limit getting there or paid rent late or something. But I'm pretty sure those crimes aren't worse. I don't know where you're getting that from.

45:43 Kayla: Sometimes there's a problem with people who. They want to look at everything metaphorically rather than actually. And you can really get into this space of, like, well, it's one versus the many and the mob mentality, and this is just one man who dared to live differently than others. But if you get so metaphorical about. Chris: It that you ignore the reality, you ignore the rules. Which is so funny, because her philosophy is objectivism. It's about looking at the reality of things. So, yeah, I don't know. It's just. It also just really kind of like that other quote that we read before. This one just kind of calls into question a lot of her other stuff. Like, you know, I can take. I can take the things that she writes that I like at face value, but also, then it makes you kind of go like, well, what type of person am I? What type of person would admire this other type of person? And then, like, I don't. I'm not sure I want to like what she writes. Like, I don't know. You know, it just kind of calls other things into question, I guess, is what I'm saying.

46:53 Kayla: It goes back to what were talking about with the game itself. Like, you can do this with almost anyone. You can find the choice quotes, and then you go, you know, if Hitler said, I need to pick a different person. Cause I'm doing that, like, rule thing. Who's another bad person? Chris: Stalin, Mao. I don't know. Somebody that's, like, less, like, world leader, millions killed person. That's bad. Kayla: If David Duke. If David Duke said, love your neighbor, right? Chris: You'd be like, look, David Duke said, love your neighbor. Yeah. Kayla: Like, if somebody give you an out of context David Duke quote that said love your neighbor, you'd be like, oh, that's so nice. And then you go and read what he actually has to say on a deeper level, and then you go, oh, so love your neighbor doesn't actually mean love your neighbor. And I need to think of this in a different way, that what was presented to me is not cool and not full of context. And what he's actually saying is, love your neighbor if they're white and hate your neighbor if they're not. And I don't want to subscribe to that philosophy. So let's figure something else out.

47:47 Chris: Some context for this was given that, like, oh, well, she knows she was only in her twenties at the time, and we're all dumb when we're in our twenties. Kayla: You're an adult when you're in your twenties. We all grow and we all change, but you're still an adult in your twenties, and you can be held accountable for your actions. Chris: Yeah. And clearly, like, part of Roerich's narrative. Kayla: Oh, please tell me that the work thing was written before this. Chris: What work thing? Kayla: Please tell me that the fountainhead was written before she had this to say about this. Chris: No, no. Kayla: Are you kidding? Chris: Absolutely not. Kayla: The fountainhead was. Chris: No, no, she wrote her. Yeah, yeah. This was like, this is early, random. This is like, before night of January 16. Kayla: No, I know. Chris: I know. I know. This is what I'm saying. I know. I'm really sorry. Kayla: That's fine. Chris: I'm sorry.

48:27 Kayla: I already had to reshape the way I think about the fountainhead. I think the fountainhead is largely a useful tool in learning to think about how artists should relate to their art. And not much more than that, but. Gross. Chris: Yeah. Join the club. All right. Thank you for playing. Good take, bad take. Kayla: You're not welcome. You're not welcome at all. Chris: But I wrote some of the takeaways down here. But we already kind of talked about them, right. Just to convey the fact that she has some decent Inspo porn. And that's part of her initial appeal. That's what you get. First, you read the fountainhead. You're impressed by the statement it makes about artistic integrity and intrepid vision. And then you get into, like, maybe Atlas shrugged and a few of the shorter works, and you start getting into the philosophy, and then much later, you dig up some of the other things she said. And it's like, not good. And that's a good segue into talking about how she was received by scholars, critics, and the public. We'll start with the latter because the questions of why was she and why does she remain so popular? And why is she more popular among youth?

49:33 Chris: I think one of the answers is the thing that we just talked about. She has a solid repertoire of Inspo porn quotes. Right. She has a bunch of quotes that are like that. What was that? Live, laugh. Don't let the be the hero of your own story. Exactly. So when you're a young, idealistic teen, that type of stuff resonates harder. When you're a teenager, you like hearing that stuff. That type of thing is influential to you. Yeah, I should swim against the current and be the uber person that I was always meant to be, blah, blah. But it's much more than just the inspirational stuff. It's how the inspirational stuff is framed. It's a very adversarial outlook. It's very me against the world, which is basically the default state of mind for teenagers and young 20 somethings.

50:23 Chris: So you're in that phase of life where you do feel like anything is possible and you do feel like you're supposed to go forth and conquer. And critically, you probably also feel like an outsider at that age. Kayla: Right. Chris: You know, like, unless you're, like, in the top 5% of popular kids at school, and honestly, like, they probably also feel like outsiders. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: I mean, it's like teenage angst is a phrase for a reason, but the randian literature appeals to that sense of isolation and sense of adversarial. I'll show them indignation that we feel as youths here. I'll read this via Wikipedia. Historian Jennifer Burns, writing in goddess of the market, which is her book about Ayn Rand, writes, some critics dismiss Rand as a shallow thinker appealing only to adolescents, although she thinks the critics miss her significance as a gateway drug to right wing politics, end quote. And I think, and it sounds like you think Miss Burns is onto something here, despite the reductionism of objectivism as merely right wing politics. But certainly there's a point behind the fact that, like, the initial real appeal of Ayn Rand isn't really about any of her philosophy. It's about the reader identifying with her characters, especially someone like Roark.

51:32 Chris: And the identification is, yeah, I also feel like I'm socially isolated. And what Rant tells us isn't that is a universal feeling that we all share, especially at that age, some more than others, and our social lives are about figuring that out and bridging that gap. Rather, she tells us, she validates us with, you feel like an outsider because you're better than everyone else, and you'll show them. And it's not just the outsiderness. It's also the transgressive nature of her ideas, which I'll just quote this one from an op ed on glreview.org, comma, because I found it very insightful. Rin's simplistic reversals. Selfishness is a virtue. Altruism is a sin. Chris: Capitalism is a deeply moral system that allows human freedom to flourish, have given her work a patina of transgression, making her beloved by those who consider themselves bold, anti establishment truth tellers, even while they cling to the prevailing hierarchical order. End quote. Ouch. I don't like this because I'm in it.

52:33 Kayla: Yeah, like the. I have a lot to say. I don't want to. Chris: Well, this is a podcast, so maybe that's not really compatible. I don't know. I'm not gonna force you to talk, but if you have something to say, now's the time. Kayla: I'll podcast if I don't have to talk. Chris: Let'S do a podcast that's just entirely silent. Kayla: It'll be like four minutes and 33 seconds. John Cage. But podcast, yeah. I think that it can be the reason why I don't think it's completely reductionist. To be like, Ayn Rand can be an on ramp to the right is largely because of how co opted her philosophy has been in the US to the american right. I think it's much more likely that if you are somebody who gets into Ayn Rand these days, that you get funneled into conservatism rather than objectivism.

53:29 Chris: Yeah. Just to reply to that real quick, I think that maybe reductionist was the wrong word for me to use. I don't think that Miss Burns is saying that's all it is. I think she's saying that it is that. Right, right. So if she's saying all it is a gateway drug, then that would be reductionist. But I don't think she's. I think that's astronomy. I don't think she's actually saying that. Kayla: And then the other thing is that a lot of these ideas that Ayn Rand is presenting, while they sound really heroic at first blush, do ultimately play into a lot of the things we kind of have to undo when we start to learn about white supremacist thinking. Hear me out. Hear me out. I promise I'm not just jumping to the white supremacy. I know I keep bringing Hitler up, but just the idea of, like, no.

54:16 Chris: We'Ve gone full rule. What is it called? Coolin's rule. What's his name? Kayla: I don't know. Chris: Do you ever refresh the rule? Kayla: Yeah, rule whatever. On the Internet. Chris: Rule 34 on the Internet. The one where you always talk about Hitler. Kayla: Yeah, I know. I'm very guilty of that, I'm not gonna lie. But the philosophy of, like, I am singular, I am different than everyone else. I am individualistic, ubermensch. I am, like you said, I am better than everyone else. And I'll show them that individualistic thinking really plays into whiteness. And it might be why something like objectivism can funnel people into american conservativism, because I think that this stuff is going to apply or is going to fill a need, largely for a lot of white kids.

55:02 Chris: Yeah. And you can see the parallels with Nietzsche. Kayla: It's not about community. It's not about those things. Chris: She's been, and I talk about this in a minute, but she derives a lot of her ideas from Nietzsche and certainly the Ubermensch. I am going to conquer all because I am just that much better than everyone, and that's why people hate me. It's because I'm better. That's very nietzschean, and I'm certainly not blaming world war two on him. But I'm also. I'm also saying that, like, that is one of the threads that wove into that tapestry. So I think you can kind of draw that parallel, too. Kayla: I think anything that seeks to isolate the individual from a sense of community can be very. Can be an on ramp to extremism.

55:47 Chris: Right. And I like Nietzsche, but he was also a shithead. So, you know. Anyway, do you feel like that gives you maybe, like, a. More of a sense of, like, why she's popular amongst the youtubers? I still feel like that transgressiveness, there's that, like, me against the world Inspo. Kayla: It doesn't complete the picture for me, but it fills in a lot of details. Chris: Okay. Yeah. And I've also heard the argument, we talked about this at the top of the show, that people just have a rand phase, that you grow out of it, which is a little dismissive to people's experiences, saying, oh, they'll grow out of it. But at least anecdotally, the Rand phase thing is totally a thing. Kayla: Right. Chris: I have several friends who have had bizarrely similar experiences, as I have, right down to the college club thing. Several authors I read for these episodes talked about their own rand phases. And Nicole, that we talked about at the top of the show, she had her own rand phase. So it is kind of a thing. So Jerome Brooke, arise chairman, and we mentioned him on some of the previous episodes. He ascribes this to people losing their idealism of youth. I don't know that feels, based on everything we've talked about, doesn't quite feel right to me.

57:02 Kayla: Again. It still feels like it's not painting the whole picture for me. I feel like a piece is missing, and I don't know what that piece is. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I gotcha. Now, while Rand's works have enjoyed tremendous popular success, her critical reception was not nearly as positive. Kayla: Because the books are bad. Chris: So I have a list of reasons, but we could just stop at books are bad. Kayla: I really liked the fountainhead, you guys. I enjoyed it a lot. And, yes, of course, you can make the argument that, like, her writing is pedantic and laundry list y and, you know, purple patchy when it shouldn't be. It insists upon itself, but also, it's like it was written in. When. Chris: It was published in 1940. Kayla: There was a lot of fucking western literature that's like that at the time. And I do think. I do think, and I know I've said this before, I do think certain criticisms are levied against her, particularly as an artist, that are harsher criticisms than are received by her male contemporaries that were doing similar things.

58:00 Chris: Yeah, that's my second on the bullet of this year. No, but you know what? Kayla: Fuck you, Ayn Rand. You shouldn't get to benefit from feminist thought because you were, like, women shouldn't be president. Chris: Right, exactly. Yeah. I still. Look, I'm a millennial, Kayla. I have a lot of experience separating art from artists, and so I probably will always like the fountainhead, even though its author was. Well, you heard the quotes. Okay, so critical reception. First, the very fact that she was a popular philosopher, I think, maybe worked against her a little bit. You know, like, philosophy isn't for mass consumption. It's for the hallowed halls of academia. So I think, like, that's. That factors into it somewhat. Second bullet point is what you just mentioned. Women philosophers are a no philosophy. At least the in group club. Sitting at the grown up table is, like, it's overwhelmingly a boys club, right?

58:57 Kayla: Yeah. Chris: So I think that definitely factors into it, which sucks, because she also hated women and internalized all that. But whatever. Third, there's the amateur problem, right? She didn't take the usual PhD path that you should take. She studied some philosophy in her undergrad, but then she shortcutted her expertise by just doing philosophy, which is interesting, because I do think that there are professions and callings that amateurism is a bad idea for. Right. Something like healthcare. We've talked about in the show, doctors and nurses are objectively better than gurus. And wellness influencers. So there's certainly a point there with certain professions and certain areas of expertise, but philosophy, I don't know, man. It kind of feels inherently like it's everybody's game, you know? Like, how can you put a fence around your navel gazing?

59:53 Chris: Like, what exactly is the expertise, or lack thereof, that would invalidate somebody's unauthorized navel gazing? Kayla: I don't know. I don't know enough about philosophy as an art or science to say I have no idea. Chris: I don't either. But it just. I don't know. Like, once you get to the pontificating stage, I'm just kind of like, how can you pontificate wrong? Like, what is the. Did you not get your license? Logical fallacies, I guess. I mean, she definitely is guilty of that, but then you can judge on the logical fallacies, not on, like, whether she went to school. Kayla: Right. Right. Chris: Fourth. Kayla: Yeah, that's pretty shitty to be like, you can only be year degree from her mood.

1:00:35 Chris: That might get recolored in just a minute. Oh. Fourth. She does get called derivative. Right? And this one I find, like, super dismissible. A common critique will be, oh, she's just like, a knockoff. Nietzsche. Kayla: Right? Chris: Which, like, yeah, but people don't say. Kayla: That about Plato and Aristotle. They say they're two different things, and they, you know, the influence, but they don't say, like, knock off. Chris: Yeah. All thought is built upon the foundation of other thinkers that have come before you. So, like, why are we shitting on her for that? That's not valid in my opinion. Kayla: Stop defending Ayn Rand. I'm getting very worked up about defending Ayn Rand. Chris: Oh, don't stick it. No, just remember those quotes. Kayla: Oh, my God. Chris: Fifth, she has this antagonism toward academia, which we've seen come through in her later disciples and an Ari itself.

1:01:21 Kayla: Oh, I forgot. College professors did 911. Chris: Exactly, exactly. So I found it funny when we discussed last episode that she was bummed to about the critical painting of Atlas Shrugged and of her other works. But, I mean, like, she had such a everyone is wrong and I'm right attitude, and she thought that colleges were destroying America or whatever. So, like, what did she expect? Kayla: Right? Chris: Like, did she expect all those same people she denigrated to turn around and be like, yeah, she's right, we do suck. Kayla: Good call. It's strange to get so depressed after me against the worlding and not having everybody go like, oh, my God, morons. Chris: And they don't like me. What went wrong? Kayla: I see that a lot.

1:02:03 Chris: Here's another quote from Wikipedia. Rand's relationship with contemporary philosophers was mostly antagonistic. She was not an academic and did not participate in academic discourse. She was dismissive of critics and wrote about ideas she disagreed with in a polemical manner without in depth analysis. She was, in turn, viewed very negatively by many academic philosophers who dismissed her as an unimportant figure who need not be given serious consideration, end quote. Kayla: I think that I am going to agree. Chris: Yeah. So in addition to the antagonism, there's like a few more things in here in that statement. I think we're on, like 0.6 or seven now or something. So 0.6 that she did not, quote unquote, participate in academic discourse. So, like, maybe the problem with the philosophical amateurism wasn't the amateurism itself.

1:02:52 Kayla: Right. Chris: But rather her refusal to engage with other scholars. Right. When you have that dogmatic, like, well, you know, I have the right thing and they're wrong. Like, where's the discussion? Right? Like, how do you have discussion there? Kayla: As Ocean Gate is to submersible technology and regulations. Ayn Rand is to philosophers. Chris: Gotta get that ocean gate reference in good. That's good. No, that'll be good for the search engines. That'll be SEO positive. Kayla: That metaphor works for me because it does kind of, we see this time and time again of like a figure criticizing the quote unquote, establishment and then being like, I'm not engaging with this. But then, like, doggedly seeking approval and like, why aren't you letting me in your club? That I hate. You see that a lot. And that's. I mean, that is related to the Ocean Gate catastrophe, disaster rip of. I want to be taken seriously as a submersible entrepreneur, but I'm going to denigrate the industry and its regulations and then catastrophe.

1:03:54 Chris: Right? And then another point made in that little paragraph there is her polemical approach, right? Her absolutism, her us versus them, her objectivity, dogma, the way she presents ethical disagreements as good versus evil, and she's always the good one. All of that contributes to what I think is, like, mostly a correct dismissal by the wider philosophical community. Even if none of those other points were true, her dogmatic, polemical approach just kind of makes her dead on arrival. Right? Like, how do you discuss anything? And I'll also add an 8th point, which is just the content of her philosophy. I think some people also find, or many people find distasteful. Chris: Like, I do think there's a tiny bit of merit to the idea that saying, like, that saying selfishness is good and altruism is bad is kind of a tough pill for people to swallow and engenders some of those thoughts of dismissal.

1:04:46 Kayla: Very antithetical to many, many decades, hundreds of years of societal thought in parts of the world. Chris: Right. And then also fangirling out over capitalism is icky. Kind of icky. Yeah. And I think that does contribute. But that said, I think that's a very small reason, because there are also some guys out there with pretty reprehensible things to say, and we do take them seriously. Like, again, Nietzsche. Right. We take Nietzsche seriously. Kayla: You know, fuck that guy, too. Chris: But. Well, right, but there's. We don't say he's like a fake philosopher. We don't say he's like, you know, we don't dismiss his philosophy. We just say he's a philosopher with some ideas that are cool and some. Kayla: That are like, ugh, you heard it here first. Nietzsche is a fake philosopher.

1:05:28 Chris: That's right. I'm dismissing him. So there you go. Everything you wanted to know about why she is popular with the populace and unpopular with the scholars. By the way, I was reading up a bit on dianetics the other day. Kayla: Why explain what dianetics is. Chris: I have a little bit here to explain it, just in case. Our lizards probably know what dianetics is because they're all cult enthusiasts. But anyway, it's L. Ron Hubbard's completely made up psychological field that involves, like, it's the thing that has the n grams and the e meters and all that. Kayla: It's the basis of Scientology. Chris: Yeah, it's the pseudoscience that Scientology is based on. So he presented his work to the psychological field, and surprisingly, it was utterly dismissed due to some really technical stuff, like not being based on any kind of evidence or study. And it just came directly out of his head because he thought it sounded right, you know, like Malcolm Gladwell or Ayn Rand. So that's why I bring it up, because it reminded me of her critical reception vis a vis the amateurism and dismissal by scholars and the antagonism. Dianetics, as you may know, also does the I'm right and all of the psychologists are wrong thing.

1:06:38 Kayla: Right. Chris: And as I mentioned, I think philosophical amateurism is basically fine, whereas medical amateurism is not. So they're not the same, but they do share some interesting structural similarities. Kayla: You're glib, Chris. Chris: I'm glib? Kayla: You don't recognize the Tom Cruise bit? I remember when he was telling Matt Lauer, you're glib, Matt. Oh, no, I think it was Matt Lauer, right? Chris: Yeah, you're glib. Kayla: I apologize for questioning the scientific basis of dynetics. Oh, you're glib. I don't even know glib means I am glib. Chris: Glib means whatever you want it to mean, Kayla. Alright. Now, before we get to the criteria, I do want to bring up a couple of points that get raised when people talk about the cultiness of objectivism and Ayn Rand. And yeah, it does get brought up, as evidenced by the fact that Ari had a canned response to my interview request. And it even got brought up like contemporarily to Ms. Rand, like she once, and I think this happened several times, but certainly at one point she did have to respond to an interviewer thusly, my following is not a cult. I am not a cult figure, end quote. So, so those accusations were thrown around at the time.

1:07:52 Kayla: I think it's unfair to be like, if you say you're not a cult, then you're definitely a cult because that's not fair. That's absolutely unfair. Chris: Right. That puts you in an unwinnable position. Right. Kayla: But sometimes it provides a little context that makes things a little more fun. Chris: Yeah. I will now ask you to recall from the previous episode our story about the Brandons, Nathaniel and Barbara Brandon. Nathaniel was Ayn Rand's original favorite student, intellectual heir, and spouse approved fuckboy. The most rational of fuckboys, though. So it was okay, let's ignore the fact that sexual dalliance is also kind of like a typical culty behavior.

1:08:33 Kayla: Yep. Chris: And go right to Mister Brandon's thoughts after the infamous falling out with his idol. Brandon himself later described the culture of NBI. And if you remember, that's the Nathaniel Brandon Institute objectivist haven. He later described the culture there as one of intellectual conformity and excessive reverence for Rand. Some described NBI, or the objectivist movement as a cult or religion, end quote. So that's from Brandon himself. Kayla: Cult, cult, cult. Chris: I'll also bring up another statement of his that Rand gave people something that was missing from their lives.

1:09:13 Kayla: Cult, unquote, cult. Chris: We say that on the show a lot. Just mentioning that here, you said that today. Today, Nathaniel also gives us this accounting of his time in Rand's inner circle, in their little group that they so cheekily called the collective. Kayla: I hate it so much I go to jail. Chris: I'll let him take it from here. There were implicit premises in our world to which everyone in our circle subscribed and which we transmit. So actually, before I get into this, remember point of view, they had a falling out. So, like, this has been contested, right? Like, this is a. This is a biased pov, just like everything is, and this has been contested by, like, other people and whatever. But this is from Nathaniel Brandon himself. There were implicit premises in our world to which everyone in our circle subscribed and which we transmitted to our students at NBI. Point one. Ayn Rand is the greatest human being who has ever lived.

1:10:11 Kayla: I am out. I'm getting out of here. I'm leaving. .2 walking away. Chris: Atlas Shrugged is the greatest human achievement in the history of the world. Ayn Rand, by virtue of her philosophical genius, is the supreme arbiter and any issue pertaining to what is rational, moral, or appropriate to man's life on earth. Once one is acquainted with Ayn Rand and or her work, the measure of one's virtue is intrinsically tied to the position one takes regarding her and or it. Point whatever. We're on five. I don't know. No one can be a good objectivist who does not admire what Ayn Rand admires and condemn what Ayn Rand condemns. Point the next. No one can be a fully consistent individualist who disagrees with Ayn Rand on any fundamental issue. Point further.

1:10:55 Chris: Since Ayn Rand has designated Nathaniel Brandon as her intellectual heir and has repeatedly proclaimed him to be an ideal exponent of her philosophy, he is to be accorded only marginally less reverence than Ayn Rand herself. Point the last. But it is best not to say most of these things explicitly, excepting perhaps the first two items where she's the greatest human being ever. One must always maintain that one arrives at one's beliefs solely by reason, end quote. Kayla: Is it bad that I. Yeah, I kind of have questions here that is, feels like maybe there's some. Chris: Quite a culty list of things. Kayla: It's quite a culty list of things. And I can't help but going, I need secondary sources.

1:11:36 Chris: I know. Kayla: I need some evidence here, because that is. Those are. That's like textbook. Chris: I know. I know. I agree. I don't think that those should be taken at 100% face value, not to. Kayla: Deny his lived experience. Chris: And my understanding, too, is that this wasn't like a, like, these are the writings. Like, I don't. I think it was just more of. Kayla: Like, this is the vibe that he. Chris: This is the vibe. If you don't believe these things, then get out. Then get the fuck out. And like that. That I believe that's easier to defend, but also harder to prove. Kayla: Yeah, I do believe it, though. The way that she talked about herself, the way that she talked about the philosophy, the way that they triangulates with her behaviors. Chris: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Finally, I want to leave you with one more direct quote from Nathaniel Brandon. We were not an occult, in the literal, dictionary sense of the word, but certainly there was a cultish aspect to our world. We were a group organized around a charismatic leader whose members judged one another's character chiefly by loyalty to that leader and her ideas.

1:12:41 Kayla: No, good. Chris: So, to be fair, I want to present some counterpoints. Maybe this is a counterpoint. So, Johan Brook, in that interview and that bit that Ari sent me, he mentions, like, he says, hey, when I became president of Ari, which I think was in 2000 or 2001, he says, I wasn't required to sign off on this list of beliefs. I never saw this list of beliefs. They didn't make me sign anything when I became president of the Ayn Rand Institute about Ayn Rand being infallible or whatever. Kayla: Okay. Chris: And so, again, I'm presenting that as sort of a counterpoint, because he did. And I want to present the thing that they presented. Kayla: Sure, sure. The cult says they're not a cult.

1:13:22 Chris: Guy, and I think it's a good point, and it kind of absolves Ari, but it's also a bit of a straw man, because I think the claim here was that actually NBI and the collective were called, not that Ari was a cult. So he's kind of saying, like, well, when I joined Ari, they didn't do this, but it's like, okay, nobody said, like, that was. Brandon made these statements before Ari was even a thing. Kayla: Right. And you've also said that, like, this wasn't, like, a manifesto that they all had to sign on to. It was just the vibe, the unspoken rules that were communicated indirectly. Right. I also don't want to do the thing of, like, just saying, like, oh, it's brainwashing. It's a cult. When, like, people choose to do things, you know, like, people have beliefs that they really believe in, and it's not just like, they got duped by Ayn Rand, who's a cult leader. Like, maybe people chose to follow her because, you know, they chose to follow her, and not because there was, like, an insidious culture of, you better follow Ayn Rand, or else you're excommunicated.

1:14:22 Chris: Right, right. Yeah. There's definitely choice involved there. It's. With all these things, it's always complicated because it's like, there's some choice, and then there's also some, like, coercion. Right, right. When you're in a. What do we talk about all the time in the show, too? Power dynamic. When you're in a power dynamic, the, you know, choice becomes muddy. Right. Like, there's definitely choice, but there's also, like, what is choice? Oh, my God. The writer of the fountainhead is unhappy with me. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: And I'm just this lowly student who. Kayla: Just joined, and she's 50 and I'm 20. Chris: Right, right. Your own brook, by the way, your own Brook is probably, like, my favorite objectivist. Like, obviously, he has some ideas that are not great either, but for the most part, I feel like his stuff is pretty good. Maybe I'm biased because he came to campus and we chatted and had dinner or whatever. But anyway, he also says in this interview, don't judge ideas based on the worst advocates for those ideas. Judge them based on their own merit. Read the books. And we mentioned that back when were talking about the serial killer obsession. And I think that is, like, great advice, but also, like, hard to do up to a point, you know, or easy. Easier to do up to a point, and then it becomes hard.

1:15:35 Kayla: Right. Chris: Like, it's. I'm still gonna do that with the fountainhead, but after reading some of those things to you, it's, like, really fucking hard. Kayla: I think it's easier to do with the fountainhead that it is, than it is for Atlas Shrugged. Chris: Right. Because Atlas shrugged is more like, this is me saying the things I think versus, like, here's a piece of art. Right. Kayla: Because, like, yeah, art is always going to be a conversation between the artist and the audience's interpretation. And, like, you know, you can make arguments that an audience's interpretation is just as valid as the artist's intent. Blah, blah, blah. It becomes less easy to make that argument when a piece. When a text is more. Yeah. Like a philosophical manifesto of, like, here is what I believe.

1:16:17 Chris: Right, right. There's, like, large chunks of that book that are author intrusion. So it's kind of like, you can't. Like, when the author is intruding into the story, you can't separate it. Right. So with that, after, what, like, 7 hours of content? Eight. I don't know. Eight, if you count the bonus episode. We are finally ready to do our thing. Kayla: Are we? Chris: I have never been ready, but I've also always been ready. Kayla: Ew. Chris: Are you ready for the criteria? Kayla: Kayla, girl, you better believe it. Chris: Okay, now, as always, we have to say, like, who are we actually talking about. And, like, we've mentioned several potential targets for our ire here.

1:16:58 Kayla: I'll tell you who I'm not talking about. Chris: There's Ari. Kayla: There's general. I'm not talking about Leonard Peacock. He is precious and must be kept at arm's length. Chris: He has some pretty shitty opinions. Kayla: Yeah, he fucking sucks. But the character of Leonard Peacock. Chris: Right? Right, absolutely. We won't talk about him. But we could be talking about, like, the philosophy as a whole. We could be talking about NBI or the collective. Some combo. Kayla: What do you want to talk about? Your episode, baby. Chris: Personally? Kayla: Yeah. Chris: I think that it makes the most sense to talk about the collective, but I might also be saying that because it's, like, the lowest hanging fruit. Kayla: If we're talking about the collective, it's a cult, my man. Like, I don't need to do the criteria. Are we talking about? I think we should talk about objectivism. What does that mean, Ari?

1:17:41 Chris: Yeah, I don't know either. That's what I'm saying. Like, when it's too broad, it's like, what are we talking about exactly? Like, objectivism could just mean, like, all of the people that are into it and have interacted with one of its members, maybe. I don't know. Kayla: But if we do the collective, then we're not talking about the thing that you experienced. It kind of. Okay, how have we approached other things like this? Have we. Chris: How have we done this podcast? Kayla: How do we do this show? Chris: What is. What is podcast? Kayla: I think we should talk about. Chris: I think we should just do both. Let's do. Let's do both. Let's write down the middle. Kayla: Can we just do Ayn Rand, the collective. Ayn Rand. Chris: Just Ayn Rand. Then I think we're basically talking about, like, the collective. So I think we can say, like, as per the title of this episode, the collective and its legacy.

1:18:29 Kayla: Okay. Okay, great. Charismatically, we're doing two sort of. Do I need to? Chris: We're winging it. Kayla: Okay, I'm gonna write things down. So we remember. Chris: All right, so charismatic leader. Kayla: Yes. Obviously, this is the last one. We need to. Chris: From the mouth. Daniel Brandon himself. Charismatic. He used the words charismatic leader. Obviously, she held a lot of enough sway that, like, 20 year olds moved across the country to, like, hang out with her on the weekends and then maybe. Fuck. So high. Kayla: High for both. Chris: Yeah, high for both the collective and its legacy, because its legacy is based on said charismatic leader almost entirely one of the highest. Yes. Expected harm.

1:19:18 Kayla: Collective. Hi, my man. Yeah, I mean, I guess were only talking about, like, the Brandons. It was just really high for the Brandons. Chris: Yeah, but the Brandons also. But Nathaniel also said, like, you know, oh, people are people. Students in NBI are judged on whether. On how closely they adhere to what Rand says as being true. Is that harm? I don't know. Kayla: I feel like it's high for. I feel like it's high for the people are moving across the country. Chris: People are like, yeah, but, like, I don't know. I wouldn't say like, Leonard Peekoff has been necessarily harmed. Kayla: I don't know. Chris: I mean, like, he's been harmed in the same way that he hasn't been.

1:19:59 Kayla: He had to see somebody else get the seat that he wanted. And then when that guy stopped fucking Ayn Rand, she went, fine. Sloppy seconds, you're up. Harm. Psychologically harmed. Chris: That's harm. That's harm. That's harm. Fair enough. I would actually say that harm from the collective doesn't feel super high, aside from a few of the closest individuals, but so, like, that's medium, maybe, whereas harm from the larger legacy of objectivism, this is what you experience potentially pretty high, depending on how you feel about her philosophy and its impacts on the country and the people that run it.

1:20:40 Kayla: What do you think? Considering this is something that you. This was your lived experience, what do you think? And I know that we started this episode kind of talking about the ways in which it wasn't harm, but what about the harm? Chris: I think for me, it has actually done more good than harm, because I think that, like, for all the reasons stated, you know, gives me an idea that spirituality doesn't have to come from supernatural religious stuff, gives me a different framework other than Catholicism to think about things. Kayla: Okay. Chris: But your logic and reason and all that. So all those, I will say for me personally, is more good than harm. Kayla: You're a special little guy. What about the people who objectivism touches as a whole? Chris: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say is, like, between the on ramp and also, like, the, like, the pseudo fasci on ramp and the potential harm, like, if we're, you know, talking about capitalism as being harmful, which we do on this show, and even though I kind of like it still, there's also a lot of harms from it, I think that points to relatively high expected harm from the larger legacy.

1:21:41 Kayla: Rand Paul got a beat down from his neighborhood, so. Chris: Yeah, you're right. Actually, the existence of Rand Paul is by itself makes it high. Kayla: Okay, so we just say. Did we say high for both or medium high? Chris: I said medium for the collective, but also, like, it may have been really high. Like, we don't have. Kayla: I'm gonna say visibility medium high, because I think it's high and you think it's medium. Chris: Okay. Presence of ritual. Kayla: Oh, my guy. Hi. High. High. Chris: This is very high. This is very high. Like, she has her own language. You know, her books have their own language. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Like, that's one of the complaints, actually. Kayla: Is like, you're doing little groups, and you're doing little groups in both. And you're over here, and you're over there, and you've got.

1:22:22 Chris: Right. Kayla: I'm doing a really great job describing the ritual of this group. Chris: Yeah, you're doing. Yeah, you're over here, over there, and you're in groups, so you really nailed that. No, like, when you're reading one of Ayn Rand's books, like, you know it. Kayla: Right? Chris: Because of the language and, like, the. Kayla: Way that it's like reading the Bible. Chris: Yeah, exactly. And I read, like, on rational Wiki's article about objectivism. They put it like this. Like, objectivists like, to make up their own definitions for words and then complain that nobody else is using them, which is, I think, a really fair criticism. And also, like, yeah, that points to ritual. Kayla: Yep. Chris: Right. And then, yeah, there's just. I don't know. They're like, the weird, sort of like, you. Like, I am the most rational woman and you are the most rational man, and therefore we must have sex, and it's the most rational thing, and our spouses rationally must. Like, there's just a lot of that kind of stuff that's just like, okay, that's ritual.

1:23:20 Kayla: I just don't understand how. And I know whatever, how the rational thing there isn't to get divorced and remarried. Why is it a fair. How is that rational? What's the rational there? Well, you see, if this person is. If you're the best person and he's the second best person, and rationally you must be together, then why not be. I don't know. Whatever. Whatever. Whatever. Chris: Well, so the penis is rational, but the marriage contract is also. Yeah. Did that. Did that explain it? Kayla: Cult, ritual, high. Chris: All right. Niche within society. She's popular. Many millions of books sold. I wouldn't call it niche. Oh, no. Is it a religion? Oh, shit.

1:24:08 Kayla: I don't know, though. I think that it's kind of niche. There's lots of different definitions of niche. Okay. I would say the collective is niche, for sure. She was not like, she died in poverty. She didn't sell the Atlas Shrug did not sell. Great. So I think at least for the collective, that's niche. Chris: Yeah. Okay. Yep. Kayla: I think for wider, it's tough with. I feel like Ayn Rand Institute is niche. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: I feel like the co oping of objectivism for the republican party is not niche. Chris: Yeah. I think it's like the concentrated microdose of objectivism that constitutes, like, what Ayn Rand would say. It's this, don't touch it.

1:24:55 Kayla: Right. Chris: That feels niche. But the way that concentrated microdose has diluted into larger society, which it has, is not niche. Right. It's definitely permeated into libertarianism and conservatism. And Alan Greenspan was the chairman of the Fed. Kayla: And generally, if you went on CNN and said Ayn Rand, the people watching would know what you were talking about, or at least have some. You can reference Ayn Rand in general population, and probably, I would say, 45% to 55% of people know some of what you're talking about, which does not feel niche. And those are just my fake numbers. They're not real numbers. Chris: Right. Okay. So medium to high, depending on.

1:25:38 Kayla: I said niche for the first one, not for the second. Chris: Okay, so niche for the collective, not for the legacy. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Okay. Antifactuality. And remember, this means, like, logical fallacies, not necessarily like, they got the facts wrong. Kayla: I think there are a lot of. Chris: Logical fallacies, even for the group that says they love logic more than anything. Kayla: I think that. Chris: That you're saying they're capable of logical. Kayla: I think that makes them extra capable. It's like somebody who goes like, I'm not susceptible to a cult. You're extra susceptible if you think that you're not. If you think you're the most rational and logical, you are missing out on your many blind spots. And for Ayn Rand to be like, I gotta fucking for blind spots, and he's bad because he won't fuck me. None of that's logical.

1:26:23 Chris: He is not a good objectivist because he won't fuck me. Yeah, I think you're right. Like, you're asking for blind spots. If you're saying that I'm the most rational and everything that I think is based on objective reality, so I would. It's like, not the highest. It's not like QAnon level antisexuality. Kayla: It's not total detachment from reality. Chris: I'm gonna give it, like, a 63%. How does that sound? Kayla: For both or for the collective or its legacy? Chris: I think for both. It's kind of similar. Okay. Onto life consumption, I think, for this one. Kayla: Okay. Obviously, for the collective, it's high. Chris: Yeah, well, I mean, they weren't spending every day at Ayn Rand's apartment. They were only spending the weekends and then creating an institute to promote her.

1:27:10 Kayla: Ideas, moving across the country, hanging out, making their whole lives about this. Chris: I would have moved across the country to date Shannon Miller when I was 17, or whatever that is. Kayla: Maybe Shannon Miller's a cult leader. Chris: Probably. Kayla: What do you think for the legacy? How do you feel about. How do you feel about the percentage of your life consumed by this? Chris: Now that you say it that way, it's pretty fucking hot because it's shaped the way that I view the world. Like, it's shaped my outlook. Kayla: But is that life consumed, or is that just life? Chris: Stop asking really good questions. I don't know. That's a good question too. That's a really good question.

1:27:54 Kayla: Like, life consumed. Like, we used to think of it as like, oh, okay. Cicada three, 3301. You're, like, sitting on your computer for 6 hours a day. Percentage of life consumed. You're on the computer. I think I did the club, but. Chris: Even when I did the club at Penn, it was like one of several extracurricular activities that wasn't preventing me from playing video games or going to the gym or class. Kayla: It feels like sleeping in the. Chris: Morning is preventing me from going to class. Kayla: This feels like something that there is a. It's kind of like where you meet it, obviously. Leonard Peekoff. High percentage of life consumed. Casual fountainhead, researcher. It's his job. If it's your job, your percentage of life consumed. Chris: Yeah, but it's your life. Is it just your life? Kayla: Your job to me is different than. Cause that's, like, active output hours versus passive. How are my thoughts shaped?

1:28:42 Chris: Also, this isn't his job. This is his calling. He's the intellectual heir to this titanic person. Kayla: Percentage of life consumed, high. Chris: All right. Kayla: But I'm going to say that it is too wide of a spectrum to pinpoint it for the legacy. So low. Chris: 404 not found. Oh, okay. Low to high. All right. Dogmatic beliefs among the highest. I can't even think of one that would be higher, which is crazy, because this is like, the philosophy that got me into, like, reason and analysis and logic and, like, examining things and, like, trying to figure out where I'm wrong about stuff, which is like, the opposite of dogma. It's such a mind. Fuck that. The group, the philosophy, whatever you want. Ayn Rand and her followers. How dogmatic. She and her legacy is. It's a real mind fuck, but it's very high.

1:29:42 Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Okay. Chain of victims. Kayla: I think it's really high for both. Chris: I've made a bunch of people read the fountain. Kayla: It, myself included. Chris: I made you read it. I've made prior girlfriends read it. I've made my mom read it, although my mom never read it. Did I tell the story on the podcast? Kayla: She did read it. If you're gonna tell me that an audiobook is not real. Chris: It was an abridged audiobook, Kayla. It was an abridged audiobook. It was. I listened to it. Kayla: She didn't think it was abridged either. Chris: Who didn't think it was abridged? Kayla: Your mother. Chris: Well, she's wrong. She's objectively wrong, because it was abridged. I listened to it. It was missing parts of the fountainhead that are just absolutely. It's like it was missing all these Tom bombadil parts. Kayla: Okay. Dog man.

1:30:23 Chris: Very crucial to the narrative. Okay. So that was. I mean, I was shocked. I was shocked. Kayla: Hi. Chris: The way the story goes is that she said that she was reading it or had read it or something. And then, like, I had to go into my parents bedroom to, like, pick, you know, like, grab, like, a box or some shit or whatever. And then, like, I saw, like, on the dresser, I saw this, like, oh, that looks like the fountainhead, but it's like, this weird large box. Not the. Not. It doesn't look like a book. Walked over to it, saw that it was cds, dvd's, or whatever it is. Kayla: Cds. Chris: Cds. It was cds. And I, like, went out of the bedroom. I was like, what is this? What is this, mother? Kayla: That sounds very dogmatic to me.

1:31:04 Chris: Yeah. Yeah. We're not on dogmatic. Kayla: We're on chain of victims. High for both. Very high for both. Chris: Fine. Fine, though. That was when I was in the cult. So, like, of course I'm gonna be like. You didn't listen. Kayla: You. Chris: You listen to the teachings instead of reading the teachings. Ayn Rand will be very upset. Okay. Safe or unsafe exit. This has two very different answers, depending. Kayla: I think that it is highly unsafe to exit the collective. Chris: I think that the Brandon's experience was basically, like, the dictionary definition of this criterion. Kayla: I think it is safe to exit the legacy. Chris: Yeah, that, I think, is, like. No. Like, when I drifted from objectivism, I didn't feel any, like, literally zero anything from anyone.

1:31:50 Kayla: Right. Chris: Even now, like, even. Even emailing Ari, I was like, hey, look, I'd love to have you guys on the show, someone from your institution on the show. Like, this isn't a puff piece, though. And there's probably parts of it that are critical. And they emailed me back, and they're like, hey, yeah, sorry, we don't have enough time, but, like, here's some information. Kayla: Great. Chris: So, like, that, to me, seems very safe. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: So collective textbook definition of unsafe. Legacy, more safe. And that is the criteria. Kayla: We only have nine criteria. Chris: Only nine? We started with six. Kayla: Really? We don't have ten? Chris: Should we make. Should we do another? Kayla: I think we gotta make ten just to have a round number. Chris: Yeah. Nine's a good number, though.

1:32:32 Kayla: All right, so overall, I will read this to you. Chris: Okay. Kayla: First I will read to you the answers for the collector. Chris: Okay? Kayla: High charismatic leader, medium to high harm, high ritual niche, high antifactuality, high percentage of life consumed. High dogmatic, extreme high dogmatic, high chain of victims, high on unsafe. Chris: Actually, I'm gonna say unknown for chain of victims for the collective. Kayla: Okay. Chris: I don't know who was, like, recruiting who, although they did make that school, so it's at least there. Kayla: It's another spectrum. We'll give it a spectrum. Chris: We'll give it a spectrum. But it was there. Kayla: What does that say to you? Chris: Very much a cult. Kayla: That's a cult. That is very much a cult. Chris: Sorry, 20 year old me.

1:33:12 Kayla: No, no. This is the collective. We didn't do the legacy. Fair enough. Chris: Fair enough. Kayla: The legacy reads as high charismatic leader, high harm, high ritual, not niche within society, high anti factuality, low to high spectrum for percentage of life consumed. High dogmatic, high chain of victims, safe exit. That, to me, reads as something different than cult. Chris: What does it read to you as? Kayla: That reads as religion. Chris: Because of the not niche. Kayla: Because of not niche in the safe exit. Chris: Yeah, I guess most religions don't really harass you. Well, you get excommunicated from, like, Mormons or whatever. Kayla: Yeah. I think that the religions that have the. The higher presence of unsafe exit, those are the ones that tend to get read more as culty or, like, are. Like, you think of something like Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses or things that have an excommunication aspect tend to fall into the is it a cult or not conversation more than something like, I'm a Unitarian.

1:34:11 Chris: That's a good point. Okay, so I think that you are. Kayla: Oh, and sorry, I want to say one more thing. The spectrum of low to high for percentage of life consumed also reads as a religion to me. It feels like where you meet generally, like, why mainstream religions, you can kind of meet it where you are, and. Chris: You can, like, there's, like, twice a. Kayla: Year, or you can. Chris: Yeah, yeah. Or there's like. Like, you know, people like my parents, who, like, usher every Sunday. Kayla: So that, to me, religion reads counterpoint. You were a little religious after you were like, I'm not religious anymore. And then you went and formed yourself a religion. Chris: Yeah. So the irony there is not lost on me. And, in fact, it's. It's kind of, like, beautiful in, like, a shitty way, and it's, like, poetic. I guess so. But my counterpoint is that I don't. I don't want it to be one.

1:35:01 Kayla: Yep. Chris: So I think that's pretty. I think that's a pretty strong point in the. In the opposite direction. Kayla: Look, man, you not wanting it to be one is just. Chris: I not want it very strongly. Kayla: As strong as our criteria. Like, again, we are not professionals. These are. I think it feels like it. So, this, granted, we have looked at these things over the last five years in the context of other cult researchers and how it applies to things like new religious movements and, like, a wide. Chris: Array of different types of groups that we've studied. Kayla: But, yeah, we're not professionals. So if you don't want to be religion, you can say, it's not a religion. I'm saying it's a religion. Chris: Okay, so you're saying it's a religion based on five years of study and, like, semi rigorously applying a set of criteria. And I'm saying that it's not a religion based on Lada. I'm not listening.

1:35:50 Kayla: Yes. Chris: Okay, good. So I think that's the official position of the podcast. We're split on that issue. Before I do a sign off, it is incumbent upon me to finally list the sources of all three of these episodes. So, obviously, Wikipedia articles, including Objectivism, Ayn Rand, a variety of entries on philosophy, and other characters in the Ayn Rand sphere. I looked at Conservapediae, which I mentioned before. It seems to be like a Wikipedia for little baby conservatives who get triggered by the real world in need of safe space to bitch about abortions. I also looked at objectivism, and because that was. Most of that article was, like, Ayn Rand. Like, she's pretty cool, but, like, she doesn't. Like, she thinks that abortion should be legal. So, like, fuck that.

1:36:34 Kayla: Yeah. Chris: So also, objectivism and the corruption of rationality, a critique of Ayn Dran's epistemology. Just some snippets from this book by Scott Ryan, obviously a critic. Urban dictionary, just because rational wiki. I mentioned that before, their scathing entry on objectivism. They're the ones that use the term randroid, Ayn randlexicon.com, which does what it says on the Tin CEI, the cult Education institute, although all they had on objectivism was like, links to other stuff. So I don't know if that's the, like a source really. Vice, obviously Vice. You always gotta use vice. Kayla: Gotta use vice. Chris: Vice is there. Kayla: If you're not referencing Vice, what are you doing?

1:37:15 Chris: What Ayn Rand hoped you'd miss an op ed on glreview.org, which I think is a pretty good title for an article. It would be a good title for this episode too, a little bit, because that's kind of what were mentioning before about the on ramping, of course, ari.com comma, the Ayn Rand Institute, which has classes available for free. And I took one, you know, tick off the experimental. And of course I took one just to tick off that experiential theme box for this season. Again, it is possible to visit there, but didn't do it because it's just like a little office building in Irvine. I also used, of course, the interview that Ari sent me between Euron Brook and Michael Shermer. I also used Michael Shermer's essay that they referenced, the one back in 2011 called the unlikeliest cult in history.

1:38:12 Chris: So, you know, that's in case you wanted to skip all of these episodes. It's already been called a cult, but we said that many times with many different people, including Mister Shermer, and then also a few one off blog entries that don't need specific mentioning here but will be linked in the show notes. Kayla: Well, Kayla, that was rigorous. Chris: We covered, and I like to be rigorous. I like to be super rigorous and logical until it doesn't suit me, and then I like to ignore things until. Kayla: You'Re a fair partner. Fucks a model, right? Chris: We covered an awful lot of ground in these last three episodes. I I'm beat. I do appreciate you listening, though, to my very own navel gazing. And if you're game for a little tiny bit more before we sign out, I do kind of want to briefly go over the things that I think contributed to my journey away from Rand and objectivism. We've talked a lot about how I used to be Rand fan and how different that is now. But what was the journey like? How did I go from point a to point b? I think that's useful to talk about real quick.

1:39:12 Kayla: Yeah. Chris: So game theory is actually one of them. Not to be too pedantic, but the first thing that kind of, like, wedged in there a little bit was game theory. Like, the core insight of the prisoner's dilemma is extraordinarily powerful. The notion that in some situations, two or more people can make individually optimal decisions that nonetheless make everyone worse off. This directly flies in the face of the idea of the invisible hand of self interest. Now, there's some situations in which the invisible hand does apply, and efficient markets like equities or whatever, but there are many situations in which, absent any outside influence, people are rationally incentivized to make self destructive decisions. That's the key takeaway of the prisoner's dilemma, that self destructive decisions in a cooperative, competitive environment can actually be rational. You can actually have rational, destructive decisions. So that opened me.

1:40:09 Chris: Excuse me, individually rational. Kayla: Right. Right. Chris: The individually rational decision is not the collectively. It's collectively. So that opened me up a little bit to the idea that, for example, minimum wage requirements can be and are a good thing. So, game theory also curation. Right. We've talked about curation a lot on the podcast. Like, another word that I've beaten into submission is curation. I've had more than enough real world observational evidence now to know that good curation is mandatory for large, complex social systems. Whether it's the subprime financial crisis that needed some more curation, there a little bit, or abhorrent online communities like eight chan, or my job, seeing all of the effort made behind the scenes to protect World of Warcraft, like, all of that is curation. If you don't curate Twitter, it turns into a shithole. The list goes on.

1:41:04 Chris: We have seen more than enough example to see that curation is extremely necessary, and only using individual property rights as a tool for curation is woefully inadequate. Kayla: Right. Chris: Also, absolutism is unhelpful. This is my third point, and rand did have me going for a while on the idea that absolutism is actually good and true. But over time, it became quite clear that it's just not a helpful approach. I won't say it's never, because that would be an absolute statement in itself. Oh, zing. But generally, I didn't mean that as a zing, actually, until you said ho. But generally, it lends itself to black and white thinking, and it corrals us into logical positions we shouldn't take and often don't want to. Ayn Rand's absolutism in her thinking, her life and her philosophy, I think, actually did a lot of harm to her work and her legacy.

1:41:58 Kayla: Well, it made her think that she was the most important person on the planet. Chris: A lot of harm, not good. Kayla: Yeah, I am sad. Chris: Granted, once you take away the absolutism, it kind of loses its randian identity because. But because it is there, it has made it very difficult to even agree on what objectivism is over the years, and has encouraged conflicts and schisms where they didn't maybe even really need to happen. Next point. I also don't think she solved the is ought problem. Obviously, objectivist stances on morality, politics, etcetera, don't follow inevitably from the laws of physics. And if they did, then discussion would be pointless, which in turn makes it hard to have discussions with objectivists, which, again, if you're wondering why your thing is not considered academically valid, maybe it's because it's discussion proof and ultimately, therefore a dead ideology. And finally, over the years, this tended to happen much later.

1:42:52 Chris: And like you pointed out earlier, that's probably on purpose, but reading some of Rand's really bad takes, I'm sorry. Kayla: That must have been hard. Chris: It was. Actually, I read the one about the colonialism a couple years ago, and that was like, oh, man. I think I was reading it when I was, like, doing one of my false starts for these episodes. Kayla: Oh, boy. Chris: And I found that, and I was. Kayla: Like, oh, my God, like, I can't do this. Chris: I don't know if I can do this yet. Yeah, yeah. Wish they had put some of those quotes in the back of the book on the fountainhead. Kayla: Oh, yeah, that'd been great. Chris: I mean, would've helped filter. Although, like, then I wouldn't have had the experience. I don't know, whatever. Architecture is still cool. Okay. I hope this has been an interesting journey for you and for everyone listening, because this is definitely a randian selfish exercise on my part. I definitely got a lot out of picking at my own brain with a pickaxe, and I think I've grown in my understanding of this topic and of myself, even just in the last month of doing these episodes.

1:43:55 Kayla: You just learned it was a religion? Chris: I just learned it was. I just learned that it was not a religion because I don't want it to be. And I'm subjectively willing that into existence, like, the secret. And I guess that's the note I'll end on here. Living is learning and ceasing to grow as death to quote one of my favorite female philosophers, Julia Child. You'll never know everything about anything, especially something you love. This is Chris. Kayla: Julia Child, this is Kayla. Chris: And this has been cult or just weird. We keeping that culture just weird? Kayla: Yeah. Yes, absolutely.