/lit/ - Literature

Ayn Rand for betas

>>15898241
Please dont compare surface level shit like Ayn Rand to Stirner

>>15898294
at least Ayn Rand could write half decent novels and has a legacy. Stirner is a literal who that no one outside of this Sri Lankan elephant taming message board.

>>15898316
...cares about.

>>15898294
>don't compare shit to crap
why not?

>>15898241
yes

>>15898241
No. Rand is an idiot that never had a deep enough thought in her life enough to call it philosophy. Stirner was an educated student of Hegel, and a schoolteacher, who wrote this sharp and (subtly) humorous philosophy that holds truer than most philosophers. Rand is all about following the spook of money. She’s no better than Sowell. Just a prop to the current system that’s killing culture, kinship and life on earth.

>>15898316
She could not write even halfway decent fictions

>>15899754
gotta agree with papilon here. If not by itself, Stirner had some major influence on Marx/Engels's historical dialetics. Ayn Rand influenced only some mediocre teens to think they are some kind of Übermenschen

>>15899754
From what I've read of Rand she seems to have a great contempt for those who pursue money and power for it's own sake. She has no objection to accumulating wealth, but it must be done with a greater purpose in mind.

>>15899754
Butterfly, how do you reconcile your progressivism with your admiration of Stirner? The former is based on moral standards which are rejected by the latter

>>15898316
Stirner is well known among the left and even my professor brought up Stirner in a lecture. Nice try though.

>>15902008
Not her but it's easy to say that a union of egoists can embrace progressivism as a form of love for their property, e.g. a type of unspooked whig humanism

>>15902008
As long you don't see Progressivism as something that must be followed as ultimate truth but as your egoistic preference it's easy to reconcile with egoism, and practically any kind of thought can be reconciled with egoism.
Stirner himself said wrote that he would like a union of egoists very similar to what socialists were proposing, so here instead of a union of egoists similar to Socialism, you can have a union of egoists similar to Progressivism.

>>15902044
>>15902027
Of course, but this doesn't seem very consistent with Butterfly's very moralistic progressivism and his schoolmarm-like putdowns of everybody who has grown tired of his old ideals

>>15902044
Haven't read Stirner yet but it does sound like Ayn Rand ...

>>15902044
What about a union of egoists similar to anarcho-capitalism?

>>15900816
After reading Atlas Shrugged (not really worth it for most people) I see how every criticism of her online is strawmanning. She's not hard to poke holes in, but you have to understand her first.

>>15898316
>half decent novels
Bro...
No one would even know of Rand if it wasn't for pre-internet /pol/ style incel losers
>>15902027
>love for their property
Then you're already doing it wrong

>>15902247
It doesn't, read it.
Stirner is opposed to the state and to property as understood by Ayn Rand, as well as a nihilist, which Ayn Rand isn't.

>>15902278
Basically that would mean people would produce things and exchange them because they prefer that over acquiring it by other methods, like stealing.
It isn't hard to imagine, instead of risking the anger of another person and his power, you use your power (in this case skills to make something) to get what you want from another person.
As long as you don't do this out of respect for private property or any other spook but because you see it as what you want to do and benefits you it's egoistic.

>>15902326
>Basically that would mean people would produce things and exchange them because they prefer that over acquiring it by other methods, like stealing.
>It isn't hard to imagine, instead of risking the anger of another person and his power, you use your power (in this case skills to make something) to get what you want from another person.
>As long as you don't do this out of respect for private property or any other spook but because you see it as what you want to do and benefits you it's egoistic.
negro you just described the Galt's commune from Atlas Shrugged

>>15902349
But Ayn Rand defended a small state with police force to protect private property, and is against the use of force by individuals.

>>15902367
So Stirner is even more Randian than Rand? At least in all her utopian thinking she allowed for the necessity of defending her randian heroes from looters, Striner just thinks that even without a police force things will work themselves out?

>>15902453
>Striner just thinks that even without a police force things will work themselves out?
Stirner thinks there's nothing wrong with criminality.
As he writes it:
>The tiger that assails me is in the right, and I who strike him down am also in the right. I defend against him not my right, but myself.
Of course he wouldn't want to be robbed, but he doesn't see the thief as morally wrong.

>>15902027
>unspooked
>humanism

>>15898241

no it's just a manual for easily btfo people on the internet

>>15899754
>spook of money
how is that a spook when you can buy things your ego finds pleasurable with it?

>>15902016
You just made that up, pathetic.

>>15902247
its not, you can find the audiobook for free on youtube, if you want to hear some guy rambling nonsense

>>15902681
You're a fuckwit.

>>15902606
>Of course he wouldn't want to be robbed, but he doesn't see the thief as morally wrong.
That's refreshing, so what is and isn't moral according to him, in a nutshell?

>>15902707
>That's refreshing, so what is and isn't moral according to him, in a nutshell?
Nothing is moral, morality is a spook.
Instead, you do what you please.
Take into account that this isn't egoism or hedonism in the traditional sense as a mindless thing just following your most basic instincts, for example if you love someone and it's your pleasure to please them in a way you have to stop doing something you would do otherwise, for example, spending money in a gift for someone you love instead of in yourself, you are still following egoistic ethics.

>>15902008
Progressivism is a way of overcoming spooks with more empowering spooks

>>15898241
>Ayn Rand
I wonder why the fuck commies never gulag'd this dumb fucking bitch

>>15902676
It’s a legal document from the state. See chapter on the state.
Money has no real value. It’s most valuable to the wealthy because it’s a way to enslave people. Something we ought to overpower

>>15904175
Weird how slavery and serfdom were rampant in societies without money, but abolished in societies with money. Really makes you think.

>>15904224
They used money. But the deal under monarchism was tad different. Do you also deny that divine right is a spook? That’s got a chapter too.
>really makes you think
You really ought to read the book

>>15898241
Yeah it's been the most overhyped philosophy of the last few years. Its just Ayn Rand for people who have arbitrarily decided that they hate libertarianism but they still want to fuck kids

>>15904175
>it's a way to enslave people
Stop ruining words for appeals to emotion

>>15904554
First of all, libertarianism is anarchism. The “Libertarian Party” is ass neoclassical liberalism.

Secondly, the man has been popular, with on and off intensity for longer than Rand was alive. His subject matter may be narrow than Nietzsche, but is respected by any thinking person and eclipses Rand.

But thirdly. I actually don’t want pedoes like you reading it, so gtfo

>>15902676
>how is that a spook when you can buy things your ego finds pleasurable with it?
It's not a spook, it's only a spook if you are controlled by it.

>>15904590
Try to think.

>>15899754
Where do you find evidence for Rand "following the spook of money"? From what I have read, she idolizes individualism and freedom of man, not money. Admittedly I'm only familiar with The Fountainhead, but in that novel for instance Howard Roark does not chase money or even conventional "success" - he pursues his own desire of designing buildings his own way. I believe it is phrased something to the effect of "not building in order to have clients, but having clients in order to build". The emphasis is on /not/ being subservient to the desires of others and compromising one's vision to fit with someone else's standards. Peter Keating is the man who squashes his own ego in order to satisfy others and is much more "successful" than Roark. By the way you are portraying Rand, I would expect that this character should be the happiest. Why then is Keating the most miserable member of the cast?
Perhaps by "spook of money" this means Capitalism? I am not familiar enough with Stirner (although he is on my list to read) to probably give a satisfactory argument about this. But supposing this is a reference to capitalism, from my understanding this is because Rand finds that it is the only economic system that respects an individual's right to ownership and trade (or not) with other individuals. This seems a fair enough point to me, although I suspect the concept of private ownership can introduce some difficulties since this almost certainly necessitates some outside force to arbitrate, but I think that is a bit of a digression from my main point.
If I have made any mistakes please correct me.

>>15898241
triggermehellmo

>>15904175
>ought

have you even read him?

>>15905091
Yeah. Picture for you.

>>15904951
Pardon, I admit I have not read her garbage, but her fanboys seem most enamored with capitalism, and either have misread her or I am being duped here.
Her “individualism” is more a separatism, an isolationism. I’m more against Atlas Shrug and her philosophical writing. And I think London does the theme better in Martin Eden.

I say spook of money, because its value is strictly imaginary, like any law. Capitalism is spiritualism.

The short answer is no, the long answer is yes. The end result of Stirner's ideology in the world would be that capital simply owned everything.

>>15900614
>Ayn Rand influenced only some mediocre teens to think they are some kind of Übermenschen
laughably untrue
atlas shrugged is the bible of silicon valley
the book is commonly considered the most influential book in the US, after the actual bible

>>15905248
>I admit I have not read her garbage
into the trash your opinions go

>>15905248
>I say spook of money, because its value is strictly imaginary
do you then consider utility a spook? or do you not consider utility a value?

>>15905382
t. Mr. Marginal Utility anon.

Haven't you been btfo'd enough?

>>15905304
most silicon vally guys are just rich kids who drank the cool aide though, wow you know html, super genious.

>>15905274
Capital owns everything now, pretty much. As such the owner class that lies cheats and steals owns the majority of people as well. Stirner was a critic of the socialists of his circles, but this was written as a sort of blue print for everyone. A union of egoists was what he suggested. If it happens at all, it will have to be with such ferocious guile As this.

>>15905382
Are you trying to say money is valuable because we need the tool for trade? We don’t really.
I advocate a non-accumulative currency to make life easier, but I imagine people would realize what they’re actually doing and lapse into a shared moneyless economy.
The accumulative currency is an unnecessary evil and produces poverty of all sorts and is indeed the linchpin that is driving us to extinction.

>>15905413
>Capital owns everything now, pretty much.

I know, but the question this thread asks is if Stirner's ideas are just hipster Ayn Rand, and the short answer is no because Stirner is an anti-moralist and Rand is an extreme moralist, but the long answer is that both their ideas will end up having the same effects: Laissez-faire capitalism is essentially giving the world wholesale to billionaires, and anarchism does the same.

>>15905396
no idea who you're talking about

>>15905406
your opinion of them is irrelevant
the fact of the matter is that the statement:
>Ayn Rand influenced only some mediocre teens to think they are some kind of Übermenschen
is provably untrue; it also influenced the owners of lucrative tech enterprises to think that they are some kind of Übermenschen.

>>15905413
>Are you trying to say money is valuable because we need the tool for trade?
I'm saying that utility is a value, and thus money has value in its utility.
Now unless you consider utility to be a spook, then its value is not strictly imaginary, ergo money is not a spook.

>>15905248
I liked Martin Eden as well, although it has been quite some time since I've read it. From what I recall London seemed to go in a different direction though did he not? In Rand's novels the direction she takes is that the characters who act in their best interest and are "selfish" (she uses the term to mean acting in interest of one's own ego) tend to reach the most fulfillment. In ME, didn't he become disillusioned with the things that he thought he wanted? The girl, the fame, the "education", etc. When ME achieved the tools and knowledge to understand himself and the world around him, the things which he originally strove for revealed themselves to be unsatisfactory. Perhaps I am misremembering? But based on this I would maintain that the root of what starts ME on his quest is an external desire, while in Rand's world the plots revolve around characters who struggle to maintain themselves in a world that pushes subservience.
I would also say that to me it seems like in the context of Rand's ideas, the most useful aspect of Capitalism is from the concept of "private property", which cooperates with her idea of satisfying one's own ego. I don't see where she fetishises "money", but maybe I am blind.

>>15902292
Why would /pol/ like Rand? She was a Zionist Jew. /pol/ would want to Holocaust her despite her right leaning ideas

>>15905493
Well for starters Rand is the kind of person, like all libertarians, who would support dictatorship as long as that dictatorship practiced free markets.

>>15905518
I mean, yes Rand outright support dictator Israel with little regards to Palestine human rights. But /pol/ hates Jews unless they are self-hating Jews like Bobby Fischer. And Rand was faaar from a self hating Jew

>>15905248
he was describing a fact not advocating for it

>>15905248
>value is strictly imaginary

except you can use it to buy things from people who accept its value

>>15905457
Except you’re not thinking it through.

>>15905475
>I'm saying that utility is a value, and thus money has value in its utility.
Right, so again it is not really all that valuable to the majority of the world. An economy can work without it and work better by not grinding us all into the dirt. As a utility it is shit. We use this shit for the shithead’s sake. If we adopted anything close to egoism en masse we would not use accumulative currency market capitalism. It is *shit*

>>15905476
They seem a bit like Taoism vs Confucianism

>>15905550
And not. And so doing make the world better place.

>>15905640
>Except you’re not thinking it through.

Yes I am. Any ideology that doesn't have as its explicit goal to destroy or abolish the capitalist class, will simply be absorbed by the market and turned into a commodity.

>>15905640
>An economy can work without it and work better by not grinding us all into the dirt.

If that were true a hugely successful barter economy country would have had a huge population explosion due to their skyrocketing standard of living, leading to expansion and empire, but that's not what we see. Barter economies get fucking rolled because having to trade some perishable good three times to get the thing you actually want has a higher overhead than fiat currency, bitcoin, or even gold.

>>15905640
>Right, so again it is not really all that valuable to the majority of the world.
The precise measure of HOW valuable it is is irrelevant to our discussion.
Unless you consider utility to be a spook, then money has SOME nonimaginary value.
If it has SOME nonimaginary value, then its value is NOT strictly imaginary; it some measure of value that is existent.
Therefore when you say spook of money, you are wrong.

>>15905719
Why are you arguing with a bitter cashier? Who gives a shit. If she were smart, she would have gone to school and gotten a real job.

>>15905719
>*it [has] some measure of value that is existent.

>>15905657
Agreed. But anarchism doesn’t “do the same”. Stirner’s philosophy leaves much wide open for interpretation. It’s very matter of factual this way. A basis to start with rather than an official beginning to anarchist political theory you could say.

>>15905683
>skyrocketing
How male of you. All this “success” and “advanced” modernity. Not an uncle Ted follower I see.

>>15905726
that's completely unnecessary

>>15905719
No, valuable is valuable, but money is a LEGAL FICTION and as such should be replaced with something less destructive.

>>15905738
>Not an uncle Ted follower I see.

A follower of a failed academic and smalltime terrorist? No, not really.

>>15905786
A follower of Ass Pinker, right?

>>15905760
>money is a LEGAL FICTION

Holy shit! No way! When did you figure this out?! Quick, call Jerome Powell and let him know!

>>15898316
based

>>15905800
Unlike you, I'm not a "follower" of anyone. No idea who "Ass Pinker" is either.

>>15905801
choke on my clit, you faggot

>>15905819
A wild guess. Steven Pinker is a neoliberal shill and promoter of the status quo. This bs equating success with population explosions and expanding empires is just the sort of nauseating thing he’d bow to. I measure things differently.

>>15905821
Hey, beat me to it.

>>15905851
>I measure things differently.

History doesn't care how you measure things. You're still in an adolescent stage of development, trying to change the world to the way you think it should be. For someone who claims to have read Stirner, that's weird.

>The man is distinguished from the youth by the fact that he takes the world as it is, instead of everywhere fancying it amiss and wanting to improve it, model it after his ideal; in him the view that one must deal with the world according to his interest, not according to his ideals, becomes confirmed.

>>15905886
>You're still in an adolescent stage of developmen
Actually it’s human society that’s in an adolescent stage. This life-as-competition is asinine and heading us straight to our extinction.
Again, Stirner is a basic truth. In the hands of dead-inside sociopaths I guess you would assume he and Rand shared the same ideals or worse, that he advocates being absolute shits to everyone, but your reading of the material is shallow. And there is much more to consider. (A shame Stirner didn’t live to grace us with one more thought). But as I’ve said before, no gods, no masters, no gurus.