Revisiting "Acolytes and Adversaries: Public Response to the Fountainhead"

In my post, "Acolytes and Adversaries: Public Response to the Fountainhead", I talked a little bit about the polarization that Ayn Rand's works seem to create among followers. In reading an article in the Los Angeles Times on The Fountainhead, I was impressed by some of the author's thoughts on why Rand's work hasn't hit it big among the general populace:

College students might love Rand's books, but few will ever stumble across her on a syllabus. Academic philosophers don't acknowledge that she ever existed. Even those who love Rand's books tend to dismiss her most loyal followers as crackpots. "I've read 'Atlas Shrugged' a half-dozen times; a great book, just terrific," says Michael Shermer, who publishes Skeptic magazine from his house in Altadena and who wrote a chapter, "The Unlikeliest Cult," on Rand's die-hard followers in his book "Why People Believe Weird Things."

"I love that black-and-white world view, heroes and villains," Shermer says. "But as a scientific tool to model the world, it doesn't work. People are not all good or all bad; they're complicated. The Randian world is black and white. It's fantasy. How can they hope to appeal to mainstream America with their philosophy when they have these weirdos who project it?"

Peikoff and other Randians don't want to appeal to mainstream American if they have to compromise. Their role model, after all, is Howard Roark, the brilliant architect-philosopher of "The Fountainhead," who blows up his own building rather than see his design debased.

As Berliner explains: "Orthodox objectivism is a redundancy. It's just Objectivism. Some people like to have Objectivism and at the same time indulge their whims. What it holds, it holds as an absolute. A lot of people are psychologically uncomfortable with that. They want to water it down, compromise it, add their own stuff, and think that they're still Objectivist."

Perhaps it is this "black and white" mentality that isolates a lot of people from Rand's ideas, creating characters that while noble (or despicable) are yet not quite real enough to be able to relate to. Perhaps it is the uncompromising ardor of Objectivists, coupled with a perceived sense of superiority, that makes people apprehensive when it comes to Rand's ideas.

I feel like people assume that in order to benefit from the ideas presented as part of Objectivism, they have to approach Objectivism from an Objectivist standpoint -- all or nothing, in or out, no compromise. The fact is, whether or not we agree with Objectivist economic policies, there are many great ideas contained in Rand's work as pertaining to creativity and innovation. Though we may not like the egotist mentality of a great many of Rand's main characters, there is meaning to be found in her ideas of strength of character, integrity, and a desire to create.

Objectivism is founded primarily on the virtue of reason, and the first act of reason is to acknowledge truth, from whatever source it may come. That doesn't mean that we accept blindly anything that is told us or anything that is written in a book; it simply means that when we recognize truth, in whatever form it may appear, we ought to have the courage to accept it and make it a part of our lives.