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."

Fountainhead Wordles

I was talking to a classmate about Atlas Shrugged, and we got onto the topic of Rand's deification of her characters. In all of her works, Rand seems to put a huge emphasis on characters, and that was something that I saw from a little bit of a different perspective as I made Wordles for both the first chapter and the entire book. Rand really uses her characters to try to get her ideas across, usually centering around one or a few 'enlightened' and passionate individuals who, by their integrity and innovation, are able to evoke strong positive change in the world. It will be noted that, at times, the characters become kind of flat as they are overpowered by the philosophical crusade waged throughout Rand's works, but in general, there is much of value that we can take from the examples of Howard Roark, Hank Rearden, and other such heroes in coming to understand our role in the world and our potential to triumph in spite of adversity.

Binary Art

I've been thinking a lot about the way that information is transferred and how that is changing modernly, and it got me marveling at the fact that digital media is composed, at its basest level, of just 1's and 0's. It is crazy to think that we can express ourselves through music or writing or art or videos, and it's all done with strings of 1's and 0's. Anyway, in tribute to digital media, I tried my hand at some binary art, using the cover for The Fountainhead as a foundation. I love this picture, especially how the light just seems to flow seamlessly into the image of the person, making him and the sun seem almost as if they are the same entity.

Acolytes and Adversaries: Public Response to The Fountainhead

In my previous post, "The Power of the Word," I talked a little bit about the impact that a well-put phrase or a even just a couple of perfectly-paired words can have on a person. I've been researching Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, and in looking over some of my favorite quotes, it's been fun to experience Rand's writing again. She really has a way with words, and honestly, that was probably the thing that made me love her books so much -- the ideas are interesting, but I just loved the writing. I figured I'd share a quick passage from The Fountainhead, just so you can get a taste of her style, and then I'll follow up with some thoughts on the impact of her work in my life personally and the general population's consensus on the work.

The leaves streamed down, trembling in the sun. They were not green; only a few, scattered through the torrent, stood out in single drops of a green so bright and pure that it hurt the eyes; the rest were not a color, but a light, the substance of fire on metal, living sparks without edges. And it looked as if the forest were a spread of light boiling slowly to produce this color, this green rising in small bubbles, the condensed essence of spring. The trees met, bending over the road, and the spots of sun on the ground moved with the shifting of the branches, like a conscious caress. The young man hoped he would not have to die.

Not if the earth could look like this, he thought. Not if he could hear the hope and promise like a voice, with leaves, tree trunks and rocks instead of words. But he knew that the earth looked like this only because he had seen no sign of men for hours; he was alone, riding his bicycle down a forgotten trail through the hills of Pennsylvania where he had never been before, where he could feel the fresh wonder of an untouched world.

The Inspiration Behind Howard Roark

Roark's Stoddard Temple is likely based
on the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois,

http://reasonandlibertycentral.blogspot.com/2010/02/ayn-rand-code.html

I found a great little blog post today that talks about the potential sources of inspiration behind Howard Roark's architectural masterpieces as described in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. I had heard before that Roark was based loosely on Frank Lloyd Wright, the great American architect and thinker, but I had never really before considered the buildings themselves, so this was something kind of new for me.

240 Central Park South, one of a few potential
inspirations for Roark's Aquitania Hotel

Presumed to be the model for
Howard Roark's Wynand Building.

I decided it might be fun to see some of the different buildings from The Fountainhead rather than just hearing about them; when I was about 15, I wanted to be an architect, so I enjoy just getting to look at different buildings, especially ones that for their time were thought to be very radical and outlandish. Seeing Roark's works in  physical representation really does seem to kind of brings the book to life, giving Roark real substance and personality, but on the other hand, the ideals promoted by Roark (and his character in general) are intentionally unrealistic and impossible to captured on a page; they challenge us to escape the clutches of conformity and rise to the greatness that is inherent in every man and woman. I at first thought it odd that I couldn't find much art for book, but I am understanding more and more, at least for this story, that the visual is not so much that which matters; that which matters is the idea and feelings that the book instills in the reader. It is about the power of one, the power of the me and of the you, as individuals, to enact positive change, at whatever necessary costs. A lot of people spout that Objectivism is such a selfish, godless idea, and maybe that's true for it as a whole, but I take what good I can find in any source, and for me at least, that good is the courage and power to enact change, the integrity to pursue one's dreams, and the confidence to do it all when everyone else tells you that you can't.

The Fountainhead: The Integrity of Innovation and the Power of One

Taking a whack at video blogging. For some reason, though, the thoughts inside my head sound a lot less monotone than my voice does.  :)

Robots in the Garden

Tonight I watched the film adaptation of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, and it was honestly a pretty poor movie. I like the book and everything, but something about the movie just made everyone seem so robotic and dispassionate (not to mention pitiful. It was, perhaps, this that got me thinking first about robots. I guess I kind of pictured robots sitting around chatting to one another and dropping really corny lines, and then I thought about the good lines and the interesting ideas from the movie, and I wanted to share them in a creative way. So, I've been working on making a kinetic typography video that would incorporate some ideas on the nature of creativity and on the paradigm shift that is going on in terms of how we create, share, and consume media (most specifically literature). Anyway, I ended up with the above picture, a bunch of robotic audio clips, and a master sheet for the first part of my quotes but which I'm unable to finish until Adobe will decide to let its downloader actually download After Effects, the program that I was going to use to put together the typography animation. It's kind of a first try at all this for me, so I'm just chucking some of what I've done up here, in addition to a number of movie quotes that I've tweaked slightly so that they would correspond to writing rather than architecture. Really, the overall message of this and the focus of my study of The Fountainhead will be the idea of departing from old ways and embracing the new ways of digital media, stretching and cultivating our minds in order to understand and grow from the wonders of the modern digital age. Another primary focus will be the power of the word and, more specifically, the power for good or for bad of a single person when armed with the word.

"The Best Part about Beauty..."

So, I stumbled upon this video a while ago and just recently ran into it again. It has had me thinking a lot about beauty and the way that we define it modernly. Francis Bacon is quoted as saying, "The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express," and I believe this to sentiment to be true, but at the same time, we live in a world that places a whole lot of emphasis on physical appearance. The past decades have seen revolutions in technology and computers, and as photo-editing programs and computerized rendering have grown more and more developed, we've seen their influence grow in defining beauty. To some extent, we have created an unattainable ideal of beauty, one that exists only within the pages of magazines and the windows of computer screens; we've created an unrealistic expectation for what a man or woman ought to be, how he or she should look, what he or she should think about the way that he or she looks. Well, it's not natural. It's not even skin deep.

Technology is great, but when the line becomes blurred between technology-augmented reality and technology-distorted reality, there is a problem. When that which is false and non-existent serves as a standard for that which is real and breathing, something must change. We are seeing some amazing developments in virtual reality these days, with new graphics engines and artistic innovations that could not have even been imagined a decade ago, but we need to remember throughout this all what beauty really is. It's not about the special effects and the perfect, airbrushed, ivory skin. It's not about having the nicest clothes or the perfect hair. Beauty is that which exists in all and which is recognized by few. It is that which evades those who seek it and which comes to those who strive to recognize and cultivate it in others. Beauty is inside each of us, and we need not pander to the whims of society in defining who we are what we are worth. Because in the end, while reality can never replace the beauty and innovation of virtual reality, the opposite is certain as well, that digital beauty can never truly compete with the beauty, that spark of divinity that is natural within each of us.