The Hugo finalists are announced.  Looking at the categories, it just now hit me that the genre that is probably not the most popular in books quite dominates the movies….

If V for Vendetta wins anything, I will be sure to denounce the Hugo awards here.

I haven’t seen any of the Dr. Who stuff.  Anyone have an opinion to offer?

Naturally, I think BSG should take away an award.

Finally, the only author I’ve read here is Verner Vinge.  Jeff loaned me one of his novels. I will try to read all five of the novels soon to see what I think.

I don’t have time to do this justice, but this review cries out for a few responses.

OK, Rand was an atheist.  Obviously (or, from the point of view of this blog) that was a flaw in her work and thought.  But I really don’t appreciate the shallow criticisms listed in this review.

Her defense of greed and selfishness, her diatribes against religion and charitable sacrificing for others who are less fortunate, and her criticism of the Judeo- Christian virtues under the guise of rational Objectivism have tarnished her advocacy of unfettered capitalism.

But Rand wasn’t against real help for others.  She objected to nihilism disguised as love–the kind of thing we see most clearly in modern environmentalism.  In fact, if I recall she and her husband (despite their many flaws) were known to help friends in need (though I think this was before she became  queen of her own cult).

They are men (except for Dagny Taggart, who could be confused for a man) who always talk shop and give scant attention to their family. In fact, no children appear in Rand’s magnum opus.

Well, I hate to get technical, but Dagny Taggart, her brother James, and Francisco d’Anconia are all given time as children.  Children are seen and discussed also in Galt’s gulch (kind of a spoiler but not really).  Actually, family dynamics play a huge role in Atlas Shrugged, though they are mostly negative.  People are forced to choose between spouse or sibling and what is right.  I certainly agree that Rand’s utopian libertarianism has a hard time dealing with the fact that people come in the world dependent on others, but if you’re going to critique a book give us something that show you’ve read it.

Rand’s plot violates a key tenet of business existence, which is to constantly work within the system to find ways to make money. Real-world entrepreneurs are compromisers and dealmakers, not true believers. They wouldn’t give a hoot for Galt. Rand, of course, knows this. And that’s OK, because “Atlas Shrugged” is about philosophy, not business.

No, actually Rand was consistently naive about businessmen, defending them as if they got where they are through capitalism.  But it doesn’t matter because he wanted to present us with an ideal.  And she did that brilliantly.

In her world, there are two kinds of people: those who serve and satisfy themselves only and those who believe that they should strive to serve and satisfy others. She calls the latter “altruists.”

No, in her world there are those who honestly trade with others and those who want to take by force from others and claim this is a moral right.

Rand is truly revolutionary because she makes the first serious attempt to protest against altruism. She rejects the heart over the mind and faith beyond reason. Indeed, she denies the existence of any god or higher being, or any other authority over one’s own mind. For her, the highest form of happiness is fulfilling one’s own dreams, not someone else’s – or the public’s.

I’ll grant that Rand would agree that her opposition to altruism and to God are tied together, but I don’t think she’s right.  Nor do I think it is helpful to bundle all these issues together in one brief paragraph.  Altruism as a feeling or ethical orientation in general is highly problematic.  Whether it is nationalism (which Rand was all too susceptible to, in my opinion) or some form of internationalism, you have people denying other people (never only themselves) in favor of a theoretical concept.  As Fisher Ames, the forgotten Founding Father, said long ago, one might as well talk of love of arithmetic as love of the people.  (Ames was also the one who objected to the fact that Bible stories were not being used in schools any more, but were being replaced by fables which always ended in someone bursting into tears and giving money away.)

This philosophy transcends politics and economics into romance. The novel’s sex scenes are narcissistic, mechanical, and violent. Are the lessons of her book any way to run a marriage, a family, a business, a charity, or a community?

Maybe.  And I may have blocked some of it out.  But in general, for all the talk of happiness, I found all of Rand’s heroes far too grim and almost joyless.  Having said that, it is a major plot issue that people can only truly fall in love with those they admire.  Whatever other flaws the book may have, sex is not at all presented as merely a matter of self-gratification, which is what any reader of this review would think.  Far from it.  It is the villains who engage in mindless, contemptuous sex.

But is the only alternative to embrace the opposite, Rand’s philosophy of extreme self-centeredness? Must we accept her materialist metaphysics in which, as Whittaker Chambers wrote in 1957, “Randian Man, like Marxian Man, is made the center of a godless world”? No, there is another choice. If society is to survive and prosper, citizens must find a balance between the two extremes of self-interest and public interest.

…

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snore

Huh?  What?  Oh, sorry, I nodded off there for a moment.  I simply don’t find these sorts of claims about “balancing” to be all that interesting.  I think they appeal to people who like the status quo, but that is about it.  And they don’t appeal to the demographic that Rand wrote for (younger, prone to cage-stage).  I’m all for a Christian response to Rand.  But I simply don’t see any point in offering a few suggestions of this sort that seem entirely too vague and sound like advice from someone who owned a record player that used cylinders instead of disks.

But, in any case, Rand was a vociferous proponent of military defense and engagement with communist regimes.  So she, in fact, did have room for “the public interest.”  She believed she had in fact found that balance.  It isn’t accurate to make readers think she gave such things no thought.

As far as Adam Smith’s theory of moral sentiments, I frankly don’t think of Smith as someone who is any more a friend of Christian Theism than Ms Rand in his theories.  And I do think you will find in her books evidence of Smith’s “sympathy.”  What made this rational was that it was one person genuinely wanting to help another person, not some nebulous love for people one didn’t know.  (Probably not entirely a defensible dichotomy but still one that I think is instructive to consider.)

Smith’s self-interest never reaches the Randian selfishness that ignores the interest of others. In Smith’s mind, an individual’s goals cannot be fully achieved in business unless he appeals to the needs of others. This insight was beautifully stated two centuries later by free-market champion Ludwig von Mises. In his book, “The Anti-Capitalist Mentality,” he writes: “Wealth can be acquired only by serving the consumers.”

This is absolutely absurd.  The whole point in Atlas Shrugged is that the Capitalists are serving the masses by what they do.  That’s why, when the go on strike, the whole civilization starts to fall apart–because they were holding it all together and benefiting millions the entire time.

Not to mention that Rand was an admirer and promoter of Mises (if memory serves, they had a falling out when Rand gave an altar call for dogmatic atheism and Mises resisted).  She could have easily written, “Wealth can be acquired only by serving the consumers,” without compromising her philosophy in the least.  I wouldn’t be surprised if she did so.  More than once.