I worry about people who define things in such absolutist terms. Donald Pfaff almost sounds like the mirror image of Ayn Rand, who prescribed the best in humanity to our innate selfishness.
I can imagine his book becoming as important to a generation of college kids as ATLAS SHRUGGED was to mine—and screwing up the next 30 years just as thoroughly.
hah; well I don't think pfaff has the gift for popularization that Rand did. also I really think she's kind of evil, and I wouldn't say that about pfaff.
I think calling Ayn Rand "evil" is reductive, and doesn't consider what may have led to her loathing of anything vaguely "Socialist". She was originally an ethnically Jewish Russian liberal, who believed that the Russian Revolution would lead to the end of the unearned privilege of aristocracy, along with its attendant antisemitism. However, with the Bolsheviks taking over it instead led to the crushing of non-socialist liberalism and the rise of Stalin, who was as far as I can tell every bit the antisemite Hitler was!
Rand wouldn't be the first former liberal or leftist who ran in the other direction thanks to Stalinism, though she seems to have fared far worse in this day and age than Eric Blair, aka "George Orwell", did. Some of it regards her fervent embrace of Libertarian Capitalism and sexually dominant Great Men over Democratic Socialism (unlike Blair who supported trade unions, national healthcare, and the Independent Labour Party), but there's also a whiff of misogyny coming from many of her detractors.
It's the same smell I get from a lot of folk who despise Leni Reifenstal, even though she started backing away from Hitler by the start of WWII, and was out front of repudiating him once the war ended. While the bulk of creative people who worked for the Nazis also did so, most of them (like JUD SÜß director Viet Harlan) were far less willing to admit how they'd been taken in by him and his ideology!
I tend to reserve "evil" for people like Robert Welch and Fred Koch, who founded The John Birch Society, or Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan who played footsie with the Birchers while publicly pretending they weren't every bit as extremist themselves.
I mean, Ayn Rand seems pretty evil to me. I don't really care if she was a former leftist; embracing vicious neoliberalism is wrong and harms lots of people.
I really think using charges of misogyny to defend Leni Reifenstal is pretty ridiculous. It's nice that she had a change of heart to some degree, but she literally was one of the main propagandists of the third reich? people don't need to forgive her.
Like, people are always complicated and generally have reasons for what they do. they can still be evil though. It happens.
Stalin was very antisemitic, but I don't think he's *as* antisemitic as Hitler. most people weren't as antisemitic as Hitler. He killed 6 million Jews; it's a high bar.
Here I was loving The Altruistic Brain, but your article has forced me to rethink. But I still do not believe man needs government to control his savage behavior. I would tend to believe that control brings out the savage. Seen this way, I think there is a certain altruism, but as you write, it is an altruism that favors the social unit. But the degree of altruism towards other societies, well, it may depend on how much the other society is seen as antagonistic towards one's own social group. The question then becomes is the fear of the other society something hominids naturally developed, or is it that controlling a social group requires opposition to other social groups?
I don't necessarily think large scale contemporary nation states make people nicer! Rebecca Solnit's a Paradise Built in Hell is really good on this, imo.
I worry about people who define things in such absolutist terms. Donald Pfaff almost sounds like the mirror image of Ayn Rand, who prescribed the best in humanity to our innate selfishness.
I can imagine his book becoming as important to a generation of college kids as ATLAS SHRUGGED was to mine—and screwing up the next 30 years just as thoroughly.
hah; well I don't think pfaff has the gift for popularization that Rand did. also I really think she's kind of evil, and I wouldn't say that about pfaff.
I think calling Ayn Rand "evil" is reductive, and doesn't consider what may have led to her loathing of anything vaguely "Socialist". She was originally an ethnically Jewish Russian liberal, who believed that the Russian Revolution would lead to the end of the unearned privilege of aristocracy, along with its attendant antisemitism. However, with the Bolsheviks taking over it instead led to the crushing of non-socialist liberalism and the rise of Stalin, who was as far as I can tell every bit the antisemite Hitler was!
Rand wouldn't be the first former liberal or leftist who ran in the other direction thanks to Stalinism, though she seems to have fared far worse in this day and age than Eric Blair, aka "George Orwell", did. Some of it regards her fervent embrace of Libertarian Capitalism and sexually dominant Great Men over Democratic Socialism (unlike Blair who supported trade unions, national healthcare, and the Independent Labour Party), but there's also a whiff of misogyny coming from many of her detractors.
It's the same smell I get from a lot of folk who despise Leni Reifenstal, even though she started backing away from Hitler by the start of WWII, and was out front of repudiating him once the war ended. While the bulk of creative people who worked for the Nazis also did so, most of them (like JUD SÜß director Viet Harlan) were far less willing to admit how they'd been taken in by him and his ideology!
I tend to reserve "evil" for people like Robert Welch and Fred Koch, who founded The John Birch Society, or Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan who played footsie with the Birchers while publicly pretending they weren't every bit as extremist themselves.
I mean, Ayn Rand seems pretty evil to me. I don't really care if she was a former leftist; embracing vicious neoliberalism is wrong and harms lots of people.
I really think using charges of misogyny to defend Leni Reifenstal is pretty ridiculous. It's nice that she had a change of heart to some degree, but she literally was one of the main propagandists of the third reich? people don't need to forgive her.
Like, people are always complicated and generally have reasons for what they do. they can still be evil though. It happens.
Stalin was very antisemitic, but I don't think he's *as* antisemitic as Hitler. most people weren't as antisemitic as Hitler. He killed 6 million Jews; it's a high bar.
I read your reply and, after careful consideration?
This really isn't a hill I'm ready to die on.
OTOH, if what I fear about Donald Pfaff comes to pass? I may have to die on that hill instead....
Here I was loving The Altruistic Brain, but your article has forced me to rethink. But I still do not believe man needs government to control his savage behavior. I would tend to believe that control brings out the savage. Seen this way, I think there is a certain altruism, but as you write, it is an altruism that favors the social unit. But the degree of altruism towards other societies, well, it may depend on how much the other society is seen as antagonistic towards one's own social group. The question then becomes is the fear of the other society something hominids naturally developed, or is it that controlling a social group requires opposition to other social groups?
I don't necessarily think large scale contemporary nation states make people nicer! Rebecca Solnit's a Paradise Built in Hell is really good on this, imo.