Objectivism's rejection of the primitive

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Ayn Rand's (WP) Objectivism (WP) rejects an array of ideas and modes of living that it deems are primitive by nature and indicative of a Wikipedia:primitive culture. The implications of the advantages of first world development for third world development are ignored by Objectivism's greed (mistaken self-interest) and racism (at best, mistaken cultural assessment). Objectivism views primitive states of existence as being "savage" and marred in Wikipedia:mysticism, Wikipedia:fatalism, ignorance, superstition (WP), Wikipedia:poverty, passivity, and Wikipedia:collectivism. The cure to such a society, Objectivism holds is, Wikipedia:Western civilization, capitalism (WP) and Wikipedia:modernity. In its view these brings with them Wikipedia:reason, individualism (WP), science (WP), Wikipedia:industrialization, and ultimately Wikipedia:wealth. This is of course an impractical comparison; the aesthetic goods of a society are not its material ones, there are many interactions, but they are purely coincidental. Both aspects should be considered, but it is a measure of Rand's mental weakness that she believes one to come from the other.

Objectivism plays upon post-industrial civilizations vague impressions of the hardship of pre-industrialized society to conflate that society's fears with its own fears of moral codes. And as usual, it uses Wikipedia:pejoratives and Wikipedia:flag waving as arguments. It contends that by upholding reason and the value of the individual, a culture is able to reject the "primitive mentality that cower(s) before the forces of nature" and "the dictates of mystical authorities."

Objectivists contend that Wikipedia:Rousseauian (WP) of primitive life became the foundation for the 1960's counterculture Wikipedia:1960's counterculture and New Left Wikipedia:New Left, which Rand vehemently opposed. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of their rejection of the excesses and corruption of society as it was, and ignorance of their aim to renew and rebuild society anew; to abandon what others had screwed up, not abandon the ideal altogether.

Two specific groups that Rand controversially accused of being primitive "savages" were Native Americans and Wikipedia:Arabs. Rand also outlined her broader anti-primitive views in various speeches, interviews, and in her book Wikipedia:Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution. Those anti-primitive views and their relevance to Objectivism have since been expounded on by individuals such as Wikipedia:Leonard Peikoff and Michael Berliner, newsletters like Wikipedia:The Objectivist, and groups such as the Wikipedia:Ayn Rand Institute and Wikipedia:Atlas Society.

Rousseau, the New Left, and the "savage"

See also: Wikipedia:State of nature

"Rand is the antithesis of a primitivist. Her characters are not refreshed by interaction with nature. For them, nature is there to be harnessed." – Wikipedia:Mimi Reisel Gladstein, The New Ayn Rand Companion

According to the Objectivist-based Wikipedia:Atlas Society, eighteenth century philosopher Wikipedia:Jean-Jacques Rousseau offered an "idealized image of primitive man" who had not yet been "corrupted by civilization." The source of such Wikipedia:primitivist views according to the Atlas Society was Rousseau's "antipathy to reason", and his postmodern hatred of Wikipedia:individualism and Wikipedia:capitalism. In this respect, Objectivism views Wikipedia:Rousseau, who praised the authenticity of primitive modes of life, as the father of the nineteenth-century Wikipedia:Romantic poets, which the Atlas Society contends ultimately became the inspiration for the Wikipedia:counterculture of the 1960s and the Wikipedia:New Left.

Objectivism is racist. It rejects the notion of the Wikipedia:Noble savage, believing instead in mental inferiority. Founder of the Wikipedia:Ayn Rand Institute Wikipedia:Leonard Peikoff uses the example that if you were to "study savages in the jungle", you would find that they are mentally "undeveloped" and thus "have no method and no discovery of any control over their minds yet." Piekoff refers to such "savages" as "imagistic, pre-conceptual ... fear ridden, (and) emotional ridden", with a "primitive type of mind" comparable to a baby or an animal.

Tribal altruism

Rand states that "the morality of altruism" itself is primitive and "tribal phenomenon", rooted in the fact that in her view "prehistoric men were physically unable to survive without clinging to a tribe for leadership and protection against other tribes." This does not recognize, but takes as its premise, the greater efficiency of communal living. Rand takes the exploitation of others as a good, but it can only be afforded where there is more wealth.

In Rand's assessment, modern "theoreticians of altruism" such as Wikipedia:Immanuel Kant, Wikipedia:John Dewey, Wikipedia:B.F. Skinner, and Wikipedia:John Rawls were out to dominate our "magnificent scientific civilization" with the "morality of a prehistoric savagery."

Objectivism's societal examples of primitiveness

Rand's Objectivism rejects primitivism and Wikipedia:tribalism, while arguing that they are symptomatic of an "anti-industrial" mentality.

Native Americans and colonization

Rand believed that the indigenous Native Americans|(WP), who in her estimation exhibited these "savage" traits, thus forfeited their property rights in doing so. Rand also contended that Native Americans, "having failed for millennia to create a heroically productive capitalist society, deserved to be stripped of their land." When Rand addressed Wikipedia:West Point Military Academy cadets in 1974 and was asked about the dispossession and "cultural genocide" of Native Americans which occurred en route to forming the United States (WP), she replied that indigenous people "had no right to a country merely because they were born here and then acted like savages .... Since the Indians did not have the concept of property or property rights – they didn't have a settled society, they had predominantly nomadic tribal "cultures" – they didn't have rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights that they had not conceived of and were not using." Rand went on to opine that "in opposing the white man" Native Americans wished to "continue a primitive existence" and "live like animals or cavemen", surmising that "any European who brought with him an element of civilization had the right to take over this continent."

On Wikipedia:Columbus Day of 1992, Michael Berliner executive director of the Wikipedia:Ayn Rand Institute reiterated this philosophical position and hailed the European conquest of North America, describing the indigenous culture as "a way of life dominated by fatalism, passivity, and magic." Wikipedia:Western civilization, Berliner claimed, brought "reason, science, self-reliance, individualism, ambition, and productive achievement" to a people who were based in "primitivism, mysticism, and collectivism", and to a land that was "sparsely inhabited, unused, and underdeveloped." In a 1999 follow up editorial for Capitalism magazine, Berliner, who was also senior advisor to the Ayn Rand Archives, expressed objectivism's "reverence" for Wikipedia:Western Civilization which he referred to as an "objectively superior culture" that "stands for man at his best." In response to Michael Berliner's critiques of Native American society, Robert McGhee, an archaeologist with the Canadian Museum of Civilization, stated that the Wikipedia:United States Constitution and its concept of democracy "may owe much, to the political concepts of the Wikipedia:Iroquois and other Native peoples."

Additionally, in 2005, the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights rejected a proposal by the Wikipedia:U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs to formally apologize to Native Americans, stating that the proper response from "Indians" instead should be "gratitude." The Ayn Rand Center's remarks went on to decree the transfer of Wikipedia:Western civilization to the Americas as "one of the great cultural gifts in recorded history, affording Indians almost effortless access to centuries of European accomplishments in philosophy, science, technology, and government", remarking that "before Europeans arrived, the scattered tribes occupying North America lived in abject poverty, ignorance, and superstition."

Arabs versus Israel

"There is indeed a primitivism in the Middle East embodied in the Arab states. Those nations are feudal throwbacks. In contrast to the Westernized Israelis, they are tribalist clans, with no concept of individual rights." – Wikipedia:Leonard Peikoff, founder of the Wikipedia:Ayn Rand Institute

Rand's rejection of what she deemed to be "primitivism" also extended to the Wikipedia:Middle East peace process. Following the Wikipedia:Arab-Israeli War of 1973, Rand denounced Wikipedia:Arabs as "primitive" and "one of the least developed cultures" who "are typically nomads." Consequently, Rand contended Arab resentment for Israel was a result of the Jewish state being "the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their (Arabs) continent", while decreeing that "when you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are."

When asked about the topic during a May 1979 episode of the Wikipedia:The Phil Donahue Show, Ayn Rand reprised her support for Israel against the Arabs under the reasoning that they were "the advanced, technological, civilized country amidst a group of almost totally primitive savages [...] who resent Israel because it’s bringing industry, intelligence, and modern technology into their stagnation."

Wikipedia:Leonard Peikoff, who was associate editor with Ayn Rand for Wikipedia:The Objectivist, reiterated Rand's earlier stance in a 1996 editorial for Capitalism Magazine, noting that "(Israeli) land was not stolen from the nomadic tribes meandering across the terrain, any more than the early Americans stole this country (The U.S.) from the primitive, warring Indians."

Objectivism

Peter Schwartz of the Ayn Rand Institute attempts to reframe as a pejorative, much of the Left's philosophy all at once, by stating that there is a push in the present day to restore the aforementioned "medieval mentality" under the guise of tribalism (WP), multiculturalism (WP), and environmentalism (WP). Schwartz believes that this leads to an Wikipedia:anti-science and anti-technology mentality, which becomes subservient to the "mysticism of religion."

Frederick Cookinham in The Age of Rand: Imagining an Objectivist Future World, adds prophecy to the objectivist sermon/five minutes of hate: the "socialist/altruist claim that people lived in communist paradise and lived in harmony with the earth until modern white guys destroyed everything" will not stand against the evidence in the future.

Libertarian reaction

See also: Wikipedia:Libertarianism and Objectivism

Jennifer Burns in her biography Wikipedia:Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, notes how Rand's position that "Native Americans were savages", and that as a result "European colonists had a right to seize their land because native tribes did not recognize individual rights", was one of the views that "particularly outraged libertarians." Burns also notes how Rand's position that "Palestinians had no rights and that it was moral to support Israel, the sole outpost of civilization in a region ruled by barbarism", was also a controversial position amongst Wikipedia:libertarians, who at the time were a large portion of Rand's fan base.

See also

Anarcho-primitivism (WP) Wikipedia:Deindustrialization Wikipedia:Eco-communalism Wikipedia:History of technology Wikipedia:Idea of Progress

Wikipedia:Modernization theory Wikipedia:Neo-Luddism Wikipedia:Neo-Tribalism Wikipedia:Postmodernism Wikipedia:Primitive communism

References

Burns, Jennifer (2009). Wikipedia:Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, New York: Oxford University Press.

External links

• Avatar: The Atlas Shrugged Of The Left
• Columbus: A Moral Retrospective – a review of Michael Berliner's debate with Ed Castillo by Tim C. Mazur
• Property Rights and Native Americans by Wikipedia:The Atlas Society
• Wikipedia:Template:Ayn Rand