THE SUPERSTITIOUS IDEALISM OF AYN RAND - Jersey Flight

 This quote from Ayn Rand struck me as peculiar:
 
"We inherit the products of the thought of other men. We inherit the wheel. We make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile. The automobile becomes an airplane. But all through the process what we receive from others is only the end product of their thinking. The moving force is the creative faculty which takes this product as material, uses it and originates the next step. This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It belongs to single, individual men. That which it creates is the property of the creator. Men learn from one another. But all learning is only the exchange of material. No man can give another the capacity to think. Yet that capacity is our only means of survival." For the New Intellectual, The Soul of an Individualist pg.79

This is full of several false premises as well as confusions. While it's true that we "inherit" our thinking (as we are all part of a causal social chain running backward in time) it's utterly false to isolate the "creative faculty" from this causal chain. What is created presupposes a quality of necessary conditions in order for the created thing to even exist. We do but err if we isolate the object of creation from the world in which it is created. We do but err if we try to present the creating individual as something autonomous; there has never been an autonomous man or woman and there will never be an autonomous man or woman.

Ayn Rand is correct in her first premise, we inherit the thoughts of others (just so long as by "inherit" she is not referring to biological magic). As children we might as well be born dumb, deaf and blind, we are in constant need of support (we have not an independent bone in our body). Man is not an autonomous being (he never has been and he never will be). Consciousness is impossible without heteronomy; the very existence of consciousness presupposes heteronomy. Man is a social being, he cannot exist outside the group. Even the nomad relies on the goods of society to continue his life; what would its quality be without the productive forces of the group? Does he sport a winter coat; does he hunt game with a rifle? Did he make these things, and yet, how contingent is his life on the material goods he has not made; goods which presupposes the existence of a community of creators. Mutual aid renders social quality (community is the necessary presupposition of a quality life).  

Contrary to Ayn Rand, without the material conditions required to produce consciousness there would be no "creative faculty."

She acknowledges the fact that "men learn from other men," but then she seeks to minimize the significance of this interaction by stating that "all learning is only the exchange of material." This is like complaining about the fact that words are only symbols... so what! Does this negate their value; do they suddenly become unnecessary? Most certainly not! 

Ayn Rand proves that she's good at producing trite rubbish: "No man can give another the capacity to think. Yet that capacity is our only means of survival."

But didn't Miss Rand just tell us that "we inherit the products of thought from other men?" Here she wants to play a game of petty semantics. "The products of thought are not the same as thinking," is no doubt what she would say. But if we merely inherit the product, mindlessly and magically, from whence comes our capacity to think?

{Such idealism leads to the conclusion of elitism.}      

If what Miss Rand says is true then how do we learn to think? If a child was placed in a white room and never given any instruction what would happen to that child, how would it developed; how would it learn to think? Didn't Miss Rand tell us that "men learn from other men?" How then does she go on to negate this process? Further, all learning is not "merely a material exchange," it is also an impartation of that which is conceptual or abstract; it is the imparted ability of abstraction itself.

It would seem that Miss Rand is in the position to claim that learning is spontaneous and instinctual, bestowed upon us by the magic of a biological Holy Ghost. But if this is the case why take note of the fact that men learn from other men? What proof does she have to support her magical premise? What happens if you subtract the premise that men learn from other men? Can Miss Rand give us an example of a learned man who has not learned from other men? Can Miss Rand give us an example of a person who has the capacity to think and yet did not learn this from other thinkers? Can she prove her claim of automated inheritance? 

Further, if no man can impart the capacity to think, and yet this capacity is our only means of survival (which belief manifests the most fanatical idealism) then how can we insure our survival as a species? From whence comes the capacity to think? Perhaps Miss Rand is a mystic; perhaps she is altogether superstitious and irrational?    

The great fallacy of Miss Rand is that she assumes the existence and legitimacy of an idealism known as autonomy (a mere abstraction). But man is not an autonomous being; he never has been and he never will be. Once we shatter the fallacy of Rand's loaded premise (that of autonomy) her entire way of looking at the world comes tumbling down; her authority is cast to the wind. 

The burden of proof lies on the shoulders of those who claim the existence of autonomous men: show us these men, prove they exist! And yet the very consciousness, of the one speaking, presupposes the existence of heteronomy. To make the case against heteronomy is to prove that one is not, and has never been, autonomous! 

Autonomy is Ayn Rand's superstitious idealism; in rejecting all crude forms of deity, it would seem she has erected a new one, that of autonomy. 

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