Psychological Devastation

 

Ayn Rand did a tremendous amount of psychological damage to the world. Or at least to her followers. She turned them into mindless drones and religious dogmatists.

Her philosophical writings overflowed with psychologizing and moralizing. Readers who didn't agree with her radical, new theories before she presented them were damned as personally corrupt and morally low. This gratuitous judgmentalism is a disrespectful, abusive, bullying, malicious way to treat people. 

To give the devil her due, she literally and sincerely advocated reasonism, individualism, rational independent judgment, and fearless free thought. But not when it came to her personally. There she wanted everyone to defer to her authority and take her views on faith. She truly thought she earned and deserved this.

Those who thought otherwise – however much they believed in her philosophy and were friendly to her personally – were ferociously damned. They were labeled intellectually dishonest and personally disloyal. They were often publicly abominated as an enemy to her philosophy and herself. And they were furiously purged and fanatically excommunicated for all time.

No-one ever came back from these purges and excommunications. No-one was ever forgiven for the sins they didn’t commit. Ayn Rand never really changed her mind about anyone. She knew of no “honest critics” of herself, neither philosophically nor personally. And in her adulthood she couldn’t recall a single person she ever seriously misjudged or wronged.

Almost all of her followers today repeat her sins exactly. Some of these malicious and bizarre robots, like Leonard Peikoff, Harry Binswanger, and Peter Schwartz, do so to an extreme degree. Not much discussion and debate is allowed in the world of Ayn Rand. Not many free and open exchanges of views take place.

Rand wrote great novels and magnificent philosophical essays. She entertained, inspired, educated, and uplifted the world fantastically. But she did – and continues to do – a lot of psychological damage. With the way Ayn Rand writes, talks, and approaches intellectual issues, she warps your mind, stunts your spirit, and blackens your soul.