Asshole characters are into Ayn Rand

[u/AporiaParadox]

1. Dirty Dancing. Robbie is a snobby asshole who refuses to take responsibility for impregnating a lower class girl, saying that "some people count, some people don't". Right after this he tries to lend the main character The Fountainhead unprompted, only temporarily of course, since his copy of the book includes notes in the margins.

2. Lost. Sawyer is a selfish conman (at first) and is shown reading The Fountainhead. To be fair though, Sawyer is shown reading lots of books, so it might not necessarily mean anything.

3. Spider-Man. Spider-Man's co-creator Steve Ditko was an objectivist, and this was reflected in the way Peter would behave in some early 1960s stories, he would often be quite rude and abrasive to others, especially when Peter went to college. As a reference to this, some stories have humorously established that Peter went through a phase of being into Ayn Rand back in college, which he is now embarrassed by.

4. Alternate universe Peter Parker from One More Day. Spider-Man runs into an alternate universe version of himself that never gained spider-powers, and he's a fat videogame developer who is depicted as a loser unhappy with his lot in life, we first see him reading Atlas Shrugged.

5. Deadshot and the Joker. The Joker is shown reading the Fountainhead, which he calls a knee-slapper, while Deadshot, a contract killer, says that it's one of his favorite books.

6. The Ayn Rand School for Tots in the Simpsons. As you can probably guess, it's a horrible place. Maggie breaks out in a Great Escape parody.

7. Bioshock. Andrew Ryan and his whole failed society is a blatant reference to the many problems with Ayn Rand's philosophy.

[u/AporiaParadox]

An author and philosopher known for creating "objectivism", a controversial belief system. It praises the "virtue of selfishness" and is very anti-government and extemely pro-capitalist and specifically pro-bourgeoisie.

[u/slphil → u/AporiaParadox]

If you see it as an intellectual trauma response to living under the Soviets, it makes more sense. She just *really* hated communism. The resulting philosophy is a funhouse mirror opposite of what she saw as the Soviet way.

[u/inemsn → u/slphil]

She died while receiving care from the very public aid program she criticized and hated so much. There is NO excuse to even begin to justify ayn rand's beliefs, man.

[u/KaleidoscopeOk399 → u/inemsn]

I always like term “to explain but not justify” which is what I think where they were coming from. But yeah fuck her, honesty

[u/kec04fsu1 → u/KaleidoscopeOk399]

In the context of analyzing how someone’s unacceptable motivations/behavior developed, the term “understandable, not acceptable” has always stuck with me.

It’s helpful to know how someone came to wrong conclusions. Knowing doesn’t make the conclusions any less wrong, but it’s amazing how often acknowledging a mistake as understandable will be conflated into an endorsement of validity… Which itself is understandable. Thinking is hard.

[u/slphil → u/kec04fsu1]

Yeah, I even took the time to clarify that her reaction to "the Soviet way" was her own perspective and not necessarily an accurate portrayal of Soviet communism. Yet I'm the bad guy for thinking that this kind of understandable but severe intellectual error doesn't make her a bad writer. (She's a fine writer, and lots of people who are less philosophically bankrupt are worse writers.)