During a long walk home today I pondered how Alan Greenspan is a huge fan of Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand is one of those thinkers with whom I enjoyably disagree. Or better put, I disagree with her philosophy, but the process of constructing arguments against it fortifies my own thinking, and forces me to consider things I otherwise would have overlooked. This feeling is not a given with all argument. For sure there are positions to be held from which there is nothing to gain through argumentation, and the only correct response is to walk away and shake one's head in pity at the daftness of the arguer; creationism is a good example, as is the birther movement, the Tea Baggers and the anti-government conspiracies of the gun nut crowd.
I was lucky to read Atlas Shrugged in a time and place that allowed my full attention over a period of several days, and that highlighted the themes in vivid detail. I had picked up a copy in Hong Kong, during my first trip to China, after my travelling companion that I spent the summer backpacking with returned home. At the time I was determined to make my way in the world by trading in the arts and crafts of the Far East and had set out in my search for treasure. This search washed my up to the banks of the PuDong River, at 15 HuangPu Lu - the PuJiang Hotel.
The Pujiang Hotel, easily my favorite hotel in this world, is like something right out of Ms. Rand's novels. Built in 1846, the hotel introduced China to such wonders as the first electric light, the first western circus and the first telephone call. By the time I found the place, the hotel had reinvented itself in the modern Chinese era as backpackers hostel. A bed could be had for $7 US a night, in a suite the size of a tennis court with 30 more just like it. It was the Grand Central Station for backpackers in Shanghai, where information could be traded, temporary friends had and new adventures planned. Except I arrived in this magnificent structure of common use at time when no-one else was around, and got to look at 30 other empty beds in this hugeroom where the only one occupied was mine.
I was lonely, in lonely surroundings, in a country that can be imposing in its isolation, in what was once the greatest hotel in China, pondering the start of a new venture that I had no clue on how to begin, and it was here that I read Atlas Shrugged. Even at the time I understood it as an exercise in Hegelian reasoning, reading a book about unfettered capitalism, in China's former center of unfettered capitalism, which had fallen under totalitarian rule, but which was struggling to regain its former glory as the center of a mercantilist economy. I ate the book whole in that hotel.
And for a time, I thought I might chose to believe in Ms. Rands teachings, in the same way I thought I might be a Buddhist when I first started learning about Buddhism. This lead to two memorable things: not buying pirated movies and software despite their abundance; and refusing to exchange dollars for RMB with a friend at the lower state-set exchange rate instead of the black market rate. But, just as I eventually realized I would never be a Buddhist because I reject the central teaching that all life is suffering, so to I realized I would never be an objectivist because I believe that altruism is man acting at his greatest, not his worst.
I moved beyond Ayn Rand and her ideas, but still look back with nostalgia. In a way, it is similar to my musical tastes in high school. When I was 14, I loved Metallica. That year I had a birthday party in which a dozen friends came over and we stayed up all night, playing pool and video games, eating junk food, and listening to Metallica's Black Album. It was glorious. I think back on the music fondly, an it vividly evokes my memory of that party, but my tastes have changed. I remember loving it long ago, but can't bring myself to listen to it again. And today I look with suspicion upon anyone my age expressing the same enthusiasm for the Black Album I did at 14. In that same way, I question the judgement of educated adults that haven't been able to move beyond Ayn Rand.
