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The Annotated Ayn Rand
It is no secret that Geoffrey Raymond, the author of the infamous "Annotated ____" series, is one of Zero Hedge's favorite artists, in no small part due to the crowdsourced method of artistic creation. Indeed, it was only last summer that a copy of the Annotated Cramer (who can forget that prominent third nipple) was sold to a mysterious collector for a stately sum after it was annotated (in addition to the comments from the usual disgruntled suspect scribbling directly on the canvas) with comments compiled from our own post revealing this masterpiece. And once again, just as it should be, Zero Hedge and it's readers get the last word. Prior to shipping his portrait of Ayn Rand to its new buyer, Geoffrey Raymond has invited ZH readers to submit a final round of comments, which he will then transcribe, more or less verbatim, onto the painting. He painted The Annotated Rand to coincide with last month's release of the Atlas Shrugged movie (a truly terrible flick, we are told) and the annotations inscribed in black were taken outside the premiere, then later at theaters around NYC. The blue comments were taken at his usual stomping grounds outside the NYSE. The Raymond market, as we've predicted here before, remains hot, with prices for this best work now flirting with six figures. Might make sense to go to www.annotatedpaintings.blogspot.com and pick up a choice one while they still cost just a little more than a handful of gold coins in CME-adjusted terms. Regarding the Rand painting, our favorite annotation is "Rand + Greenspan = Bonnie + Clyde". All you closet Objectivists can now step up to the plate and have at it...
Take it away.
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If you were truly selfless you'd literally disappear.
You, Sir, are an idiot if you do not realize that I can eat using zero hedge or leverage.
Realize it? I don't even know what you're on about.
Compassion, love, charity, helpfulness...None of these are compatible with "Altruism!"
Cheers to Ayn Rand - for her part in helping turn the USA into a nation of serfs who enjoy being sodomised by their masters. May the worms in her coffin feast on her misguided and hypocratic wisdom while she decays back to the old and enduring normal.
You can try to pedal the "freedom is slavery" message but I don't think it'll go down too well.
The "ism's" divide us.
Sch.....ush!
I'm trying to read this very important book
?
I'm surprised how many statist read this site. I've met a few people who read Rand and just didn't get it. That's the only problem with her philosophy, about a third of the population doesn't understand it and never will. Power hungry people, (politicians and other insecure types) are missing a synap preventing the circuit of understanding. Someone once said "statism (liberalism) is a mental disorder". I agree.
No, we got it.
Then again, I got "Hungry Caterpillar" as well.
Rand is not complicated. Rand is easy. Rand is for those who like human affairs to be easily classifiable and dismissible.
Here's Rand in a nutshell:
1: Altruism and compassions sucks!
2: Selfishness rules!
3: You are god - when you love yourself!
etc etc ... more infantile dreck...
Send me money or admit that your self interest demands that you should not pursue blind altruism.
Yeah, me too.
Who is blind? If you are rude, I'll give you nothing. If you are kind - and needy for a moment - I will help you.
By contrast, Rand hated all altruism.
Who then, is blind?
Rand said you should feel free to help those whom you care about but not feel forced into acts of self sacrifice for those whom you would deem unworthy. So you agree with her. Duh!
I disagree with Rand that kindness and helpfulness should be private only.
As Ron Paul said today, and many times before:"I don't believe we should take food stamps away from people - rather we should focus on not spending a trillion dollars on our military being all over the world..." etc
Private and collectively, charity/altruism is not the problem; selfrighteous hegemony and pomp & circumstance is.
Besides, who needs to "learn" selfishness from essays elevating it to super-human accomplishment?
I disagree with Rand that kindness and helpfulness should be private only.
Public charity is a terrible system. You have to put your money into a big pot that everyone fights over and the majority ends up going for bombs and banker bailouts. If the government stole less of your money in the name of altruism you'd have more money to give to those who you know are truly needy.
As Ron Paul said today, and many times before:"I don't believe we should take food stamps away from people - rather we should focus on not spending a trillion dollars on our military being all over the world..." etc
Ron Paul says that social welfare programs should be phased out over time so that those who have grown dependent on them will have a chance to adjust. In the meantime, military funds should be diverted back home to support those programs.
Altruism != Compassion, ya dipstick!
Semantics, Sir.
I take it you don't want your tax dollars benefitting anyone in need?
It would be easier to answer that question if you weren't pointing that gun in my face.
Real and vivid. Well done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VzdkXm5Ies&feature=related
Really worth a watch: 1979, at the 5.01 mark, a woman asks about [drum-roll] the illuminati, and Rothschild and international bankers.
At 8.37 a very smart (and, being subjective, sexy as hell) woman basically asks "what happens when gas hits $5 a gallon" and "what stops the Corporations take over the world".
Rand then fluffs it, and gets totally owned over economic power. Damn, I wish I had a tardis to meet that woman.
1979
2011 now... how things change, ho-hum.
Seriously - American debate was some much better 30 years ago. How you have fallen, Ozymandias.
Very keen Use of Weapons. That sexy woman does look the part of a time traveler for sure.
Really though it looks like Rand most thoroughly fluffed it when she denied knowing about the Illuminati. She did it with a straight face though; so maybe...
Apparently I'm like cryptonite in DNA form. No-one's come forward to claim the prize yet, which means I've been wasted on local issues; atm I am literally a strontium dog, waiting for a contract.
Oh, and yes. She was actually on the 'good cop' side, and put it out there; witness her willing to be staked out and grilled by a baying audience of chimps. Brave move back in the day, and more ballsy than the current crop of black-eyes do.
No, I don't agree with her, but she did at least attempt the 'uplift' by direct engagement. Sadly, history left her standing, and Kissinger and Rumsfeld [even back in Nixon times] were plotting the angles.
It is complicated, as ever: I still despise her ethics and philosophy - her bravery and stubbornness, I can respect.
You've only had an account for a month, so perhaps you haven't see the Ayn thrashing.
It's nice to see someone else fight the good fight though.
Tunga is having a hard time rationalizing his objection.
Ayn Rand was an idiot, fascist, dogmatic fool. Here's a bit on his ideas', and how his ideas are championed now. Just two articles.
Universities Pimp Out Curriculum for Funds; John Spreads Ayn Rand
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/18179
Wisconsin, The "Tunisia" of American Politicshttp://www.larouchepac.com/node/17559
Um, "his"?...
She is a bit mannish *austin powers voice*
Oh dear! If you are not aware of her gender (a most basic bit of knowlege impossible to miss had you done the most minimal and basic research), then I doubt that anything else you have to say about her is meaningful.
The whole "Ann Rind thing" is just gay.
"Jesus Alan, I don't care if Frank is in the next room! Just do me already."
"I come, Graymalkin."
Did Greenspan really 'tap that'? Sick irony if true
He worshipped at her altar.
Make of that what you will.
Reality Check Quote:
"CAPITALISM - THE UNREAL IDEAL"
I take it you don't trade your labor for money then?
U got that right - but if you are needy I'll be happy to help you out.
You can send a check. How much shall I expect?
What I "need" right now is a gardener and/or a maid! Shall I send you my address and employment terms, or will you work for free, out of the goodness of your heart?
Capitalism - M.I.A since 1913
Raymond has captured Rand’s intense personality, her independence - certainly the opposite of the modern girl. Raymond’s brush opposes the Hollywood look. It’s a literary look - a face in defense of individualism, demanding the right to live one’s own life. A blazing comeback for Rand in a global age that would corral men’s souls. Rand would love it.
I love it!
How does "individualism" jive with hegemonic nationalism?
If yin is laissez faire individualism coupled with capitalism, i.e., private property as the means of production, and the Christian worth of the individual and freedom, then yang is the iron fist of state collectivism as a source of inefficiency, i.e., lack of productivity, that degenerates into totalitarian oppression.
Ayn Rand: “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”
Lokking out for #1 (individualism), is NOT something a Nation-State condones, hegemonic or otherwise. It's tolerated until such time as the Nation-State gains control of the Present.
"He who controls the Past, controls the Future, and he who controls the Present, controls the Past" -- O'Brian, "1984"
I just posted this to Downtoolong on Simon Black and I think it fits here:
I can understand the rebirth of spirit from individual accomplishment. That’s why I like Ayn Rand. The basic theme of Rand’s We the Living about Soviet Russia appeals to me; it is the sanctity of human life – in the sense of “supreme value.”
Said Rand, “The essence of my theme is contained in the words of Irina, a minor character of the story, a young girl who is sentenced to imprisonment in Siberia and knows that she will never return:
Said Rand: “I could not understand how a man could be so brutalized as to claim the right to dispose of the lives of others, nor how any man could be so lacking in self-esteem as to grant to others the right to dispose of his life. Today, the contempt has remained; the incredulity is gone, since I know the answer … of the men who value their own lives and of the men who don’t … the first are the Prime Movers of mankind and the second are the metaphysical killers, working for an opportunity to become physical ones. … men motivated either by a life premise or a death premise.”
Rand was the age of twelve at the time of the Russian revolution when she first heard the Communist principle that Man must exist for the sake of the State.
I taught Alan how to blot
- Love Ayn
...me, me, me
Belarus currency crisis and crackdown. Is this what awaits us? Read here: http://thesilvergoldhedge.blogspot.com/2011/05/belarus-currency-crisis-a...
Coyote ugly.
"Fear and Love are opposites, morality ends where fear begins."
No. Morality begins when one overcomes one's fear - by taking and acting on a larger perspective than mere selfinterest.
Something rand could not conceive of - it woulod have spoiled her self-love.
What selfless acts have you committed today?
I told my friend to sell stocks and buy silver,
think that counts?
Did you tell him this yourself? If such advice floated down upon your friend from thin air, perhaps that would be a selfless act.
More selfless acts:
Walked.
Ate.
Slept.
But in reality a self is always involved:
He walked.
It ate.
She slept.
that was basically a joke....
Its actually hard to commit a completely selfless act.
You have to do something to help others without expecting anything in return.
thats the only way you avoid karma.... according to buddhists.
Its actually hard to commit a completely selfless act.
It's impossible isn't it? Can you give an example of an act being committed while no actor is present? Can a verb ever stand alone? Can walk or eat or sleep come into being by their own accord?
Without a self to commit the act there is no act. The scam is that some people tell you it's good to act selflessly when they really want you to do what they tell you to do unthinkingly. That is self sacrifice and it's what turns people into Moonies or cannon fodder.
was just a play on a quote of hers
"Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins."
Ok, heres a quote of mine that comes to mind.
"Pleasure comes from helping yourself, happiness comes from helping others."
Does happiness come from helping others for whom you feel empathy? That is not a selfless act. In such a case you have given charity to those whom you consider to be worthy according to your own self determined standard.
In order to act selflessly you would have to give charity to someone with whom you disagree, perhaps even a mortal enemy who would use your gifts against you. Such an act would show no regard for yourself and could be truly called "selfless."
didnt say it was or mean to imply that it was.
I agree on the second part.
I feel the best after i have spent the day teaching people. When I make someones day fun, exciting and memorable,
i feel like im glowing with warmth and love. thats happiness.
Is it selfish of me to volunteer my time to teach? sure it is.
That's the way to do it!
You're confusing selfishness with lack of Compassion (probably on purpose!)
"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will NEVER live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live FOR MINE." -- John Galt
Notice that there ARE TWO clauses to that sentence!
I was excited to receive a letter from the original artist,
and co-creator of the character “Spider Man”
earlier this year, concerning Rand. He’s notoriously hard to
correspond with and a long time
follower, of Ayn. So,
is Greenspan the Anakin Skywalker of “Objectivism”?
is Greenspan the Anakin Skywalker of “Objectivism”?
Yes.
And Bernanke is the Jar-Jar-Binks, right?
No, Bernanke is Flicka. From My Friend Flicka. In the scenes where he's walking away from the camera.
Would that be Steve Ditko?
"Government "help" to business is just as disastrous as government persecution...
the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off."
Ayn Rand
Don't junk me thats a real quote of hers!
Ayn got her gubmint check in the end, it seems:
http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/149721/ayn_rand_railed_against_governme...
I dont know why they junked you.
i like the quote from the article "As Michael Ford of Xavier University's Center for the Study of the American Dream wrote,
“In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest.”
Leave it to an outer party member at a Jesuit university in the rust belt to throw eggs at a dead, capitalist, atheist.
he had won the victory over
himself. He loved Big Brother"
My first junk....yeahhhh bitchez!! And for pointing out a faux pas
No, not for pointing out a faux pas, but for (vicariously) assigning hypocricy to where there is none. Go read "The Objectivist", June 1966 - "The Question of Scholarships". You'll see there that she asserts the morality of claiming back what one can of that taken forcibly in the first place.
Get the hell out of my way!
@stycho...yeah Ditko.
@stycho...yeah Ditko.
Second-rate art surrounded by graffiti.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs"
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html
+ lol
No,I can not spare a cigarette, douche-bag.
Masterful diagnosis, pitiful prescriptions
Well, here's my comment:
"She didn't just "honor profits", she worshiped them."
Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter
Ayn Rand? ...never heard of her.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLoMej34zvA
It appears Ayn Rand's 5:00 stubble is worse than Strauss-Kahn's late night police mug shot. I'm guessing Rand had more male testosterone pumping in her veins than an Austrian weightlifter knocking up a Mexican maid.
Needs a blood-red swastika in one eye and a blood-red hammer/sickle in the other. Can placing those images there be my comment? If not ........
Ayn Rand is sophistry for troglodytes
Why would you paint a hammer and sickle on someone who escaped the oppression of the Soviet Union as a young woman, came to a new country and achieved success as a best selling novelist and screenwriter? Would you paint swastikas on Mann, Lang and Einstein, too?
The Cleveland steamer of philosophy
This is "art" only in today's world where shit-on-glass = modern abstract art.
Rand would likely agree with you about that. One of her villains -- Ellsworth Toohey -- promoted similar works. On the other hand Rand enjoyed watching Charlie's Angels, so there's no accounting for taste.
The Dirty-Sanchez of paintings
Ayn Rand on Gold:
"Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it."
""When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor— your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?"
""Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion—when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn..."
That's good. I like it.
Now if only I could get the goons at the Ayn Rand Institute to realize it.
Instead they just produce propaganda fit for Fox News.
Honestly look at this shit:
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer/News2/feed/DocServer/site/PageServer?pagename=media_topic_business
Peikoff is a tool. Scrawl that on the portrait!
Word.
I think.
Many of those fools have not read a page of her books.
There is wisdom, but you actually have to read the books.
You won't get this on Fox News.
It still amazes me that Greenspan was a follower of Rand, but chose to play the part of a villain in her books?
"how f*cked up is that?"
If some of his speeches are played in reverse, he can be heard to say "Ceci n'est pas une pipe."
Objectivist heaven: All the trains run on time...and have only one rider (insert narcissistic ego here).
We free market types believe in markets which are free and you can't have a market at all if there's only one person present. Therefore your characterization lacks credibility.
I am more of a free market type than all of you put together and I stand by my characterization. It's all well and good until you get on the freeway or need an ambulance. Same logical flaw as Thoreau and Neitzsche...overly romantic, megalomaniacal, that sort of thing. I'm sure that you'll agree now that I've explained it. Sorry for being subtle with the train metaphor but this was supposed to be a pithy graffitti type thread. Bit of a Mussolini reference y'know.
There are privately owned ambulance services and roadways and have been since those things came into being. I'd think that someone who claims to be more free market oriented than all the other readers at ZH put together would know that.
Huh. I had no idea you were claiming the mantle of all ZH, just be careful of the kooks and racists and liberal-socialists here.
Let us know how far you get on your private freeway.
I had no idea you were claiming the mantle of all ZH,
Of course anyone can see that I said no such thing. Why are you pretending that I did? Folks can scroll and read, you know.
Let us know how far you get on your private freeway.
The government has taxed away all the money that would pay for an efficient private system of roadways. I'd think that someone who claims to be more free market oriented than all other ZH readers put together would understand that.
You said, 'we free market types'
I said, 'all of you put together'
You said, 'all other ZH readers put together'
I said 'claiming the mantle of all ZH'
which you proceed to both deny and do again in the same post (above this one).
So you can scroll but you sure can't read.
The whole freeway thing is to indicate the truly fabulous, as in romantically unreal, nature of Rand's appeal. I appreciate your confirmation of this.
How can you fail to understand that your opposition to a free market in surface transportation makes you less in favor of free markets than those of us who support the idea of completely voluntary economic system? George Orwell might have been thinking of you when he coined the word "doublespeak."
I guess my criticism is that the world she describes in her non fiction and fiction is a world that has never existed, and never will exist because, as soon as it were inhabited by any person besides a cartoon ideal of a person, it would fall like a house of cards.
Do you also see no value in Aesop's Fables or Huck Finn or Slaughterhouse Five?
Her fiction is mediocre, her philosophy appealed to me when I was young, before I had any real life experience. After I did, it seemed like a naive world view. Her characters and 'philosophy' belong in the idealized realm of the novel. The realm of Superman seems wonderful too, but it's not a template to organize my life in the real world.
I'm not even religious, but I think I have more to learn from Jesus Christ than Ayn Rand about morality.
Don't even mention Rand in conjunction with Vonnegut.
her philosophy appealed to me when I was young, before I had any real life experience.
If your life experience taught you that, contrary to Ayn Rand's philosophy, you should give up your own opinions and adopt those of others then why do you still attempt to form opinions and post them on line?
Don't even mention Rand in conjunction with Vonnegut.
Have you read KV's Harrison Bergeron?
and I'll be the long-haired wizard with the LAZY EYE
ask the ladies and they'll tell ya that I'm CRAZY FLY
I'm steppin to the mike LIKE A SOLDIER, BRO
I hate to sound like a dick, BUT I TOLD YA SO
HO
old crow and a soul full of DESPERATION
I'm rockin up on the mike with NO CONSIDERATION
for your church OR YOUR FAMILY
AYN RAND COULDN'T STAND ME
SO SHE BANNED ME
I'm like a DANDY Lion, Jack
you can cut me down and then I'll pop right back
and attack
from the back
like a GREAT WHITE
I'm not down with the scrappin'
BUT I'M DOWN FOR THE GUN FIGHT
behind my back TALKIN' SHIT
but when I front your ass
you wanna act like a LITTLE BITCH
keep on and get your ASS MACKED:
Kid Rock's in the house That's Where I'm At!!
never fully trust a childless philosopher.... rather ironic that most are.
Perhaps it is a deepseated need they carry to parent us all in their static understanding of Truth with a capital T.
woodashes...has made me ponder this. Brilliant observation. Maybe it's good many "thinkers" don't pro-create?
She be one sick puppy; and to think all them beast peoples followed her lunacy..........
tell some truth
Some people choose to exist and some choose to live. Rand fell into the former camp.