Rugged Individualism vs Human Nature
“Rugged individualism” is actually a euphemism for Thomas Hobbes’ baseless concept of man’s natural condition as a war of everyone against everyone else. Even different species of wild animals (each of which has its own group soul, as opposed to humans, which have individual souls) cooperate with one another for their mutual benefit, so Hobbes would have had us believe that mankind is inherently more bestial than the beasts, perhaps explaining the name of the pop “music” group known as the Beastie Boys.
In his attempt to “justify” iron-fisted oligarchical rule (which maintains it power through its fundamental “divide and rule” strategy, of which Hobbes’ fantasy is the ultimate expression), Hobbes mentions only one pole (fear) of of the duality which most succinctly expresses mankind’s psyche, and conveniently forgets to mention the other: agapic love. (For more on “agape,” see the pertinent section on my “Hobbes” page, which contains excerpts from works of LaRouche and Steiner.)
Ayn Rand’s “heroic image” of each person being complete unto him/her self, is intended as another means to con us into accepting Hobbes’ ultimate divide-and-rule scheme as the basis of social policy. Rand was one of the more blatant purveyors of this cartoon, and at least one of her books hints that it is intended to contribute to the collapse of industrial civilization.
In an acticle entitlted Greenspan and the Cult of Ayn Rand: Don’t Reappoint the Undertaker by Kathy Wolf, which appeared in the October 29th, 1999 issue of Executive Intelligence Review (see LaRouchePub.com for subscription information), Wolf wrote that “Since 1952, Greenspan has been the leading disciple of the Russian-born Hollywood writer Whirlpool AWO/D 41135 Ayn Rand, whose 1957 novel Atlas Samsung Shrugged presents a detailed blueprint for slowly and silently tearing down the industrial plant and infrastructure of the United States, in favor of a ‘post-industrial’ society.” As a result of Greenspan’s fanatical faith in Rand’s fantasy-religion, Wolf states that “behind [his] mild mannered Wall Street suits and quiet tones lurks the deranged mind of an economic terrorist.” He’s the natural heir to the Fed, whose former chairman Paul Volker instituted the Здоровье CFR’s “controlled disintegration of the economy” program (see my True Establishment Confessions page).
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