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Necessity is the Mother of Invention


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A google search of this proverb returned:

when the need for something becomes imperative, you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it.
synonyms: source, origin, genesis, fountainhead, inspiration, stimulus; literary wellspring

While coincidental that fountainhead appeared in the list of synonyms, it was inspirational and stimulating as well.

Consider the source, origin and genesis of Miss Rand's philosophy from the introduction of The Romantic Manifesto.

As a child, I saw a glimpse of the pre-World War I world, the last afterglow of the most radiant cultural atmosphere in human history (achieved not by Russian, but by Western culture).  So powerful a fire does not die at once: even under the Soviet regime, in my college years, such works as Hugo's Ruy Blas and Schiller's Don Carlos were included in theatrical repertories, not as historical revivals, but as part of the contemporary esthetic scene. Such was the level of the public's intellectual concerns and standards. If one has glimpsed that kind of art—and wider: the possibility of that kind of culture—one is unable to be satisfied with anything less.

She spends the next couple of paragraphs concertizing her assessment of the downward descent she observed going on around her before adding:

Renunciation is not one of my premises. If I see that the good is possible to men, yet it vanishes, I do not take "Such is the trend of the world" as a sufficient explanation. I ask such questions as: Why?—What caused it?—What or who determines the trends of the world? (The answer is: philosophy.)

The chapter on Ayn Rand from Burgess Laughlin's book, The Power and the Glory, highlights, in terms of essentials, many milestones of this quest.

 

Ok. So Miss Rand wrote her fictional opus', and published many of her findings. What about the fire she lit.  Is "[t]he glow was red and still, like the reflection of a fire: not an active fire, but a dying one which it is too late to stop." A philosophy, printed in the pages of a book, sitting on a shelf is not the same as the philosophy that that determines the trends of the world.

Near the beginning of Galt's speech, Rand builds up to and sets the tone for some elaboration.

"Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. . . . But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that's through, this time.

Movies, books, news broadcasts, talk at the coffee counter are replete with conversations that blame the problems in the world on human nature. But when a man is on trial in a courtroom, assuming an objective system of law, it is not man on trial, it is a particular man on the basis of his particular moral code. In a structured environment, the judge, the prosecutor, the defense, are bound by the rules of justice as to what constitutes as evidence for and against guilt. This rigor is not necessarily employed at the water cooler, where the ongoing informal trial unfolds on a daily basis. Yet it is the verdict of these informal public juries that decide the outcome of presidential elections, local millages, or the informal conclusions about what determines the trends of the world. At this point in the juncture, it is this informal courtroom that will ultimately determine the success or failure of 'Operation Objectivism.'

It is the wellspring of ideas that irrigate the moral landscape. Moral gardeners need to learn to identify and pull the weeds from the desired flora, as well as how to best care for and cultivate fertile minds for a proper moral code to flourish.

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Our present state of cultural disintegration is not maintained and prolonged by intellectuals as such, but by the fact that we haven't any. — For The New Intellectual, pg. 12

It is easy to get disillusioned when as George Lakoff pointed out in a commentary on Donald Trump:

As the legendary Green Bay Packers coach, Vince Lombardi, said,

“Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” In a world governed by personal responsibility and discipline, those who win deserve to win. Why does Donald Trump publicly insult other candidates and political leaders mercilessly? Quite simply, because he knows he can win an onstage TV insult game. In strict conservative eyes, that makes him a formidable winning candidate who deserves to be a winning candidate. Electoral competition is seen as a battle. Insults that stick are seen as victories — deserved victories.

Thanks, in part, to over 200 years of public schooling, the art of insulting insults has been raised to the level of a sport. Many who comment on the play by play from the previous night's debate do not dissect the issues, but highlight the score in terms of who skewered whom, and how many times. Pointing out formal and informal fallacies have fallen out of vogue, only the most blatantly obvious ones get identified as foul. Otherwise, one may as well be making obscure, ancient Greek references.

This style of approach is captured by Miss Rand in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, pg. 145, as:

When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side.

The enemies of "clearly and openly defining the principles at stake" seem to understand this better than its defenders.

For Rand, necessity as the mother of invention was a matter of discovering: Why?—What caused it?—What or who determines the trends of the world? For many of us, it is discovering how we can enroll others into the possibilities she brought to light during her brief stay amongst us.

 

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