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Ἀριστοτέλης

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Everything posted by Ἀριστοτέλης

  1. Lol...yes and no, Doug. I can elaborate on what I know, or found out, when this theory was presented to me. I can't elaborate on its truth because the person, or persons, who presented it to me couldn't substantiate it. They claimed this was all revealed in a magazine interview of Frank O'Connor some months before he died.They never produced the article and the internet was in it's infancy when I encountered this person/persons. The access to information was a tiny fraction of what it is today. Frank died in 1979...which predates the internet by about 12-15 years. It certainly isn't something you can Google, unless its been archived electronically in the past 20 years. First, the acronym...AYN RAND: America You Need Reason And Not...Death...or Destruction, they weren't real clear about the D. Before you go thinking I'm a crackpot, I dismissed this theory due to the lack of physical proof. They never produced a photocopy of the article and I stopped looking years ago. Also, the person/persons were one of many who patrolled Objectivist BBS's and forums during the mid-1990's claiming answers to questions nobody was asking...because they were crackpot questions. There was a brief attempt by a number of these actors to de-secularize Objectivism, that is, to turn it into a religion. Some of them involved extra-terrestrials, ancient scripts, etc. These people were liars claiming knowledge that they couldn't have, but a lot of young "converts" bought into them. I suspect most of these people became Scientologists, or Mormons...or something. Anyway, I never believed it due to the lack of evidence, and because I had no background in religion or mysticism - I've never been much of a believer - taking their word on faith never entered my mind. Liars come in two variations, I have found: those claiming knowledge that they don't have, and those claiming knowledge that they can't have. This person/people proved to be both. During the search for this mysterious article I learned more about Ayn's early years as a writer. I think she first wrote under the name right about the time she met Frank O'Connor. If I'm right, she probably chose the name before they met, or before they became more intimate, when she decided to write for a living. I stopped looking because the claim was that Frank helped her with the name...the acronym. I surmised that the timeline for the acronym theory was wrong and that the person/people putting forth this theory were liars claiming knowledge that they couldn't have. Reidy is probably closer to the truth about why she chose a pseudonym to write and publish under. She still had family in Russia and she was very aware of what treatment they would receive if she published under her real name. As to why Alisa chose Ayn Rand, I don't know. It stands to reason that she chose it deliberately...but having studied her and other Objectivists over the past 30+ years, I'm not sure why it would be important to know why. Every so often I troll Objectivist forums to see if any of the crackpots are still around.
  2. ...that is to say that "Ayn Rand" isn't really a name, not one tortured from the non-essential fragments most people want to consider, anyway. The "name" is her message's acronym.
  3. The above explanations are complete nonsense. "Ayn Rand" doesn't represent anything that exists in the real world, it's a message Alisa wanted to get out to America...and to the world.
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