Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Going philosophical

Glen made a comment, so I hopped over to his website. (Glen was my pastor for student fellowship Chi Alpha back in Stanford, and he's been a real inspiration for me, as well, as I guess now, one of the people I guess might be a little disappointed with me). Think the second post there's about Andrew Wright, (with whom I've had several late night conversations about love, life and philosophy) and his rejection of Ayn Rand's philosophy. (He's also a really fun guy, and even though sometimes I feel like he doesn't always act like a Christian should, but hey, at least he's real about it! :> )

Who's Ayn Rand? Well, I wouldn't have known until I got to Stanford. Ron Howard, the DA lecturer, also conducted a set of classes on Ethical Analysis and Voluntary Social Systems, and he drew heavily on references to Ayn Rand and her books, and her philosopy of Objectivism. To quote her,
"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." —Ayn Rand

Well, layZim's interpretation: Live for your own happiness as your purpose in life, work towards that happiness, and don't believe in any God except reason.

Eh. Well. Seems like a lot of people do that anyway? Andrew explained to me that it was a kind of philosophy that was spread through classrooms, with friends explaining to friends and passing them the books, (fiction books, actually) and maybe some teachers mentioning it in classes. And it was apparently quite popular! (Well, in Singapore, even if people don't know her name they're still living by it.) And now that I'm aware I DO see her books around. But the philosophy just didn't take in my life. Guess I'm the sort of person who doesn't really like to be told what the truth of life is, I gotta experience it for myself -- source of a thousand arguments with mom.

Anyway, Andrew just blogged that he's over Ayn Rand. And to that, I say Amen, and congratulations!

And now, a message from Ah Ping:


ah ping loves u

heh. lovable pig, isn't he?