When I say "cry", I mean to show emotion, stress, pain. Dagny never cried in Atlas Shrugged, if I remember correctly. I like to write stories, and I especially like the ones that really stir the audience's emotions when the hero shows pain when he suffers some sort of tragedy, so long as that tragedy is overcome by the end. I believe this is a good device to make the audience despise the villain or antagonist even more. A great villain can be defined by either what he stands for or by how hated he is, and when you require an emotional response from the audience when you see someone suffer due to another person's actions, you know something great is being made. My own villain's goal, for example, is to seek freedom in the sense that he wants to evade the consequences of his actions. Free will really means to be able to think and use your mind. He doesn't understand that, and the physical realm is not good enough for him. His physical limitations frustrate him. He believes in the soul/body dichotomy, and, in the story, he's figured out how to separate them. He wants to separate the soul from the body--a radical extreme in philosophical skepticism. Being an older man, he's experienced the loss of a loved one, and he's determined to get them back. What he does throughout the story was done with full intention, and he blanks out and ignores the consequences of his actions. The consequences imposed on one of the other characters is both tragic and quite depressing. In the end, he fails because nobody will serve him. I find it quite strange that this question should come back to the top of the page again. I asked it when I had a very scant understanding of Atlas Shrugged and Objectivism. I've read the novel for the second time recently, and I can finally articulate what's truly been bothering me about what Ayn Rand wanted to say. Let me just be clear, I agree with Ayn Rand, but there were questions she did not answer. If an individual is to work for what he desires, that's fine. A person with a lot of intelligence would find it much easier to acquire wealth, etc. However, what about the person who isn't as strong and intelligent as, say, the valedictorian in school, the millionaire who made a fortune in the stock market, the genius who cures cancer, or the contractor who designs skyscrapers? Certainly that person has goals, ambitions, and dreams. What if he doesn't have the capacity to acquire what he most desires with honor? What would be the point of going on if day in and day out a person experiences the same disappointments, knowing he can't have what he wants because he's not smart enough to hold a job which would pay his dream house, as one example? I don't think I'm a smart person. I get terrible grades in math and science. |
Objectivists are humans, so of course they routinely feel emotion like anyone would (barring some medical problem). You can see that reflected throughout Rand's stories because she's writing about humans. Exactly how someone reacts-to or acts-on his emotions is another matter. What Objectivism urges (naturally) is being objective about the proper relationship between cognition and emotion: these are both essential in a healthy human life, and it is crucial to not make the mistake of trying to substitute one for the other, denying either it's critical role. Err one direction and you'll suffer the effects of repression; err the other direction and you'll suffer the effects of emotionalism. What is emotionalism? I can't find an adequate definition online. From Merriam-Webster.com: Definition of EMOTIONALISM 1: a tendency to regard things emotionally 2: undue indulgence in or display of emotion First Known Use of EMOTIONALISM 1865Seems adequate to me. What might be missing or unclear? (It isn't a moral evaluation of whether emotionalism is good or bad, of course, nor whether crying by a fictional hero would clash with his heroism.) To add to Ideas' point, I would describe it as the policy of letting your emotions be in control of your life/actions rather than reason. Emotionalism means that if it feels bad/good then it simply is bad/good. But that's an abortive attempt to displace cognition: feelings are automatized responses (not volitional) and therefore by definition they can't be objective -- they may or may not be right, and the arbiter of whether they are is, of course, your thinking (volitional) mind. Emotionalism replaces thinking with an unquestioned, unexplored, out-of-context, nonobjective reaction. Greg you nailed this. Bravo! I love this quote: " Err one direction and you'll suffer the effects of repression; err the other direction and you'll suffer the effects of emotionalism." It's a constant balance. It might be asked how, exactly, one can strike a "constant balance" between repression and emotionalism (or between cognition and emotion). Ayn Rand's answer is given in the excerpt that JK Gregg quoted in his Answer: A rational man knows—or makes it a point to discover—the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them. He never acts on emotions for which he cannot account, the meaning of which he does not understand. In other words, one must remember, first of all, that merely experiencing an emotion does not mean that one must regard it as an identification of a truth, nor that one must act on it. What is true or false, and what concrete action one should perform (if any), can be determined only by one's rational mind. If one has any doubts about what one's emotions are expressing about one's own past patterns of thinking and acting, one should introspectively review one's doubts as soon as any immediate urgencies have subsided and one once again has more opportunity for serious introspection. One should also never suppress the doubts (except very temporarily in the face of a genuinely urgent need for immediate action). Emotions usually can be powerful and immensely time-saving reminders to man of his own past patterns of thinking and acting -- if one has developed them over time by consistently rational thinking and decision-making. (Refer also to the topic of "Introspection" in The Ayn Rand Lexicon.)
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Emotion is no sin in Objectivist ethics, but rather "automatic results of man’s value judgments integrated by his subconscious." From the Playboy interview:
Some emotions can be irrational if they are premised on faulty values or inconsistent with reality. It's up to us, through introspection, to explore, define, and validate our emotions. |