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Many thanks for all the responses. I will only add this: I read a lot about Rand in the past few hours and, now that I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that Rand was indirectly responsible of ruining people's lives too, as Hubbard did.

Think about it: Alan Greenspan was a big fan of Rand and even wrote letters to her, so presumably he was influenced by her, even after he was appointed as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Considering how it all went bust in 2008 and Greenspan's responsibility in some decisions that led to the subprime mortgage crisis, we can conclude that Rand had an indirect responsibility in that too.

In fact, he wrote this in a letter to Rand: "Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should."

Also, Alan Moore is fucking brilliant; reading a single interview with him (and I read an insane amount of them) can really help put things into perspective. Neil Gaiman said the only problem that Moore has is that he is a genius.
 
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By the way, I don't think Satanism is either a pagan or atheist disease. It seems to me that Satanists just want to be The Rolling Stones to Christianity's The Beatles, the bad boys or something like that. And Rand IS vulgar.

Also, Libertarians are like rat poison: 95% of it is harmless, but the remaining 5% kills you. For example, I agree with the indiviual freedoms they defend, like the decriminalization of drug use, the right of women to abort and the separation of Church and State, but what turns me off on them is their stance against taxation, public schooling and healthcare; in fact, it seems to me they defend those individual freedoms purely to look good, while it is the second part that is the most important to them. If they got rich, it is thanks to the system others created and maintained, through taxation, hard work, blood, sweat and tears. Even Adam Smith said that in order for true Libertarianism to occur, you must feed all children first, or something of that tenor.

Stephen King said it best: "You can't live the American Dream without America."
 
I know, I saw a documentary about Rand's influence on this stuff but however big an influence she was, I think Greenspan gets the blame for what he did. Unless the ghost of Ayn Rand bullied him into it.

She was influential for sure but most of these people weren't willing to suffer for their own beliefs like Steve Ditko, who was seemingly just as willing to starve to death as Howard Roark from the unwillingness to compromise.
Her calling religion "mental slavery" is completely glossed over by most of them.

It's not that different from when far right politicians find a scientist who says something they find validating and comforting. They'll use that but not care about anything else the scientist believes.

It's like "Wow! You mean there are philosophers and scientists who will justify my behaviour? What? They don't like guns?... let's just forget about that."
 
I am amazed that there are still cults hanging aroung this day and age, you know?: Transcendental Meditation, The Zeitgeist Movement and The Venus Project, for example, along Scientology and others. The world must be really fucked up if people are looking at these cults for answers.
 
I have read some critical articles saying it is a cult; for example, they say the mantras they give to people actually are names of Hindu deities, among other things that are much worse than that. It saddens me that David Lynch is now the figurehead of the movement.

Here are a lot of critics against TM: http://www.suggestibility.org/.
 
NYT Book Review Picks 10 Best Books of 2016


I've had my eye on The Vegetarian by Han Kang for a while.
The North Water by Ian McGuire sounds great. (Thanks, Pan Michael)
Sartre's Lovecraftian paranoia in At The Existentialist Cafe also sounds intriguing and pretty funny.

What appeals to you?
 
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Robert Adam Gilmour said:
I didn't know Transcendental Meditation was a cult. I thought it was just a way of relaxing and focusing.
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Way back I got a weird vibe from the Transcendental Meditation movement. I suppose a weird vibe doesn't mean much, especially remembered after years, in that I can't give the details - but hearing it called a cult does not seems strange to me in the least.
 
The one person I knew who was into NLP and transcendental meditation was also a hardcore Objectivist. Lynch is also something of an Objectivist or libertarian, isn't he?
 
I don't know if this is just a meme, but Lynch being great defender of Reagan is something that you often see mentioned online.

There is this habit that people have, where they automatically assume that any avant-garde artist has to have progressive worldview. Weird that this is still common, given the number of occasions where said assumption turned out to be far from reality. Don't know if this is true of Lynch, as I honestly don't know anything about his politics outside of the above Reagan meme.
 
Robert Adam Gilmour said:
I had heard is that Lynch is Republican and anti-abortion, but I think it is accepted that he was a Reagan supporter and had a meeting with him after Elephant Man. Apparently he's been a Democrat for a long while.

Here's some quotes about his positions.
David Lynchs Religion and Political Views | HollowverseThe Hollowverse
Twin Peaks's David Lynch Admires Ronald Reagan, Supports Natural Law Party's John Hagelin
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Interesting - I knew a little bit about the Natural Law Party and assumed it was a personality-based splinter from the Libertarian Party, but it's apparently Libertarianism overlaid with a heavy does of TM.

Hidden X said:
There is this habit that people have, where they automatically assume that any avant-garde artist has to have progressive worldview. Weird that this is still common, given the number of occasions where said assumption turned out to be far from reality. Don't know if this is true of Lynch, as I honestly don't know anything about his politics outside of the above Reagan meme.
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It's a reasonable conclusion from Lynch's work that he's not a conservative "values voting" Christian - hence his support for Reagan was a bit odd and requires either nuance or cognitive dissonance on Lynch's part.
 
Robert Adam Gilmour said:
I didn't know Transcendental Meditation was a cult. I thought it was just a way of relaxing and focusing.
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Too much money involved in it for me to not be suspicious. I'm sure it helps Lynch and others, but the constant pay walls put me off when I can just learn about meditation for free elsewhere.
 
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TM is a cult as are so many other 'movements' these day. Spiritual, political movements, Scientology, even sex, all a substitute for a traditional religion that few can believe in anymore.

Don't tell me that people don't need the meaning religion gives them. Only a small number of people can function well in a purely rational world. Human beings need illusion; that's why materialists like myself love Weird Fiction. Almost everything is a substitute for religious belief; that's why people get so crazy and irrational when you argue politics. They see a dissenting voice as attacking the very thing that gives their life meaning, although it's meaning as illusory as any in trad religions. The bare bones of human life--born, live, die, oblivion--are just too stark for most. So you end up trying to find Meaning in a meaningless Universe.

But Ligotti is right; some can hide from horror in the very heart of horror. As long as its pretend.
 
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Druidic said:
\Human beings need illusion; that's why materialists like myself love Weird Fiction. Almost everything is a substitute for religious belief; that's why people get so crazy and irrational when you argue politics. They see a dissenting voice as attacking the very thing that gives their life meaning, although it's meaning as illusory as any in trad religions..
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Not sure how being a materialist leads to love of Weird Fiction. Could you explain the connection? If everything is born, live, die, oblivion, what is there to argue? It doesn't matter, does it?
 
You mean there's more to life, Arthur? Born, live, die, oblivion doesn't work for you? Please fill me in LOL.

We all need illusions to make life bearable and we get them. From Romantic love to the Drug Culture, it's all about finding meaning. Even materialists long to believe in the unreal. Lovecraft understood the link between religious belief and supernatural horror in literature. The need for meaning can only be satisfied by illusion.

Being a nihilist who only values Logic but has a (too) high degree of compassion for animals and human beings is a bitch.

My advice to others is simple: do the Right Thing in every circumstance. You'll know what it is if you have a drop of empathy; and even if your actions are arbitrary, DO IT. Meaning be damned.
 
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