Selective Amnesia

Random post to keep my membership to the cartel alive

February 2 this year was Ayn Rand’s 100th B’day. And as a honorary member of the Cartel and a libertarian, here’s my obligatory post on Ayn Rand. I shall follow it with a little explanation of what to me is libertarianism.

Ayn Rand, no doubt, has influenced me. I loved a few of her books – Fountainhead, We the living (interminably long read though it was). Some I wanted to disagree with – Capitalism – The Unknown Ideal particularly (got a bit preachy it did).

But in the end, I doubt if I would have been able to defend my beliefs as well as I do, against a father and family, blind believers that they are in Government control, and against friends and wellwishers who seem to think I am out of my (normally sane) mind.

But I have, and that is due in not small measures to Ayn Rand’s books, and my subsequent reading up. For that I shall always be grateful.

That concludes my homage to Rand.

Prakash writes what Libertarianism is all about, to him. He calls it total self-ownership.

To me though, libertarianism can be concluded in one phrase I have often said, to friends and co workers.

Nobody influences me. I influence nobody.

Imagine, for a moment, what that means, if followed in spirit and letter. You get to live your life the way you want, without interference from anyone. You would not go around shoving advice, especially bad, on to others (that alone will make life on this planet simpler and better) and no one does too.

Of course, that means my job as a copywriter is throws out of the window. In which case, I shall take up cultural anthropology.