When creativity and appreciation of beauty are expressed through an act of violence and destruction, you know something is terribly wrong.
In her novel The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand’s leading lady Dominique Francon hurls a beloved statue to its destruction from a high-rise window. In a state of turmoil and ecstasy, she explains that she could not bear the thought of such beauty falling into the hands of the mediocre masses, who would defile it due to their inability to appreciate it. This act symbolizes her belief that true beauty and greatness are doomed to be destroyed or corrupted by a mediocre society. By destroying the statue herself, Dominique exerts control over its fate, rather than allowing it to be defiled by others. This moment encapsulates her inner turmoil and her struggle between idealism and cynicism.
Rand’s other principal character and love interest of the disturbed Francon, the apparently brilliant young architect Howard Roark, dynamites a building he designed because its owners have deviated from his unique architectural style. Roark’s destruction of the building is intended as an act of defiance against the compromises and mediocrity he refuses to accept. It is a dramatic assertion of his belief in the inviolability of individual creativity and integrity. By blowing up the building, Roark demonstrates that he would rather see his work destroyed than exist in a corrupted form. This act underscores one of the novel’s central themes: the sanctity of personal vision and the right of the creator to protect the integrity of their work.
Rand intended these characters to embody her philosophy of Objectivism, which emphasizes individualism, self-interest, and the pursuit of one’s own vision and happiness above societal norms and conventions. However, to anyone paying attention, there is something very sinister and disturbing about Rand’s characters and her self-proclaimed philosophy. She lauds individuals who need to destroy in order to express themselves and assert their creativity and artistic merit, an irony that cannot be lost on any observant reader.
Roark is capable of asserting and defending his creativity only through an act of violent destruction, rather than through societal channels such as litigation, press mobilization, and recruitment of like-minded people. He has no time for the contemptuous institutions of society, which only stifle the creativity and genius of people like him. He is a sovereign individual and, like Nietzsche’s Übermensch, also beyond good and evil, exempt from the mores and norms of society. As for the pitiful Francon, she is so enamored with her own sense of beauty that she willingly destroys what she supposedly loves. Extending her logic, and behind it Rand’s philosophy, Francon should therefore systematically destroy everything of beauty in her possession lest the grubby masses get their hands on it.
Contrary to Rand’s belief, these are not creative, unique, and sovereign individuals, but people deranged by their own sense of self-importance. One would not find them pleasant and certainly not safe to be around. Indeed, in her attempt to elevate self-interest and individualism as the highest ideals, Rand unwittingly exposes the destructive consequences of their pursuit.
The plot, then, revolves around a woman who thinks the rest of the world is full of crude and mediocre people, who would defile her statue by, say, hanging their socks on it to dry. And an architect who asserts his presumed originality and creativity through an act of destruction that could injure or kill anyone nearby, regardless of precautions. Somewhere in this mix, Rand also features a concrete drill used by Roark, supposedly symbolizing his sexual force, which is given expression later in a violent sex scene with Francon that many critics have scrutinized as disturbingly non-consensual. That, more or less, is Rand’s The Fountainhead.
Rand’s philosophy is as disturbing as it is nauseating. When creativity and appreciation of beauty are expressed through an act of destruction and violence, and presented as a framework for individualism, you know something is terribly wrong.
What is especially disturbing about Rand’s philosophical mumbo-jumbo is her apparent blindness to the fact that, while selfish pursuit is not problematic in itself, doing so with violence and destruction is in fact criminal. Roark behaves criminally in dynamiting a public building and obtaining sex violently. Francon recklessly throws a marble statue out of a window, endangering the lives and safety of anyone who might be below. Both are not only intensely unlikable, they are criminally negligent. Rand might claim this as artistic license in a novel, but it is her entire so-called philosophy of Objectivism that is faulty. In her Objectivism, personal ambition is achieved through criminal negligence towards society, in the same way Rand’s characters assert their distorted individual rights over society. They act with reckless disregard for others, in conduct that grossly deviates from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the situation, creating a substantial and unjustifiable risk of harm to others.
It is difficult not to see the same reckless drives at work in corporations that plunder resources, exploit workers, and pollute the environment, and governments that conduct wars and oppress populations. While this tiny portion that is powerful and wealthy pursue their vision of happiness and fulfillment, there is less than zero benefit to the countless, faceless little people, who as it happens both bear up and bear the brunt of this distorted order. Actually, Rand’s work is not an exploration of what such a world would be like or an exhortation to create one; it is a defense of the grossly unjust world that we have at present.
It is unsettling that The Fountainhead and other books of Rand’s, in particular Atlas Shrugged, are frequently cited by politicians and corporate leaders as being “visionary.” The Silicon Valley crowd simply love and adore Rand, for reasons not too difficult to work out. And Sajid Javid, a former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, cites Atlas Shrugged as his favorite novel and Rand one of his favorite authors.
Academia, on the other hand, is largely dismissive of Rand, seeing her works as lacking a proper philosophical basis, suffering from the same mediocrity she attributes to the faceless little people of the world.