Welcome to the After Rand
The After Rand project seeks to honor Ayn Rand as a catalyst of intellectual awakening while extending her insights in the way she herself championed: through independent thinking.
The project starts with Rand’s recognition that art is essential to human life, while expanding Rand’s concept of art deeper and wider than the limits of conceptual philosophy. My concept of art is grounded anthropology: the study of man as a sensate individual, capable of reason and positioned in a social context.
This project continues Rand’s quest for clarity and meaning, not by rejecting her, but by building on her foundation to understand art as a universal human practice rooted in our senses, emotions, and evolutionary and cultural history.
My goal is to make this project compelling to the widest possible audience.
Why Me? Why Ayn Rand?
When asked about Ayn Rand, President Obama quipped that everybody reads Rand, and then they grow out of it.
In 1966, I was 19, confused and alone. My life was balanced on the edge of a trap, desperate for answers. I read Rand. She had the answers. My story began there. I will tell it here, in the After Rand.
On February, 14, 1967, Ayn Rand gave a talk in New York, “Can You Measure Love?” I was there. Rand’s answer was compelling, and her entire persona was commanding. My life took another major turn.
In 1968, I had a choice to meet Ayn Rand. I refused. I was not ready. Was I right or wrong?
I was also there through the split and the aftermath. People have been given the impression that the split was all about sex. The sexual angle has tarnished Rand’s reputation and created a terrible hurdle for the spread of Rand’s ideas. The After Rand will reveal the what the split was really about, and restore Rand’s reputation as she deserves.
I wanted to be above all the trivial insider business, because the “insiders” were cliquish, trivial people. I represent the outsider connection of Ayn Rand to the wider world.
I am not an insider
I am not a loyalist. I am not an apostate. I am one of the very few genuine “outsider heirs” of Rand—someone shaped by her, but not captured by her. Dedicated to Rand’s ideas since 1966.
My project is to make Rand compelling. Rand is a real value for real people.
Welcome to the After Rand.
🔥🔥🔥 I knew there must be some other term for this chapter of history and “After Rand” seems to fit nicely… or perhaps “After Ayn” since Victoria Rand and I stole her pseudonym surname. 😀
Looking forward to finding out what you have to say. I was first introduced to the work of Ayn Rand by my parole officer, a very nice woman, back in ‘72 when I was 16 and had been arrested for marijuana possession. First she loaned me Anthem then Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Those books just blew me away - especially some of the essays in the later. But what really hit home to me was the more metaphysical aspect of her ideas. I’d been interested in more Eastern philosophy especially Taoism and the ideas of Allen Watts - which is very self-destructive in that it is the rejection of the idea that a person is more than simply the bodily processes and mental processes happening right now - the idea that a person is a verb not a noun. It is the complete destruction of self. But reflecting on Rand’s ‘A is A’ I came to see, or relearn, that I am a being in the complete sense. That is just one aspect of how her work brought me out of the intellectual gutter. And I love Ayn Rand for that.