Stuff'em. Make money from'em. Use it to think your thoughts. No point
getting depressed about'em - they're not (depressed, that is, or if
they are, how would they know? )

And I love buying all that instant gratification stuff.

He he he, you're right - but I guess its the Irish inside where I hope that everyone will one day reach a state of clarity and reason. I love buying things off the cuff, but at the same time, when ones life is basically a cycle of purchasing crap - one has to ask, is there anything more to life than just consumption, breeding and dying?

Welcome Kaiwai, great to see new blood writing here.

Thanks for the kind comments. I tend to write on my own blog and update my youtube videos. I find it easier expressing myself in video than in words alot of the time as I tend to be rather crappy at writing.

I've just recently purchased quite a number of Ayn Rand books recently to give myself something to read further. Its funny when mates come over and they look at my bookshelf of books and surprised what I have

Distinction between asserting that the lot of a genius like Rand is depression and sadness, on the one hand, and on the other, clarifying that there are reasons to feel occasionally blue.

Welcome to the site!

Scott DeSalvo

Whether you think you can, or think you cannot, you're probably right!!

I'm not too sure about you, but it is kind of depressing when you see the vast majority of people stroll through life with little time to think about things in depth.

Stuff'em. Make money from'em. Use it to think your thoughts. No point getting depressed about'em - they're not (depressed, that is, or if they are, how would they know? )

And I love buying all that instant gratification stuff.

Welcome Kaiwai, great to see new blood writing here.

I tend to get into states of depression when I see clarity of the world, look at the 'average person' as he or she shuffles through the shop, consuming, masticating, breeding then dying.

I'm not too sure about you, but it is kind of depressing when you see the vast majority of people stroll through life with little time to think about things in depth. Decisions made on the whim of emotional tidal waves created by marketing, acquisition of crap because it promises to provide instant gratification to the 'quick time disinterested' generation which strolls through life these days. The idea of silence and reflecting becoming something only embraced but the weird, depressed and kooky such as I - the notion of silence or lack of outwards activity being seen as boring rather than acknowledge deep reflecting and analytical thought.

So yes, when you look at the state of the world today, its difficult not to get depressed. 

NOW I know why I am so moody and angry and depressed! Its because I'm a genius, and that is the lot of the brilliant--sadness, frustration, suffering!

Thank God for Barbara Branden, who can set us straight on the nature of man and inevitable suffering our best are doomed to experience! I'll just go ahead and get rid of that sense of a benevolent universe and my sense of personal accomplishment as I stand at the window of my corner office that I earned and gaze over the lit skyline of Chicago. And get on with the business of misery. To prove to the world that I am great, and therefore, miserable.

Scott DeSalvo

Whether you think you can, or think you cannot, you're probably right!!

The one thing they can't seem to bear is that Ayn got over it quite nicely.

I read an absolutely terrible thing a while ago on Nathaniel Branden's website. It was his story about his wife Devers going to meet Ayn in her apartment. The bulshy little madam literally pushes her way into Ayn's apartment unannounced and then drags up the past and rubs Ayn's nose in it... only to try and pose as some tough-ass and win her approval in some fucked up kind of a way. Then of course it all gets used against Ayn in the same manner as Barbara's above comments. Despicable! Made me really angry. Small nobodies like to pit themselves against giants to look impressive to other small nobodies. Yet another revolting exploitation of a heroine... they just can't help themselves, they're obsessed with her... more accurately, they're obsessed with elevating themselves by standing on her shoulders at the same time as cracking her with a whip. Absolute scum.

This was at an official TAS function, was it? Ed Hudgins did the intro... but here I thought that TAS was going to eschew such biographical controversies.

Guess not.

More lies -- more stinking hypocrisy.

Very insightful indeed -- "stuck exactly where she was when her and Ayn’s friendship ended." Her ex-husband, years following the break, once lost patience with her and yelled, "Stop seeing yourself as a victim!" Even he noticed this.

A massive projection of one human being’s cynical psyche onto another’s.

Life and some of its consequences can bring us terrible emotional pain. That is a normal and healthy response to gross disappointment and loss – but with time, it passes. Barbara reminds me of someone who suffers from arrested development and is stuck exactly where she was when her and Ayn’s friendship ended. She tries so hard to keep Ayn imprisoned in that time of pain too. It would be tragic if it weren’t so treacherous.

I can't help observing that Ms. B. contradicts her biography in Part I of that speech, when she says that Rand was happily "living in the moment" for a short period after writing Atlas Shrugged. In PAR, we are told this "never" happened to Rand again quite early on in her life -- just after the terrible experiences of her youth.

Just another contradiction to add to the list which, since the publication of PARC, only keeps growing...

I have heard far too many stories about Ayn Rand in the decades following Atlas to accept Ms. Branden's characterizations. The Rand who took dancing lessons when she was in her 60s(!) -- or the Rand who rediscovered, in her 70s, the same love for mathematics she had in her youth -- or the Rand who wrote with the glowing excitement unique to her style of hero-worship about the Apollo mission to the moon -- the Rand who still enjoyed her "tiddleywink" music with emotional abandon -- had not turned into a fundamentally "depressed and enraged" person as is being claimed. Cumulatively, these are far more than the "moments of happiness" Ms. Branden concedes may have been possible for the post-Atlas Rand.

Moreover, my own reading of Rand's private papers has convinced me that Rand's post-Atlas "crisis," as she called it herself, was, in part, an issue of career-shifting -- and "purpose"-finding. Ms. B. doesn't mention this, but Rand believed that she had accomplished her major literary goals with her last two novels. This, as much as anything, I believe, "de-motivated" her work on any new novel -- and she did start making notes for one. Also, Rand came to enjoy writing non-fiction very much -- she found it much easier than fiction and often fun. Rand definitely had "bounced back" by the early 60s in a fundamental way, and, in PAR, Ms. Branden concedes this to a considerable extent -- while, in these comments, she makes no such acknowledgment.

And, as Linz observes, Ms. B. wasn't even there to observe Rand for most of the post-Atlas period of her life. But does that stop her from making totalistic pronouncements? Peikoff, who knew Rand best during the final years of her life says she was happy.

Notice Ms. B.'s standard tricks in play, too -- "It ['the hatred, distortions and lies' of the critics] was more than [Rand] could handle. She had a right not to be able to handle it."

That may be, but, from the actual evidence, Rand appears to have been able to "handle it."

Ah, but like all geniuses, Rand had a "right" to be angry and depressed! In that most grotesque of psycho-covers, Ms. B. asks us to accept and forgive Rand for her "rage" and to understand her morbid depression.

By the time we accept Rand's humanity, and forgive her, we've forgotten whether the premise was ever established in the first place. With the "witness" being oh, so forgiving, it is the critic of this tale who is set-up to look the unforgiving or unrealistic cultist by this stratagem.

And, of course, Ms. Branden's latest portrait of Rand conveniently fits with the needs of Ms. Branden's reputation -- the Rand who madly cast her out had been twisted by "rage and depression" -- and, we must "forgive" her, just as Ms. B. has somehow found it in her heart to do.

Oh, yes, Ms. B. admits feeling "unforgiving anger" at Rand -- over the years -- something her ex-husband has confirmed in spades -- but, don't you see, she's gotten beyond all that... Of course, such forgiveness hasn't prevented her from comparing Rand to medieval torturers... (and, still, she complains about Chamber's review comparing the message of Atlas to that of the Nazis!)

Well, folks, be sure not to miss Part I.

The bitch wasn't even there for the years she's talking about!

What a double-damned phony the woman is. She "twists in pain" she says as she thinks of Ayn's later years -- the years she wasn't even there to see!? What is she now, clairvoyant?!

God damn you if you ascribe your pain at being found out for a fake and a phony to the woman who found you out -- someone of whom those close to her for her last three decades recounted no pain -- not at least until her husband died.

Unbelievable.

"Fireless failure" is right. Can someone point out anything Barbara has done with her life besides produce a discredited biography and a complete work of fiction, ie., herself.

PC

Genius leads inevitably to suffering? Taking inventory of many of my personal favorites: Richard Feynman, Bob Noyce, Andy Grove, Gordon Moore, Linus Torvalds, Steve Jobs etc., etc. etc. None of these people are/were primarily about suffering and none had a dark psyche.

Jim