Video from cracked.com (given the tinyurl treatment). May be slightly NSFW. There's an ad at the beginning.

http://tinyurl.com/73n2gsv

Ayn Rand, The Unlikeliest Cult in History, by the esteemed Michael Shermer. http://www.2think.org/02_2_she.shtml

No biggie here, but something that may be of interest just to show how deeply a religious cult can completely take over a person's life, personality, reasoning ability,etc.
I read one or two books by Ayn Rand back when I was a heavy reader and the books..the writing...was so stupid that I never bought in to Ayn Rand because I couldn't buy into a person who would write so badly. However, I read all of Mission Earth..I think every one of the series........these books were trash...even while reading them something in the back of my mind was saying that these books were garbage. However, I was IN the cult and so my mind was somehow programmed to somehow allow for this bullshit nonsense and to continually think that this was worthwhile stuff. Amazing how malleable a mind is and how it can be totally programmed to adopt a fixed path. I guess this is something the CIA is well aware off.

Anyway...the only thing that came close to this later on in my life was when I read 'The Stand' by Stephen King. I had read 3 or 4 of his novels prior and they basically sucked. He was a guy who started with a decent idea, but ran out of steam by 80-90 pages. However, 'The Stand' was supposed to be his ultimate work, and so I thought..."Okay...there has got to be something in this..professional writer..his supposed masterpiece'..and so I read it. By 100-150 pages I became aware that this was just another piece of garbage but I read it till the end. Most wasted hours of my life reading this garbage..but I still read it to the end. Anyway.. as I said, no biggie....I gues the moral is....'A mind is a terrible thing to waste'..ha..ha.....Anyway...I like talking to myself..I'm the only one nowadays who listens to me.

No biggie here, but something that may be of interest just to show how deeply a religious cult can completely take over a person's life, personality, reasoning ability,etc.
I read one or two books by Ayn Rand back when I was a heavy reader and the books..the writing...was so stupid that I never bought in to Ayn Rand because I couldn't buy into a person who would write so badly. However, I read all of Mission Earth..I think every one of the series........these books were trash...even while reading them something in the back of my mind was saying that these books were garbage. However, I was IN the cult and so my mind was somehow programmed to somehow allow for this bullshit nonsense and to continually think that this was worthwhile stuff. Amazing how malleable a mind is and how it can be totally programmed to adopt a fixed path. I guess this is something the CIA is well aware off.

Anyway...the only thing that came close to this later on in my life was when I read 'The Stand' by Stephen King. I had read 3 or 4 of his novels prior and they basically sucked. He was a guy who started with a decent idea, but ran out of steam by 80-90 pages. However, 'The Stand' was supposed to be his ultimate work, and so I thought..."Okay...there has got to be something in this..professional writer..his supposed masterpiece'..and so I read it. By 100-150 pages I became aware that this was just another piece of garbage but I read it till the end. Most wasted hours of my life reading this garbage..but I still read it to the end. Anyway.. as I said, no biggie....I gues the moral is....'A mind is a terrible thing to waste'..ha..ha.....Anyway...I like talking to myself..I'm the only one nowadays who listens to me.

There were four or five young women who were on staff in the org. They had read everything Ayn Rand had written. We were stripping down some wood paneling and then putting linseed oil on it one night after the org closed and for some reason they got onto the topic of Ayn Rand.

I had never read any of her stuff - still haven't. - The only exposure I've had to Ayn Rand was on the Tonight Show when Johnny Carson was hosting it. Unfortunately I was young and she had some influence on me but nothing near to the influence she had on those other staff members. They credited Ayn Rand for influencing them sufficiently to be interested in $cientology when someone from $cientology first contacted them.

I don't know if Ayn Rand ever met Hubbard but she did predispose at least a few people to fall for $cientology when it came along. Maybe Davey should award her one of $cientology's medals and make a more definite link to her for $cientology.

Ayn Rand's novella Anthem is an indictment of totalitarian governments. I'm not nuts about most of her stuff, but I happened to read this short book during my brief involvement in Co$, and it was one of the things that helped crystallize my feelings that I needed to get the hell away from the cult.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella)

I have never heard about Rand, so I followed the link provided by Don Carlo. What she created does not look like a cult to me because she was not using mind-control techniques such as sleep deprivation, isolation from the family, etc. If her followers were stupid enough to put her on pedestal, that was their fault exclusively.

Her philosophy, Objectivism, is deeply flawed because it is based on proposition that the nature is independent of the observer (I think, being Russian, she borrowed this proposition from dialectical materialism).

I seriously doubt that she was as famous as the article author says because her philosophy died in obscurity.

Last year a part of Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 was released as a movie. It got an 11% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and grossed a little over a quarter of its $20 million budget. Atlas Shrugged: Part 2 is slated for release this year. It looks like it has a substantially different cast. Jason Beghe has second billing on IMDb's page for the movie. There is supposed to be a part 3 to the series. Judging from the rating and box office results I'd say there are some deep pockets behind turning that book into a movie.

Demented, where did you get the idea that Ayn Rand's philosophy died in obscurity? Agree with it or not that is not the case, she is the ideological mother of the Tea Party movement and Alan Greenspan, who as head of the Federal Reserve Bank set policies which set the stage for The Great Recession was in her inner circle.

Objectivism is anything but dead.

Baltizaar, it is interesting that you mention The Stand. Reading that book was the trigger to me leaving Scientology. I don't know why but after reading that book I realized that the Emperor of Scientology was wearing no clothes and I took off.

I keep posting because you never know if one sentence or one paragraph can make a Scientologist reader wake up.

It is not just Objectivism, all philosophical systems postulating that reality is independent of the individual’s senses are in a terrible shape since the advent of quantum mechanics.

There are other philosophical systems that put emphasis on individual liberty, Tea Party activists could be using any of them. But even if they follow Objectivism, they are not scientists, so their opinion does not count. It is left to the real scientists to decide which philosophical system to choose as a foundation of their methodologies.

Greenspan is an idiot who recommended to deregulate real estate market, which led to the current economic crisis (deregulation allowed companies to offer exotic mortgages to their customers, which was not permitted under the previous regulations). I know this topic very well, I even wrote several articles about the dangers of deregulation.

I would not be surprised if Greenspan the Idiot is an Objectivist, although I doubt that. I heard that he is a follower of Keynes, although I am not sure about that, either.

There were mind- and behavior-control techniques being used, though not the usual ones. I had a friend about 20 years ago who just wouldn't shut up about Ayn Rand. I tried to read both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged but didn't get far in either one, finding her style dry and pedantic and her "heroes" extremely unlikeable. So I decided to read Judgment Day: My Years With Ayn Rand by Nathaniel Branden, who had been one of her inner circle for years. He split with Rand and her group rather acrimoniously (kicked out and publicly denounced by Rand herself; his own personally issued "SP declare"). Branden still admires her and to this day preaches Objectivism. Even through his rose-colored glasses, my reaction to his book can be summed up in two words: holy crap!

This woman was a seething mass of emotional, mental and personality issues. How on earth she came to have so much sway over her minions, and how they could possibly overlook her personality defects confused me until I saw the pattern--she appealed to those who either already felt that they were or desperately wanted to feel morally and intellectually superior to the unwashed masses. In that way there are similarities to Scientology; however, LRH attracted people who really did want to help others by cloaking his crap in the guise of helping people become Homo Novis in order to help humanity, while Rand propounded unabashed greed and selfishness. She was a master manipulator, and her dupes essentially worshiped her and emulated her every move, loved her every like (right down to music), hated her every dislike, etc. Fortunately her jibberjabber was less successful at attracting people than LRH's. And like Scientology, there are a few true things in Objectivism, but it's not worth wading through the sewer to find them.

btw, when I went back to my friend and incredulously told him what I had learned about Rand, he rather embarrassedly backpedaled and I never heard about her from him again. lol

Demented LRH, you are spot on with Greenspan. http://www.theawl.com/2011/04/when-alan ... ed-economy

Pill-popping, too. Maybe Ayn used that commie "looter" Medicare in her old age to get her pills. http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/149721 ... eeded_them

well, thank you for the mention. nice of you. After readng 'The Stand' I haven't purchased another book by Stephen King becasue I realized that he was a novelist who was wearing no clothes..ha...ha..