I read most of her books and was on my way to becone an objectivist.

And 20 years later I conclude that both logics and experience dictate that she had this one wrong.

John Steinbeck got it right, IMO, in East of Eden.

And he was just as much as a thinker as Ayn was.

In fact I think he understood human nature way better than her.

Ayn also lacked a proper understanding of money. 

She adored the gold standard, if I remember correctly, but should have embraced monetary freedom.

This is what John wrote:

Steinbeck monster evil

"I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents and no one's fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible punishment for concealed sins.

And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?"

These poor souls are IMO the exceptions.




 

 Interesting, I don’t know too much about Steinbeck so I’ll have to look into that, thank you. 

I don’t know if Rand would be totally opposed to that. There are people born with defects of all sorts (mental and physical), but one says that [the average] man is born a certain way and according to certain rules. There will always be instances of malformed people (as explained by Mr. Steinbeck in your quote), but they’re not the norm. 

I like Rand a lot, but I wouldn’t call myself an all out religious objectivist. I follow reason where I see reason, and she just happened to be rational pretty often. 

 Yes, I have very much to thank her for.

You might like Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday 

 I’ll have a read! 

 Let me know what u think of it then 

 Yessir.