I'm currently reading Ayn Rand's We the Living. I've only read one Ayn Rand before; I can't remember which book it was. All I remember was that the two characters that hated each other the most were also constantly having sex with each other. It seemed a bit bizarre to me. But since then I've occasionally heard people rave over Ayn Rand's books. So I decided to dive in again in hopes of figuring out what exactly it was that people liked in them. I still don't think I get it. (Feel free to enlighten me.) But I did find that some sections of the book stand at a delightful juxtaposition to an article I was reading in this week's High Country News. I'm curious, which quote resonates with you more? And why?
"Don't you know," her voice trembled suddenly in a passionate plea she could not hide, "don't you know that there are things, in the best of us, which no outside hand should dare to touch? Things sacred because, and only because, one can say: 'This is mine'? Don't you know that we live only for ourselves, the best of us do, those who are worthy of it? Don't you know that there is something in us which must not be touched by any state, by any collective, by any number of millions?" -- Ayn Rand, in We the Living
This inclusiveness is by design. Kathy's friends and family members underscore Aldo Leopold's belief that, just as ecology is the science of connection, so "all ethics... rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts." It is also Moore's reply to centuries of Western philosophy. She believes that our great thinkers have spent far too much energy parsing distinctions between ideas, between humans and other living things, between the mundane and the sacred, and not given nearly enough effort to pointing out commonalities. -- John Calderazzo, writing about Kathleen Dean Moore in an article entitled, "When reverence isn't enough" in HCN.
