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You are here: Home / Politics / Crazification Factor / Putting the ‘I’ in ‘I Love You’

Putting the ‘I’ in ‘I Love You’

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I’d have guessed that “The Selfish Path to Romance” was an overgrown trail not marked on any maps, but it’s actually a book applying the lessons of Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead to relationships. I assume the longest chapter is on rape, but maybe masturbation is front-and-center. Anyone brave enough to read a copy should report back.

Also, too: there’s a Facebook for Randians?

(via Slog)

Reader Interactions

66Comments

  2. 2.

    debit

    My reaction: Buh? Wha-hey, does the woman on the cover have her hands tied behind her back?

    ETA: It’s a spoof right? It has to be a spoof.

  4. 4.

    dr. bloor

    Because the only thing more successful than Rand’s economic theories was her love life.

  7. 7.

    WereBear

    I believe I dated a few of these back in the day, the ones who were all about “What am I getting from this relationship?”

  8. 8.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @debit:
    What’s truly frightening is the portrait on Rand on that website. Looks like Bela Lugosi in drag.

  10. 10.

    Jazz Superluminar

    From their blog:

         Too much of what most of us have learned about how to find and sustain love is misguided and ends in heartbreak. Lasting passionate romance is not the result of luck, chemistry, trial and error, or fleeting emotions. Rather, a successful romance can be yours when you are guided by rational principles, identify the causes of your emotions, and proactively and constantly work on nurturing your relationship. This is explored in depth in The Selfish Path to Romance.
         Love is not about sacrifice. Real, lasting romance comes to partners who have self-esteem, are clear about asserting their needs and their worth, and develop virtue and moral character in themselves. As novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand wrote, “It is one’s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.”

    reading this shit is like anti-V1agra.
    I hope Randian’s looking for love decide to go Galt on the rest of us. We would totally miss them.

  11. 11.

    cathyx

    Can two single narcissistic people make a successful couple? No. My sister and her husband and my parents are two examples that it can’t work.

  12. 12.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    Also, too: there’s a Facebook for Randians?

    Sure! You pay a bunch of money to it, then it says you’re a moocher and goes offline forever.

  13. 13.

    Jazz Superluminar

    I went to a seminar one time on Randian Love, but all I heard was the sound of one hand fapping.

  14. 14.

    DecidedFenceSitter

    Heh – I’m conflicted. While the implementation annoys me, the core bumper-sticker belief is one I actually hold true.

    A relationship needs to sustain, fulfill my needs in order for it to be a healthy relationship. If it doesn’t, the disconnect will cause dissonance which will eventually end the relationship. So I have to be selfish and think of myself. Just not in this stupid, “it is all about me” sort of way.

    Cause one of those wants is for my partner to be happy. So thus I do my best to do that while balancing my other wants; but I never forget that I have a relationship with myself as well that needs balancing.

  15. 15.

    Tara the antisocial social worker

    No one’s done a joke about trains and tunnels yet? Slackers.

  18. 18.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    ah yes, connecting admirers of ayn rand in the atlasphere, i mean wasn’t that what the internet was supposed to do? connect socially awkward grown men and 14 year old girls, so they can explore their surprisingly parallel world views and life’s experiences?

  19. 19.

    Brian R.

    A Facebook for Randians?

    Instead of “friending” someone, do you instead let them know “fuck you, I got mine”?

  20. 20.

    Mark B

    I guess the conversation might go like this:

    Randian1: “I love me, do you love me, too?”

    Randian2: “No, I only love myself. Now start satisfying my desires before I go Galt.”

    Randian1: “Meh, goodbye.”

  21. 21.

    Amir_Khalid

    A selfish path to romance? To a sane person, the very notion reeks of narcissistic bullshit. To a Randian, I suppose, narcissism even in the matter of romance is the opposite of bullshit.

    I am reminded of another book I once saw, much more wisely conceived, and titled Everything Men Know About Women. Its pages were all blank.

  23. 23.

    bemused

    I saw the vid of a young Catholic man confronting Paul Ryan about being a fanboy of Ayn Rand instead of Jesus. Ryan rushed away. Amy Sullivan at Swampland has that vid and a great vid that a group hopes to get aired called Ayn Rand & GOP vs Jesus. Much more of this, please.

  25. 25.

    Mark B

    @bemused: The fact that Rand was rather vocal and persistent about her own atheism and how it was integral to her philosophy* could lead to some interesting juxtapositions.

    *I pretty much vehemently disagree with her on this. What she calls Objectivism and Atheism are pretty much unrelated. One can be an atheist without buying into her stupid ideas, and obviously, a lot of her followers are not atheists.

  29. 29.

    Poopyman

    @Mark B:

    One can be an atheist without buying into her stupid ideas, and obviously, a lot of her followers are not atheists.

    Well, one can’t quite call them Christians, either, even though they self-identify that way.

  30. 30.

    Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen

    That caused me, very briefly, to re-think my firm opposition to book burning.

    Especially since this book will serve as a big-assed warning sign to FLEE any potential mate. Seriously, if you get involved with an asshole who has this on his/her bookshelf, you have no one to blame but yourself.

    Also, too: What’s with the B&D on the cover?

  31. 31.

    bemused

    I’m assuming that many non-extremist Christians are not even aware of Paul Ryan’s worship of Ayn Rand along with other GOP legislators so the more attention this gets, the better.

  32. 32.

    Jazz Superluminar

    @Amir Khalid
    haven’t been around for the past week really, but how are you doing with recovering from your accident? Hope all is good with you. If not so good, I hope you are at least enjoying the Eng v. SL Test series, which is really entertaining, especially right now…

  34. 34.

    cat48

    Swampland reports that Mr. Ryan & the GOP who praise Rand have a problem with their Budget. American Values Network doesn’t like it:

    I am fairly certain that when Paul Ryan first decided to publicly share his admiration of Ayn Rand, he could not have imagined it would lead to him speed-walking to his SUV to avoid a young Catholic trying to give him a Bible and telling him to pay more attention to the Gospel of Luke. But that’s what happened Friday morning in downtown Washington after Ryan spoke to the surprisingly smallish crowd gathered for Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Conference.

    Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2011/06/03/paul-ryans-ayn-rand-problem/#ixzz1OJq6jTqr

    Edit: Also2, there will be ads run.

  35. 35.

    Amir_Khalid

    @Jazz Superluminar:
    I’m doing okay. Broken front teeth still to be fixed, some persistent aches and pains, but I seem to have recovered much of the — little enough — physical strength I had before the accident.
    On the sports front: like most Malaysians I’m really not a cricket fan. The sport is at least a generation past its heyday here, even among participants. The big cricket fans in Malaysia seem to be expatriate workers from the Indian subcontinent. Me, I’m in between football seasons.

  38. 38.

    shortstop

    This is just more validation for losers who are determined not to fix what’s broken in them. The randy Randian men (because really, almost all of them are men, and of a certain angry loner type) who buy and follow the principles of this book will once again find themselves bewildered that love has eluded them. This book will provide them with another comforting assurance that it’s not their fault they’re still alone, and that the women they’ve met are all irrational and unworthy of their Galtian attentions.

    @Jazz Superluminar: And lord knows, libertarians are reeeeeeally good at identifying the causes of their emotions.

  39. 39.

    Joe Bauers

    I just had this mental image of two lovers, sitting close, facing one another, smiling. But each of them is holding a mirror and gazing lovingly at their own reflection, lost in their self-regard.

    Life: You guys are doing it wrong.

  41. 41.

    WereBear

    This confusion between “selfishness” and “assertion” trips up so many women; who, by nature and socialization, have the Giving Thing ticking them along like a pacemaker.

    It is also a source of confusion for men; since their socialization can become a handy rationale for being a jerk, and so many role models are like that. At least women aren’t blocked from their empathy, as so many men are.

    Either way, it’s a trap good people fall into, pushed by charming con artists. Know why anyone falls for psychopaths? Because, just like the Republican party, they tell you exactly what you want to hear.

  42. 42.

    Jazz Superluminar

    @Amir Khalid
    ok, good to hear it’s not so bad, and hope they fix up the superficial stuff alright. Did not know that about Malaysians and cricket, I guess that’s just my presumptions showing (sorry for that). I do work with a lot of Indian expats, and so there is certainly a lot of banter between us about the Tests – they’re marginally less smug nowadays than they have been in the past…

  44. 44.

    RSA

    How do I love thee? Let me figure the expected utility.

    I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

    And other measures of your value, all finite,

    multiplied by the relevant probability.

  45. 45.

    psycholinguist

    And this is why academic psychologists hate the practitioner side of things, you get weirdos like these people in the video with a Ph.D. and “psychologist” after their names. Arrrrg.

    If they do decide to become academics, an unholy number of these pricks end up as evolutionary psychologists, and spend a lot of their time trying to justify their decision to be a selfish asshole with the “my genes made me do it” meme. They have absolutely ruined the evolutionary psych field.

    But it did remind me of a joke: Two behavioral psychologists meet at a conference and end up in bed together. The next morning, one turns to her partner and says “It was good for you. Was it good for me?”

  48. 48.

    Tonal Crow

    Sweet! Another buyerbewareware product for Galtistas to waste their money buying. Almost anything that diverts their money from the Republicans’ propaganda machine is a good thing.

  49. 49.

    Sentient Puddle

    @debit:

    ETA: It’s a spoof right? It has to be a spoof.

    Amazon link. After skimming a bit from the samples, I’m unfortunately going to have to go with not a spoof.

  52. 52.

    ruemara

    Hmm, I think I may be dating a practitioner. because I’m often the third wheel in his relationship with himself.

    Well, somebody has to write books about relationships for narcissists.

  54. 54.

    eyelessgame

    @lacp: ….except it turns out the 14-yr-old is a cop, and it all goes to shit, and another Rugged Individualist is brought down by The Man looters denying his expressions of his individuality.

    Fixed.

  55. 55.

    eyelessgame

    @DecidedFenceSitter: Thank you for saying so – it’s how I felt, too, looking at the blurb. A lot of relationships fail (or become permanently unhappy) because people do not pay attention to what they need in their relationship: a successful relationship is about two people meeting each other’s needs, and part of that is clearly communicating what those needs are.

    But the implementation here really, really sucks, because it’s derived from the works of an autistic sociopath.

  57. 57.

    AAA Bonds

    BETTER COVER THE BLACK LIBERTARIAN DEMOGRAPHIC THAT’S GOTTA BE JUST BOOMING RIGHT NOW

  59. 59.

    mythago

    Also, too: What’s with the B&D on the cover?

    This is a rhetorical question, right?

    Given that Rand’s ideal version of romance was “polyamory for me, monogamy for my partners” I’m not sure where this book could possibly go.

  61. 61.

    The Dude Abides

    @13 & 16. Those were fucking hilarious comments. Thanks for the belly laughs.

  62. 62.

    Michael R. Brown

    Contrary to online disinformation, Rand did not advocate rape and was powerfully against it. How curious, that women who want to be submissive no longer are allowed to be. The progressive wing is getting extremely conservative in its old, reactionary age.

  63. 63.

    Yutsano

    @Michael R. Brown: Who are you, and why should I care?

    How curious, that women who want to be submissive no longer are allowed to be.

    You are welcome to not only point them out but to also describe in detail how their decision to be submissive is being repressed. Last time I checked being a housewife was still perfectly legal in this country. Since, let’s be honest, that’s what you’re really talking about here.

  64. 64.

    drkrick

    @Michael R. Brown: Didn’t she identify a sexually sadistic serial killer as her ideal man? I suppose some weaselly distinctions could be made between that and advocating rape, but as a general proposition I think the point stands.

  65. 65.

    bjacques

    @Opal 46: Magazine FTW! Even Howard Devoto’s solo stuff. I really need to get my LPs out of storage and give them a spin.

  66. 66.

    Nutella

    @cat48:

    Wow, that’s a great ad that needs to be played in Wisconsin, Iowa, New Hampshire, everywhere.

    The Randists have gotten away with their claims to be both devoutly religious and dedicated to Randism for too long. There are much worse aspects of Randism than its atheism, of course, but this dramatic instance of the hypocrisy of Ryan and friends is an excellent way to expose it.

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