#unpublished drafts

A thing that is really funny thing I noticed since we've been practicing and implementing the concept of "never try to be anything more than what you naturally are in the very moment" is just how pervasive this demand and idea of "trying to be something" is in society (or at least American society)

Like a few days ago my mom told my dad that I am "trying to be healthy" because he was trying to make me eat more than I wanted and I raised an eyebrow, confused, because I wasn't trying to be healthy, I wasn't trying to be anything, I was just eating at a level and amount that felt right and made me feel happy.

And so I expressed my confusion and my mom really struggled to understand that I genuinely had no interest in seeking out health or having it be a relevant motivator as to why I was telling my dad I didn't want to overeat

(i hit a wall rip so imma wrap this thought up and go to sleep)

At the risk of making the kind of blog post where the thing I'm trying to say goes completely unremarked upon, here's one of my long-standing favorite lines from Ayn Rand's "The Inexplicable Case of Ayn Rand":

"You cannot be both an artist and a moralist. You will have to decide which is the primary purpose."

Not only is that just a beautiful sentence, but I'm not sure there's anything else like it. It can't be dismissed just as "kind of a cliche," because the idea that you can be both an "artist" and a "moralist" is far from being a cliche -- you can quote it from any number of people, including the authors of The Sound and the Fury and Animal Farm and 1984. It's not a cliche because it's not a cliche and everyone knows it's not a cliche (or, if you have the misfortune to have a mind that works that way, because it's a phrase you have read at some point, and you're trying to tell yourself you aren't quoting it).

But there's more than just that. The "inexplicable" in Rand's statement isn't just some vague statement of incongruity. The "case" of Ayn Rand is one of a sort of double-dealing which, if she were being honest, ought to have long ago stopped making her the object of anyone's respect. As far back as "Night of January 6, 1964" (published c. 1960), it had been clear to me that some of the things that Ayn Rand was saying weren't things that she could get away with saying. But then, it had also been clear to me that some of the things she said were things she couldn't get away with saying, and so I had always just been curious and fascinated, because the gap was so obvious and so tantalizing. And there was the passage in Atlas Shrugged, which went as follows:

The first act of a successful man is to discover what it takes to get him to succeed; and once you have done that, the second act is to discover why it doesn't happen. This is the point that I would like to emphasize about the "inexplicable case of Ayn Rand."

Let us agree to say that what has happened to Ayn Rand has been this: She has become an "artist," but she has not discovered what it takes to make her a "moralist."

If there was some secret sauce that would reveal itself, it is that I am saying. I am saying that once you grasp it, there is nothing else to understand. There is something that is going on here, but this is the point where it should be apparent that no matter how I try to make it "explicable" or "make it make sense," it will not. It will not because Ayn Rand has said so.