Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life (movie review)

Not to worry: just because I've seen one semi-hagiographic DVD made by some of her best friends, am I now suddenly some authority on Objectivism or what have you. This will not be a boring lecture decrying (or embracing) her metaphysics (if that's an appropriate word).

"Awww, what a sweetheart" was my more up front reaction, along with "so is this what the fuss was about?" I'd checked out The Fountainhead in like 8th grade, noticing its push-button value in adult faces. Like anyone that age (and younger) I wanted to be a part of the conversation, and this looked like a ticket. But then I lost the thread, and hey, who gets to live near a Movie Madness well stocked with well made documentaries? Certainly not me, until my middle years, when I had the good fortune to occupy a space in 97214 (actually, a few spaces).

What I guess people don't get, quite, is how the USSR of the day was a convenient backdrop against which to play out big labor disputes (many still ongoing). The reality of the Russian experience was going to take much longer to get through, given the Doppler Effect of human affairs and osmosis. Ayn was first wave messenger from a world deep in dire straits, a hell for so many. New York had its own Broadway version of Russia going, more romantic, more a projection. Rather than fault that, just accept it, and read Hugh Kenner in The Pound Era about the invention of China (while we're at it). So yeah, she was out of tempo with the drama so many were on about, but hey, she'd trained with the best, in Hollywood, and knew how to hold her own. Good for her. I admire her gumption, her complete commitment to her dreams.

But then I'm hopelessly lost in some other dimension, is the other shoe maybe. My meaning of "capitalism" for example: I play cities against cities, like we do in sports, talking about London and Hanoi as my "capitals". These days I'm severely dissing WDC and boosting Portland. That's me being a capitalist, using my head in a sensible way. Ayn Rand did the same, boosting New York, loving those skyscrapers. Hey, go for it girl.

We watched in my living room, Tara, Steve Holden and I all on our lap tops, doing our work. Tara found Phil Donahue amusing and I found myself explaining about the invention of the TV talk show and the pioneers of the genre, Oprah in the same lineage. Ninja David showed up on my porch during intermission asking to borrow my cell phone, sucking me back into my own Food Not Bombs soap opera (David "give me a hug..." fade out, cue laugh track, see ya next week).

The funniest part of the Ayn Rand story (at her expense, but she could laugh about it later): she's like totally gung ho to sail into New York Harbor past the Statue of Liberty, seeing the skyline, has dreamed for this day all her life, and she sleeps through it or something (I was glancing at my laptop when they said what the problem was). Never mind. She had her tears of joy later. So many of her dreams came true.

Speaking of which, the other irony or poetic twist if you prefer, was that this ardent atheist would have so many miraculous experiences, such as finding herself a handsome / dashing Roman soldier right off the set of King of Kings, with Cecil B. DeMille himself taking her under his wing. "You can't make this stuff up." Which leaves open to question, "so who does?" Ayn (I'm guessing): "you don't need a who (no agency)." God: "look ma, no hands!"

The Incredibles (movie review)

I just saw this again at the Bagdad with the kids. A cool bizmo gets a cameo.

Nick was waiting outside the theater on this warm-for-February Academy Awards night. I shared my sense Ayn Rand would've liked this film about extraordinary individuals caught up in an oppressive "no powers allowed" mediocracy (like Harry Potter & friends escaping muggles through Hogwarts), but Nick mainly just liked the good family vibes, a scarce commodity in his scenario.

I'm not a big Ayn Rand reader, mostly just The Fountainhead in like 8th grade (looked interesting, plus I detected raised eyebrows among the adults). I was much more into Freud (called him Frood until people figured out whom I meant). My friend Trevor, a true scholar, has been studying Ayn's 'n Bucky's thinking for signs of convergence/divergence, plus he's dug into the technocracy movement with gusto (found a great video). Trevor (many years my junior) is one of my favorite teachers -- always expanding my horizons.

That's what The Incredibles reminds me to be (not that I need much reminding): grateful for the many differently abled superheros in my life (corny but true), all average joes and janes on the surface (such perfect disguises).

Hannah Arendt (movie review)

Tara found a nifty wall projector I'd somewhat misplaced (as in lost) and the original plan was to hook that up, renting from Amazon (not my habit).

I'm trying to get out of my box, shake loose old habits.  However, just getting the DVD from the Germany section at Movie Madness proved simple as pie (I also made pie, x2 pumpkin) and we ended up watching Hannah Arendt on the Sony Trinitron, not even an HDTV.  Talk about stuck in a pattern (but one that works!).

Besides, if I'd rented it on Amazon would I get the lengthy extras, including the panel discussion at Deustsches Haus / NYU?  Maybe, I dunno.

Heidegger has been bubbling up in conversation.  I think I'll develop my narrative around Hannah and Ayn Rand as a kind of dynamic duo.  Checking with Google, I see that's hardly a new idea.  I'm entering a well-plowed field.  Excellent.

I've been chipping away at my own self portrait, the better to fit in as a puzzle piece.  Whereas I make direct ties to Vienna Circle figures (Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Menger for example, and lets throw in Jung and Freud), I'm somewhat distant from the Continental line, coming from Princeton, though my thesis adviser, Richard Rorty, did help me to tune in.  Walter Kaufmann was happy to send Heidegger to the back of the queue, in terms of readings we might choose.  So why not approach those thinkers through leading women instead?

I hadn't realized the Eichmann trial in Israel had occurred on my watch, much less that Hannah was there for the New Yorker.  I was still somewhat oblivious at age two or whatever it was.  By the time of the Kennedy assassinations, I was tracking, and when we got to Nixon's bombing of Cambodia I was fully aware, though still just in middle school.

So Hannah and I partially overlap on the timeline.

The movie makers underline the challenge that adds, as many in their audience will, like me, have lived through this period.  Affecting realism is harder when the judge has a practiced eye.  We know what a phone sounded like when ringing.  They got it right.

I think I'll add Margaret Fuller Ossoli as another thinker here, on assignment for the New York Tribune at one time, then editor of Dial, and Dora Marsden, the British "anarcho-feminist".  How these dots connect is for later.  The movie got me in the mood to link to thinking women.

Silicon Forest (not Valley)

Yesterday I went dog walking with a peer engineer, as in software engineer, a loosely used term as there were so many routes to get here, me through applications development for nonprofits and data science types, him through psychometrics and government lab work (Sandia I think it was). We'd both been on the same code school's faculty. He helped me find my way to Clarusway, a source of recent teaching gigs.

Anyway, we were chatting about the difference between NaN and None in Python, walking Sydney and Quinn, enjoying the perfect weather, when I realized various new things, meaning I had some insights, sparked by what we were talking about, a free ranging conversation.

Towards evening, I tackled the task of rounding out my online profile a little more, as the requests or queries need their data to hit against. Lots about me out there, but maybe not always as helpfully cross-indexed as it could be, and I'm in a catalytic position when it comes to connecting loose ends.

For example, I cross-posted my reddit account to DobbsTown, a Mastodon server. I also wired my right side main access panel, on the right margin of World Game (Grain of Sand), to include said reddit and tiktok connections. The content dates back but the links are brand new.

Speaking of branding, it's hardly lost on the market researchers and PR types, that Silicon Forest and Silicon Valley have remained quite distinct in Geek Lore. The former is gravitating into Cascadia, the bioregion (not really a political entity) whereas Valley boys and girls are seeing dollar signs in more military contracting. Washington State gets a lot of that, whereas Oregon's role is more subtle (think field testing), to the point where Oregon actually advertises as a "peace state" in some circles (hint: WILPF). We also have better land use planning than you'll find in many states (another source of pride).

The story goes like this: the Oregon Trail, coming west from the Great East (lots of peeps seeking a better life, refugees from Euro-think), came to a fork somewhere in Montana or one of those. Keep going along a northern latitude, and reach Oregon, with its lush and secure agricultural lifestyle, or turn south and wager your future against the likelihood of striking it rich, laying your claim to fame and fortune. The former sounds relatively prosaic and vaguely communist, whereas the latter is Ayn Rand, bold, heroic, venture capitalist.

Feeding my story (above) is an example: a true life story featuring a young, dashing CEO, looking to base a startup here in Portland, but finding the venture capital culture close to non-existent relative to what he was used to in strike-it-rich California. His idea was to use AI to provide a look ahead feature in any browser that could steer junior away from pornography, a see-no-evil genre product. 

The only problem: he was twenty years ahead of his time (this all happened a long time ago). 

VCs tend to live in the future. Portlanders, given all the rain, and Powell's Books, tend to be bookworms, as likely to live in the past as anywhere. Getting Portlanders to march towards the future is difficult when so many of them still believe they're in Nirvana already (even in the wake of the Joker Riots). 

When PDXers do get around to futurism, it looks like socialism, given half of them are latent Swedes and Finns and see society more as a design problem begging for elegant solutions, than as a source of melodrama and outrage and Protestant moralizing about who deserves what they get.