Thanks so much, Thom, for this illuminating, if utterly chilling, story that connects "libertarianism" to sociopathy. We need to continue to understand the psychological roots of what gets converted into a highfalutin' ideology. Usually the roots are in very early, lived experience with one's earliest caregivers.
Thanks so much, Thom, for this illuminating, if utterly chilling, story that connects "libertarianism" to sociopathy. We need to continue to understand the psychological roots of what gets converted into a highfalutin' ideology. Usually the roots are in very early, lived experience with one's earliest caregivers.
Before the trauma of the Bolsheviks smashing her father's store and appropriating it for "the state," I wonder what else happened to Ayn Rand in earliest childhood. My experience as a psychoanalytically trained psychotherapist with a background in early childhood development, leads me to wonder if there were traumatic lapses of empathy in her upbringing. People who end up idealizing the cold, I-IT use of other people above the I-Thou of mutual empathy, do so because they didn't feel the consistent love of an adoring parent when they were infants and toddlers. The relational configurations of our first three years create the templates for our later beliefs. Those beliefs emerge from our lived experience and if one hasn't experienced reliable, mutual affection and emotional security with at least one, attuned caregiver, one has no template for that kind of relationship.
As far as I understand, David and Charles Koch were raised by a Hitler-idealizing, German nanny because their parents wanted them to have a "strict" upbringing. No love or affection for them...just adherence to the rules of cold, imperious adults. I believe that made them the voracious-for-power adolescents and adults that they became. The craving for power over others is often the result of feeling utterly powerless to get what you need in earliest childhood, and what infants and toddlers need most is attention, attunement, and love. TFG didn't get these either at the developmentally-neccessary time of infancy to 3 years.
I'm guessing that there's something in Ayn Rand's earliest years that accounts for her idealization of extreme, conscience-less attitudes and behavior. I'm also guessing that the trauma of the Bolshevik cruelty only further cemented an attitude that had already formed deep within her psyche from infantile experience; that one is utterly on one's own, that if you don't prioritize your own needs exclusively, you won't survive, and that doing so is a virtue worthy of idealizing and asserting to the rest of the world. (But in your old age, when you once again experience your need for help from others, and this normal need can no longer be denied, then it's OK to revert to depending on the state to help you.)
I've been connecting this trauma to the Florida Cubans, but I'm not sure it's too "creative" to connect it to Palestinians. Castro jackboots down the door of your plantation mansion. Jews chop down your family's 100-year-old olive grove. I have not followed the news about an Armenian diaspora in progress right now. the "Heimat" is lost, and all there is left is to hate. There is no end to it in human history, but such events put to shame petty outrage over masks or vaccines or a closed Forest Service road or grazing fees or the route out of town a raped woman takes to where. It is crazy-time.
Love hearing your take on this since you actually know what you are talking about. Ayn was 12 when the everything blew-up in her world. Puberty. I could talk about what that does, but I would bore even myself.
From what I have read, the nature/nurture aspect of root cause for the anti-socials is going to take a long time time to unravel. Brain scans are helping, but I am waiting and watching for any breakthroughs.
Thanks so much, Thom, for this illuminating, if utterly chilling, story that connects "libertarianism" to sociopathy. We need to continue to understand the psychological roots of what gets converted into a highfalutin' ideology. Usually the roots are in very early, lived experience with one's earliest caregivers.
Before the trauma of the Bolsheviks smashing her father's store and appropriating it for "the state," I wonder what else happened to Ayn Rand in earliest childhood. My experience as a psychoanalytically trained psychotherapist with a background in early childhood development, leads me to wonder if there were traumatic lapses of empathy in her upbringing. People who end up idealizing the cold, I-IT use of other people above the I-Thou of mutual empathy, do so because they didn't feel the consistent love of an adoring parent when they were infants and toddlers. The relational configurations of our first three years create the templates for our later beliefs. Those beliefs emerge from our lived experience and if one hasn't experienced reliable, mutual affection and emotional security with at least one, attuned caregiver, one has no template for that kind of relationship.
As far as I understand, David and Charles Koch were raised by a Hitler-idealizing, German nanny because their parents wanted them to have a "strict" upbringing. No love or affection for them...just adherence to the rules of cold, imperious adults. I believe that made them the voracious-for-power adolescents and adults that they became. The craving for power over others is often the result of feeling utterly powerless to get what you need in earliest childhood, and what infants and toddlers need most is attention, attunement, and love. TFG didn't get these either at the developmentally-neccessary time of infancy to 3 years.
I'm guessing that there's something in Ayn Rand's earliest years that accounts for her idealization of extreme, conscience-less attitudes and behavior. I'm also guessing that the trauma of the Bolshevik cruelty only further cemented an attitude that had already formed deep within her psyche from infantile experience; that one is utterly on one's own, that if you don't prioritize your own needs exclusively, you won't survive, and that doing so is a virtue worthy of idealizing and asserting to the rest of the world. (But in your old age, when you once again experience your need for help from others, and this normal need can no longer be denied, then it's OK to revert to depending on the state to help you.)
I've been connecting this trauma to the Florida Cubans, but I'm not sure it's too "creative" to connect it to Palestinians. Castro jackboots down the door of your plantation mansion. Jews chop down your family's 100-year-old olive grove. I have not followed the news about an Armenian diaspora in progress right now. the "Heimat" is lost, and all there is left is to hate. There is no end to it in human history, but such events put to shame petty outrage over masks or vaccines or a closed Forest Service road or grazing fees or the route out of town a raped woman takes to where. It is crazy-time.
Love hearing your take on this since you actually know what you are talking about. Ayn was 12 when the everything blew-up in her world. Puberty. I could talk about what that does, but I would bore even myself.
From what I have read, the nature/nurture aspect of root cause for the anti-socials is going to take a long time time to unravel. Brain scans are helping, but I am waiting and watching for any breakthroughs.