I'll have to agree. Although they are initially dependent on their parents, (and eventually get over that), children tend to do what they want to, until they are forced to conform, obey, wait their turn, get in line and follow the leader.

When I first read Atlas Shrugged in college I saw it in terms of the personal sense of life, not as a political novel. I still thought of politics as irrelevant, something that could be ignored as a way of life that someone had to do in the lower rungs of human behavior but which could be safely ignored. (It soon became apparent that it was a dire threat that could not be ignored and that that couldn't be right, which motivated me to go back and look again at the novel and at Ayn Rand's philosophical justification for individualism.)

Ayn Rand's motivation for writing the novel was to portray in fiction her vision of the ideal man. She wrote in the introduction to Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, "The political aspects of Atlas Shrugged are not its theme. Its theme is primarily ethical-epistemological: the role of the mind in man's existence—and politics, necessarily, is one of the themes consequences." [emphasis added] The plot was designed to show the role of the mind by showing what happens when it is withdrawn from society.

She said that while writing Atlas Shrugged she kept telling herself that she was trying to prevent the plot from coming true in reality, not to predict it. She recognized that 'men of ability' reacted to controls by avoiding them, not by working harder to satisfy them -- as in her later "Is Atlas Shrugging?" -- and ultimately refusing to cooperate more when it gets worse (as in the Soviet Union), but I don't think she would have liked the widespread characterizing of her ideal hero as a hippie-of-the right drop-out motivated by the worst and expecting utopia if only everything collapsed, 'somehow' creating a miracle by no means and with no understanding of the theme of her novel. 'Going' Galt, to her, meant something much more positive: the ideal man.

"She explained and fought for what she was for: reality, reason, science, individualism, freedom and capitalism, and romantic art. "
Yes!!! Most of human history those didn't hold sway. The parts of the books that stood out to me were about celebrating those things rather than lamenting when they don't prevail.

Collectivism is not a "natural state". There is no such thing. We are not cells. Each human being must use his rational faculty to learn to make choices, including choices of relations with others.

At a primitive level it makes sense to stay together for mutual defense and to exchange the product of effort. That doesn't imply collectivism. The proper form of relationships requires abstract thought. Moral concepts and principles are an advanced achievement, in contrast to emotional outbursts and force. They are an achievement. "Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."

"So why have the overwhelming number of Mankind's governments been collectivist?"

Because it is the natural state of most lifeforms--beehives, wolf packs, herds and flocks, prides of lions and slime mold cultures, spores and forests, multicellular organisms, tribes and families, language structure--because there is strength and security in numbers and systems. Because organic things (life) grow from a singularity to a complex assemblage, like a fractal or moiré pattern, replicating a template to a larger and larger grouping, each of which becomes the entry to the next level.

The isolated singleton is an anomaly, not the norm. To survive, most lifeforms need at least two members to reproduce. Without reproduction, extinction follows. Likewise, thoughts and belief systems are aggregates of bits of software that function by a process of integration. A rational mind is one that integrates according to an accurately identified reality. That is unique to each mind and sets the individual apart, even when in a cooperative assemblage. The individual is a value onto himself.

That idea is seldom acknowledged. Collective groupings treat each member as a disposable element, unless it's the queen bee genetically selected as an egg factory or the alpha male who earned that position through brute force. Losers are excommunicated to find another group or perish. Oh, there are species where an individual lives alone unless seeking out a mate, or where mates stay together for life but apart from their fellows. It’s rare, because there is safety in numbers.

Cell structures cooperate to keep the larger entity growing and healthy—unless they turn cancerous and eventually kill the host. That works with political ideas as well. They can turn cancerous and thereby destroy entire civilizations. It happens over and over. Not learning from the lessons of history, or from visionary philosophers, keeps repeating the old patterns. That's why. How would you persuade the present decision-makers to avert the coming doom?

Now that I went back and reviewed the post, I see that. Thanks for the clarification. My bad for not reviewing the post before responding.

The question was about Ayn Rand's idea of heroism, not about other over-uses, or about admiration and respect, which are much broader. The confusion in the original question was assuming that Ayn Rand's views could be based on a negative, i.e., reaction to a negative. (The assumptions in later posts with the deterministic "hardwired" for the majority masses are worse.)

Well put Lucky. I would only change " - rhetoric devoid of sense. " to rhetoric devoid of Reason and Aristotle's logic.

"While the State exists there can be no freedom; when there is freedom there will be no State." Lenin

Yes, to blarman and ewv.
From what is known about Lenin, he was no libertarian, nor was he an anarchist.
So what does that statement mean?

Suggestion 1: Lenin gives no value to freedom so a State giving no individual freedom is quite ok with him.

Suggestion 2: The statement has value only for its poetry, it sounds deep when in a speech,
the masses then can scream approval. It is ramblings just like those from the modern soft left
- progressives, liberals (to Americans), democratic socialists, etc. - rhetoric devoid of sense.

The primacy of the individual for Rand, as well as the importance given to clarity and thought over
emotion make instructive contrasts between Lenin and Rand.

For me, the word heroes is overused. Everyone is a hero today. Having people that I admire and respect is important. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding the definition of hero in this subject.

He meant that he thinks a majority of people are determined to be dependent 'worker bees', not that we should follow the majority. It is still wrong, confusing heroic inspiration with 'following' and attributing sense of life to deterministic inheritance.

A characteristic "crowd psychology" to follow a leader -- in the religious version, clinging to a Master -- is a neurosis, not something "hard wired". People choose, or accept by default, their own values.

Having heroes as inspiration does not mean following others, let alone be deterministically "hard wired to follow others". An independent mind is required to fully understand and appreciate a proper hero..

"Her whole approach to philosophy was driven by a strong desire to avoid the whole communist Russian experience."

Her escape from and avoidance of the whole communist experience was driven by her own sense of life and philosophy, not the other way around. The evil of Russia was a negative, not a force for anything.

Before Ayn Rand left Russia, people she knew there begged her to in America report what had happened to them and what they were going through. Once she had gained sufficient command of the English language she wrote We the Living to do it, and punctuated it much later with "The 'Inexplicable Personal Allchemy'".

She continued to stand up to it throughout her life, but was not motivated by a crusade against Lenin or the communists in particular. Shortly after arriving in America she was frightened to see the same mentality spreading here and knew what the result would be if it were not challenged. All her life she applied her principles to fighting against what she later learned were the philosophical roots of it, exposing the result in reality of irrationalism, mysticism, altruism and collectivism as it evolved.

But it wasn't all about fighting the irrational. She explained and fought for what she was for: reality, reason, science, individualism, freedom and capitalism, and romantic art. Her early fiction and major novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, put her own sense of life into fiction. The Fountainhead was a psychological novel portraying the independence of the first hand mind. Atlas Shrugged portrayed her vision of what she called the "ideal man", which she had planned to do since a child. This was all intended as positive value, but the shear motivating contrast with the cesspool of the collectivists decimates them.

But she could not leave the philosophy to fiction, even with its philosophical speeches. It has to be systematically explained for the principles to be conceptualized and organized. She wrote important non-fiction breaking new ground, including "Philosophy Who Needs It", For the New Intellectual (including the semi-nonfiction Galt's speech and other such philosophical passages from her fiction) , Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, "The Objectivist Ethics", "The Metaphysical versus the Man Made", "Causality Versus Duty", "Apollo 11" and "Apollo and Dionysus", "Man's Rights and "The Nature of Government", "What is Capitalism", "The Property Status of Air Waves" and 'Patents and Copyrights", The Romantic Manifesto, and "Don't Let it Go". All of her social and cultural critiques included the basic principles of what is right to explain and illustrate the proper standard. And she sponsored and made possible entire lecture series on her philosophy, notably those by Leonard Peikoff.

I do but have no use for the word. I am not a democracy.

Do you know what the word "majority" means? Guess not.

I have confidence in my own abilities and therefore have no use for heroes so I consider your statement to be false. And I do not follow anyone nor do I lead people. I only lead myself.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Lenin had nothing to do with Ayn Rand's philosophy and sense of life. Lenin and the rest of communism were a total negative, not a motive for anything positive. From a very early age she wanted to be a fiction writer depicting the heroic. She developed her philosophy to explain and validate her sense of life, not as a protest against or triggered by anything. She left the Soviet Union to live what she wanted, not in "protest". She already knew that communism was incompatible with and a threat to her life.

Ayn Rand explained her concept of hero in her book The Romantic Manifesto. As a concept of morality and art, not politics, it is an inspiration, not following anyone.

No one is "hardwired" to believe anything. There are no innate ideas. Human beings are individuals who must use their conceptual faculty to discover how to act. Primitives submerse themselves in tribalism because they never learned any better and grasped at whatever they thought would help them, with no conceptual understanding of ethics and social philosophy. Civilization is freeing man from the tribe.

Lenin was a complete totalitarian collectivist, not any kind of individualist at all. His notion of "freedom" was submersed in the collective taking care of your needs. Marxism had to vaguely promise the state would "wither away" because Marx and his followers needed it to seize control and had no explanation for how capitalism would or could "evolve" to communism without it in his theory.

Yes, and it would be in their interest to make selfish trades. My impression is they didn't usually act rationally. I don't know much about it, though, and would be interested to learn if my image is wrong.

Marxists are nothing if not hypocritical!