Thank you. I will.

I don't recall any mention of study of Marx & Lenin in that context. I do know that she must have read them because of her ability to point out their shortcomings. By human condition, I meant her observation of the interactions between peoples, supplemented by her own dealings with humanity, from the grocer to the banker. Her replication of certain types which are familiar to most of us, could only come from a very observant writer.

I am referring to our social brain, sometimes called "mammalian" brain, which gives us the mechanism by which we socialize, and seek status elevation within our given hierarchies. I heartily recommend reading Howard Bloom's The Genius of the Beast or Global Brain for some great insight into crowd psychology and the biological tendencies of the majority of our species to be worker bees rather than forager bees, ie: to follow rather than to lead or go it alone. Fascinating topic!

I don't think she needed him to inspire her. I do wonder about that dictator making such a statement; looks like a sort of hypocrisy on his part.

Unfortunately, the bullies become presidents.

I agree.

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

" Humans are hardwired to follow leaders..." I wonder if you would care to expand on this? When I think of hardwired, I'm thinking of our five senses which arrive operable at birth. That is, we do not have to think about them before we use them. Is this the sense in which you use "hardwired"?

Yes, I think unearned respect for people having greater mass is a learned reaction from experience and it requires significant effort to overrule that fear with rational thinking.

:) Now if only the voters were not so impressed by towering honchos as to become willingly subservient. We still don't have enough adults (i.e., rational thinkers) to persuade the rest to debug their animal-based programs without bloodshed.

Since 1900 only 3 candidates for president were less than average height (and they lost.)
All the rest towered over the average voter, and likely their erroneous feelings of superiority started when they beat up the smallest kids on the playground. Fortunately, the rest of us learn to be adults.

Good point. We tend to make leaders out of people we admire, and I used the word "heroes" loosely. People can view leaders as heroes, and wish heroes to be leaders, but neither condition holds true in all cases.

Well, we do know that the experience she had in Russia greatly impacted her thinking. Her whole approach to philosophy was driven by a strong desire to avoid the whole communist Russian experience. She realize part of the horrors she suffer was the assault on the individual that came from communists first on a spiritual level and then on a physical level. For example, the 30 million Russians who were under Stalins "Let's make Russia Great, again!" Programs or rather his 5 year plans. Again, he demonstrates Lenin's creed in practice. Since the individual is so unimportant, we need not be bothered by the death of 30 million of them. Ayn Rand figured perhaps the best to promote Human life is to celebrate the individual. The hero is the story of the individual.

To answer the question, Ayn Rand thinking driven by her experience with communism which she able to juxtapose with her American experience. She loved American and had a unique insight into what actually made American great and values are needed to achieve that greatness in the future.

Division of labor, specializations, maximum beneficial use of talents and skills made modern societies possible, including trade and the idea of individual rights versus forced servitude. There is no room in that philosophy for the cult of personality not based on merit. The old memes of alpha male, tribal chiefdom and charismatic leader are hard to eradicate. They must have been survival tools in the long dark night of cognitive evolution. Nature is impartial about selection, whether by force, fraud, or rational valuation. The notion of having to choose between individualism and collectivism is a false dichotomy.

I don't think hero's and leader's need be the same thing, in fact when you aspire to be or follow a leader you immediately lose yourself and the identity of an individual. A hero is someone to admire for their courage in not giving up, for working and aspiring and not looting another for their wants or needs. This inspiration can inspire you to be heroic in how you live. Whether you are the owner of the mill producing a new steel or the sweeper who aspires to do the very best he can do to complete his task.

Wouldn't her "observation of the human condition" have included studying the writings of Marx and Lenin?

Agriculture began in Europe roughly 10,000 years ago. It is very likely that it took thousands of years to become dominant over hunting, fishing, and gathering. Indeed these forms of food consumption still persist today albeit in a decreasing manner.

Would it not be likely there were some better at hunting, some better at gathering that would create new value, tools, and techniques?

Anyone who is familiar with Rand should know that the first question doesn't apply. It may not have been question 2 either. It may just have grown from her observation of the human condition.

We will always need our heroes, whether they be mythological, political, religious, scientific, literary, artistic, comic, sports, or other. Humans are hardwired to follow leaders, for the most part, in our never ending quest to make ourselves socially acceptable and attain the highest hierarchical status possible. Our survival depends upon it. The small minority of us that resists becoming sheeple, who are the forager bees of our species, are destined for a life of discontentment and war against the collective. But even the most individualistic among us must still admit to having figures in our lives worth emulating and admiring, aka: heroes.

Lenin was far from a supporter of libertarianism. He was an autocrat. He valued the control of the State over personal liberty in all cases. He was very much an elitist who wanted to rule others. Lenin's first quote about destroying the family is in harmony with this, as family is the first source of government in a person's life and to free societies is still a higher government than the State.

Long gone. They moved to agriculture, where collectivism made less sense. Then they developed industry, and it made even less sense. But the religions and old values still promoted it. Lenin promoted it.

For me Ayn Rand is standing up to all of it and showing how bad it is.

I think Karl Marx was the origin of the idea that the State would wither away and the society would become a pure communistic utopia.

The hunter-gatherers were long gone when Lenin wrote this

My impression is what Lenin was saying as not new. In a hunter-gatherer existence, it was hard to create new value. You had to share what the tribe had to subsist on so that the tribe could survive. We developed religions around notions of self-sacrifice from this. We don't naturally distinguish between doing an honest trade because it's in our self-interest and defrauding someone. The fraudster we may first think, "He's bad for putting his own interest above the person he's dealing with." This is completely wrong in the industrial and post-industrial world.

I see Lenin as just carrying on the put-the-tribe first mentality in a world that was industrializing, with disastrous results.

Rand is not objecting just to Lenin but rather the whole system of putting the tribe's interest first that human kind grew from.

BTW, I have not studied Rand's motivations at all. My response is more about what her books mean to me, about humankind rising above an undesirable default state, than her actual motivations.