There is such a thing as society: it has overcome Covid and restored the truth
National Guard reads Atlas Shrugged (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA)
Over the last forty years we have seen the appreciation of the courageous and all conquering individual kicking back against an overbearing nanny state. Ayn Rand, the founder of the philosophy known as Objectivism, described it as “ . . . the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”
The New Right of the 1980s, inspired by Reagan and Thatcher, based their economic principles on pulling back the power of the state to liberate individuals so they could compete and strive through business. By the time Clinton and Blair led the March of the Moderates in the 1990s, the power of the individual was an orthodoxy which reached well beyond the economic sphere.
Objectivism is the ideological foundation on which Silicon Valley has been built. Steve Jobs saw Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged as one of his “guides in life”. One of Facebook’s guiding principles, “Move fast and break things,” is a mantra of Objectivism. For many of these tech founders the question isn’t “Who is going to let me?” but “Who is going to stop me?”. Ayn Rand would thoroughly endorse such sentiment.
Objectivism has not had it all its own way. The banking crisis of 2008 demonstrated that self-styled “Masters of the Universe” on Wall Street and in the City of London, pretending the pursuit of greed was somehow noble, could corrupt an entire financial system. It was the taxpayer who ended up with the bill, the exact opposite of Rand’s master plan. China has proved it can corrupt free trade for its own economic advantage, while Russia has done the same politically with free speech.
But still the power of the liberated individual continued to rise. In recent years, the dominance of the unbridled self has seemingly rendered collective wisdom worthless and informed debate meaningless. Personal belief is now treated as an objective reality, so facts can be discounted, experts ignored and lies made truths. Objectivism — intended by Ayn Rand to rest upon an objective reality independent of ourselves — seems to have begotten its opposite: a subjectivism of fake news, culture wars and populism. There are now “Your Truths” and “My Truths” — neither of which need have anything to do with facts.
The impact of this highly personal, subjective relationship with “truth” is all around us. It is largely agreed that Vote Leave’s infamous statement “We send the EU £350 million a week, let’s fund the NHS instead” had a strained relationship with fact. It is also largely agreed there was a contentious relationship with truth every time Donald Trump tapped out a tweet.
But “personalisation of truth” is not just found on the Right of the political spectrum. “No-platforming”, mainly a phenomenon of the far-Left, demonstrates that self-truth is so powerful that debate becomes worthless or even dangerous. Jeremy Corbyn’s inability to be an effective Leader of the Opposition was caused by a deeply-held personal belief that his actions and thoughts were inviolable universal truths: any criticism was evidence of mainstream media bias. Debate with Corbynism became evidence of conspiracy.
But after the long night of the Covid pandemic, a belief in society seems to be dawning and the power of the individual might just be brought back in check. It is a source of personal joy that, other than a few notable exceptions, the rules of lockdown have been largely accepted and followed by society. Many predicted mass rioting and looting when western governments took away liberties from citizens, as there was no Chinese authoritarian stick to beat the populace with. Yet the majority have recognised that the fight against Covid would have to be societal, not merely personal. Notably Millennials, in the main, willingly locked down and were subsequently hit hardest by the economic ravages of coronavirus, despite the medical consequences impacting them least.
At the start of Objectivism’s surge to power, Ronald Reagan said the nine most terrifying words in the English language were “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. How hollow this now sounds, with the citizens of every nation dependent on the state’s ability to get jabs into arms. But it’s bigger than just the state. Covid has asked questions of society, too, and, in the main, society has stepped up to the challenge. As society starts to reassert itself against the individual, let us hope we will once more start to value experts, engage in debate and recouple reality with “The Truth” rather than “My Truth”. Even Ayn Rand would have approved of that.
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