Memoirs - Ford Hall Forum and Ayn Rand
(preliminary)
One of the interesting events I attended in its heyday was the Ford Hall Forum. Ford Hall is and auditorium on the campus of Northeastern University near downtown Boston.
The Ford Hall Forum was world famous and attracted many of the most famous people of the time. I saw numerous well known people, scientists, writers, politicians (I think), and others (Isaac Asimov – was among them).
The format was very interesting, consisting of a lecture followed by an open question and answer period.
One of the most controversial writers of the time was Ayn Rand (We The Living, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged). The title of her talk could very well be “The Age of Mediocrity” (1981) and currently available as an audio recording.
Her philosophy was quite arguable and leaned to the right, but in a way not like simple right-wing types.
Having barely escaped from the Soviet Union when she was young, crawling under barbed wire fences, she made it and got to America. As a writer she then wrote books which glorified capitalism, in a truly idealistic manner (forget about what Corporate America has done to capitalism today).
Simply put she idealized the heroes of her stories, creating characters that were perfect men, honest, striving, and not afraid to take great risks to do what Ayn Rand considered heroic. I had read her books and admired her.
During her appearance I was sitting up front in a not completely full house. My nearest neighbor a seat or two away was a young Asian woman probably a student at the school.
After the lecture and during the Q&A period we looked at each other by chance and she said to me . . . “that woman doesn’t like children.” I asked her what prompted her to say that and she said something to the effect of ‘I can just sense it in her.’ It was also clear that she came to the conclusion from seeing and hearing her in person just then. We probably had a discussion about it, I cannot remember any details, except that afterward I did some research into this.
Ultimately I found that I agreed completely with this woman, that Ayn Rand did not indeed, like children. Besides never having any children, (not being married either, I think) I discovered that if you read her books carefully you could sense this. After a while I stopped being interested in Ayn Rand. I thought of her idealistic philosophy to be one of a very bitter and cold person.
She covers a lot of logic and (what she considers) facts in her work, but seems to have personally been devoid of one thing, emotions.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_rand