American Individualism In A Multicultural Class

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Ironically, not focusing on the self per se, but on that process of interacting with the world, one may be truer to that self, whatever it is. Trying to identify oneself definitively by teasing apart all of the deeply intertwined relations between self and other to fix one's true self may be in vain, because one's self changes through experience and one need only be in touch with one's present state. Furthermore, excess attention to one's identity or self-image risks narcissism, distracting one's attention from being engaged. Roark is at his intense best when he is Juicy Couture Necklaces precisely not thinking of himself, but deeply immersed in his work, as Rand abundantly makes clear.

Rand's basic definition of "self-interest" is one that free-market advocates do not emphasize in the marketplace; that secular leftists or religious believers may be too resentful of her slanders to acknowledge; that intellectuals may be too disdainful of her simplistic inconsistencies or didactic art to recognize; and that all understand but may find difficult ...
... to practice: that self-interest is not greed for wealth, fame, or power, not even fair compensation for one's labor, which is secondary and only granted by others. Self-interest is primarily behaving with integrity as "man qua man," developing one's full potential of mind and body, and insisting on one's rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by granting them to everyone else. In trying not to impose the theory of a dialogic self on the class, but only to encourage students to articulate and question their own values in response to the reading, I found that Rand's inconsistencies partly reinforced their confusion. For example, one student thought that Roark's simple indifference to most people yet contempt for them reinforced his own right to offend others as a generalized protest against respectability, thus conforming to a stereotype of nonconformity, which neither Emerson nor Rand would approve. At any rate, most students enjoyed the novel and were stimulated to discuss ethical values in questioning the text and each other, citing personal experience as well as textual evidence. Some grappled with their inner conflicts and came to greater understanding of themselves as dialogic through the class process.

Others had difficulty negotiating between the equally valid claims of their own self-interest and their need to belong to society, still thinking that negotiation was some kind of cop-out either Juicy Couture Jewellery way, rather than a conscious choice, an assertion of one's priorities. Had I challenged them to contrast their changing priorities across contrasting scenarios, not just in any given one, they may have realized more fully that trying to negotiate between self-interest and altruism can be negotiated only situationally, not in the abstract as general principles. Overall, The Fountainhead aroused the most interest of all the readings, as a controversial vehicle to raise self-aware dialogue on American individualism in a multicultural class.