Fred Kinnan is a comparatively sympathetic character among the looter coalition, for more or less the reason you just described. I think Rand’s opinion is that people like Kinnan are being locally rational & self-interested, but within a worldview that is truncated in an unprincipled way to embed a conflict theory that is in tension with his ability to recognize & extract material concessions and, if taken to its logical conclusion, involves a death wish. It doesn’t seem like he’s enjoying his life or really has any specific concrete intentions.
Robert Stadler is another interesting mixed character. He starts out with specific intentions (learning how the physical world works on a deep level). This eventually puts him in conflict with the looters, and unlike the viewpoint character Danny Taggart he submits to their worldview, giving up his sanity & the agenda that made his life worth living in order to occupy a place in their regime.
Kinnan is better adapted to cynically hold onto his position for longer, but at the price of the kinds of hopes that created a conflict for Stadler.
I agree Kinnan is more sympathetic, intentionally so. Like, if everyone around is a Kinnan, you just have to be good at mechanism design, and their local selfishness will, like fluid filling a container, form something good (according to the mechanism designer). I’m saying that Kinnan doesn’t kowtow to the collective in the same way; but is still a looter, is still not living up to Rand’s visionary form of selfishness that loves life, and would find his way to conflict with people, if that were in his local self-interest. In other words, I’m trying to say that although dropping selfishness altogether seems more something (less value-enacting; more able to be sucked into totally ungrounded maelstroms) than being a Kinnan, still, being selfish isn’t enough to avoid conflict.
I like how Stadler’s arc adds a touch of real horror to the story (related to the point of the OP). Where the viewpoint characters merely sustain the regime until they decide not to, Stadler “lets the cat out of the bag” and finds himself blindsided by the regime turning genuine scientific insight to depraved ends.
Fred Kinnan is a comparatively sympathetic character among the looter coalition, for more or less the reason you just described. I think Rand’s opinion is that people like Kinnan are being locally rational & self-interested, but within a worldview that is truncated in an unprincipled way to embed a conflict theory that is in tension with his ability to recognize & extract material concessions and, if taken to its logical conclusion, involves a death wish. It doesn’t seem like he’s enjoying his life or really has any specific concrete intentions.
Robert Stadler is another interesting mixed character. He starts out with specific intentions (learning how the physical world works on a deep level). This eventually puts him in conflict with the looters, and unlike the viewpoint character Danny Taggart he submits to their worldview, giving up his sanity & the agenda that made his life worth living in order to occupy a place in their regime.
Kinnan is better adapted to cynically hold onto his position for longer, but at the price of the kinds of hopes that created a conflict for Stadler.
I agree Kinnan is more sympathetic, intentionally so. Like, if everyone around is a Kinnan, you just have to be good at mechanism design, and their local selfishness will, like fluid filling a container, form something good (according to the mechanism designer). I’m saying that Kinnan doesn’t kowtow to the collective in the same way; but is still a looter, is still not living up to Rand’s visionary form of selfishness that loves life, and would find his way to conflict with people, if that were in his local self-interest. In other words, I’m trying to say that although dropping selfishness altogether seems more something (less value-enacting; more able to be sucked into totally ungrounded maelstroms) than being a Kinnan, still, being selfish isn’t enough to avoid conflict.
I like how Stadler’s arc adds a touch of real horror to the story (related to the point of the OP). Where the viewpoint characters merely sustain the regime until they decide not to, Stadler “lets the cat out of the bag” and finds himself blindsided by the regime turning genuine scientific insight to depraved ends.