The first time I read The Fountainhead, I was a freshman in college. A new friend had recommended I read the book, so I did. I remember not being able to put it down and read it cover to cover over a single weekend.

One of the main reasons I was hooked was the main protagonist, a young architect by the name of Howard Roark. In case you've never read The Fountainhead, here's a glimpse into what the character is like:

At one point an architectural critic asks him: "Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us."

Roark answers: "But I don't think of you.”

In other words, he was based before such a term existed.

Roark seemed to embody everything I wanted to be. A person of courage, ability, and one who is unwilling to compromise on his principles. For several weeks I went around trying to emulate him. I tried to stop caring about what other people thought and instead focus on what I wanted to achieve. Never mind that I didn't yet have any idea what that was. When friends asked if I wanted to go out, I declined. I stopped caring about how I dressed, or what people thought, or at least I tried to project an image of not caring.

It seemed to be working because at one point someone even told me I reminded them of the character Howard Roark. But unlike the real Howard Roark, this made me feel good, which made it obvious that I was nothing but a fake knockoff version.

I quickly came to accept that trying to emulate Ayn Rand's protagonist was unrealistic. In the novel, Roark has no mentioned family, parents, or relatives, which was not the case for me. While there were definitely times when I wished I was all alone in the world, it simply wasn't true. There were people in my life I couldn't just abandon and forget.

So I gave up on the whole Howard Roark persona and started acting like a normal teenager again. I figured Rand's philosophy, while idealistic, wasn't at all realistic.

In a nutshell, Rand's followers, aka objectivists, believe that an individual's own happiness is the proper moral purpose of life. It champions capitalism as the only social system consistent with these values, and rejects altruism while arguing that rational self-interest, not self-sacrifice, is the foundation of a moral life.

Time passed. While I never forgot about The Fountainhead, or how much I loved its main character, I never really gave any more thought to Ayn Rand or read her other works.

Then I got into Bitcoin and crypto and started learning about libertarianism and free market principles. That's when I was reintroduced to Rand's work once more. There's actually quite a bit of overlap between what she believed in and what crypto supporters believe in. I ended up reading Atlas Shrugged, which like The Fountainhead, is also about the individual versus the collective, but it's also about capitalism, the tyranny of the majority, and how government regulations can collapse an economy.

While her perspective on these latter points were definitely areas I agreed with, I still found myself thinking that her vision of the ideal man was perhaps not only unrealistic, but also that something was missing. At this point in my life I was the happy father of two sons, and it dawned on me. What was missing in Rand's stories and philosophy was the fact that neither allowed for the presence of children.

I imagine the reason she kept children out of her stories was because it would make the characters seem cold and less human. But the reality is our world cannot exist if we do not have children because we would go extinct. And when you have a family, it can’t just be about you, the individual, unless you're some monster who doesn't care at all about his kids. You must also account for your family, which is a kind of collective.

So once again, I found myself dismissing Rand's philosophy. But at the same time, I didn't think it was quite that simple. There had been a reason why I was attracted to her protagonists while being repulsed by the villains in her novels.

What I admired in Howard Roark wasn't really selfishness. It was integrity. It was the refusal to be a second-hander, to build your life around the approval of others rather than around something real. The villain in Rand's world isn't the person who loves his children, it's the person who has no inner core at all, who exists only as a mirror of whatever the crowd wants him to be. That, I believe, is the real danger.

The antidote to empty conformity isn't radical isolation but a genuine commitment to the things you care about. And genuine commitment, almost by definition, eventually points you toward something beyond yourself. For me, that's my wife and my sons. The moment I held my first born I understood something Roark never could: that choosing to be responsible for another person doesn't diminish you. It completes you. There's a part of yourself that simply doesn't exist until you have someone to love that unconditionally, and no amount of individual achievement can fill that space.

So my version of Rand's philosophy would be this idea that you get to choose who matters. Not everyone deserves your energy, your worry, or your effort to please them. The opinion of a stranger, a doubter, or someone whose approval you've been chasing for the wrong reasons, don't even warrant a thought, just as Roark never thought of the critic at all.

But the people you love, the ones who depend on you and who you've chosen to build a life with, they matter because you have decided they matter. The goal isn't to stop caring what anyone thinks. It's to be selective about who gets that power over you.

Ayn Rand and how my perspective on objectivism has changed🎧

Preview (5 min read)