The Ethics of Living Forever Debate (Part II)

[0:34:02-0:36:58] Now they delve into a discussion of exactly what AI is and means. I do think artificial intelligence will force us into asking more questions about ourselves, but that does not mean these series of 0s and 1s are the same as the organic creatures we are. It is already apparent that AI assists us in so many ways today, from the computers in our pockets to the surgeries completed with robots. There is no doubt that these machines will help us learn more so much faster and efficiently than ever before. However, I do not think this will change fundamental human nature or replace us in any meaningful way like so many people seem to fear.

[0:36:58-0:39:37] Alright, so Tucker then says, “If the Industrial Revolution, the steam-powered loom in England gave rise to Marxism in the first and second world wars and Vietnam and Korea and every other conflict for a hundred years, the deaths of hundreds of millions of people. You know, technological change causes displacement, the fall of religions, the fall of empires, the murder of millions. So what will AI do?” Wow. This sounds like a Marxist professor talking about how awful the Industrial Revolution was for all of humanity rather than focusing on how many millions of lives new technology and innovation saved. To hear this sentiment coming from someone “on the right” is doubly astonishing. Truly, there is not much difference between the religious right and the atheist left when a morality of death is at the center of each. And then Tucker jumps to autonomy and AI somehow taking free will away from humans. That is quite the jump, in my opinion, since nothing can stop a man from using his own mind and, therefore, his free will to make decisions.

[0:39:37-0:43:47] “I don’t really have any reasons for saying no, other than my animal sense tells me, ‘No.’ […] That was my ‘instinct’ speaking, which I regard as a kind of coequal with my rational sense.” Ayn Rand sums up perfectly that

An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An “instinct” is an unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man’s desire to live is not automatic . . . Your fear of death is not a love for life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history. (Ayn Rand, Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 121)

So, another thing that separates us from any other animals is our need to learn what will allow us to survive. It is not automatic. If you are having a “gut feeling” about something, it means that your subconscious has some kind of answer that you are not yet consciously aware of yet or your emotions are sending out signals of danger but that is not knowledge. And Bryan’s admittance of his own depression taking over his life means that he lacked the desire to live and was making decisions counter to life. That has nothing to do with his own mind being wrong or untrustworthy but everything to do with how he was interpreting his situation. It made sense to him at the moment to go for that brownie to bring momentary pleasure in the face of the utter sense of hopelessness he felt. That is not irrational per se, but it is not the best way to live or find genuine happiness and he learned to overcome that hole he put himself in.

[0:43:47-0:44:35] Amazing. Tucker says, “And it does strike me, if you’re looking back into history that this is the only period, post-war, post-World War II where you’ve had a society at scale that assumes that there’s nothing beyond itself. […] Why did every previous generation assume that there was a God, but we don’t?”

First of all, not all people have believed in religion, and many were forced into whatever religion controlled their region for the majority of human history. You’d be killed if you thought otherwise. And while it’s true that there is a growing number of atheists in this world, Christianity and Islam still reign supreme. We are seeing this atrophying in religion because of all the newest science and technology that has been created. There are many answers we now have that we simply did not have before. Creation myths were the best way for homo sapiens to explain how things happened and that is why religion was the first stepping stone toward philosophy in explaining our world and how it works. The more we care to learn about things like our appendixes, the more we understand that everything can be explained in this world and not in some divine, unknowable realm.

To which Bryan replies that it doesn’t really matter whether we believe in god or not, “we already agree on don’t die—all of us do.” Now, I have explained in a previous video that this is simply not true. Those depressed or terminally ill people out there no longer believe in “don’t die.” It is a choice people have to make daily. I just think Bryan Johnson’s premise is wrong, and Tucker sniffs this out with him by continuing to bring back the idea of self-harm.

[0:44:35-0:46:54] This is yet another idea that I have discussed before, and it boggles my mind every time I come across it. Tucker says, “There’s no meaning without a power beyond ourself, is there? I mean there is only this sort of, like, shallow, silly, or sense meaning that we attach to various things, like sex or living longer or feeling good or whatever, but there’s no meaning beyond our physical, momentary experience. Whereas a person who acknowledges a power beyond himself attaches ultimate moral meaning to events. […] No God, no meaning.” I simply cannot fathom a person who does not look at their spouse for who they are and love them for their values and physical form. How could you feel anything higher than what is right in front of you? I plan on worshipping, yes, worshipping my baby when she arrives because of the potential she has and the perfection that she already is. To me, that does feel spiritual, but it does not need to ascend to some higher plane to be real and intense. It almost feels like Christians live with this foggy window between them and reality, unable to feel spiritually for the things that are the here and now. Even an insect who lives for a day has no clue that his life is tiny, momentary, fleeting; he survives by his instincts and lives with every fiber of his being for that brief time, as if he would live forever in such a manner. Humans do not live like bugs, though; we produce and make marks all over the future of our race. We leave ripples in our wake and our names can be carried on past our lives. Why do you need anything more?

And, of course, Bryan Johnson comes back with the biological “squirtings” idea that that’s where our meaning comes from, rather than understanding that human beings get meaning from the values they achieve throughout their lives. It is a process that requires action, not just chemical integrations, though we do rewire our brains with every experience we have. And it is true that we do live and experience in a particular body where mind and body are inextricably intertwined. But the body without the mind is nonexistent; we are more than those chemical processes our body goes through. We must use our rational minds to survive, which is why we need a code of morality in the first place. In my opinion, you cannot “engineer” meaning for an individual human being. They must figure out what that is for themselves through their own personal experiences and physical nature in space.

[0:46:54-0:50:18] Rightly, Tucker points out that we still need a code of morality to Bryan. But then he goes and says something silly: “If I feel like killing you because it pleases me, how can we oppose that?” As Dostoyevsky believed (and as I’ve addressed before), he thought that people without religion would murder each other left and right. I, among many others out there, are “good without god.” We are living our lives in peace as atheists. How is that possible? Because there is such a thing as a secular moral code to live by. Let me shout again, “Objectivism!” Reality is the only thing I “follow” to come up with my code. Would killing another person make me feel good? No. Would I end up in prison for life for it? Yes. Would it lead to my rational happiness to be trapped in a cage for the rest of my life or be haunted by the flashbacks of committing such a heinous crime? No. So why do it? If Tucker took one psychology class, then he would, hopefully, understand that people do seemingly “crazy” things for typically obvious reasons. There are all kinds of reality-based reasons that people harm each other; they don’t require a mysterious demon on their back to harm themselves or another for money, fame, revenge, justice, you name it—there’s almost always a reason for the action taken.

And then Tucker dares to say that we can’t say murder is “wrong” without god and Bryan Johnson just goes along with it. Ayn Rand discusses crime in particular as:

A crime is a violation of the right(s) of other men by force (or fraud). It is only the initiation of physical force against others—i.e., the recourse to violence—that can be classified as a crime in a free society (as distinguished from a civil wrong). Ideas, in a free society, are not a crime—and neither can they serve as the justification of a crime. (Ayn Rand, “Political Crimes,” Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 176)

So it is wrong to kill someone because they have a right to their own life. Though, this can be teetering on the brink of a trolley problem if the killing is given without the proper context. I don’t have the space to look at the law in depth here, but that is why we have a court system in the first place—to determine if a killing (or any other crime) was in self-defense or not. Killing in self-defense to protect your own life is not morally wrong; it’s what becomes necessary for your own survival, so it can neither be right nor wrong. Ayn Rand has always said that “morality ends where a gun begins” (Ayn Rand, Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 133). A moral system can only be followed when a man has a choice; that choice is simply robbed from him whenever another threatens to kill him and vice versa.

Unfortunately, both men lack the clear answer that Ayn Rand has provided, and which Tucker believes remains “unsolved.”

[0:50:18-0:54:31] This was another doozy when Tucker asks, “Without God, how can we say, and why would we say, that life is better than death? I mean, the religious person, the Christian, says life is better than death because God creates life.” At no point did I grow up thinking that death was better than life. I am baffled that a Christian honestly wonders why life is better than death. Only if you truly believe in this blissful afterlife that you have no proof exists could you see death as anything other than horrifying and an enemy to mankind. Life is much more exciting, first of all, than oblivion and more than what I imagine would be a dull place after the high wears off in the afterlife. You can only feel the highest of highs on earth and develop a greater understanding when you have lost a value and felt the lowest of the lows. Death is simply a negation of life, the absence of life. I do not want to be a void; I want to live. And the world is beautiful to me on its face, not because someone divine created it. Nature creates its own wondrous patterns, and it excites me to learn about them, and as humans have learned, every species has evolved with these attributes due to some advantage for their survival. We have this beautiful and still very mysterious mind, and I gaze in spiritual wonder at its beauty with no need to have a sole creator of the entire world. Yet, I believe that I go to that same spiritual realm of emotion that a Christian does but completely devoid of god.

[0:54:31-1:00:34] Oh, boy, Tucker says, “You would not disagree if I said, ‘Here’s what we know: We know that AI is likely to spawn some improvements, also certain to kill millions of people.’ Millions will die because of this, I don’t think there’s any doubt about it—the chaos alone, right, will cause that.” Why not just blow it all up essentially? Wow, his answer is like a mix of utilitarianism and nihilism and a Luddite mentality. First of all, the lawsuits brought against Elon Musk and his “self-driving” Teslas, as far as I am aware, are all due to user error and not because of the algorithm itself. People are the ones still harming themselves when they don’t use their brains or follow directions. AI is much safer and helps to keep us safer than we’ve ever been before. There is no guarantee, as Bryan is saying, that artificial intelligence will kill millions. There already has been no such apocalyptic scenario as he fears. If anything, more people have survived a surgery that a doctor’s shaking hand would have botched years ago that a robot did without a single error. Heck, I had LASIK done with the help of AI and lasers to fix my nearsightedness, and that was the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a miracle.

Bryan Johnson is able to make somewhat of an argument similar to mine to Tucker that humans are more fallible than AI is, which does seem to be the case thus far. And I’m thankful that at least Bryan was able to say that he does not “accept the premise” of AI killing millions in the future.

[1:00:34-1:07:40] “We don’t have any idea what we’re talking about, and we can’t anticipate the future. We’re limited in our foresight, in our knowledge, and particularly in our wisdom.” And then he comes up with this example of no robot ever being able to tell him why his wife is mad at him and Bryan Johnson says that we can use AI to tell us that answer. To which Tucker says that this is too “mechanistic,” and ignores “the most important universe, which is the spiritual universe.” I shouted here, “Objectivism!” Tucker claims again that we are controlled morally by “spiritual forces, unseen forces” and that he doesn’t see any “evidence” in what Bryan is saying. And Bryan Johnson agrees that this is a very spiritual moment for all of us on this planet and that AI is “neutral” and that we give it meaning, which I agree with. Bryan says he wants to eliminate “the causes of death.” To which Tucker retorts, “But until we can account for why we do it to ourselves, we’re probably not gonna change it. And I think the most obvious explanation is we’re being acted on by demons, whose—and this is how every religion that I’m aware of has described it, correctly, in my opinion—acted on by demons, whose goal is to destroy and kill people and they’re a counterbalance? by God. But, if you don’t agree with that, then you need to substitute another explanation in its place in order to proceed in the hope that we can change.” One more time, I scream: “Objectivism!” There is a battle between “good and evil” as Tucker mentions, but it is not in an unseen realm, it is between individual human beings. It is happening every second of every day, and that is why civilization has emerged to manage those fights through our military, courts, and police, aka our government on a global scale, and with the help of philosophy and psychology and other sciences on an individual scale.

Finally, Bryan Johnson says, “I’m with you; what I heard you say is there’s more to reality than we can see, there’s forces which we can’t identify, and we should address those. We’re on the same page, after the same thing.” Neither man can seem to prove what “forces” are acting on us to determine our actions or our code of morality. Objectivism would say that human beings with free will are driven by their minds to survive, to live, to be happy. That’s it. There is nothing more than that as a species. To live “healthy, wealthy, and wise,” as John Clarke and more famously Benjamin Franklin said, is to live happily on this earth. That should be our only goal, our only mission in life.

***

Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr4E0jEjQMM; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/universe.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/history.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/existence.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/instinct.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/crime.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/physical_force.html; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l79rXk4NQlc&list=PLqsoWxJ-qmMvgfp2mg-AAFnCROvtu9NVR&index=2; https://www.amazon.com/New-Intellectual-Philosophy-Rand-Anniversary/dp/0451163087; https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191145; https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Ideal-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451147952; https://www.amazon.com/Return-Primitive-Anti-Industrial-Revolution/dp/0452011841

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.

Literary Critique of Sally Rooney’s Normal People (Part I)

I picked up and put down Normal People by Sally Rooney multiple times as I came across it in my everyday life—at the bookstore, at the library, online. I had heard that she was a Marxist, and I could only roll my eyes and vow to never read her book.

But a few years after its first publication, I saw her top all the literary fiction lists and lauded as the voice of the millennial generation. I could hardly ignore someone who received such ravings and applause from what seemed like several thousands of fans. So, I borrowed the book from my local library and spent a weekend reading.

The following article will need to be in two parts: the first part concerning Rooney’s writing style and the second part concerning the story itself.     

The very first thing to pop out at me was the use of dates for chapter headings. It begins with “January 2011” right on page 1. The readers now know that this text is time-sensitive and not evergreen like all good literary fiction should be. Please note that when I critique these style choices and techniques, it is not just found in this book but in most of the modern books of today, be they genre or literary fiction. Exact dates and times, like those found on all of our digital paper trails nowadays, erase the concept of reading a piece in any time period.

This brings me to another important point: I do not believe that Man and the values he requires to survive have changed. His emotions have not changed. That is why we can read ancient texts, like those of Plato and Aristotle, and still gain wisdom from them. They are not static pieces of text, which make no sense to us today. So, writing can be everlastingly relevant, and literary fiction, a form of fiction that teaches us what it means to be human, should be sensitive to such notions.

The next striking decision made by the author is that there are no quotation marks used at all in the book. The whole point of grammar is to make the reader stay with the story. It is the hidden mechanics of a piece well-written. Therefore, quotation marks are necessary to avoid confusion and pull the reader out of the story.

A single printing press traveled overseas from England to Massachusetts in 1638 and another arose in 1685. These presses printed mostly religious texts for their local communities. Colonial America began to publish more news-based books in 1728 when Benjamin Franklin began his own printing press. Since those early days of publishing, books were an enjoyable pastime for many a family.

But since the creation of the publishing industry, the roots were planted for today’s “Big Four” (Penguin Random House (1927), Macmillan (1843), Hachette Book Group (1826), and HarperCollins (1817)). By the end of the nineteenth century, the companies began publishing the likes of William James (1842-1910), James Joyce (1882-1941), William Faulkner (1897-1962), and Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). All these writers, and many others, used James’s idea in psychology of “stream of consciousness” writing, where I believe grammar was first butchered and thrown to the wayside in favor of primal emotions cast upon the page. The authors took this theory to mean that our minds do not form complete sentences and that incomplete phrases are best for expressing our true inner experiences. Forget the structure of language and the reasons for its construction, these writers shout.

Though Sally Rooney and most modern writers do not go as far with the nonsensical writing as Joyce did, it is still common to see sentence fragments used for emphasis, much like in Hemingway’s writing. Ernest Hemingway used a mixture of sentence fragments and short telegraphic sentences. Rooney is similarly described for her “perfectly spare prose” (Goodreads blurb) in which this technique is still used. However, this type of prose used throughout a book strips it of its intended emphatic impact and renders the impact of the text overall immature.

Therefore, alongside this “modern” choice of skipping the quotation marks is also the author’s decision to slip in sentence fragments, like using “Yesterday” (2) to emphasize her points. Unfortunately, many more modern writers have bent the grammar rules like Hemingway, Faulkner, and Joyce. Perhaps poets more than novelists can get away with such playful uses of language, but for a story that is trying to delve into a serious study of character, I find that it, again, pulls the reader out of the story.

Another massively annoying technique used by every modern author I’ve read is the use of name-dropping. Brand names are tossed left and right, which to a modern audience may be understood, but in a decade will be lost on the readers. Rooney will require several footnotes at the end of her book for things like “Facebook” (4, 82, 170, 192 x2, 212, 232 x3), “MacBook” (21, 70), “Destiny’s Child remix” (32), “Kanye West song […] with the Curtis Mayfield sample” (40), “Aldi” (47), “Watch the Throne (74), “Vampire Weekend” (86), “Twitter” (100), “Skype” (191, 192, 222), “Evian bottle” (197), “Microsoft computer” (121), “Coke” (160, 229 x2), “White Lies song” (234), “PlayStation” (266), etcetera. I am only a few years younger and even I had to look some of these references up. That’s why I believe it is a good idea, especially in literary fiction, to never drop brand names. I know writers wish to give more detail and I even remember my creative writing teacher asking the class, “What kind of apple is it? Is it a Gala apple or a Red Delicious?” But for a reader, all they want to know is if it was a red apple, or if it was sweet, or bruised, it does not require a name for them to understand the point you are making as a writer. You can describe things with the senses, not by their brand names.

I also feel uncomfortable reading about characters texting, emailing, and online chatting because oftentimes the writer, as Rooney does, keeps the messages in their “original” forms, which usually means sentences that begin with the lower case, shorten words to letters, and generally misuse all forms of the English language. A novel is not meant to be a photograph of real life; it is an art form. An author does not have to choose to put in text messages as they look in real life, just as epistolary novels probably did not add the obvious spelling mistakes or scratched out sections in real letters they received. Art is all about omitting and shifting around things in real life to make it better, showing Man how the world ought to be—not how it is.

Instead, Rooney chooses to show her readers what the world is as she sees it, in the words of Hobbes’s Leviathan, as “nasty, brutish, and short.” Rooney emphasizes such ugliness by using curse words in her text, such as, “The economy’s fucked anyway” (21). I find that unless no other word would be better suited to that character, curse words should never be used. Being vulgar in literary fiction is unnecessary, lowly, and a cheap way to show character. I feel the same way about using clichés. There are better ways to explain a scene than just throwing around garbage words and seeing what moves the reader only after having a fit.

My final critique of the style choices this author made is her trickling throughout the book of her liberal ideology. Of course, I believe that this is the key to what got her published in the first place.

Allow me to list every obvious moment of liberalism and virtue signaling allowed to carry on throughout this book:

  1. “school as an oppressive environment.”  (12)
  2. “He told her she should try reading The Communist Manifesto, he thought she would like it” (13, about Marxism)
  3. The Fire Next Time (14, about racism)
  4. The Golden Notebook (27, about feminism)
  5. “It’s something to do with capitalism, she said.

      “Yeah. Everything is, that’s the problem, isn’t it? she nodded.” (36)

  • “The communist Declan Bree. Connell, unprovoked, continued watching the road. We could do with a bit more communism in this country if you ask me, he said. From the corner of his eye he could see Lorraine smiling. Come on now, comrade, she said. I was the one who raised you with your good socialist values, remember? It’s true Lorraine has values. She’s interested in Cuba, and the cause of Palestinian liberation. In the end Connell did vote for Declan Bree, who went on to be eliminated in the fifth count. Two of the seats went to Fine Gael and the other to Sinn Féin. Lorraine said it was a disgrace. Swapping one crowd of criminals for another, she said. He texted Marianne: fg in government, fucks sake. She texted back: The party of Franco. He had to look up what that meant.” (48-9)
  • “reusable plastic bag” (52, 114)
  • “Critical Theory seminar” (69)
  • “Jesus, don’t tell me he’s involved in this Nazi thing, is he?” (82)
  • “Holocaust denier”;  “white moderates” (83)
  • James Connolly & The Irish Trades Union Congress (87, Socialist Marxists)
  • “I wanted to try an open-relationship thing. […] Men can be possessive, she says.” (98)
  • “Generally I find men are a lot more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves, says Marianne. […] I mean, when you look at the lives men are really living, it’s sad, Marianne says. They control the whole social system and this is the best they can come up with for themselves? They’re not even having fun.” (99)
  • “Would you rather live under a matriarchy? says Peggy. […] Don’t you enjoy your male privilege? she says.

“It’s like Marianne was saying, he replies. It’s not that enjoyable to have. I mean, it is what it is, I don’t get much fun out of it.

“Peggy gives a toothy grin. If I were a man, she says, I would have as many as three girlfriends. If not more.” (99)

  1. “Time consists of physics, money is just a social construct. […] I don’t buy into the morality of work, she says. Some work maybe, but you’re just moving paper around an office, you’re not contributing to the human effort.” (112)
  2. “May the revolution be swift and brutal.” (125)
  3. “fascist”; “chauvinist pig” (144)
  4. “Peggy thinks men are disgusting animals with no impulse control […]” (144)
  5. “That’s money, the substance that makes the world real. There’s something so corrupt and sexy about it.” (166)
  6. “Magdalene Laundry report”; “Denis O’Brien case” (173)
  7. “The whole idea of “meritocracy” or whatever, it’s evil, you know I think that.” (180)
  8. “Recycling bin” (256)

Now, there were some other more minor points made concerning class division and Connell wearing “Argos chic” clothes (151) and being a “milk-drinking culchie” (154), but those do not slap readers across the face as the other quotes above do.

Many of these topics concern the Left’s tribalistic love affair with topics like racism, feminism, and Marxism. Sally Rooney openly declares herself to be a Marxist, and it seems like that opened the doors to her publishing career.

End of Part I

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.

Literary Critique of Sally Rooney’s Normal People (Part II)

Here is the back cover blurb for Sally Rooney’s book, Normal People:

Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins.

A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t.

Not only is the writing immature in certain ways, but the characters from the beginning are immature. I understand that someone reading this who is younger or older than her intended audience may think this portrayal of young adults is accurate, but I, (who am of that age range), found them extremely immature. They act more like teenagers and remain one-dimensional throughout. Take, for instance: “It occurred to Marianne how much she wanted to see him having sex with someone; it didn’t have to be her, it could be anybody” (12). Marianne lacks a self, a side to love. I believe this comes from her author’s devotion to Marxism, where sacrificing herself to other people is the only way she can feel much of anything. “She just let things happen, like nothing meant anything to her” (22). Marianne remains this passive, bleak, almost deterministic character throughout the book.

But Marianne is no better than Connell. Who cares so much about other people in high school that he only has sex with Marianne in secret? Marianne asks him: “Would you be embarrassed if they found out? she said. In some ways, yeah” (94). It just seems so childish for a person who is no longer a boy. In a similar Marxist fashion, Connell is also focused on Marianne’s class, as if being wealthy makes you a different species. Rooney writes: “If anything, his personality seemed like something external to himself, managed by the opinions of others, rather than anything he individually did or produced” (73). So, Connell is a chameleon. He is a person who just feeds off of others. [And might I add that he is not the only character who is like this, Rob is another. For “Nothing had meant more to Rob than the approval of others” (219).]

I must say that I don’t believe Rooney’s attempts to just drop complaints about class and expect her readers to blindly shake their heads in agreement, just like she did with those Leftist book titles. I went to public school, and I had friends from all ends of the class spectrum, especially for a child who has no control over where or how they grow up, your “class” in America does not make you into something alien as this Marxist author is trying to imply. Who cares about your class or station or rank when you are in high school? Again, I find it childish.

Throughout the text, there is this confusion about sexuality, mainly concerning Marianne. Again, being the good little Marxist, she is open to open relationships, bisexuals, homosexuals, threesomes, whatever happens to her happens. Of course, she can never be happy when she does nothing to better herself or her situation! The whole beginning felt like an inferior version of The Breakfast Club. Why does adulthood seem synonymous with doing immoral things, as if losing your soul is cool? So, Marianne sleeps around and takes up smoking and looks anorexic and depressed all the time. Is that what it means to be an adult? She has conversations with Connell like, “I think I was starting to have feelings for you there at one point. […] You just have to repress all that stuff, Marianne, he said” (101). So not falling in love with anyone is cool? Both main characters made me cringe with their “look at me, I’m so adult” behavior. For example, Marianne discusses getting pregnant with “I like to upset people’s expectations” (105) as her justification for doing so. Anyone who does things just for other people is not ready for any kind of responsibility in this world. And look, I’ve gone through my teenage “scene phase,” but by high school, and especially college, I was ready to be a responsible adult, and I never felt like truly, passionately loving another human being was “uncool.”

The only “change” occurs in the middle of the book when Marianne and Connell’s social status reverses—now she’s considered “cool” and he’s not. But what actually changes in terms of their appraisal of themselves and how they feel? Nothing changes in the book; there is no character change. I’m not even sure it can be considered a complete book at all. Neither character realizes their immaturity, although they do manage to say “I love you” by the end. But is that considered a change when they become separated again by choice?

If anything, each character only becomes more depressed. I would blame their Marxist ideology on such emotional turmoil, but let’s look at some phrases each character uses first. They refer to themselves as “self-hating” (pg. 139); that “they had the same unnameable spiritual injury” (175); that “human life was pointless” (232); that “She hates the person she has become, without feeling any power to change anything about herself” (244); that they were “becoming unrecognizably debased” (245); that “deep down she knows she is a bad person, corrupted, wrong” (247); and yet, “No one can be independent of other people completely” (pg. 269). By the end, Marianne has let herself embrace becoming a sexual plaything, and Connell is so depressed that he wants to kill himself. Now, do these sound like well-adjusted young adults to you, dear reader?

I believe that this is a true vignette of what happens when young people try to erase their egos. They can no longer love passionately; they wallow in their own self-hatred. I implore anyone who has not yet read The Fountainhead to read it. This is real literary fiction where the character of Keating is shown in exactly the same way as Marianne and Connell—parasites. But Ayn Rand can explain Keating’s behaviors through philosophy, unlike Rooney, who gives you a sketch of two messed-up people. You can only grow to hate yourself or consider yourself a monster when your life does merely become a string attached to a web of other people. When you become other people, like a chameleon, then how can you act? To live on this earth with any agency, and, ultimately, any happiness, then you must uphold your ego.

The fact that people are praising Sally Rooney as some kind of voice for the millennial generation greatly disturbs me. Wake up, readers! It’s frightening that people are espousing how much Rooney is exposing their own feelings on the page. It means that those people are fighting against what makes them human on a daily basis.

The book would be better if she wrote about it as an anecdote of how not to behave, but instead, she loves her characters (as most writers do), and she wants them to represent how she sees the world. But it’s wrong and surprisingly immature for someone her age.

I am just a few years younger than her, and I learned that this kind of wallowing is for teenagers at most. But there should not be a kind of anger, bitterness, and frustration that should carry through into your 20s and 30s. If anything, this proves that millennials are less mature than the previous generation.

Yet, the publishing industry opened its arms wide to accept their new literary figurehead onto the scene, because nothing has changed there. Normal People seems to be about outcasts who are not really even outcasts. They are, in fact, cultural representatives of the Left, which is what the publishing industry comprises. Rooney’s characters are moochers, sucking off the teat of literary fiction’s prestige to feed their own lack of character.

Rooney paints characters who have no “self” in a world where sex is merely about power and manipulation and not something beautiful to be cherished. She destroys the ego, which is necessary for our survival. Yet, no one in her story has agency. Marianne unconditionally loves Connell, while he is afraid of dominance and of becoming a man. But, to me, being submissive is a gift that a woman gives to a man she truly values and trusts. It is the very expression of love for a woman, as dominance is for a man. But Rooney does not think monogamy or boyfriend/girlfriend dynamics truly exist. (Because you have to have a self and be confident enough to form such relationships). She hates “masculinity,” believes in “the patriarchy,” and that capitalism is a “coercive system.” The same old, same old ideology. She is just another liberal, checking off her list of things to drop in her story. Well, she does not speak for me, nor does the entire publishing industry. I refuse to recognize Sally Rooney as the great millennial writer who is a perfect representative of literary fiction.

End of Part II

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.