Metaphysical Materialism

There has been something about Ayn Rand that has bothered me, that, until now, I haven't been able to put my finger on it. Her philosophy is what I would call Metaphysical Materialism, which contends that Man(kind) in all his techno-materialistic ethical splendor has finally reached the culmination of evolutionary development. You a’re not going to find a more refined evolutionary manifestation because we have reached the zenith of maturation. That the billions of years that it took the handmaidens of evolution to turn a "lesser god" into a "perfected ape" were well-spent. And like a new car shining in splendor on the showroom floor, you can't get any better than this!

For me, this thinking leads to an existential malaise, because it circles or confines everything within the boundaries of this physical universe. . . a universe processed and viewed through the disposable thought patterns of this perfected ape. Where's the Source? Who drew-up the Plans for this objective universe? Where, then, is the subjective universe? What was going on before the beginning of time? What was the consciousness that initiated the big bang thinking that triggered the creation of this magnificent chaos?

Like accountants with too much time on their hands, Ayn Rand and Carl Marx waxed rhapsodic about the grandiosity of finitism, and how neatly everything fit into their well-ordered patterns. And like Darwin, Spencer et al, Ayn and Carl believed (to paraphrase the dead Door, Jim Morrison) that he who controls the numbers controls the whole shebang. It's not about anything else other than control. Control every commodity on the planet, control the Ecos (management of the house), and control the minds of the masses, and there you have it! You have the “perfect” species in its proper place -- usurping the power and authority of the Creator.

If these "managers" destroy this evolutionary platform (earth) in the process of amassing total control, that's just the chance they will have to take. Isn't risk at the heart of good ole capitalism anyway?

“For how would a man be profited if should gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” If one has no soul to begin with, what’s the problem?!