Saying that Philosophy: Who Needs It, by Ayn Rand, “surprised, unsettled, or challenged” me would be an understatement. The book could best be described as the marijuana to my cocaine, my gateway into a realm of heightened senses, though in this case, of heightened intellect. There are few experiences in life which we can cite as “changing the way we think,” but reading the collection of essays did just that. It taught me to approach life the way I would a maze: by analyzing every possible angle to determine the proper course of action. It showed me a fundamental error with the way we’re taught to think in high school: to analyze consequences, not causes. When we do this, we assert that the universe is some unknowable realm of inexplicable occurrences that our mind is incapable of grasping. Rand’s book taught me that nothing is a given. We can’t accept something as “inexplicable,” because in doing so, we abnegate our means of survival, our rationality. Man’s happiness, man’s peace, man’s success, even man’s survival, these things must be learned and discovered by the individual. Only by consciously developing as Rand says, an “integrated view of existence,” a life philosophy, can we do this. Rand’s book set me on the path to defining my own philosophical system; I’m not entirely there yet, but things certainly make a lot more sense. Go buy the book; It will change your life.
-L.C.
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