Success is often associated with financial gain, or as something that is attained without regard for how broader communities are affected. The late writer and philosopher Ayn Rand argued that success can result from pursuing personal happiness, and by creating value for others–both of which are moral achievements.
Soon, Rand’s views will be on display for the world in the form of a new multi-purpose headquarters in Austin. The author of “Atlas Shrugged,” required reading in many high schools across America for years, will be honored in the form of a museum, cultural center and think tank, all housed in an architectural marvel blocks from the University of Texas.
Don Watkins, vice president of fundraising and marketing for the Ayn Rand Institute, says Rand’s concepts will shape the institute’s planned new headquarters that will break ground in September.
“Her ideal is a thinker and a producer,” he says. “One of the reasons I think it resonates so much is that she sees heroism in all creators, whether it’s the artist, the architect, the scientist, and the businessman or the businesswoman.”
Her approach gives entrepreneurs a way to see their work in moral terms rather than treating commerce as something that is spiritually empty.
“There’s a deep spiritual meaning in producing material values,” Watkins says. “Material resources, material wealth, has deep spiritual meaning, and the people who create it should and often do experience their work as, ‘I’m creating something important and rich with meaning.’”
He says Rand’s philosophy challenges a moral tradition that associates virtue with sacrificing personal interests for others. Productiveness does not mean that the person who earns the most money is morally superior, Watkins says.
“Morality is not a contest,” he says. “It’s not about your relationship to other people. In that sense, it’s not comparative. It’s about your relationship with reality.”
A teacher, coffee shop owner or entrepreneur can share the same virtue by using his or her mind to create value, he says.
“They should take as much pride in their character as a producer as somebody who’s created a world-changing company.”
The distinction shaped Rand’s view of sacrifice. She saw hard work, missed opportunities and difficult choices made in pursuit of a valued goal as investments rather than sacrifices.
“A sacrifice is the surrender of a higher value to a non-value,” Watkins says. “It’s surrendering what you personally care about for something that you don’t.” He says Rand saw successful people as those who “took responsibility for what they wanted out of life.”
Watkins discovered Rand at age 15, and says her belief that philosophy mattered and could provide definite answers changed the way he saw the world. He first joined the Ayn Rand Institute as a writer around 2006, and returned in 2017 after other pursuits to serve numerous roles at the Institute. He coauthored “Free Market Revolution” with Yaron Brook.
He describes Rand’s philosophy as “the system that liberates the individual mind, that allows people to engage in productive work, to go their own way and try their new projects, even if a central planner disagrees, and to profit as a result,” he says.
Lasting support for capitalism, he argues, requires defending the pursuit of rational self-interest rather than relying solely on economic arguments.
The Ayn Rand Institute plans to open its new building in September 2028. Watkins says the facility will serve as the institute’s headquarters, an educational center, an intellectual gathering place, and a home for Rand’s archives. Visitors will also encounter an immersive technological experience built around her novels and philosophy.
“You’re literally going to be able to walk into her world and experience it in a way that nobody has before,” he says.
Watkins says Austin fits the institute’s mission because of its combination of ideas, entrepreneurship and art.
“It’s a center of ideas, whether it’s the universities or just the kind of culture,” he says. “This is really a hub of entrepreneurialism, a hub of people who want to be creating things and achieving things.”
The new building, according to Watkins, is meant to make a larger statement about Rand’s place in American intellectual life.
“It’s really time that we recognize, in the form of an enduring building, that Ayn Rand is one of the most significant artists and thinkers of the 20th century, and that she’s not going away, that she’s here to stay.”