Howard Roark: A Revolt against Modern Culture

Identity politics of Left and Right, DEI, tribalism, ESG, authoritarianism, post-truth philistinism...how does a person believing in human agency navigate a world that looks hostile to his values and ideals? These foggy and absurd follies of modern culture, which mysteriously became the presumed ‘consensus’ in our institutions and culture, can indeed negatively impact our life. They can hamper our careers, hinder our day-to-day work, and even bruise our spirit, making us think that the world is out to get us.

One way to react to such malaise is to become bitter, cynical, and give up on the world and the possibility of great endeavors and achievement in it. But this would be a shame. This earth can be too beautiful a place to surrender it to ugliness and irrationality. Another possibility is to form our own tribe that ‘will shove our truth down their throats’. But this will not work; it will just perpetuate the ugliness and toxicity. There is a third way: the way of Howard Roark.

Roark is the fictional hero in Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead, published in 1943. We meet him in his early 20s, chasing his one big dream in life: to become an architect who builds his own way, based on his own standards. We follow his life and his many trials and tribulations, and we see how he navigates a culture hostile to his vision. Roark is a maverick, an innovator, a radical, in a society where architects just copy each other and reproduce whatever has been handed to them from tradition or whatever presents itself as ‘authority’ and ‘consensus’. Roark struggles in such a world, but armed with his ironclad principles and his uncompromising vision, he eventually succeeds. And success for him is not his ideas becoming the new fashion, or gaining the acceptance of ‘polite society’, but erecting buildings the way he wants them. Roark does it, literally, his way. His clients are ‘his kind of people’: other independent minded individuals who judge his buildings not based on whether they fall in whatever the fashion of the day happens to be, but on whether they are good. And they are good.

The Fountainhead has been consistently a best-seller, and has had a particular appeal among architects. Ayn Rand chose architecture as the profession of her hero as a tribute to the glory of the American skyscraper, and as an example of an endeavor combining the intellectual with the material; thought and action; envisioning and erecting[i]. Yet, it is not primarily a book about architecture. The Fountainhead is not (only) about building structures and girders; it is about building a character that will arm one to face the world and to chase his dreams and ideals.

This is why a novel from 80 years ago can be an inspiration on how to deal with the ugliness and the toxicity of our world. Roark is first and foremost a symbol of a stance in life; of a way of relating to the world. His struggles might appear different from ours, but they are essentially the same. Roark’s world is dominated by bad ideas that remain unquestioned by the many and cast a shadow in every aspect of one’s life. So is our world. The battle we are facing is one of ideas. Roark’s weapon against such ugliness is his creative independent vision, focusing on the will to build his way. He knows he is right, and thus he cannot be stopped. There are lessons there for the struggles of our time.

This very practical relevance of the vision of someone like Roark is disputed by many, who cynically dismiss The Fountainhead as a juvenile ‘phase’; as something that respectable people overcome when they mature and sober up from the idealism of their youth.

My main thesis in this article is that Roark’s idealism is a very relevant, practical and positive model of how to engage with a hostile world and succeed in life. 

Roark is a practical symbol, because the key attributes of his character are not only accessible to everyone, but they are a fundamental condition for human success and happiness. The first key attribute of Roark is his independence. He has his own standards, and he has come to them through scrupulous study of the demands of his work and of life in general. His attention is directed not to what the ‘consensus’ thinks is good or fashionable, but to reality: to what human life and human flourishing requires. What is the expression of his respect for reality? Roark’s unbending rationality and the ruthless use of his mind. He sees through his own eyes, he identifies, he integrates, he connects the dots under his own prism, he sees what others have not seen, and thus he creates what had not existed before.

Independence does not preclude collaborating with others; actually, it is a precondition of honest and productive human relationships. Human beings can collaborate as epistemological equals, when they bring to the table the best that their judgment and ability can offer. The alternative is humans dealing with one another as rulers or wannabe parasites and free-riders; this poisons any possible relationship of harmony, solidarity, and respect.

The second key virtue of Roark is his integrity, which Rand describes as the virtue of being loyal to one’s rational convictions and values. In one of the most iconic scenes in The Fountainhead, Roark, early in his career, is offered the commission of building the headquarters of a big bank. He needs this commission badly, as otherwise he will have to close his office for lack for clients. Yet, the commission would demand him to compromise his standards and add ugly elements to the building, based on the fashions of his time. Roark declines the commission, and to the comment of the bank executive that he is selfless, he replies: ‘That was the most selfish thing you’ve ever seen a man do’[ii]. As a result of his decision, he has to leave architecture for a while and work for some time in a granite quarry, but he does not question his principles for a second. And at the end, he is vindicated.

Here is the big message of Roark: having principles and sticking to them is not a ‘sacrifice’. One is not a martyr for not bending whichever way the wind blows just to satisfy the ‘consensus’. Provided that one’s convictions have been formed in a rational way, following them is like following a map to a desired destination. Principles are a guide to action, not a luxury. Following one’s principles is not only worth it; it is the only way one can succeed. The true compromise would be sacrificing one’s principles and thus killing one’s self-respect. Remember: Roark’s goal in life was to build buildings his own way, by his own standards. Building ugly abominations would be the equivalent of him not being an architect. This applies to today’s world as well. Being a moral coward is self-destructive. Espousing slogans one does not believe, teaching bromides one does consider false and presenting them as undisputed orthodoxies, pretending to believe something that is not true: all these are shortcuts not to success, but to a betrayal of the best in us and to what this world could be and should be.

The principled life is the practical life, and Roark is a model of a very practical man. Sticking to his guns also explains Roark’s monumental courage. He is willing to stand up for his vision and ideals against the whole culture, because they are his. He knows they are true, because he reached them through intellectual struggle, having as his arbiter not the majority, the fashionable trend of the moment, or tradition, but only reality and the requirements of a humane life.
In short: independence + integrity = courage.

The ethos of someone like Roark can be the antidote to today’s culture of tribalism and low expectations. First, by arming one against the soul-destroying ideas out there. And second, by providing a positive vision that more and more can follow, eventually challenging the ‘consensus’ of bad ideas and low horizons. The Roarks of this world reveal that the Emperor of the current destructive trends has no clothes.  The trend-setters of the ‘consensus’ want to enforce, to rule, to suppress. They need others, as pawns to their plans. A creator like Roark just wants to build, to produce, to achieve, based on his own vision. This gives them a strength of character and a power of conviction which makes the consensus, eventually, irrelevant. Roark does not need the parasites of spirit and matter. He has a higher vision: to transform the earth based on his standards. His focus is, literally, to change the earth, not to rule others[iii]. He wants to erect his vision of the world as it should be:

“He looked at the granite. To be cut, he thought, and made into walls. He looked at a tree. To be split and made into rafters. He looked at a streak of rust on the stone and thought of iron ore under the ground. To be melted and to emerge as girders against the sky. These rocks, he thought, are here for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will give them.”[iv]

Roark’s mindset, vision, and dedication to the positive act of creating are the highest form of rebellion today. He has reverence for human potential and ability, for man the giant, whereas modern culture sees human beings as weak, vulnerable, and at constant risk. He has the most humane cockiness to want to shape the earth according to his vision: ‘…I love this earth (…) I don’t like the shape of things on this earth. I want to change them’[v]. This is a rebellion in the face of a culture that sees nature as having its own value irrespective of its use to us, and as fragile, precious, and better off with minimum, if any, human interference.  And Roark has his own, unborrowed vision, based on the strictest standards of rationality. How desperately is this needed in our modern culture of tribalism, of groupthink, of relativism, and of ‘who’s to say what is truth and what is false’.

The bromides of modern culture seem omnipotent and omnipresent. Yet, they are shallow, half-baked, undefinable, and unconvincing. Their proponents, the gatekeepers of ‘consensus’, are cowards. They are followers who do not want to rock the boat, and their convictions are weak. They will cave and retreat at the sight of courage, certainty, principles, and integrity. Here is the good news: the Roarks of this world, the creators, the builders, the producers, and those who, irrespective of their level of talent or ability, follow the same humane code, can win.

Dr Nikos Sotirakopoulos, Academic and Author

---

[i] Tore Boeckmann, The Fountainhead as a Romantic Novel, in Essays on Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, ed. Robert Mayhew, (Lexington Books, 2007), 134

[ii] Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, (Penguin Books, 1994), 196

[iii] Onkar Ghate, The Basic Motivation of the Creators and the Masses in The Fountainhead, in Essays on Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, ed. Robert Mayhew, (Lexington Books, 2007)

[iv] Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, (Penguin Books, 1994), 4

[v] Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, (Penguin Books, 1994), 39

---

A version of this article was first published in Building Resilience magazine.

---

Thank you for reading Philosophy: I Need It. If you enjoyed it and want to see more content, consider supporting me by clicking the button below. Every dollar counts.