I CAN’T TAKE ANYMORE OF THIS
The world of Ayn Rand is sick. Sick. Sick.
I know there are well intentioned people who perceive that Ayn Rand’s philosophy and way of life is an alternative. Especially for those who come from traditional, theistic, benighted, mainstream families. In the face of superstitions, religions that don’t seem relevant, and whatever disillusioning factors in their own lives, Objectivism might seem like an exciting escape, a valid alternative. (This article from The Nation called “The Nightmare of Christianity” sparked a connection for me between disillusioned youth from restrictive religious backgrounds, and the alternative that Objectivism might offer for them.)
At its worst, the Ayn Rand worldview is a cultist dead-end; it deifies the idea of causality and logic. It fetishizes “objective” value, and perversely conflates achievement, material wealth, and relations between human beings.
Her writing is lackluster and hackish. Her characters have no dimension. The tone and themes are muddled. Some claim that Atlas Shrugged is parody, or prophecy, or philosophy. The vision, the scope of her novel is pinched by her half-formed philosophy. There is no depth. If there is parody, it doesn’t function correctly. It is certainly didactic, and her message is communicated effectively. But as a piece of writing, it is unbearable.
I have spent more than half a year reading Atlas Shrugged. I am not a fast reader. But I have read a lot of literature. It took me several years to complete Proust, but I didn’t read it all in one go. I have read most of Thomas Bernhard, Don Quixote, and every major Dostoevsky book except his diaries. I have read War and Peace and Anna Karenina. I have read a lot of thick books–but I CAN’T GET THROUGH THIS ONE. And it feels like it’s ruining my life. It is disillusioning my belief in humanity. I can’t believe that people like this. Love this. Start forming how they view the world through this extremely sick book.
To be clear, I believe that there’s nothing wrong with being selfish. Money is not the root of all evil. I agree with these statements. We have to be selfish in order achieve, in order to remain sane. To say that money is the root of all evil is a facile, reductive statement that has no useful, practical value. But to try to create a totalizing worldview out of the idea that to be selfish is a virtue–it just does not work. It is simplistic. It is juvenile.
And the entiriety of Atlas Shrugged is a juvenile hissy-fit.
The entire premise of the construction of the book is faulty. It is not a speculative fiction. It is not science fiction. It is not parody.
On the back inside jacket of my copy of Atlas Shrugged there is an advertisement for Leonard Peikoff’s book Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. The ad copy states: “It is an essential book for all those wishing to discover the philosophic system underlying Ayn Rand’s stories about life as ‘as it might and ought to be.‘” Italics mine.
This to me represents the severe disconnect from reality that Objectivism manifests. In the Randian scheme, how can life ought and might be one way? The morality of objectivism is derived from the idea that causality and logic are the explanations for the universe. If we take that from the premise that all of the good things follow from logic and causality, then shouldn’t life be as it ought to be? According to Rand’s point of view, since we cannot escape logic and causality, life IS a certain way. Yet, according to this statement on the leaf jacket, and according to how Atlas Shrugged is constructed, life isn’t this way. It is only the way it might and ought to be. Rand concedes that logic and causality are the rules of the universe, yet, she and her Objectivists are not pleased with the way the world is. I don’t know if I have properly expressed myself, but bear with me, because this seems to be the crux of the sickness, and the awfulness of Atlas Shrugged.
The way things are, and the way things might and ought to be are not things that can exist simultaneously. Science seeks to discover the way things are. We, as humans, all know, don’t always like the way things are. There is no way that science and desire can be reconciled unless we discover a way to make our desires magically fulfilled–through drugs, or conditioning, or something else. Or, if we can remove our desires. But I think that most of us think desire is part of what makes us human and makes life worth living.
Now, the happy people in Atlas Shrugged are the people who fulfill their desires. They make big factories and genius inventions, and fall in love and have sex with their intellectual equals. Happiness does not seem possible for the rest of the population. Why, it is unclear. It seems to be the case that only smart, competent people can know what happiness is. This is not entirely explicit in Atlas Shrugged, but it is certainly the implication. The rest of the population are parasites. This article from The New Republic talks about how Objectivism is a sort of reverse Marxism, glorification of industrialists and capitalists.
This obsession of how happiness is the heart of the sick cult aspect of Atlas Shrugged, and repulsed me and continually repulsed me from early in the book and throughout. Ayn Rand insists to her readers that happiness is only accessible to those who unburden themselves from parasites, and fulfill their selfish desires. (And who doesn’t want happiness!?) This sick pummeling on the reader by the happy message pervades this book.
So, here you see, happiness, logic, causality, and the way things ought to be. How do we make a book out of this? Well we just start writing about how the whole world is going to hell because of the looters, and then we throw in this weird bit about a parallel secret society of non-mooching golden geniuses who won’t have a part of it.
There is no logic to the book. Ayn Rand just makes things happen. The crucial technological development in the book, “Rearden Metal,” is a miracle because it is made by a man of genius. It follows that the man is a genius and used his genius to make a metal, that the metal is infallible, and can be applied like flubber miraculously to any situation. If only the moral climate of the world would conform to the logic of his metallurgy and handsomeness.
It’s all just impossible and makes me sick to my stomach. And the book gets sicker and sicker.
I need recovery.
I’m not halfway through this Atlatean Slog, and I’m already deflated. I like to believe that the inner humanist in me is indomitable and resilient; I take pride in this quality of mine. I am not the sharpest tack, the clearest-eyed critic, the purist hearted, but I believe in other people. Not all people, all of the time. But in the potential of humanity. This doesn’t mean I have some drippy, mealy, sappy, soppy view of the wonderfulness inherent in every precious individual. But that there is as much worth in collaboration as their is in competition and individual achievement. It is a simple observation that people have differing abilities, and differing strengths and weaknesses, and these attributes complement each other as much as they hinder. It is a facile, 14 year old, Marilyn Manson-listening, worldview that sees the world in heroes and parasites; and Ayn Rand’s pedantic screed that masquerades as narrative is, 400 pages in, one that seems purely that of a 14 year old.
Ah. Marilyn Manson. One of the few international celebrities that is openly a member of the The Church of Satan!
It reads “we’re looking for a few outstanding individuals.”
Indeed, Dark Lord, isn’t that all the world needs? A dark-eyed man of vision; Satan, in lieu of Rand, hold my hand down that rocky path towards…
Okay…get a grip! Maybe I’m looking for solace in the wrong place. Embracing Satan instead of my fellow man; Aleister Crowley instead of The Dalai Lama; Neil Pert instead of Gandhi. [Oh, wait, Neil Pert is a big Randian. Makes sense. Outside of Marilyn Manson, the best artists are associated with Satan (I’m paraphrasing Bart Simpson here)]. Anyhow, how much worse can it be to be a Satanist than a Randian? Let’s look at The Official Church of Satan’s “11” commandments, and then pose, facilely, that Rand and her coterie hashed it out over cocktail napkins:
1. Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.
2. Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.
3. When in another’s lair, show him respect or else do not go there.
4. If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy.
5. Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.
6. Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.
7. Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.
8. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.
9. Do not harm little children.
10. Do not kill non-human animals unless you are attacked or for your food.
11. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.
At this silly egoist mixer, the points of contention might be numbers, seven (obviously), nine, and possibly ten: I can imagine Rand saying with her rational cigarette burning at the end of cigarette holder: “Hm-mm. I don’t think I can go along with them.” She coughs out some rational smoke, and we’re not sure if she is being sarcastic when she dismisses reticently: “I mean, who doesn’t love children?” Some titters in the room, but her face is fierce. “But let’s be reasonable, gentlemen. It might have some unforeseen consequences and I would have not part of that.” She ashes; and thus the schism: Satanists have no problem keeping “little children” out of the room during their blood rituals…but Objectivists? I’m not so sure. Pampering seems equated to hampering.
Any Satanists out there? Randians turned to Satan, or vice versa to verify or quash my suspicions? I’m not done examining this issue. I know that Rand can’t stand anything that has a whiff of the spiritual. According to the website “unexplainedstuff,” (what a pedigree!) Anton LeVey, the founder of The First Church of Satan, intends that:
The First Church of Satan does not recognize the existence of Satan as an actual being, but as a symbol representing materialism. The church emphasizes that the figure of Satan stands for an inner attitude, and it is never to be regarded as an object onto which human powers are projected in order to worship what is only human in an externalized form. In The Satanic Bible, Satanists are charged to Asay unto thine own heart, ‘I am my own redeemer.’ (Book IV, line 3.)
Rand seems to espouse pure rationality; but also selfish pursuits. Pure Randians would say this is nonsense; but I think as an outsider, comparing the Church of Satan and the Rand Worldview is amusing, if not illustrative. Satan is a symbol that manifests materialism. Isn’t that what Randians covet? Materialism? Dagny gladly accepts the jewelry Hand Rearden offers her. She accepts it because it is a symbol of a shared covetousness of material. Hank’s wife has no inkling of the magnitude of his accomplishments, his purest happiness: his super-human creations that have generated profit despite festering, looting maggots. The purity of the “inner attitude” of what is “human in an externalized form.” It seems to me that a hardcore Randian has a lot more in common with a proper Satanist than they may care to admit. We, indeed, we the living, Master Anton LaVey, are our own redeemers!
Of course, a Satanist might take umbrage in being associated with a sect of materialists whom have no rule against harming little children.
Descartes was not invited to this party
This isn’t about the book itself as much as it is about Rand and her own personal arrogance – because it is really so outstanding it must be mentioned. In the biographical information given about her in my copy of Atlas, at the back of the book, before other Penguin Classics are recommended, Rand is quoted as saying, “the only philosophical debt [she] acknowledge[s] is to Aristotle.”
I’m leaving a space after her statement so that the arrogance can really sink in. The only philosophy that has influenced her, a woman born in communist Russia, who clearly rebels against communism, a woman writing in the mid 20th century, who blatantly mocks the beginnings of structuralist theory, a woman who wrote, at the beginning of the longest effing monologue in the history of fiction, and I quote, “…for you, who are a human being, the question ‘to be or not to be’ is the question ‘to think or not to think'”.
In other words, human beings’ thinking and existing are intrinsically linked. Does that sound familiar to anyone? Does that sound like a philosophical debt? Why, yes, it does. I would allow her to argue that the negative influences (communism, structuralism) that she uses to work against do not have to count as debts, semantically speaking. But not only does she have the arrogance to make such a statement, she makes such a statement blatantly falsely.
And of course her only influence is Aristotle. It’s like when people say their favorite writer is Shakespeare – and it’s always bad writers who say this, I swear – are they saying that there haven’t been great writers for the last few hundred years? And are they actually implying that they are the next good writer since then?
That’s just a personal tangent-rant, but I really feel like it’s the same odious thing. And it’s why Rand is able to write the hero-myth story she writes, as I ranted about last post.
I’ve worn myself out a bit today (I’m recovering from an especially vomitous case of food poisoning last night) so I’m going to cut short here and pass the torch to lonely collectivist, should he feel inspired in that un-Randian way.
Detailorific
The Taggart Train rolls into Philadelphia with Rand’s, ahem, breathtaking descriptions of the industrial complex of Reardon Steel – of which the passengers (those idiots) literally “could not grasp the complexity” – just as the first heat of Reardon Metal is being poured, and I wonder, “what’s wrong with this picture?”…
Oh, that’s right, PITTSBURGH is the steel city, not Philadelphia… Hence the Steelers (from Pittsburgh, not Philly), Iron City beer (from Pittsburgh, not Philly), and, well, the general lack of steel industry in Philadelphia as compared to Pittsburgh in general…
Hmph.
This lack of “attention to detail” isn’t surprising, considering Rand is launching an economic and social theory that lacks any sort of practical application, due in part to the total lack of consideration of details like, for example, what would happen if single individuals didn’t really invent, and then physically create, and then mass produce all of their own ingenious projects, in a vacuum, independent of everything and everyone else in the world…
Let’s take Hank Reardon and his metal as a case in point.
Hank Reardon is a genius. Not only is he the inventor of Reardon Metal, which lonely collectivist has already explained is good, not bad, but Reardon is also so powerful that he even controls natural elements. Literally. “…every inch of [the metal], every pound of its pressure and the content of every molecule within it, were controlled and made by a conscious intention that had worked upon it for ten years.” (I’ll talk about the always fun man vs nature battle that Rand has embedded in her storyline in another post, but here I want to talk about his vacuum-packed individuality before I get too distracted.)
From what Rand tells us, Reardon spent ten long years working working working in his laboratory (in addition to neglecting/disdaining his family and running his regular steel business) alone, with only a “small staff” that “waited for instructions like soldiers” despite having “already exhausted their ingenuity” and doubting the possibility of Reardon Metal in general. Despite Dagny continuing the work laid buy her ancestor Nat, and despite Reardon, later in the story, making awed reference to the people who invented/built something or the other, which made something or the other else possible, each of the achievers in this story works and exists in a vacuum. Their inventions are not connected to other developments that preceded them, they are simply new and transcendent. (And, in some ways, or at least described by Rand as, a final step to greatness, which is basically against everything Rand is trying to argue for.) The inventors of these totally independent and ground-breaking inventions are also the builders of these inventions, in the most solitary way possible. Dagny organizes and runs and schedules and plans and god-knows-what-else a national railroad completely unaided (despite Eddie carrying out her every command and the people she relies on for materials and the people she relies on to form the materials into railroad tracks…); Reardon invented and then physically implemented Reardon Metal all on his own (despite his small army of hand-selected scientists, the people who actually run the machines that pour the metal, anyone who ever worked in metallurgy, the people who extract the ore for him or ship said ore to him or in any way collaborate in his tremendous factories which he apparently runs entirely buy his own wits); Galt’s invention (I know I’m getting ahead of myself – I promise not to give anything away) was ideated, manifested and applied by Galt and Galt alone… The list goes on. In terms of personal support, Reardon actually decides during this first scene with his family that he does not “need any person as part of his life” which sounds, frankly, like a joke lonely collectivist and I have talked about a bit.
Psychologists have argued for [insert long time period here] that social support networks not only improve but also lengthen lives, positive feedback in group settings promotes initiative and self-valuation, and that collaboration in general promotes innovation. They have also, interestingly, classified loners with an inflated sense of themselves and a lack of ability to sympathize with others as sociopaths. Hmmmmm.
arrrrrrgh! Twitter suspended our twitter account.
Not sure what happened. I started off by following all the followers of leninology.blogspot.com, known as “Lenin’s Tomb,” and everything was fine. And then I started following the 500 followers of thismodernworld.com–that’s Tom Tomorrow’s blog. I was also following some random right-wing twitterers just to see what they were up to. I don’t understand why I was blocked. I sent an email asking what I did wrong. There were about a hundred followers at leninology, the twitter account of a UK-based, very liberal blogger. I found some interesting people, and had some good exchanges that way. That experiment went well, so I decided to try it on a larger blog that I liked. Tom Tomorrow’s blog was the first blog I ever got addicted to. During the first GW term I was feeling a lot of despair and his blog, and then subsequently atrios and dailykos became daily shelters for a liberal refugee. I thought that his big fans would be following his twitter account, and they would be the kind of people I would like to connect with. (Connect with, make a digital community, etc.)
I’m not sure if there is a conspiracy against sarcastic twittering about Ayn Rand or not. Maybe I should just start another account.
But I wonder. Are the founders and stewards of twitter rabid Ayn Randians? They let all sorts of leftwingers twitter away. Of course, it was the Republicans, after the Obama victory, who were talking about how they need to get on twitter. What is the relationship between twittering and collectivism?* Maybe there is something attractive to “individualists” about twitter. Something about crystal blue-eyed visionaries banding together, shooting off their twitchy, curt nuggets of visionary-genius, ADHD style. It’s all about WHO you follow. You can’t just follow anyone you want, apparently. Why should it be anyone’s business whom I follow?
The tone of the letter I received was somewhat chilling, in the dystopian fashion of Brazil; a sanitary and socialist, or a corporatized missive:
Hi there, Helmut Doring!
This is an automated response to share reasons why Twitter suspends accounts for investigation; we’re currently reviewing your request. If you’ve already sent in the information requested at bottom, there is no need to send it again.
Twitter suspends accounts for Terms of Service violations or spam investigation. (Please visit your own profile page to make sure you’re actually suspended and not viewing someone else’s suspended profile page.) If you are suspended, it’s most likely for one or more of these reasons::
User Abuse
* a large number of people block the profile or write in with spam complaints
* aggressive following
* imbalanced ratio: the number of followers is small compared to number of people following
* misuse of the reply feature
* updates consist of duplicate links and/or text
* updates consist mainly of links and not personal updates
* updates consist of updates poached from others’ timelines, passed off as one’s ownTechnical Abuse
* updates consist of links pointing to phishing sites, malware, or other harmful material
* a large number of accounts is created in a short amount of time
* an account is identified as belonging to a spam clusterWhen this happens, we suspend the account for investigation and hide the contents from the public view in order to remove the cause of complaint.
It’s important to us that the Twitter community receives only the content they’d like to receive. While we do welcome feed-based accounts, we discourage aggressive following and other tactics that will alarm people.
If you feel you’ve been suspended in error, please reply to this email with a short explanation if you haven’t already, and don’t forget to include your user name.
Thanks,
Twitter Support
This is kind of like when the insurance company refuses you for whatever reason. The individualists who oppose a welfare state might say that well, if I don’t like twitter’s service, I can just CHOOSE something else. But I can’t CHOOSE something else. My only CHOICE is Rearden Metal. And since the visionairies have determined that Rearden Metal is perfect, I have no fallback except the old technology. Boring old blog technology. But I guess I should just be happy that the visionairies made twitter technology, and that the government doesn’t nationalize the technology so that poor people can get ahold of it.
Well, it’s all very confusing for this dumb secular humanist collectivist; but it does seem that my problem is that I was following too many people. I was being a leech. I have to build my following. I have to build my twitter account on the merit of my twittering. I got greedy. Or I wasn’t greedy enough. Arrrrrrgh!
* Note that I think that the collectivist/individualist dichotomy is, if not merely outmoded, possibly a false one. The new social media might be showing us in new ways how silly these ideas are.
Rearden Metal is infallible. How do we know Rearden Metal is infallible? It was made by Hayek Rearden, competent human being. The man who shoulders the burden of his family and other hangers-on without noticing it (even though he DOES notice it.) Dagny Taggart knows Rearden Metal is infallible. How does she know? She’s seen the lab results.
Of course, as a lover of fiction and good stories (particularly the depressing and bitter ones), I’m wondering what would be an interesting plot twist. Here’s three that would redeem this book, IMO:
1.) Rearden Metal is actually really shoddy. When put into use, the material is discovered to cause everyone headaches. Hank Rearden is so unapproachable and unsociable because he has suffered brain damage from all of his metallurgical experiments. The tracks are built and the magical “glow” of the tracks wilt the vegetation and pollute the streams. Okay, that’s a bit too predictable.
2.) Rearden Metal is a brilliant success, at FIRST. But because it is an alloy–not a refined, elemental metal, there are eccentricities that emerge in its real-world use. After fifty years of use, it becomes flamable and as EVERYTHING is made of Rearden Metal a worldwide hellflaming holocaust results as factories, skyscrapers and nuclear powerplants go up in flames: The world ITSELF goes Galt on humanity, cleansing it of the lice that assume human form. A tribe of supermen and women band together and reform the world into a utopia; the moochers die out as they have only their mooching ways of living. As it turns out, when Rearden Metal is thoroughly decayed and burnt out what remains is a pure, almost alchemical metal substance from which the supermen and superwoman create a gated-Geodesic bubble-metropolis–moocher-free. Rearden Metal is good, when cleansed of its impurities!
3.) I heard a writer give advice on constructing plot: she said think of two possibilities. These are the likely things. Then think of a third one. The third one will be the one no one expects. So I will attempt my third plot twist. When the Rearden Metal is not laid out, Hank Rearden, who was suffering from manic-depression, goes wildly mad, but Dagny and Lillian work to cover up his madness. In secret, he gets shock treatment. Dagny has to shoulder the burden of keeping his parasitical family afloat. She does it, but Rearden’s investors give her the shaft because of all the bad press about Rearden Metal–of which no one has ever seen in action. This is the point. We never find out if Rearden Metal is any good. Dagny had actually defrauded Taggart Transcontinental when she went on to build her John Galt line. She goes into hiding with Francisco and returns under an assumed name. She ends up killing a senator that was hindering the legislation; and gets Rearden metal approved and financed. Anyhow, we find out the Ellis Wyatt has a new alloy too (stolen? reverse engineered? not sure) and he gets a workaround from an insider in the State Science Institute to start building lines in Colorado. The book ends with the police tearing Dagny from Francisco’s arms as she’s taken to Canon City on a Taggart Transcontinental on freshly built new tracks to await her execution. A sort of Anna Karenina meets In Cold Blood.
Somehow I don’t think it will end up like this. Rearden Metal is perfect because it was perfected by a perfect man.
Edit: Got Francisco’s name wrong. And an update: I have since found out that Hank Rearden has invented a workaround; he’s invented some kind of new bridge. This is very much bad science fiction; science as magic etc.
A Riddle
How, exactly, do individualists band together and remain individualists? Isn’t a “group of individualists” an oxymoron?
Inspired by the humor of my early morning riddle (okay, it’s not so early, but I was awakened by someone else’s alarm much earlier than I wanted to be awake on this sunday morning, AND it’s hour change day here which is one of my least favorite days of the year), I found this amusing information about some disadvantages of being an individualist. Apparently, individualist tend to problem drinking more than non-individualists, according to what I’m sure is a very reliable medical website.
“We looked at the extent to which consumer levels of individualism (vs. collectivism) were related to their beer and problem alcohol consumption,” write authors Yinlong Zhang and L.J. Shrum (both University of Texas-San Antonio).
“We found that the higher a region scored on valuing individualism, the greater their beer and alcohol consumption, and this was true even when taking into account the effects of other variables such as income, climate, gender, and religion.”
Also, the Huffington post offers another charming insight, about the relationship between individualism and, surprisingly (or not), dictatorship:
But the ideal American hero is a loner, and hence, a loser. We celebrate the Cowboy, incapable of cooperating with anyone, and hence no threat to those in power. Action movies are full of them–lone Rambos and Bonds, blasting away at the enemy, heroic in the movies, utterly ineffectual In real life.
One reason Americans are so confused on this issue is because authoritarians of every stripe–in the military, in schools, in bureaucratic corporations, in mafia movies–use the word ‘cooperation’ as a euphemism for obedience.
The original op-ed piece by David Brooks can be found here
It’s based on an Eastern-Western divide (China vs America here) that feels a bit categorical, but it makes some interesting points.
Scientists have delighted to show that so-called rational choice is shaped by a whole range of subconscious influences, like emotional contagions and priming effects (people who think of a professor before taking a test do better than people who think of a criminal). Meanwhile, human brains turn out to be extremely permeable (they naturally mimic the neural firings of people around them). Relationships are the key to happiness. People who live in the densest social networks tend to flourish, while people who live with few social bonds are much more prone to depression and suicide.
So, in the nature of the histrionic and extreme binaries that Rand loves to base her decision-making process on, Individualists can either commit suicide or go Galt?
No comment.
Shruggers: Don’t give away the ending!
Hi! I’m rrrrrreading Ayn Rand’s urrrrrr-text Atlas Shrugged. It’s a tale of people, trains, buildings, money, intrigue….OH GOD I can’t keep the charade up anymore. I HATE IT. I’m halfway through part one and it just makes me want to puke. Why does this have to be so gut-wrenching? Why can’t I just swallow it and then reflect thoughtfully afterwards. Okay. Let’s take a breather.
Atlas Shrrrrrrruged is one of the books I that I knew I’d have to rrrrrread someday. There are people in my life for whom I care for very deeply for who have a very high regard for this humongous chunker of purply pulpy prrrrrrrose and GOD…;
Take a breath! Take a big suck of sweet air and just chill out.
My pseudonym is lonely collectivist. I brainstormed a bunch of names and my co-blogger horracious loquacious decided it was the best one. I like it. Especially after googling it…;
Meet the lonely conservative.
And I quote:
What is to become of this great nation of ours? What have we become?
Has the individual been kicked to the curb once and for all? Have the collecticists finally won?
I believe that as long as rugged individuals exist the collectivists will fail. They may make things more difficult for us, but I truly believe we will prevail in the long run. What do you think?
As long as the rugged individualists stick together, they can’t fail. Okay. Lots of cheap shots coming from me. (And possibly coming back at me after all the trackbacks and google analytics have registered). I’m really aiming low to start with. I see my role on this blog as Flavor Flav to harocious loquacious’ Chuck D. We flatter ourselves. Collectivists with big egos. Can you believe it? Of course we have the real egos. We know what’s the best for other people. The individualists know that’s what best for us is to not tell what other people should do.
That’s libertarians for you – anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
–Kim Stanley Robinson
Okay, that’s a bit of overstatement. But I believe in the power of overstatement to break ground and find buried truths. Here’s another KSR quote:
You can’t get any movement larger than five people without including at least one flippin idiot.
–Kim Stanley Robinson
This is along the lines of Mark Twain’s remark about clubs that would allow him as a member. Speaking of which, I am on the Libertarian Party mailing list. They keep on telling me that I need to protect my assets. Protect my ASSets. There’s a pun in there! 911 is a joke, and that’s no joke.
I seriously doubt horacious loquacious has read any Kim Stanley Robinson. Kim Stanley Robinson is a science fiction writer. I used to read a lot of SF, and I loved his books. And unlike, say, a Robert Heinlein (“An arrrrrrmed society is a polite society”) or an Orson Scott Card (Arrrrrrrrrgh!), he is sympathetic to the ideals of socialism. If not downright communist. But in his MARRRRRRRRS trilogy he never talked about the virtues of being collective outright until the third, and least interesting book “Green Mars”. (RED MARS, GREEN MARS, BLUE MARS; I’m hoping that he gets around to a sequel trilogy: Purple Mars, Yellow-Green Mars and Chartreuse/Chiffon Mars.)
So, I’m only 1/10ths of way through Atlas Shrugged; don’t tell me the ending. Okay, I know the ending. It’s famously awful among the liberal bloggers whom I read regularly. But I don’t know how many of them have actually read the thing. I’m actually reading the thing. John Galt’s famous 60 page raynt on the virtues of being selfish is the reward I get for reading a thousand pages of talk of looters and parasites and competent people and the vermin bureacrats who stand in their way. This is just my initial read. Stephen Colbert did everyone a service, except myself, because he gave away the ending:
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word – Rand Illusion | ||||
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(embedding doesn’t seem to work, but click on through for the video)
Before this, there was this article from the Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2009,
‘Atlas Shrugged’: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years
Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read “Atlas Shrugged” a “virgin.” Being conversant in Ayn Rand’s classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only “Atlas” were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I’m confident that we’d get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.
Again there was a lot of tittering about this in the liberal blogosphere (its unironic tone begs for tittering); but there are people who take this stuff seriously. Some of them I know, some of them are running the world economy. (I don’t think there is any overlap in these last two groups of people, however!)
So why are we doing this blog? I don’t know yet; I haven’t finished reading Atlas Shrugged. And don’t give away the ending!
Post Script: I have been going Galt for years at a time. But in my day we called it as it was: Slacking. I’m a master. Libertarians: contact me if you want any advice on how to go Galt. Here’s a tip: Learn how to make your own refried beans. It is seriously delicious, and seriously cheap.
Variation on (a) Theme
theme
| 1. | a subject of discourse, discussion, meditation, or composition; topic: The need for world peace was the theme of the meeting. |
| 2. | a unifying or dominant idea, motif, etc., as in a work of art. |
| 3. | a short, informal essay, esp. a school composition. |
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