zephyp wrote:Well I'm listening to Atlas Shrugged - about 60 hours altogether...after the first 7 hours I highly recommend this to anyone. If you get the book I recommend the unabridged version. Dark humor over a very serious them and definitely applicable to our present day situation. Get this as a Christmas gift for your progressive family members and friends -- if you have any...
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Thanks, but no thanks Mr Z, The mediocre and boring author, Ms. Rand has no appeal to me. I don't believe in cultists. What I don't understand is why so many here are so enamored with this atheist, who saw Christians and communists pretty much in the same light, feckless believers in a fantasy. Why the fascination with a person who had no use for libertarians, and who didn't think highly of democracy either? I have no respect for anyone who admired a serial killer to the extent that her main character's personality, John Galt, was patterned after him. Rand thought a sociopath, a guy who murdered and dissected a 12 year old girl for fun, exhibited the highest and best personal qualities. The qualities that make a man a hero.
There is no common good, no general welfare in Rand's world, there is only personal good. If her world view ever prevailed, it would be rule by oligarchs. The powerful over the powerless. The concept of motherhood, and a mother's sacrifice for children and family was foreign in Rand's world where devotion to self was always upper most in importance. Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Billy Graham, Desmond Tutu, union miners who gave their lives to secure safe working conditions, civil rights activists, WWI veterans marchers, Even Bill Gates, Ted Turner, and Warren Buffet who dedicated much of their hard earned fortunes to charity, and anyone else who cared for others more than self? Just another bunch of zeros, looters, parasites, and moochers.
How does one believe that the highest good is doing for yourself, and that the most important thing in life is making money. There is no common good, no general welfare in Rand's world, there is only personal good. If her world view ever prevailed, it would be rule by oligarchs. The powerful over the powerless. The concept of motherhood, and a mother's sacrifice for children and family was foreign in Rand's world where devotion to self was always upper most in importance. Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, union miners who gave their lives to secure safe working conditions, civil rights activists, the WWI veterans marchers, Even Bill Gates, Ted Turner, and Warren Buffet who dedicated much of their hard earned fortunes to charity, and anyone else who cared for others more than self? Just another bunch of zeros, parasites and moochers.
What about our all volunteer armed force, and the concept of selfless service? Just more chumps, more zeros in Rand's philosophy. You mean they sacrifice their needs and goals to serve their country? How foolish can you be. Obviously their failure to see money making as the best goal in life relegates them to the zero category. But then the powerful do need protectors. And troops who sacrifice their own lives to save their comrades? You guessed it more zeros.
By contrast, the likes of Bernie Maddoff, Enron's leaders, CEOs everywhere, and anyone who knows that greed is good. Yep, heroes all. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment compensation, GI Bill, and small business grant recipients to name a few are major looters, parasites and moochers.
Rand's world view is not surprising since it was burned into her mind, as a young girl, by the Russian Revolution where there were no good guys. Her assumptions about that world and Russian cultural mooring are at the heart of her beliefs. From her novels and philosophy, I don't see where she ever understood what made this country great. In that lack of understanding, she is typical of so many foreign born intellectuals who think that they, and the oligarchs are who made the country great. The vast unwashed masses, as you derisively called the average American, are about as significant as a grain of sand on a beach to Rand. Hers is just another variation of the great man theory of history.
Her philosophy, Objectivisim is ideological claptrap as so much of what passes for philosophy is. It fails because it assumes that human beings are first motivated by selfishness and are logical, reasoning, rational, objective organisms. Even a cursory view of history shows that's false. We, human kind, defy such simplistic descriptions. No philosophy, no social or economic theory explains humanity, the why and what we do, except after the fact, which is no explanation at all. I am however shocked that so many here are adherents of philosophy, an academic subject that has never made it big in America. Unlike what I thought, people here do believe in the Eastern intellectual elite.
She was an ardent proponent of "Laissez faire" economics, or economic Darwinism, the survival of the strongest. After this most recent economic downturn with its arrogance, malfeasance and outright stupidity who still believes this, which is based on the theory that markets are efficient. It's another theory that has never been proven, why? Simple, we humans ain't always rational. Examples are legion. We can and often do make decisions that are no way in our own interest, or that of our employer, our relationships, or the nation.
And how did her life end? If I use her definitions, at the end she was a hypocrite, a looter, a moocher, and a parasite. She became what she despised, one of those who sought and accepted help from government. In her struggle to beat cancer brought on by smoking 2 packs a day, she applied for and received Social Security and Medicare. For all of Rand's intellectual brilliance, she never understood that she smoked because she was addict, a nicotine accident. You see, like millions before and after her she believed the cigarette industry lie that smoking was not harmful, or addictive. Maybe her view that anti-smoking activists were zeros, and that government should not have interfered with the industry affected her judgment. On her deathbed, did this woman of no belief in faith, or the concept of altruism come to see how wrong she was? My guess is she did, impending death has a way of opening even the most uncaring, and disbelieving hearts.
For all the disagreements I often have with some here, what I have yet to see are people who lack faith, who are non-believers, and who in a sinking boat would think of self over family, and who worship the money God. It makes the belief in this prominent atheist all the more surprising.
Ask yourself, were it not for her other views, would you really waste your time to read this excessively long, boring book? No one ever uses the phrase "struggling to read" about any book that really holds our attention. No wonder the first installment of the movie's reviews characterized it about as exciting as a dead fish. But if you like your ideology wrapped in bad acting, the movie's producers will be happy to accept your cash.
Gat6
