Fear and Loathing

[wlotus]

I am reading Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, and the book is stirring anger and fear in me. I am about 1/4 through the book, and there is an overwhelming theme of mediocrity being rewarded, while those who do not walk in lockstep are pushed down until they surrender. When the person who is shining brighter than the rest does not quietly accept pleas from friends to step back, people in authority step in to create rules to force them to submit. The rules are created in back rooms and under tables, and the jealousy and hatred that fueled their creation are whitewashed...in this case with empty words about social responsibility and the need to even the playing field so everyone can achieve. Furthermore, those who do not fall in line are told they are selfish and wrong to fight the power.

Not only does this remind me of current political events in this country, it reminds me of some of my experiences in corporate America. I know it is just a book, but it is pushing all sorts of buttons.

Comments

[jane-etrix.livejournal.com]

o far, I don't understand Objectivism; I have looked at a couple of descriptions of it, but the words all run together after a moment or two and make no sense to me.

I don't think it makes a lot of sense in general. I can understand why parts of the book resonated, as parts of it resonate with me as well, but the big picture, even in the novel, is fatally flawed. I particularly object to the dismissal of subjectivity in matters of art, literature and music.

Ultimately, Francisco is wrong. It is easier to live in a society than be alone in the world. For instance, Reardon couldn't have produced his metal alone. He couldn't have mined or smelted the ore (assuming he even know how); he couldn't have run a production line on his own, and the back room deals of the industrialists in AS are just as problematic, in my opinion, as any other back room deal.

Just as the collectivists devalue the individual, the objectivists devalue the collective.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

Most big pictures are fatally flawed, in my opinion. No view is going to be perfect, have the answers for every person in every situation at every time. In that sense, Rand's philosophy is no more flawed than anyone else's.

It is not always easier to live in a society than to be alone in the world. There are plenty of times it would be easier for me to not have to deal with people and their attitudes, self-righteousness, lack of respect for opinions they don't want to hear, ulterior motives, pettinesses, and so on. Why is it so difficult to express an opinion and simply be heard; why must someone try to tear it down? Why don't people say what they mean and mean what they say at all times? Why do people lie about their intentions? Why don't people always get love when they give it? Why do those who are most open to others' idiosyncrasies get rejected for not being more average, more like everyone else? Every time I encounter these things in society, and I seem to have encountered them more frequently in the past five or six years, I experience cognitive dissonance that is like being dropped into icy water. (Maybe I am just more aware of it now than I had been.) It is painful and makes me want nothing more than to walk away from society altogether the way the various industrial leaders are doing in the half of the book I have finished.

Francisco is right. Not all of the time--no one is--but there is a lot of truth in what Rand says through his character.

[jane-etrix.livejournal.com]

I tend to think Objectivism is more flawed than most philosophies because it's predicted on a false assumption- i.e. people and/or the universe are/is rational. It's not that I think there's no truth in AS; it's just that the truths she presents are contextualized in such an unrealistic manner.

I understand why it's appealing. People can be annoying as hell, but again, Francisco doesn't mean "sometimes you just want to get away," a sentiment I would certainly share. Francisco (and Rand) are postulating that people like Reardon would be able to do what he did had be been alone, which is simply not possible.

Ultimately, since their only motive is profit and self-satisfaction, it seems to me their lives are pretty empty with or without other people.

It's still a fun book though.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

Francisco's point seems to be more along the lines of, "Why waste your energy dealing with this society? Go out and live your life, rather than spending your life trying to work inside of a system that makes no sense." The industrial leaders who left their businesses and didn't leave a trace of where they had gone were giving up the rat race, not necessarily giving up on interacting with society as a whole. The idea seems to be they were then free to live, rather than spending all of their energy to try to fight/change a corrupt system. (I am thinking of the philosopher who was working as a cook and seemed happy doing it.) Their disappearance from that society shows they were all too aware that had they left people ways to get in contact with them, they would not have been able to live in peace because of the demands on them from the circles they were trying to escape. Hence, the philosopher's disappearance once Dagny knew how to find him.

The message to me is there is something more important in life than trying to fit into that kind of society, and that something is life itself.

[jane-etrix.livejournal.com]

Francisco's point seems to be more along the lines of, "Why waste your energy dealing with this society? Go out and live your life, rather than spending your life trying to work inside of a system that makes no sense."

To my way of thinking, this is pretty much the same thing. The idea that the individual can simply divorce himself from society is, to me, nothing short of a very childish view of the world- and I do think Objectivism is childish. Again, Reardon (and Dagny, Francisco, etc.) did nothing alone; Reardon had a good idea, but he needed other people to help him realize it. Yet there is absolutely NO recognition of this reality in the book.

The industrialists were "free to live" before disappearing. They thought they couldn't live in a world that didn't appreciate their talents in the way they wanted to the world to appreciate them, and I'd have more sympathy for them had they not failed to appreciate all that others had done for them and/or the positions of privilege at which they started.

Again, to me, this is just the antithesis to the Communist ideals of a collectivist utopia, and in order to create the image of that utopia, the real world has to be presented in an unrealistic way.