10 Things I Learned About the World from Ayn Rand's Insane "Atlas Shrugged'

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/top-10-lessons-strange-mirror-universe-ayn-rands-atlas-shrugged




1. All evil people are unattractive; all good and trustworthy people are handsome.

The first and most important we learn from Atlas Shrugged is that you can tell good and bad people apart at a glance. All the villains — the "looters," in Rand's terminology — are rotund, fleshy and sweaty, with receding hairlines, sagging jowls and floppy limbs, while her millionaire industrialist heroes are portraits of steely determination, with sharp chins and angular features like people in a Cubist painting. Nearly all of them are conspicuously Aryan. Here's a typical example, the steel magnate Hank Rearden:

The glare cut a moment's wedge across his eyes, which had the color and quality of pale blue ice — then across the black web of the metal column and the ash-blond strands of his hair — then across the belt of his trenchcoat and the pockets where he held his hands. His body was tall and gaunt; he had always been too tall for those around him. His face was cut by prominent cheekbones and by a few sharp lines; they were not the lines of age, he had always had them; this had made him look old at twenty, and young now, at forty-five.

2. The mark of a great businessman is that he sneers at the idea of public safety.

When we meet Dagny Taggart, Rand's heroic railroad baron, she's traveling on a cross-country train which gets stuck at a stoplight that may or may not be broken. When the crew frets that they should wait until they're sure it's safe, Dagny pulls rank and orders them to drive through the red light. This, in Rand's world, is the mark of a heroic and decisive capitalist, rather than the kind of person who in the real world would soon be the subject of headlines like "22 Dead in Train Collision Caused by Executive Who Didn't Want to Be Late For Meeting."

***SNIP

3. Bad guys get their way through democracy; good guys get their way through violence.

The way the villains of Atlas Shrugged accomplish their evil plan is ... voting for it. One of the major plot elements of part I is a law called the Equalization of Opportunity Bill, which forces large companies to break themselves up, similarly to the way AT&T was split into the Baby Bells. It's passed by a majority of Congress, and Rand never implies that there's anything improper in the vote or that any dirty tricks were pulled. But because it forces her wealthy capitalist heroes to spin off some of their businesses, it's self-evident that this is the worst thing in the world and could only have been conceived of by evil socialists who hate success.

***SNIP

4. The government has never invented anything or done any good for anyone.

In Rand's world, all good things come from private industry. Everyone who works for the government or takes government money is either a bumbling incompetent or a leech who steals credit for the work of others. At one point, the villainous bureaucrats of the "State Science Institute" try to sabotage Rand's hero Hank Rearden by spreading malicious rumors about his new alloy:

"If you consider that for thirteen years this Institute has had a department of metallurgical research, which has cost over twenty million dollars and has produced nothing but a new silver polish and a new anti-corrosive preparation, which, I believe, is not so good as the old ones — you can imagine what the public reaction will be if some private individual comes out with a product that revolutionizes the entire science of metallurgy and proves to be sensationally successful!"

[Squinch]

1. Also, writers of books that excoriate government assistance end their lives completely dependent

on government assistance.

[exboyfil]

2. Absolutes are always an issue

but some more consideration on a few of the points:

4. The government has never invented anything or done any good for anyone.

While it is not a perfect analogy, consider the human genome project. Craig Venter was able to accomplish something comparable to the NIH with 1/10th of the resources (all supplied by private business). In some cases institutions need to be shaken up.

6. All natural resources are limitless.

In a sense, unfortunately for AGW considerations, we have effectively been able to uncap oil wells with fracking just like Wyatt.

What offended me most about Atlas Shrugged was the Deus Ex Machina that solved all the technological problems. Governments can be inefficient and horrible (Rand came from such a system) but the solution is not to leave the system and go to some magical Shangri-La but work to make government better within the system.

Rand herself is a very poor writer with a screwed up philosophy, but some of her observations about government out of control is spot on. For example she makes the same point in Anthem as Kurt Vonnegut made in Harrison Bergeron. The end of Anthem sucked (resolution is pretty much an analogy of the Europeans in America - we didn't build it but we will take it and hold it by force), but the story up to that point was pretty good.

[hatrack]

4. Yes, but Vonnegut made the point with humor, and 1,000 fewer pages . . .

.

[Crunchy Frog]

8. I'll take Vonnegut.

His works endorse things like compassion and empathy and altruism, while Rand treats altruism as "evil". He also recognizes that corporate power can be corrupted as well as government power. He's also readable.

[exboyfil]

9. Agree on all poiints

I did like Anthem though. Did not like Atlas Shrugged at all (too long and ridiculous). Parts of The Fountainhead were ok but overall not very well written (the love story is so painful).

[Paladin]

3. The only reason I don't regret the time I spent reading Rand's works years ago.....

....is how clearly I can now see the extent to which her sick philosophy has been adopted by conservative forces in this country. An evil woman who left behind an evil legacy.

[seveneyes]

5. There are many books of fiction in print

New ones are written every day.

[Democracyinkind]

6. Additionally...

It is not a good sex scene if there is no seizing of a woman's breasts from behind.

[Major Nikon]

7. Rand was a 3rd rate novelist and a 3rd rate philosopher

The only reason her works are so popular is because she's a sociopath preaching to the sociopathic choir. If you aren't a sociopath, you'll never get Atlas Shrugged. If you are, you'll think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread and you won't understand why everyone else who has actually read the book thinks you're a moran.

[ProfessorPlum]

10. Great article

anything that rags on this immoral, hideous book is a ok with me. I couldn't believe when I read it that _this_ was what all the fuss was about. Her characters are cardboard, her worldview based on hatred and poison.

[MisterP]

11. problem is, the crudest characters make the strongest impression

who do people prefer--Leopold Bloom or Bella Swan?; black and white is an asset for propaganda

and, yes, she hated everything Jesus stood for and made Alan Greenspan her sex slave--what of it? Reagan brought cocaine into the country, supported the Taliban and POL POT, amnestied illegal immigrants, banned Kalashnikovs--and now Jesus Himself is judged against him

[msanthrope]

12. "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and

Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." -

[HeiressofBickworth]

13. Like so many others, I read a couple of Rand books

in my teens. But unlike right-wingers who developed a fantasy world-view based on Rand's works, I understood, even as a teenager, that the works were fiction -- not real -- no connection to the real world -- and, of no value in governing a town, city, county, state or federal government or even in personal relationships. In other words, I never saw the point of those works of fiction and, frankly, I didn't find the story lines very interesting. So, to me, Rand-worshipers are suffering from stunted development; a juvenile failure to understand that "fiction" means not real.