"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."<p>– John Rogers
Gore Vidal wrote my favorite summation of Ayn Rand:<p><pre><code> This odd little woman is attempting to give a moral sanction to greed and self interest, and to pull it off she must at times indulge in purest Orwellian newspeak of the "freedom is slavery" sort. What interests me most about her is not the absurdity of her "philosophy," but the size of her audience (in my campaign for the House she was the one writer people knew and talked about). She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the "welfare" state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts. For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you're dumb or incompetent that's your lookout.
…For to justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil. For one thing, it is gratuitous to advise any human being to look out for himself. You can be sure that he will. It is far more difficult to persuade him to help his neighbor to build a dam or to defend a town or to give food he has accumulated to the victims of a famine. But since we must live together, dependent upon one another for many things and services, altruism is necessary to survival. To get people to do needed things is the perennial hard task of government, not to mention of religion and philosophy. That it is right to help someone less fortunate is an idea which ahs figured in most systems of conduct since the beginning of the race. We often fail. That predatory demon "I" is difficult to contain but until now we have all agreed that to help others is a right action.
… Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life a right action is consideration for the welfare of others. In the one case, through a state which was to wither away, in the other through the private exercise of the moral sense. Miss Rand now tells us that what we have thought was right is really wrong. The lesson should have read: One for one and none for all.
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I don’t know whose or what philosophy it is but I try to live by “don’t be an asshole”. By extension, “don’t associate with assholes whenever possible” guides my daily life. Sometimes, I can’t, so “work allows me to do what I like” helps lessen the sting.<p>I’m also far too lazy and unskilled to write satire and admittedly not really patient enough to read it.
Nowhere near as funny as the very seasonally appropriate "It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers."<p>-- <a href="https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/its-decorative-gourd-season-motherfuckers" rel="nofollow">https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/its-decorative-gourd-sea...</a>
I've often been surprised by how many women are fans of Atlas Shrugged but I guess having a female main character written by a woman has something to do with it as the philosophical themes usually aren't aligned with those reader's ideological preferences. Male Ayn Rand fans much more frequently prefer The Fountainhead, which also features strong female characters but is told from a male's perspective. No idea if this is just a reflection of people I know or true in the larger societal context.
Is it satire? It reads like a narcissism-rationalizing shitpost in the spirit of "throwing trash on the ground creates jobs". There is quite a difference in culture between US military families and Europeans on one-side and "It's all about me" on the other.
i cant think of any successful/stable long term civilization/tribe/country/society/city state that is based on this concept.<p>might work if you're a hermit or lone monk.
Seems like the author satirically argues against Objectivism by putting up lack of charity and generosity as a straw man characterization to attack. He completely ignores the fact that taxation is collected irrespective of goodwill attitude, and under the threat of force (violence/jail).<p>I frankly would have hoped the argument was not a straw man and that he argued against the actual essence of the philosophy of Objectivism. Instead of taking the cheap way out to argue against a mere peripheral unfortunate potential consequence of it (when taken to an extreme).
Most people who have a dislike for Atlas Shrugged have a poor understanding due to having only engorged themselves on satire about the book, poor rendered assumptions about the nature of the messages written by enraged people who take offense at what I can only assume stems from seeing themselves as part of the groups which Rand disparages (collectivism) and frankly tend to have never read the book in its entirety let alone anything else written by her to have a sense of the ongoing themes and an improvement to her writing style.<p>the book inspires the idea of individual potential....which if you have no personal desire to achieve tends to enrage and put one on the defence, but for those who have a spark of fire they get inspired.<p>I like the book, and would love to have an honest discourse on its flaws that is equally willing to acknowledge the depths of its actual arguments and the strengths of propositions when taken into account the underlying presumptions that are at the heart of the novel. It is a novel after all and not an academic treatise which many liken it to because of the marketing.