It has been a long time since I read the book, but I don’t think Rand even acknowledges “society”. What is good for the individual is… good. Period. Because in her world, all there are is a bunch of free individuals. Society, if the word has any meaning to her, is just the sum total of the people that make it up, and not some sort of emergent phenomenon with its own needs and desires.
While she championed individualism, it was in the form that each person act in their enlightened self-interest. The idea is that one should think about what would serve one best and work toward it. This does not ignore others or society. It requires one to understand that the reality is that they exist in and around others. And that society effects them. While a Randian character would bristle of having money taken from him for something as nebulous as the “common good”, he’d be happy to pay for an efficient sanitation department. She asks people to think what would best benefit them individually, and then to work intelligently and efficiently. She wouldn’t give a dime to public schools that fail repeatedly, but she probably would be generous with private schools, even charter schools. Very often I see people portray her position as one in which it’s greed, and greed right now. This is not correct. She would advocate each of us using our talents to do as well as we possibly can. But she certainly wouldn’t restrict benefits to the short term. Keep in mind that some of her heroes, the industrialists, work for years and years to reach an objective. In Fountainhead, Roark walks away from lucrative opportunities because he finds it more personally fulfilling to do manual labor at a quarry.
That’s a little rambling, but I hope it helps.
Ayn Rand has only one philosophy on that subject: Let them eat cake! Her attitude is “I’m rich, why can’t you be?”
That is simply incorrect. For some people, they should strive to be rich, because that is where their talents lie. And we should get out of there way because these people will then create opportunities for others. Each of those people can then strive to toward excellence in whatever they choose to do. In whatever makes them most happy. I’d say a closer short summation by one of her characters would be: “I’m great at something, you are, too. Go find it and work at it—passionately. That will be a favor to both you and society.”
Implying that Gates is a brilliant programmer makes baby Linus cry. The battle back then was not between Microsoft and Apple, but between IBM and Apple. The 1984 ad was directly targeted at IBM.
The Intel museum has an exhibit (or did when I worked there) about the most important sales call ever - when they convinced IBM to go with them over the technically superior Motorola processor. Whoever won the OS business would be sitting pretty, and probably have a monopoly, though it is possible there would be open standards and that it wouldn’t have taken over 20 years for the OS to become secure and of acceptable quality.
I do have a question about the books, since I am way too old to devote a good portion of my remaining years to reading those boat anchors. Does Rand content that the creative will always rise to the top - that they won’t be thwarted by the less creative above them? And does she assume a bimodal distribution of creativity (or trimodal, perhaps.) I’d think that in the real world, no matter where the strike cutoff was there would be people just below who could do the jobs, and people thwarted by idiots who would prosper, just like the mammals did when the dinosaurs got zapped.
And it also blurs the fact that started with very little.
By the time she wrote AS she had a lot going for her, but she struggled for years as a writer and a seamstress in Hollywood.
She was not only not middle class, she was lower class and came from near poverty conditions in Russia. Her family had been well off, but the family business her father owned was confiscated in the Bolshevik Revolution.
I’ll attempt to answer this. Creativity really isn’t the most important quality, except in jobs that require it. It is a theme in The Fountainhead because the protagonist, Roark, is an architect. Other jobs, for instance when he reverts back to being a laborer in a quarry, do not reward creativity, but hard work, strength, etc. Roark enjoys this life because there is no impediment inserted between the job he knows he can do and the end result. Bu the way, this speech at the end of the book is a good exploration of intellectual property.
Yes. There’s a powerful scene in We the Living (somewhat autobiographical) in which the state comes to her house and confiscates all be the necessities. If there are three people living there, but they have more than three chairs, the extra chairs are confiscated on the spot. In the book when she is about ten, her family’s furniture is confiscated in this way, as are even her clothes. They leave her with a dress or two. The next day she is in her classroom, and a representative of the state comes in and doles out her favorite dress to another little girl. The girl knows whose it is and what it means to her, but has no choice but to take it because she needs it. It was an incredibly crushing scene
I’m sorry, but I don’t follow this at all. People can do all sorts of things well … it does not follow that they can do all things well, or that they can do them well if they are constantly having to defend themselves.
If you re-read what I wrote you will see that I didn’t actually say he was a ‘brilliant programmer’. What I actually said was ‘And I think Gates had a larger part in driving MS to become what it became than you are giving him credit for. There have been lots of brilliant programmers in the last 3 decades…yet there are few rivals to MS or Apple today…and no one on the horizon that I can see who will shift, change or create a new market on the personal computer side of things.’ and ‘Still, if it wasn’t Gates then it would have had to have been someone equally driven and brilliant…which sort of gets back to the core issue. It wouldn’t have just sprung up fully formed by the will of the people…’.
A close reading of this will show you that I said Gates was brilliant…but no where did I mention his programming skills. Do you deny that Gates was brilliant or that he was instrumental in the formation of Microsoft?
-XT
Well, we certainly disagree about the philosophy behind the book. But what we are discussing is the content of the book. You said you agreed with Hentor and ITR’s summation of the book, and I was pointing out that Hentor especially has a flawed understanding of the CONTENT of the book.
We can certainly debate how applicable the book is both in it’s original content and the context of it’s time and today. Those are areas where there is a vast area for disagreement, as I have always freely conceded. I’m a Rand fan, but I’m no fanatic about it and I also concede that there is a lot to the books I also find unrealistic and tedious at times. Atlas Shrugged is definitely not my favorite book by Rand…or even in my top 20 favorite books of all time.
I agree that it’s possible to come away with a different understanding…but Hentor was claiming some things that are fundamentally and diametrically different than any reading of the book I’ve EVER seen (like claiming the book is about a caste system instead of a meritocracy…that’s, well, just crazy, and even a cursory understanding of the book would show that to be flawed).
And that’s fine. I can certainly agree that some (perhaps most) people would find it that way. I’m not arguing with anyone here about their thoughts on the book…simply trying to clarify some of the grosser mis-characterizations going on, in case someone in the peanut gallery is interested and wants a clearer assessment of the book and what it’s about. For anyone following along, read the Fountainhead first…if you like that THEN try and slog through Atlas Shrugged.
-XT
Missed this (though furt answered it already):
As furt said, definitely not…in fact one of her themes is that those with merit are in many cases thwarted from rising to the top by a sometimes indifferent society. In Fountainhead one of the greatest sculptors of his time pretty much languishes in obscurity…and after getting his big chance is basically panned by a group of people who definitely don’t want people of merit or ability to rise to the top. The main character also languishes for years doing either menial jobs or taking architect jobs for gas stations and the like…while a person of much less ability is lifted to the top of his profession, given the best jobs (with an emphasis on ‘given’), fame, fortune, etc etc.
If you are actually interested, Fountainhead isn’t quite a boat anchor…and you can get it on unabridged audio either on CD or at several download sites. It’s worth listening too, even if you don’t agree with the philosophy. I’d steer clear of AS though.
-XT
That’s good advice. I might go even further and suggest they read We The Living First. Some consider it her best novel. and it’s certainly less weighty.
Yes, I definitely liked that one too.
-XT
You know, you remind me of that teacher I had in high school. She was like totally insistent that Huckleberry Finn was about race, even though the book had no black characters in it. You people are so arrogant.
I’m a network engineer…I’m arrogant enough for 3.
ETA: And Huck Finn was definitely about sex…
-XT
You’re right. John Guilt just needs a friend who can bake the best cakes, perform amazing feats of mentalism, and is a master of wing chun kung fu and assault rifles, but is being held back by people who are forcing him to perform in the circus through complicated tax laws. But since it isn’t guaranteed John Guilt will meet this guy, being busy with the revolution and all, probably we do need a government in the end.
:eek: I can’t believe I just saw this thread! But xtisme has done such a fine job that I’m almost glad I wasn’t in here mucking it up for him. Alright, I’m on board now though, let’s do this thing.
Also, on the subjet of which book to start with, pick up Anthem–you can read it in an afternoon. There’s adventure and sex and a hot chick and sci-fi stuff–it’s a good little intro into the Aynster.
My bad – I thought you might have had a coherent point to make. I’m guessing this means not.
The point to make is that we don’t need to defend our stuff ourselves, we can contract with others to help us in this task, just like we don’t need to know how to create steel and have our own refinery to design a superior engine, or master economy of phrasing to create a speech that millions of people will read. Somehow minarchists feel that people are masters of everything right up until they have to defend their property, at which point they are incompetent and require a government, but defending property is a service like any other service. I don’t understand the inconsistency, and never have.