Atlas Shrugged
04-17-2011, 10:49 AM
#1
mildly retarded
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Atlas Shrugged
Great movie! everyone should see it......especially you Libbys out there. I have yet to read the book, but that is in short order. The whole time I was watching it I could not get it out of my head that Rand wrote the damn book in the 50's!
04-17-2011, 11:16 AM
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its a great book - fiction. but gradually its been spun into philosophy and economic/business models somehow, if I remember it was during the reagan years it started to be politicized first. I'm not completely sure I buy the message that is most commonly spun today as the most direct message of the book. how would you sum up the message shizzy? her main philosophy I think is 'objectivism' and the main theme is that outside (government specifically) intervention will stifle the great minds of innovation, creativity (as encompassed in capitilistic terms at least) ultimately. personally I think it has little to do with reality - I don't believe the great minds and innovators are the least bit affected by policy of the past 50 years. obviously IMO. And for the 99.99999% of us who aren't the protagonists of the book, who knows the relevance.
04-17-2011, 12:08 PM
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its a great book - fiction. but gradually its been spun into philosophy and economic/business models somehow, if I remember it was during the reagan years it started to be politicized first. I'm not completely sure I buy the message that is most commonly spun today as the most direct message of the book. how would you sum up the message shizzy? her main philosophy I think is 'objectivism' and the main theme is that outside (government specifically) intervention will stifle the great minds of innovation, creativity (as encompassed in capitilistic terms at least) ultimately. personally I think it has little to do with reality - I don't believe the great minds and innovators are the least bit affected by policy of the past 50 years. obviously IMO. And for the 99.99999% of us who aren't the protagonists of the book, who knows the relevance.
Accretion of power in governments and the financial oligarchs who rule behind the scenes have caused the greatest minds and innovators to be pretty much co-opted by government and used to stifle ordinary people.
Just wail 'til the velvet glove comes off the iron fist of government here in the US and Canada.
Any time I read Rand I get the distinct aroma of elitism coming from the pages, but I am certain of this: big, powerful government is not now and has never been a friend to individual liberty and self determination. A corollary to that is that collectivism kills in incomprehensibly large numbers.
Last edited by killer5280; 04-17-2011 at 12:10 PM.
04-17-2011, 02:19 PM
#5
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It is a great read on many levels - several messages here. A really key one is the right to own property and that ones own intellect is ones own property. I first read it at 17 (a long time ago...) and I can't begin to describe the impact it had on me.
I haven't yet seen the movie, but I hope Galt's advice to Atlas was prominently show cased
I haven't yet seen the movie, but I hope Galt's advice to Atlas was prominently show cased
04-17-2011, 06:47 PM
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I read the book just last year, and it took me almost 6 months... reading just a few pages a night before bed. It's almost 1200 pages, yes, but each page is packed with fine print and the dialog between characters is run together, not separated into paragraphs. There's almost no blank space on the pages. This makes for a very slow read. Each page would equal 3 to 4 pages of your typical novel.
Plus, I read the hard cover version, and it weighs a ton.
Having said that, as I was reading I would come to spots in the book and go, "Oh my God, that is just like what's happening now". Such as government control of, and intervention in, businesses. And those who are able to work will work for the "common good", I.E. Each worker shares their earnings with those who are "unable" to work. Hard workers end up saying, "Why am I working so hard when others don't work at all, but have the same standard of living as me?". Those are just a couple of examples.
Some parts later in the book are pure fairy tale, but overall, to think that she wrote this during the Eisenhower years is pretty incredible to me.
Plus, I read the hard cover version, and it weighs a ton.
Having said that, as I was reading I would come to spots in the book and go, "Oh my God, that is just like what's happening now". Such as government control of, and intervention in, businesses. And those who are able to work will work for the "common good", I.E. Each worker shares their earnings with those who are "unable" to work. Hard workers end up saying, "Why am I working so hard when others don't work at all, but have the same standard of living as me?". Those are just a couple of examples.
Some parts later in the book are pure fairy tale, but overall, to think that she wrote this during the Eisenhower years is pretty incredible to me.
04-17-2011, 11:07 PM
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I haven't read "The Fountainhead", but I've seen the movie twice, Gary Cooper (one of my all time favorite actors, "High Noon" being my favorite film with him) and Patricia Neal play the lead roles.
If Ayn Rand were alive today and insisted that the John Galt speech in "Atlas Shrugged" be depicted in full, as she did with Roark's (Gary Cooper) speech in "The Fountainhead", it would take up at least 30 minutes of the film. I think it was something like 24 pages in the book and very hard to get through. There is a lot of redundancy in "Atlas Shrugged". Modern editors would cut the book down quite a bit. But overall, it's where we're headed if something doesn't change soon.
If Ayn Rand were alive today and insisted that the John Galt speech in "Atlas Shrugged" be depicted in full, as she did with Roark's (Gary Cooper) speech in "The Fountainhead", it would take up at least 30 minutes of the film. I think it was something like 24 pages in the book and very hard to get through. There is a lot of redundancy in "Atlas Shrugged". Modern editors would cut the book down quite a bit. But overall, it's where we're headed if something doesn't change soon.
04-18-2011, 03:46 AM
#10
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Alan Greenspan was at the helm of the Fed while he let our banking industry take our economy into the toilet. His mentor for 4 decades?... Ayn Rand. Even he's finally admitted he was wrong to believe the market will fix itself if left unregulated. You clearly cannot trust the banking industry to be anything but greedy, and without regulations and enforcement, where we are is where you go. Add the oil industry, the coal industry, the Marcellus Shale industry, the private incarceration industry, yadda, yadda, yadda...
04-18-2011, 06:00 AM
#11
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All good stuff. But, read any of Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin's letters. They warned of big government from the start. Also of the banking industry. It's why we have the right to bear arms. So we can be protected from our own government.
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