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Ayn Rand

Meri said:
I've read "Fountainhead", but not "Atlas Shrugged" I managed to make it all the way through the book, finishing it with a "what the heck did I just read?" sort of feeling. I think the biggest problem was that I considered all the main characters arrogant, unlikeable people. Especially Roark. It's hard to read a book when one develops a deep hatred for the hero. And his philosophy.
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rAmen, sibling. That's exactly how I felt.
 
I do not think I will bother to read anymore rand books after Atlas Shrugged it just left me cold and twitchy, in a similar way that the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists did.
 
I read Atlas Shrugged as a senior in high school, and had to write a report about it. I felt my title adequately expressed my feelings: The Marquis Shrugged.*

*Only, with my real name instead of "The Marquis." I can't tell you my real name, or else you'd know some of my private info, and I'd have to throw a hissy and start a board-wide war over bullshunderscoret.
 
Marquis de Carabas said:
I read Atlas Shrugged as a senior in high school, and had to write a report about it. I felt my title adequately expressed my feelings: The Marquis Shrugged.*

*Only, with my real name instead of "The Marquis." I can't tell you my real name, or else you'd know some of my private info, and I'd have to throw a hissy and start a board-wide war over bullshunderscoret.
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I have a feeling that if I'd been forced to read it for school, I'd have refused, like I started doing with Dickens after I found out he was paid by the word. Common practise at the time, I now know, but it seemed so fitting for him.
 
madmonk76 said:
I have a feeling that if I'd been forced to read it for school, I'd have refused, like I started doing with Dickens after I found out he was paid by the word. Common practise at the time, I now know, but it seemed so fitting for him.
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Actually, I didn't have to read AS; I had to read a book from a list. But AS had been recommended to me (by my shrink) so I picked it.
 
Marquis de Carabas said:
I read Atlas Shrugged as a senior in high school, and had to write a report about it. I felt my title adequately expressed my feelings: The Marquis Shrugged.*

*Only, with my real name instead of "The Marquis." I can't tell you my real name, or else you'd know some of my private info, and I'd have to throw a hissy and start a board-wide war over bullshunderscoret.
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We all know why. Your real name is probably something embarrassing, like "Julian" or "Adrian" or "Melvin".

If memory serves, the Rand Cult had a scholarship contest for high school students who wrote an essay on "The Fountainhead". I remember glancing at the details at the time, but decided that it was a) probably just an attempt to bribe kids into indoctrination and b) it was only for like $500 or so, which wouldn't pay for a single class at most colleges. Certainly not worth reading a large and creepy book for.
 
Dcdrac said:
Was Rand some kind of nazi idealogist or something?

because that is the impression I have formed of them after reading this book.
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Can you be a little more specific? Rand wrote about and believed in free market capitalism, individual freedom and minimal government intrusion into our lives. How is that anything like Nazism?
 
Rand bprofessed a lot more thatn individual freedom, it would appear that it would be freedom for only a handful
 
Moliere said:
Can you be a little more specific? Rand wrote about and believed in free market capitalism, individual freedom and minimal government intrusion into our lives. How is that anything like Nazism?
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The same obdurate sanctimony is there, the same appalling disregard to outright hostility for anyone that does not live up to an uncompromising ideal is there, the same smug elitism is there.

The names of the ideologies differ, the criteria by which the pigeonholing is accomplished vary, the face of the "enemy" changes- but it's the same old vicious tribalism all over again. "The world would be so much better if we could just get rid of them."
 
One summation of Rand's ideas I've heard is that she believed in "special people". In "Atlas Shrugged", a wealthy industrialist was simply better than other people.
 
TragicMonkey said:
One summation of Rand's ideas I've heard is that she believed in "special people". In "Atlas Shrugged", a wealthy industrialist was simply better than other people.
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Very Calvinist, isn't it? You wealth is a good indicator that God likes you, so you're going to heaven. How you got that way is immaterial.
 
TragicMonkey said:
One summation of Rand's ideas I've heard is that she believed in "special people". In "Atlas Shrugged", a wealthy industrialist was simply better than other people.
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exactly. There are "special people" who are meant to run the world, and everyone else, who is there to, at best, help the special people fulfill their destiny. Or that's what I got reading it. I had a professor who mentioned that many people start off as Rand fans as teenagers, because they believe they are one of the "special people". I've also heard that Alan Greenspan was a big fan of hers, but then again, he had a lot of power.
 
Maybe Rand was right after all. With all the retarded s:Dt going on in the world these days, I'd be willing to believe "special people" were running the show.
 
Meri said:
I had a professor who mentioned that many people start off as Rand fans as teenagers, because they believe they are one of the "special people".
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What happened to RandFan?
 
Marquis de Carabas said:
Maybe Rand was right after all. With all the retarded s:Dt going on in the world these days, I'd be willing to believe "special people" were running the show.
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Do you want to join my special people's club?

welcomedollhouse2.jpg
 
dann said:
What happened to RandFan?
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He was being general, but his point was that at, say, 17, it's easy to believe that you're special and destined for great things. The idea of being special is very appealing, and many teenagers will believe anything that's appealing.* After some experience, usually, he said, sometime in college, a person learns they aren't special, and if you don't believe you're one of the special people, then Rand's philosophy holds little appeal. He also thought it was funny that I couldn't understand was I was supposed to get out of the book.


*when I think of some of the things I believed in high school. . . then I happened upon a copy of Why People Believe Weird Things my freshman year in college.
 
Moliere said:
Can you be a little more specific? Rand wrote about and believed in free market capitalism, individual freedom and minimal government intrusion into our lives. How is that anything like Nazism?
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In the sense of her followers, like those of you-know-who, kept talking about freedom in general and the evils of Marxism in particular, but in reality formed an intolerant cult that suppresses any dissent from the guru's teaching and sees all non-members in their select, elite group as inferior, subhuman creatures.
 
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