Interesting article on Ayn Rand

[mhaze]

....I have this image of Franz Kafka and Rand meeting in the Great Beyond and Kafka asking her : "Were you thinking?"

He might, and she'd have a quick comeback.

Like when asked if she believed in God, she replied:

"God, no".

But the cockroach of Kafka was Marx, not Rand.

 

[leftysergeant]

He might, and she'd have a quick comeback.

Like when asked if she believed in God, she replied:

"God, no".

But the cockroach of Kafka was Marx, not Rand.

Strange. I got the impression that it was a brown-nosing paper shuffler in some dehumanizing job.

 

[mhaze]

I have this image of Franz Kafka and Rand meeting in the Great Beyond and Kafka asking her : "Were you thinking?" .

Rand beat him to it, though:

Then he said, "I like cigarettes, Miss Taggart. I like to think of fire held in a man's hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind-and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression."

"Do they ever think?" she asked involuntarily, and stopped; the question was her one personal torture and she did not want to discuss it.

​

Strange. I got the impression that it was a brown-nosing paper shuffler in some dehumanizing job.

That section of AS continues...

The old man looked as if he had noticed the sudden stop and understood it; but he did not start discussing it; he said, instead, "I don't like the thing that's happening to people, Miss Taggart."
"What?"

"I don't know. But I've watched them here for twenty years and I've seen the change. They used to rush through here, and it was wonderful to watch, it was the hurry of men who knew where they were going and were eager to get there. Now they're hurrying because they are afraid.
It's not a purpose that drives them, it's fear. They're not going anywhere, they're escaping. And I don't think they know what it is that they want to escape. They don't look at one another. They jerk when brushed against. They smile too much, but it's an ugly kind of smiling: it's not joy, it's pleading. I don't know what it is that's happening to the world." He shrugged. "Oh well, who is John Galt?"
​

The dehumanization and brown nosing (which you speak of being allegorically Kafka's cockroach) is certainly evident in the dystopian world of AS, although you might disagree with Rand's opinion as to the causes, and the solution. What creates a sense of self worth?