Ayn Rand

[Anne]

We watched the documentary on 'the history of Atlas Shrugged' last night, and I'd highly recommend it if you haven't seen it or read her books. I've not read the book, but hope to in the future.
Amazing that she could see what was happening in this country so many decades ago, and she was spot-on with her predictions, as well. I've often wondered where we were going to end up, with more and more problems, government solutions & bail-outs, and we end up worse for all the 'help' - Hegelian Dialectic??

You can help people, but only help so much...eventually they start expecting more (because, after all, you have more; you should share it), and you should feel damned guilty if you aren't willing to keep it up....you selfish, horrid sinner. I'm sure we've all known people who think that way.

Volunteer work: Not a thing wrong with it, but now kids in school are bagging up lunches for those who won't eat over the weekend otherwise. I know if you are above a certain income, you might not get help, but there are so many right in this area who just can't make it, but they and the kids have home computers, cell phones, ipods, etc, etc. Is that all necessary?? I don't know, to be honest.

It has seemed more to me over the years that our own desire and motivation for a better life has been slowly undermined, to the point that we are so complacent it doesn't matter. For me, I feel I no longer have time to change much, but getting the younger people's attention might be the way to go for us.

Maybe I'm just ranting..if so, thanks for listening.

 

[Diwundrin]

I read Atlas Shrugged when I was around 15. I'd just started work and read it on the bus, on lunch breaks, and went to sleep on it until I finished it. It was a kind of epiphany to me. It was one of those 'landmark' books that are life, or thought changing.
It stated pretty much the attitudes I'd encountered in people I admired and explained why I admired them. I 'got' it. They weren't rich people, they were self reliant and pragmatic people. They were people who supported themselves and their own and took pride in it. They were charitable people but dispensed charity only to those they considered deserving. I read it again around 25 years later and it still 'nailed it' and doubtless still does today.

Atlas Shrugged in recent years has been turned into a book that we are hardly game to admit having read. The PC entitlement addicts, the ones who scream about the 1%ers, well... they go ballistic about Ayn Rand, and about anyone who 'got' her books. In their judgement she was a frothing Fascist/Plutocratic threat to the working/shirking class. She was bane to socialists.
I just presume they didn't 'get' it, or more likely didn't want to.

But they're wrong if they think it turned people into right wing Gordon Gekkos, it didn't, I was still young and silly enough to believe in voting for the 'workers Party'. I saw no problem back then in applying her way of thinking to the lives of any class. It was only many years later when it became the 'shirkers Party', and I saw her views becoming reality, that I began to list to starboard politically.

Just as did many sci-fi writers, she could deduce the course of the future. Unlike most she could lay out the whys of how it would unfold in readable form. Read it. Don't watch that TV show they made of it, I haven't seen it but no movie ever can catch the nuances of a well written book.

I read the Fountainhead too, the movie caught a little of it but missed most of the points. I found that just as illuminating on different subjects. It was hard going but tackled somewhat intangible subjects and philosophies that are difficult to express. Had they been laid out as a thesis they would have been overlooked and boring.
Expressing her ideas woven into the fabric of good 'fat' stories is a talent indeed. That girl could write!

I saw a doco about Ayn Rand around 6 months ago here but don't know if it was the same one. She was a very strange woman, and somewhat flawed in character perhaps, but aren't we all?. Bigger thinkers may have bigger flaws, doesn't change the logic in what she wrote though.

 

[Fern]

When you read or hear about what others had predicted for the future, and in many cases has born fruit, in to-day's world you get the feeling, Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

 

[Anne]

DI, I guessed you would be one of the ones who were very familiar with her work; as you tend to 'think outside the box', so to speak. Kudos to you for having the wisdom to read her books at such a young impressionable age. I think she was mentioned when we were in high school, but only briefly; I do wish they would make her books mandatory reading material in schools; or at least discuss the subject in depth....not likely in government schools, however, and if they did, she might not be put in favorable light.
According to the story, she wrote two or three books, and still the majority didn't 'get' her message; it was with Atlas Shrugged that people started to think, "Wait a minute", something's going on here that I haven't seen. Seems the worse things get, the more popular her books get, especially with college students...that's a good start if they learn to apply the lessons. The younger set say that older people are not interested; that we've 'given up'. Perhaps that's true in a way, as what changes can we make; at least that's how I see it.

If they could be reached at an even younger age, what a difference that might make. But, they are so pre-occupied with their music, award shows, etc., that it's hard to get them talking about these 'dry' subjects - yep; reminds me of myself at that age...altho I did hear plenty of political discussions from my parents and their peers.

You are correct, Fern. One wonders what will be happening a few decades down the line.

 

[That Guy]