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I've been making an effort to read more fiction lately, and a friend's wife insisted on lending me "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand.
I've heard various things about her philosophies and how they're injected into her novels, and I'm just wondering if I should bother reading this book. The damn thing's thicker than the Bible, and I lose interest quickly if the pace isn't lively.
Anyone have any opinions and/or suggestions?
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I've never read her stuff, but her ideology is knida like extreme libertarianism. Like, if everyone just looks out for themselves, everything will work out. And by look out for themselves, I mean to an extreme degree. Like selfishness=good.
When i hear Ayn Rand I always think about that South Park episode where the Sheriff learns who to read, and then the first book he reads is Atlas Shrugged, and he says it sucks ass and is the worst thing ever written. Funny stuff.
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When i hear Ayn Rand I always think about that South Park episode where the Sheriff learns who to read, and then the first book he reads is Atlas Shrugged, and he says it sucks ass and is the worst thing ever written. Funny stuff.
quote: I've never read her stuff, but her ideology is knida like extreme libertarianism. Like, if everyone just looks out for themselves, everything will work out. And by look out for themselves, I mean to an extreme degree. Like selfishness=good.
H-box's thumbnail summary is a good one. Her philosophy is called Objectivism and, just to flesh out H-box's summary a little more, goes something like this: Reality is what it is; you have to reject what everybody else tells you it is and be brave enough to find out what it is and to embrace both the good and bad of it. You're responsible for your own happiness and success and helping others ultimately only weakens them by sheltering them and giving them an excuse "not to grow up". For those of you who had a taste of those Contemporary Civilization classes in school, think of her as a combination of Plato and social darwinism. She is also very anti-religion, for the reasons stated above. Her biographers make a point of her liking to make the beast with two backs A LOT, so she couldn't have been all bad.
I read The Fountainhead and then Atlas Shrugged. I think the Fountainhead is the better starting point (somewhat shorter and somewhat less overt ideology) but, even though I disagree with 95% of what she says, I think either book is worth reading, if only to give yourself a taste of where the philosophy of the current ruling class comes from. The characters in the books are a little cartoon like by, say, F. Scott Fitzgerald's standards, but if you can deal with the characters being vehicles for ideas rather than real people you can get through them.
The only real problem I have with her is that her books have encouraged a whole army of Republican twits to see themselves as the heroes in her books and argue for getting rid of the welfare state and for an agressive form of laisse faire capitalism, while they're living off their family's trust funds.
Gvac, if I recall your political posts correctly I think you'll probably enjoy either of the books. Just promise us you won't sign up for the twit army once you do.
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This message was edited by Recyclerz on 1-6-06 @ 11:21 PM
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As a philosopher/political theorist, she's pretty interesting.
As a novelist, she's absolutely wretched.
Dancing with the women at the bar... << He knows his Claret from his Beaujolais >> "You can tell some lies about the good times we've had, but I've kissed your mother twice...and now I'm working on your dad..."
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"It ain't like it used to be...but it'll do." << EAMUS CATULI >> "You can tell some lies about the good times we've had, but I've kissed your mother twice and now I'm working on your dad..."
"...her books have encouraged a whole army of Republican twits to see themselves as the heroes in her books and argue for getting rid of the welfare state and for an agressive form of laisse faire capitalism..."
I'm not sure who exactly you are referring to but, I have to say, I wouldn't put Rand as one of the major influences on modern conservative Republican ideology. Adam Smith, sure (invisible hand and all), Burke, Kirk, Hayek and Mises, Buckley, etcetc.
But Rand?
If anything, I would say the conservative Republican movement is too statist to be considered 'Randian'.
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Logic goes out the window when passions cloud our judgment.
I have a raging hard on right now.
My balls sit way up firm and high.
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Gvac, if I recall your political posts correctly I think you'll probably enjoy either of the books. Just promise us you won't sign up for the twit army once you do.
Recyclerz, if you accurately described her positions and beliefs, then I'm not too sure I'd enjoy the books.
My political ideas are based largely on my belief that people, not government, are what makes a society great. Blue-blood Republicans are as revulsive to me as socialistic Democrats.
I suppose the Tao Te Ching most accurately describes the way I feel people should be governed -
"The more prohibitions there are, the poorer people become.
The more laws there are, the greater the number of scoundrels.
Therefore the sage says,
I take no action, and people transform themselves.
I love tranquility, and people naturally do what is right.
I don't interfere, and people prosper on their own."
Also,
"When the government is dull and sleepy, the people are wholesome and good.
When the government is sharp and exacting, the people are cunning and mean."
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This might be right up your alley. She definitely champions the individual, in terms of rights or abilities or accomplishments, uber alles.
Just like I said, don't expect a very good novel. The pace is about as far from lively as you can get.
Dancing with the women at the bar... << He knows his Claret from his Beaujolais >> "You can tell some lies about the good times we've had, but I've kissed your mother twice...and now I'm working on your dad..."
This message was edited by TheMojoPin on 1-7-06 @ 12:20 AM
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"It ain't like it used to be...but it'll do." << EAMUS CATULI >> "You can tell some lies about the good times we've had, but I've kissed your mother twice and now I'm working on your dad..."
"...her books have encouraged a whole army of Republican twits to see themselves as the heroes in her books and argue for getting rid of the welfare state and for an agressive form of laisse faire capitalism..."
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Arguably the biggest group of twits the Rand movement had was the followers of Rand. She became a cult figure and her followers argued themselves into fractured groups, each claiming to know what she 'really' meant by Objectivism after her death.
The ideas of Fountainhead and Shrugged are ok, but the reading is dense, denser then Tom Robbins, you spend a day figuring out what the paragraph really means. I never went beyond those two.
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The NY Times Book review once did an article on the greatest seling books no one has ever read and this was on the list, along with Brief History of Time by Hawking and some others. The sales figures are gargantuan, but few take the time to get into it, takes up a lot of energy to plow through figuring out who is John Galt.
The NY Times Book review once did an article on the greatest seling books no one has ever read and this was on the list, along with Brief History of Time by Hawking and some others. The sales figures are gargantuan, but few take the time to get into it, takes up a lot of energy to plow through figuring out who is John Galt.
Throw The Name of the Rose and Gravity's Rainbow on that list.
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The NY Times Book review once did an article on the greatest seling books no one has ever read and this was on the list, along with Brief History of Time by Hawking and some others. The sales figures are gargantuan, but few take the time to get into it, takes up a lot of energy to plow through figuring out who is John Galt.
Throw The Name of the Rose and Gravity's Rainbow on that list.
I bet the Bible is high on the list, too.
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After thinking about it, I think I even gave libertarians a bad name by using thme as a descriptions. Even libertarians aren't against charity, they just want it done completely independently and by choice, not by government. Rand's idea is that any kind of helping people only hurts yourself and the person you are helping, an idea that shot down in about 5 minutes of living in the real world.
EDIT: On yeah, in reading a review of the book I found out a tidbit of information that should give you an idea of what you'd be getting yourself into. One characted has a speech in Atlas Shrugged has a speech that goes on for 60 pages. I don't think that's an exaggeration either because the reviewer who saidthat still liked the book.
This message was edited by HBox on 1-7-06 @ 1:21 AM
I never bothered reading it either. let's make a book club. I'll read it and you read it and some other people will read it on the board and then tear into it in the end.
I'm not sure who exactly you are referring to but, I have to say, I wouldn't put Rand as one of the major influences on modern conservative Republican ideology. Adam Smith, sure (invisible hand and all), Burke, Kirk, Hayek and Mises, Buckley, etcetc.
They only use Adam Smith and a pure market as a reference in how to manipulate and control markets.
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This message was edited by Greggie44 on 1-7-06 @ 3:23 AM
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Gvac, if I recall your political posts correctly I think you'll probably enjoy either of the books. Just promise us you won't sign up for the twit army once you do.
Ouch! No, I think GVac's too much a traditional republican to buy into social darwinist theory. The fact that the word "socialist" seems to be a prefix for the word "democrats" makes him seem a bit harsh, but he's old-school principle-based conservative, in my opinion. But he's actually capable of asking the question: "Don't the "weaker" beings actually have to die en masse for natural selection to work?"
I put Rand in a category with L. Ron Hubbard and Noam Chomsky, (although the three are very different in most ways), in that they have a theory of everything political. They try to do for politics what Enstein tried to do at the end of his career for science: come up with one sweeping theory, or model, for everything science, (I'm seriously overgeneralizing this, arent I Mike T?). Problem is, Enstein worked in hard science, and his failure was evident to himself and his colleagues. But politics is soft social science, and whether you're right or wrong usually depends merely on how many people you can convince that you are correct. I think that's a sad but true fact of politics in general.
But, like Chomsky, there's something of value within what Rand has to say; it's just that she's asking you to take her ideas as the sum of human interaction. Instead of asking us questions about the motives of generosity and selfishness, she's saying "this is the way we are. There's no more to it." She's also doing what all ideologies do and saying "all you need is me and my ideas. Reject all others." But in practice, her narrow theories about society can only lead to some form of either fascism or anarchy. As a code of conduct, she's really fucking scary.
Instead, GVac, I'd suggest you read Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court". On religion, you two may not see eye-to-eye, but on the role of government and personal freedom, you are going to love this book. And it's funny as fucking hell! Anyone ever accused Rand of that? She's more like Marge Schott riding the cotton pony.
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They try to do for politics what Enstein tried to do at the end of his career for science: come up with one sweeping theory, or model, for everything science, (I'm seriously overgeneralizing this, arent I Mike T?). Problem is, Enstein worked in hard science, and his failure was evident to himself and his colleagues.
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Any discussion of Einsteins mind will be overgeneralized [is that a word, who cares, i like it] but yep, he struggled to reconcile what his stuff said to the universe at large, and much of it doesnt reconcile, and never has. One example; he liked the steady-state theory for the universe, it aint steady. He also didnt like the 'chance' behavior that we now know exists in nature, saying 'God does not play dice' but it looks like whatever God is out there is def rolling the bones. Failure is perhaps too strong a word for a guy who had an annus miribilis like Newton did.
Science has a hope of a Theory of Everything [ToE], or a Grand Unification Theory [GUT], strictly this is bringing the four known forces at work [Gravity, Electromagnetism, the Strong and Weak nuclear forces] into one, and this has frustrated science since they knew these existed.
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Rand's writing is horrible. I'd rather read Joyce in Cantonese than suffer through another Rand book.
In general, i prefer a straight forward, character driven novel. Don't bog me down with philosophy or dainty, superfluous word play. A turd sprayed with perfume is just a flowery turd.
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