The short answer in my opinion is that most people suck. Many in the gulch are excluded but let's face it. There is a reason Rand had to write AS. It's because the majority are sheeple not producers. How many Jim taggarts and mouchs are there for every dagny and hank in real life? What AS illustrated is that a handful where worthy of the gulch and the rest went the way of the world...lights out

I really wish I could answer that, but honestly, I don't think there are many BRAINS out there today. Most people are just meandering around in a fog, unaware of the changes that are taking place. I mean, the government will take care of everything. is the new norm... I have to admit that the few people I do associate with know what is happening and are really saddened by the state of our gun rights, financial situation, spending us and our children into oblivion. monitoring and recording all phone calls and internet interaction, drones watching us, no freedom of speech around any security area, teaching children to wear burkas in school. Changing our history, communism is exciting and capitalism is bad, environmental bull crap. You don't have to salute the American flag, but you're forced to salute the Mexican flag. It goes on and on and on until something has to give.... and that time, I am afraid, is sooner than we think.

I was with a group of friends a little over a week ago when I read the news about Cyprus coming over my cell phone. My reaction was shock. I told everyone what I was reading I and got these looks:
a. "I don't even know what you just said."
b. "You're looking at me like you expect me to react. What do you expect me to say?"
c. "Why do you care? Why should I?"
d. "Can we talk about something else?"

I think it is two things.

1. The people who are alert don't think they can doing anything about it. Therefore, they think it's a waste of time to get worked up over it (dedicate any mental energy to it). I've gotten this feedback from several people when I try to engage them.

2. The people who aren't alert (by far the great majority), are basically on drugs, or mentally exhausted.

I don't think people are thinking the government will take care of everything. That gives them credit for thinking in the first place. They are too CONTENT or too TIRED to think.

The leeches have no reason to be concerned - they are content. It is Idiocracy. They've got their stuff. Life is good.

The producers believe they have to maintain an 'American standard of living'. They exhaust themselves in 9 hour days and two hour commutes to come home to a house where the spouse has done the same thing. They have a microwave dinner while watching the crap du jour on cable TV. The brain needs its downtime. Two more hours until bedtime. Meanwhile, their kids are in the den. They've been playing Minecraft from the time school ends until bedtime and probably didn't even join the parents for dinner. The system will educate their kids on the evils of capitalism and the wonders of socialism tomorrow morning. The parents will be too busy to notice and too tired to act.

Most go hollow eyed through their day to day lives, concerned only that the kids have something to keep them occupied, and that they can watch some crap on prime time. Engaging them is frustrating at best. The friends we have, we have for a reason. Mutual respect. This is what I do with my kids. We talk about current events. I ask them questions, they are then charged with the task of thinking about their answers. This doesn't mean that they have no down time to just shut off for a bit. It's just what they do all the time.

My daughter and I were watching a piece about the UN arms treaty, and how the US doesn't want any part of it. She listened to what was being said about a gun registry, and what it would mean in the hands of another country. I asked her what she thought, and she answered, "So they can come for the people with guns first, and kill them." These were her words, not mine. Hopefully what we do here, and talk about outside of our home, will start to clear away some of the fog. Don't know if it will happen before a total meltdown.

we woke up this morning and my husband honed in on CNBC squawk box as I made coffee. that is the great kind of coffee, btw. I fired up the computer and went immediately to fox business and then to yahoo finance (which pissed me off) and then to Bloomberg(not the communist mayor).
then I checked emails and THEN I went into the Gulch. Do you think Cypress was on our minds? that was rhetorical. we spent all day trying to get a handle on what was going down there. 10 billion printed. 40% over insured deposits taken. no great analysis. oh, and in my country ,no one gives 1/2 a shit. zombies. and mallard ducks. yes, on FB, of my friends, the well, hello Mrs. mallard, got 30 comments and untold likes. this is why I hate FB. and AS movie is paying someone to hook FB lovers into the movie. yes, fill the theater with zombies. productive. do you guys ever look at the movie FB comments?? riveting.

I apologize if this post seems as if I'm delivering a lecture, but - -

I see in this thread an underlying expression of dismay and exasperation by the author and many posters regarding the clearly irrational society we must function within, and a sense that they perceive the course of their lives is overly determined by the cynically shrewd managing the stupid among us. This is, I suspect, is reality.

An excellent statistic that illustrates the scope and depth of our irrational society is today's Rasmussen pole in which 51% of likely voters approved of Mr. Obama's presidential performance.

Paraphrasing Rand's Roark in the Fountainhead, we must learn 'not to be afraid of the world'. He was, of course, referring to our susceptibility to being entrapped and overwhelmed by the oppressive mindlessness and avarice that surrounds us. But, our obsessing over the suicidal behavior of the majority - the droids who submerge themselves in populist escapism or practice progressive ideological self denigration, is itself defeatist and a pointless exercise, which should be avoided.

Our preoccupation should be the pursuit of 'selfish' ethically rational personal gratification, which some refer to as work, and others as pleasure, and which in the end is the only rational purpose to our lives. Whether rejected, discriminated against, or otherwise abused, other than protecting your legal rights, you must ignore these dolts as if they did not exist. Roark lived on his terms regardless of the effect it had on his style of living. If that meant working in a quarry, so be it.

I would suggest that all read Rand's, The Virtue of Selfishness, with specific attention to the chapter on 'How to live a rational life in an irrational society'.

The Peter Keating's of the world - the manipulated, and the Ellsworth Toohey's of the world - the manipulators, do not merit the time we spend bemoaning their existence.

Do not try to save them. Do not debate them. Do not care about them. They are irredeemable and ultimately irrelevant.

Live, love, create, and lead by example!

IMO it's the conditioning they are forced to subject themselves to... the brutal payment for their failure to constructively engage other humans, and instead be fed by such mindless drivel as what's on the boobtube (never has that term been so accurate) and social crutches like Farcebook... Letting others do their thinking, and make their moral judgments, for them... out of cowardace, fear of being seen by their "peers" as antisocial... they should feel the righteous wrath of the likes of His Honor Judge Narragansett (I wonder why Ayn never gave him a first name other than "Judge"...)... however, they would, likely, be inclined to snivel and drivel their way to another (mis)justice that subscribed to their fantasy reality, much like Hunsacker did. In short - they are like the infamous Star Trek Borg... they cannot think for themselves, they must always think as a hive collective, even to their own detriment... which makes me disdain them all the more.

Its the Crow Test. It's done to us on purpose providing too much information so that nothing can be retained. Scams are best executed with information saturation.