I'm Not Ready for the Gulch
Posted by CircuitGuy 11 years, 5 months ago to Philosophy
Through much of AS, Dagny opposes the destroyer. She isn't ready to give up on American society yet. It makes sense because she built a segment of American society. She's pained to see it looted away and then decay in mismanagement by the looters.
It doesn't seem believable to me how quickly some of the producers seem to give up in the face of gov't meddling. You'd think they'd use the same acumen with which they deal with investors, customers, employees, and vendors, to explain to the politicians and the people they supposedly represent that their policies were tantamount to looting.
Eventually all the main characters give up on society in favor of the Gulch. It almost reads like the flood myth which crops up all around the world: People become decadent. The world is destroyed except for a few righteous people. This paves the way for a new and better world.
Some of the flood myth stories are probably related, but I also suspect that humans are adapted to be drawn to stories of an apocalypse cleansing away the evils of the world.
I am where Dagny is in the middle of the book (except I'm not a business genius), not even close to ready to give up. Like so many important causes, people tend to promote it by saying things are going to the devil. You don't hear arguments like “Domestic violence is way down thanks to the hard work of many people. Until it's zero, though, we still need help reducing it further.” Instead they tend to find some statistics that make it feel like domestic violence is an epidemic.
Liberty is more fundamental than something like domestic violence, but it plays out the same way. If you say things are good and need to get better, people see that as denying the issue.
The Gulch website members are like the Gulch members in the book. At one point they were focused on making things happen in the world-- selling management or investors on risky projects with huge potential, getting people on the same page, serving clients, building their “brand” as it were. They're tired of fighting to make projects work and fighting politics at the same time. Website members are probably still out there making stuff happen, but they long for a Gulch where they can do it without all the baloney.
“Why don't people talk about all the cool stuff they're working on instead of how bad the legal / regulatory environment is?” I wonder. The answer is obvious: This website is called the “Gulch”, not “Producers saving the looters' world.”
I love the idea of a Gulch. I love Seasteads and startup incubators on ships. There is loads of science fiction about people moving to space and breaking away as the US did. I love Thomas Jefferson's hope that America would have people in different places experimenting with vastly different rule systems. If the destroyer came for my wife (her business is succeeding at the moment) and our family, however, there's is NO WAY we'd go to the Gulch. We would never leave all our friends and family and everything we've built here. Escaping on plane out of Truax and watching the Capitol dome and surrounding Isthmus go dark like Dagny is a nightmare, not something I could see anything good in.
I plan to stop using this website in a few days. People here think I'm at best a Pollyanna and at worst someone whose tiny lobbying efforts (e.g. keeping HSAs allowed under PPACA) paradoxically help the looters by postponing the apocalypse. This is a pivotal time, an automation revolution I think, and we need all producers making defending liberty a primary avocation. I'm far from quitting. The Gulch is not for me.
It doesn't seem believable to me how quickly some of the producers seem to give up in the face of gov't meddling. You'd think they'd use the same acumen with which they deal with investors, customers, employees, and vendors, to explain to the politicians and the people they supposedly represent that their policies were tantamount to looting.
Eventually all the main characters give up on society in favor of the Gulch. It almost reads like the flood myth which crops up all around the world: People become decadent. The world is destroyed except for a few righteous people. This paves the way for a new and better world.
Some of the flood myth stories are probably related, but I also suspect that humans are adapted to be drawn to stories of an apocalypse cleansing away the evils of the world.
I am where Dagny is in the middle of the book (except I'm not a business genius), not even close to ready to give up. Like so many important causes, people tend to promote it by saying things are going to the devil. You don't hear arguments like “Domestic violence is way down thanks to the hard work of many people. Until it's zero, though, we still need help reducing it further.” Instead they tend to find some statistics that make it feel like domestic violence is an epidemic.
Liberty is more fundamental than something like domestic violence, but it plays out the same way. If you say things are good and need to get better, people see that as denying the issue.
The Gulch website members are like the Gulch members in the book. At one point they were focused on making things happen in the world-- selling management or investors on risky projects with huge potential, getting people on the same page, serving clients, building their “brand” as it were. They're tired of fighting to make projects work and fighting politics at the same time. Website members are probably still out there making stuff happen, but they long for a Gulch where they can do it without all the baloney.
“Why don't people talk about all the cool stuff they're working on instead of how bad the legal / regulatory environment is?” I wonder. The answer is obvious: This website is called the “Gulch”, not “Producers saving the looters' world.”
I love the idea of a Gulch. I love Seasteads and startup incubators on ships. There is loads of science fiction about people moving to space and breaking away as the US did. I love Thomas Jefferson's hope that America would have people in different places experimenting with vastly different rule systems. If the destroyer came for my wife (her business is succeeding at the moment) and our family, however, there's is NO WAY we'd go to the Gulch. We would never leave all our friends and family and everything we've built here. Escaping on plane out of Truax and watching the Capitol dome and surrounding Isthmus go dark like Dagny is a nightmare, not something I could see anything good in.
I plan to stop using this website in a few days. People here think I'm at best a Pollyanna and at worst someone whose tiny lobbying efforts (e.g. keeping HSAs allowed under PPACA) paradoxically help the looters by postponing the apocalypse. This is a pivotal time, an automation revolution I think, and we need all producers making defending liberty a primary avocation. I'm far from quitting. The Gulch is not for me.
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Please... get off the women-haters club agenda, at least here...
That it turned out to be two black, queer, militant muslims without a clue (let alone a plan) was entirely counter-intuitive to the State!
I'm pretty sure we have less than 10 years. Probably less than 5. Maybe only 1 or 2.
Guns, ammo, food, water, silver, gold, medicine, fuel. You may have to defend your "gulch".
You have a right to chose, chose wisely.
How many here have actually gone to anything that REMOTELY resembles a real life gulch?
Even I did not move to a gulch.
I simply moved to another country where I could live in greater freedom (at a much lower cost) than in the USA.
This is an area, probably from her own lack of experience, that Ayn Rand didn't directly address in Atlas Shrugged. Family was a burden in the story, a real source of evil, vs. something worth fighting for. However, her message in the chapter "White Blackmail" really rings true to the Objectivist family man like me. Once you have a family, the system has got you by the pelotas. And the system knows it.
We have lost incredible freedoms. the rule of law is dead. the Constitution is trashed. these things proceed an economic crash. There will always be those who can profit during this slide. Nothing wrong with that. But in order to continue that way, requires huge moral compromises for most on that path. Ayn Rand did not suggest people compromise nor did she suggest sacrifice. Many of us have already decided that this government has become so corrupt that we have to withdraw our support. This is one of the most effective ways of getting politicians and voters' attention. In no way is it giving up. Einstein, Thomas Paine, Descartes, Locke, , Ayn Rand...all withdrew support from their birth nation in protest and to pursue better lives. This is a positive thing and in the case of these great thinkers has been of great importance to the world. There are steps each of us can take , as you mentioned above cg, to try and wake up others to what is happening. Sometimes that means I'm likely in some producers' faces, but I respectfully submit that instead of not enjoying the thought some in here think of you as a "pollyanna" rather you are more likely experiencing the dissonance between your world view and reality. Atlas Shrugged is a novel, not a play book for action. I looked to History to choose my path. I hope you reconsider your decision and I have enjoyed engaging with you in here very much. btw, this better have made it into the script.
“We never had to take any of it seriously, did we.” “No, we never had to.”
For me, though, the salient point of Atlas Shrugged was entirely PERSONAL and not at all social. In other words, I have always looked to see who my ultimate customer or client is. Whom do I serve by my production. I do not work for my destroyers.
That said, life in a complex, commercial, urban environment is impossible without diversities of culture within that milieu. A good merchant does not argue religion with his customer.
That being as it may, the bottom line is that until our lifetime, the Code of the Producer was not articulated. The time has come for it to be announced.
I'm saddened to see you go, but I respect your decision. There are many ways to defend liberty, and any road has its own merits. I will stay here to continue learning from the discourse this place offers. In the few months I've been here, I've been inspired to read more philosophy and political economy books I ever have before, all because I wanted to better understand someone's position. While I don't agree with everything said, l believe I'm becoming a better rounded and knowledgeable person by interacting with the people here. It's also exciting and interesting to see what some Producers are doing in their work to defend liberty. There are important people here. There is simply too much value to leave.
I wish you and your wife the best.
"Though it take a thousand years..."
That is perseverance!
Very moving.
O.A.
Of course, it is your decision, but I have enjoyed your optimism and it reminds me of days gone by, when I first started my business. It has on occasion even given me pause regarding my level of pessimism... inspired me to some degree and perhaps influenced my outlook, even if only temporarily. Nowadays that is a pleasant feeling... Unfortunately for many of us the experience of our past, our lost liberty, opportunity, and recognition of history repeating, weigh heavy on our outlook. Who doesn't hope for and want an improved outlook? I for one, await the day when my best effort is rewarded to the level it once was. Nothing would please me more than to get my operation back to maximum capacity and see the fruits of my labor build what I conceive, rather than have an increasing portion taken and squandered.
In my lifetime I have witnessed a loss felt keenly and if history is any indicator it does not leave a positive outlook or a likely return of such opportunity to our posterity without an upheaval. Is this pessimism or just recognition? Perhaps it it is just more burden than some can bear: that the contrast of what was and what is, is too great. Time can be both friend and foe.
Some of us believe the way to a brighter future is to sound the alarm, spread the word and warning. To pull away the curtain and expose the charlatans, oppressors, cronies, looters and moochers. We must point to the past and compare the parallels... enlighten the people so things do not get worse, or if they do, to help prepare.
Just like in the book, people come to the breaking point at different times and suffer differing levels of imposition. What would the book ,or for that matter the Gulch be without the Dagnys or Hanks that held out till the end?
The problem is not that the Gulchers are not using their acumen to influence their representatives; it is that our representatives will not hear us. I have received countless dismissive form letters. It is as if we speak different languages. There are too few of our voices. This is changing and hopefully through spreading the word, sounding the alarm and offering a predictably dire perspective based on present day facts and history we will awaken and outrage enough people so that we will elect or persuade in sufficient numbers representatives to make liberty, freedom, opportunity once again paramount. Hopefully before it is too late. Someone must say "hey don't step in front of that bus; walk on the sidewalk!"
Additionally we must offer another viable option. This is the strength of Objectivism, in its message of the benefits of capitalism, free markets and equal opportunity over outcome. Is it radical to propose a return closer to founding principles of government, of economics, to point out the folly and disastrous effects of the social engineers?
Some may believe they can continue to shoulder the increasing burden like Boxer (Animal Farm), some will die trying and some will survive. Others have had enough. In the worst of times some still profit while many around them suffer. I do not have enough time to wait and hope, or the energy left to keep pushing that mountain of a boulder uphill like Sisyphus. I will do as I must; as we all do; as we all see fit.
No one knows what the future will bring, but past abuses of government in my lifetime were met with more widespread outrage and occasionally people would be fired or impeached, but today there is insufficient appetite for holding government officials accountable.The buck is passed. It doesn't stop anywhere. I hope we change this paradigm together, each of us in our own way.
Perhaps you will invent the motor that changes the world and all the old patterns may be obsolete. I am a strong proponent of technology for solving problems, but technology cannot change the desire of some of us to dominate others. This is a human failing that we are destined to repeatedly suffer
You expressed an affinity for Jefferson. He believed liberty could not be maintained without the unfortunate spilling of blood from time to time. In our Declaration of Independence he enumerates many of the same abuses felt today. The following quotes are replete with warnings. http://jpetrie.myweb.uga.edu/TJ.html I hope a peaceful revolution is at hand and bloodshed can be avoided. This may come about through a financial collapse and/or an awakening of the people to the injustices and folly of Marxist leaning governance. I do not relish this, but the chance to stop the madness and begin anew is appealing.When the public consensus is that this social experiment has failed as all other similar attempts before it, then for a few generations we may again be blessed with the freedom to pursue happiness on our own terms.
Please feel free to participate as you please. I will miss the reduction in perspectives and your optimism.
I wish you the greatest success at whatever you put your mind to.
Respectfully,
O.A.
First, the producers did not give up because of government meddling. They quit because John Galt explained it to them. Galt had the reasons, the arguments, the facts, the logic, to convince them. They gave him the time to do that. He had three hours with Ken Danagger. We can assume that he had similar opportunities. He was obviously a mythic communicator.
As for the present, it is complicated. We live in a world affected by Atlas Shrugged. In her time, those words had never been spoken. For the 50th Anniversary Celebration, Ed Snider of the Philadelphia Flyers Comcast Sportsnet and other enterprises told about how he learned of Ayn Rand's ideas. It was at a meeting of hockey team owners. He turned to Patrick O'Malley (son of Walter of the Dodgers), and asked "How can these men go along with something so obviously contrary to their own interests?" O'Malley wrote "Atlas Shrugged" on a piece of paper and said, "Read this."
But you do not find O'Malley or Mark Cuban or a thousand others telling the government where to get off the train. Some do. Perhaps the most visible is T. J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor who frequently writes for the Wall Street Journal and others.
This week, Ed Hudgins of the Atlas Society had a blog on Reuters about selling the post office. The message has been getting clearer, especially since the Bush-Obama Bailouts. The Economist has written about the correlation of government regulations and sales of Atlas Shrugged.
But, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, George Soros, ... they, too, have minds of their own, and lives of their own. To expect everyone to agree with every word of your favorite book is to wish for a featureless village. Capitalism thrives on diversity. As I noted, a good merchant does not argue religion with his customer. The question is who holds the commanding heights of the culture. In the past, it was the collectivists, right and left, the groupists, the aggregators, the conformists, the amalgamators. But that red sun has set. A new golden dawn is on the horizon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJmuHNDcX...
I came here not for a sounding box to echo my own ideas, but to hear the views of people with similar goals and concerns, and argue with them.
I'd just as soon you not quit, but that's your choice.
Hmmm, I thought that's what we were doing?
None of us are actually IN the gulch ('cept kh), so I don't know why we're being addressed as if we've "given up"... as far as I know we're all where we've always been...and producing...and trying to wake up others.
Ya lost me CG.
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