This site is a very long way from any Atlantis. Try http://forums.4aynrandfans.com/. There has been "talk" of a real one, including fantasies about new countries on artificial islands, for decades, but it isn't practical. Maybe a private enclave resort for a month out of the year could work, the way the first "real" one started.

Agreed. The closest we have seen to Atlantis at this point is Galt's Gulch Online. We are talking about putting together a real Atlantis, but at this point it is just talk.

Shrugging means dumping the parasitical weight off your shoulders, not stopping living and working. Everyone in the valley was portrayed as remaining a 'workaholic'. Your being an engineering professor is one way to do it. Are there maps and driving directions to Atlantis or do you have to go in by crashing through a ray screen?

Most people in my non-Gulch life would have no idea that I have shrugged. I am a workaholic and enjoy > 90% of it. Being an engineering professor has its rewards. What I have shrugged from is starting tech businesses. The first one got bought out by a larger competitor, and that worked out well enough. The second case was kind of sad. One of my partners was a real life John Galt. He invented the equivalent of Mr. Fusion from the Back to the Future movies to convert a variety of hydrocarbon wastes to energy, fuel, or chemicals. If it is the economical way to go, that company will get restarted in Atlantis. For now, it got sold off to a company that hasn't capitalized on it much. I am still on that company's advisory board.

I can understand and identify with all of that. But I didn't have the same experience initially reading the novel because it was an earlier stage in two ways. First, the country hadn't disintegrated as badly as it is now, and second I was an optimistic college student pursuing science and engineering with little concern for or interest in the alien political realm at all. I could identify with the sense of life of the characters in the context of their own story, unrelated to any personal relation with the culture or political problems.

I still appreciate the novel in the same terms, though of course awareness of the parallels with the politics and culture around us has been forced on us all. I still despise politics, but learned not long after reading the novel that action in that realm is necessary for self defense, which over the years has meant both general trends in politics and elections, and some very specific activism. We have had some notable successes in heading off some very bad injustices, but the trend continues to worsen.

I have no patience for them either but mostly hold them in contempt rather than waiting for improvement. Sometimes there is relative improvement, but it is only part of zig zag path in a net downward spiral.

I don't advocate a 'shrug' movement as a means of making a difference either for society at large or a smaller group seeking some kind of asylum, but there is a limit to what I will tolerate in working for punishment, and I understand why some people would take a comprehensive 'shrug option' even though it isn't "natural". Everyone has his own circumstances and his own limits.

In our case we have been punished and viciously persecuted for speaking out, but refuse to stop. In the suspicious minds of paranoid bureaucrats those who speak out against them "must be doing something wrong", and they pursue punishment exploiting arbitrary power without regard for objectivity. (We are all starting to see that intimidation on a grander scale the way the Obama administration has repeatedly regarded the tea party movement as being "terrorists", and the consequences of that will become worse, especially with the growing mass surveillance used for "parallel construction" of motives for government action). So though our circumstances are different, I empathize with the personal experiences you referred to in your own life. You do deserve sympathy, just like Rearden and the rest. But there is no Ragnar to help.

And I referred to their anti-intellectual followers.

OK, ewv, you're right. The pain was felt by me as I understood exactly what several AS characters were going through. I had the same visceral reaction regarding Roark's character as well. I don't let it affect me long term as much as you probably think I do. I am much more resilient than that.

You are correct. It is likely to be a very long time for America to return to its roots. I doubt that it will ever happen. Having sold a company because Obama led customers away from my biofuel company to solar companies like Solyndra and having my parents lose $100 K as a result of his illegal handling of the auto bailout, etc. are just two of the effects that government has had on me directly. I want no sympathy. I have done quite well in my life, even in my shrug era (the last 5-6 years). Let us just say that AS opens up wounds that I would rather just let heal. I was a Dagny-type for a long time. Shrugging is not natural for me, but it was the only logical thing to do. I am anxiously awaiting our re-emergence, either in America or in our Atlantis. Anxiously is the key word. I used to be patient, but the day after day needle pokes of Ellsworth Tooheys like Obama and his minions have worn my patience thin.

You seemed to be talking about Atlas Shrugged, not some personal pain of your own, since you referred directly to "Atlas Shrugged" as being "so painfully long" to read.

The personal "dull pain" you refer to isn't supported by the two quotes you gave. Francisco was referring to his own understanding of why Rearden would not quit, and the other one was Eddie Willers' sadness resulting from his own loss of idealism. Most of the scenes in the valley illustrate a very positive sense of life in what they could achieve themselves despite the destruction in the outer world.

You should reassess what leads you to feel an endless dull pain waiting for this country to return to original values. For one thing, there is a good chance that it will not, at least for a long time after your lifespan. You shouldn't base your life on unrealistic expectations of what others will do as necessary for your own sense of life as something better than chronic dull pain for the rest of your life.

It is frustrating to experience the destruction when you know how much could be possible, and we should never lose sight of that fact, but it doesn't prevent you from achieving what you can personally in your own life and experiencing the rewards of that, especially the psychological rewards for a person of independence. That is still possible in a mixed economy -- for as long as that much lasts -- despite the injustices.

There is also justifiable fear of what you are threatened with, depending on your circumstances if government agencies are directly persecuting you. Different people are being adversely impacted to different degrees in different ways, and brutes have a way of inflicting long dull pain.

But none of that should reduce the essence of emotional experience of life to a "long dull pain" as a dominant reaction -- remember the scene in The Fountainhead where Roark replies "only down to a certain point".

Beginning of what comment? What are you referring to?

You are correct. I was providing examples of the dull pain that I feel waiting, waiting, waiting for the time when this country will return to its original values.

Reading requires a lot of work if you are going to really achieve anything from your efforts. It's much easier to sit back and allow somebody else to tell you how you feel about a subject. I thing the problem is even darker than AR may have visualized as possible. (oh my, did I just go there??) With our incredible access to information today, it is possible to spend days digging through website after website reading one persons opinion after another and never finding out what the basis of all the confusion really was.

Tonight I started to read about a particular news item that I wanted more information about. I knew the real problem lay in the interoperation of a law and what the law exactly said. It took me 3 hours to find what actually turned out to be a city regulation. At any point I could have quite searching and accepted what a reporter offered as the "real law" and had I done so, I would have been just as wrong as 3/4 of the people offering their opinions on websites I saw and read - who were all most likely regurgitating what the reporter had errorously offered up.

It might actually be forth handed information or even fifth or sixth handed.
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Producers are rich, but not all methods of accounting involve money. I feel that a successful producer, happy with his own level of productivity in one industry might achieved what some may see as vast riches, but another producer may accomplish much less fiscally but gain wide acknowledgement as a scholar or perhaps a car dealer.

In the areas that I've pursued in business. The first one (real estate) I was a total failure at due to a lack of training in the field. But that failure taught me how to succeed in the next two industries.

The second was as a general contractor that specialized in military construction projects that other contractors had failed to complete. I hired good men that I paid well enough that they never even thought about looking for another job. I made certain they knew that their success was linked to my success. I examined exactly why every contractor I was replacing failed to complete a job and if I did not understand their failure, I passed on the job. The biggest thing I learned from my first business was to NEVER attempt a job that I did not KNOW how to finish.

My third business was/is one that is based entirely on my personal ability and performance. Each item I produce is hand tooled by me. Each ball of clay I use is mixed and produced to my chemical formula and the glazes that are applied are the result of several years of careful experimentation and analysis. When I price each piece I follow instruction offered to me by one of my most gifted professors - "Charge enough for it that you won't mind seeing the piece in somebody else's home".

I don't make many pieces, but I charge enough for them that I don't have to.

I have what I feel is the greatest job on earth, I turn mud into gold.
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jbrenner: "Atlas Shrugged wouldn't have been so painfully long."

Snippets from isolated descriptions within the book do not make the novel painfully long.

You stated "the left really only has the mental maturity of a 12 year old". I understand the contemptuous dismissal, which they deserve, and don't criticize you for it, but it's important to understand that there is much more to it and that normal 12 year olds are much better.

you're assuming she's read it once.
you're assuming she can read.

As on p. 460 of AS, the end of Chapter III of Book 2, "Francisco's smile was like a moan of pain, the only moan he would permit himself. 'I won't ask it, Mr. Rearden. I know it.'"

I don't think that the anti-intellectual followers seeking to be taken care of can be characterized as the mental maturity of a 12 year old. There is a good deal of evasion and shear evil that is psychologically more "mature" than a 12 year old could dream of, and a normally functioning 12 year old who is at all intellectually active is much better.

"You should re-read them." YES! Better a 12 year old's philosophy based on Rand than a progressives of any age based on Marx...

Hopefully the old saying "There's no such thing as bad publicity" is true!

It was a great way to reference Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged right under the noses of the bureau of censorship.
Of course it had to be slurred to get past the mental filters, but the more it gets mentioned, the more offers to watch the film adaptation of Atlas Shrugged might be accepted.

I have been able to get people to watch the movies that would not have any interest in reading the book. I use this method to slowly educate on the importance of a philosophy for living in the world.

Obviously we must be getting to them if all they can do is denigrate Ayn Rand and her philosophy. Offering ridicule instead of a cogent argument. A food fight among kids.