What is your favorite part of Atlas Shrugged?
Mine is from Galt's speech: A farmer will not invest the effort of one summer if he’s unable to calculate his chances of a harvest. But you expect industrial giants - who plan in terms of decades, invest in terms of generations and undertake ninety-nine-year contracts -to continue to function and produce, not knowing what random caprice in the skull of what random official will descend upon them at what moment to demolish the whole of their effort. Drifters and physical laborers live and plan by the range of a day. The better the mind, the longer the range. A man whose vision extends to a shanty, might continue to build on your quicksands, to grab a fast profit and run. A man who envisions skyscrapers, will not. Nor will he give ten years of unswerving devotion to the task of inventing a new product, when he knows the gangs of entrenched mediocrity are juggling the laws against him, to tie him, restrict him and force him to fail, but should he fight them and struggle and succeed, they will seize his rewards and his invention.
"Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all."
"Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours."
I think thats why AS didnt have the impact that AR expected. Trump has more impact with a MUCH less intellectually consistent message at his rallies. Imagine if we had that part of Trump allied with the ideas of AR- maybe things would really change.
Politicians voice this simply enough that most often sounds like slogans. The fact is that the "engine" is on what the large population depends, on what they build (even though Obama thinks they did not build it) their lives on.
At the time of Rand it was necessary to formulate what capitalism is? Have you heard one of the lectures by Branden when he talks about how Rand defined to him what capitalism was? She asked him: "Do you believe that a human being has the right to exist?" Branden: "Yes". "Do you believe that he has the right to exist for his own sake?" Branden: "Of course. Otherwise it would be by permission." Rand: "The political implementation of that idea is capitalism."
That is why it was necessary for Rand to spell out all aspects of that principle in Galt's speech.
Having said that, Francisco speech on how money works comes in second to Galt's.
As for the novel's adaptation to films, none of the three sequels give credit to the contents. They were poorly made and superficial (although I don't blame the authors, they had very limited budgets. But the actors practically ruined the contents. Same is true for "Fountainhead". Cooper was too old to play the role of Roark.
What confused me at the time, and even now, is that our do called democracy is based on mob rule, so the producers have little clout- like we see now. Even though Apple makes great stuff that I use all the time, The government puts tariffs on their imports and just tells Apple to make the stuff here (translation- they dont have "pull" to get the tariffs waived for them).
So if AR was thinking that to convince the producers would keep this country from falling into collectivism, she was off base and you can see what effect AS had since. A few people, like us, understand but at least half the people are dyed in the wool collectivists who are hell bent on getting rid of any parts of the constitution that protect our rights.
As to the films, I agree. I thought the actress who portrayed Dagny in the first one was pretty good, and it played out like a normal movie. It was interesting to watch, and I at least felt like I was there. The following two were very bad, probably because of low budgets and a mediocre director. I saw an internview with Spielberg one time where he said "I am a storyteller". They needed someone like that in AS2 and AS3.
My list of the really good movies doesnt include any of the AS releases actually, but then again they didnt spend 200 million like they did on Titanic. Some movies like "the hundred foot journey" had a really good story and director, and I suspect not a big budget.
I thought only the 3rd sequel was passable, the 1st and 2nd was awful. Those Dagnys simply did not cut it, specifically the 2nd one.
In the 3rd Francisco was played by a 60 yo actor who probably got the role for his younger fame. It was awful.
Democracy based on mob rule? That is the reality now but it should not be. The mob will always be mob. The gladiator games in the Coliseum of Rome were designed to silence them: Give us bread and circus!
I do not know what is the right way to have them understand what human dignity and integrity are for. I think that is one reason the elite's contempt for them, except that they lump everyone in the group who does not agree with them politically, the purpose of which to enhance their own power. So if we want to generalize neither group is better than the other.
We are very far from the idealistic way the Founding Fathers were trying to set the path for this nation.
I had thought, off an on, for years about what a movie of it would look like; I concluded that a mini-series would be better; that Winston Tunnel incident would have made a very good episode all by itself. For $300 plus an automatic typewriter, I could have written a much better script. Not bragging on myself as a writer, that main thing would have been in knowing what to keep and what to cut; since Ayn Rand had already done most of the work, most of it could have been written by doing straight copy from the book.
I will say that I read Jurassic Park after I saw the movie, and I could see that a LOT of the details were left out in the movie, including all the work that the Ingen people did to guarantee safety and efficiency in the process they used. It was essentially sabotage that was responsible for the problems, NOT some loosely worded thing about "life finds a way". It was their programmer who found a way, not the dinosaurs
It is difficult to realize while it is necessary to distract the guilty while evidence against them is being gathered.
I enjoy the philosophical but it is said the test of true wisdom is to state it simply.
I agree but somewhere along the line it looses it's profound impact.
“All your life, you have heard yourself denounced, not for your faults, but for your greatest virtues. You have been hated, not for your mistakes, but for your achievements. You have been scorned for all those qualities of character which are your highest pride. You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgment and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been called anti-social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads. You have been called ruthless for the strength and self-discipline of your drive to your purpose. You have been called greedy for the magnificence of your power to create wealth. You, who’ve expended an inconceivable flow of energy, have been called a parasite. You, who’ve created abundance where there had been nothing but wastelands and helpless, starving men before you, have been called a robber. You, who’ve kept them all alive, have been called an exploiter. You, the purest and most moral man among them, have been sneered at as a ‘vulgar materialist.’ Have you stopped to ask them: by what right? — by what code? — by what standard? No, you have borne it all and kept silent. You bowed to their code and you never upheld your own. You knew what exacting morality was needed to produce a single metal nail, but you let them brand you as immoral. You knew that man needs the strictest code of values to deal with nature, but you thought that you needed no such code to deal with men. You left the deadliest weapon in the hands of your enemies, a weapon you never suspected or understood. Their moral code is their weapon.”
A theory in psychology in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others?
Bonus round.
'Narcissists' are renowned for using 'psychological projection' to blame other people, even when it is entirely apparent that they are the
Guilty.
That may not seem like much. Still, it's a concept libs can't handle.
enough of that Corpalite (sp?),
Me dino's tiny brain doesn't know what that word is supposed to be.
A can of Crap Lite perhaps?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprolite
My spell checker doesn't know coprolite either--just like allosaur.
"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in the lonely frustration for the life you deserve and have never been able to reach. the world you desire can be won. It exists..it is real..it is possible..it's yours."
As Ellis Wyatt departs he burns his oil fields because he refuses to validate or take part in the looters’ system or offer them any useful resources to draw from.
The AS story remindes me of how handicappers add exttra weight to race horses to try and make them all equally likely to win thus keeping the odds down on any one horse. One horse does win however in spite of their machinations.
1) The Tramp's story of the Twentieth Century Motor Company. Because it tells the story of Socialism/Communism in microcosm. How producers are punished, while slackers are rewarded. And how producers will go out of their ways to not be seen as better than someone else. How people game the system. And how the poor make claims on the affluent. If you have 1 more dollar, you owe them that dollar; if someone else has 1 more dollar they owe you.
2) The epitomous speech by Francisco that the book gets its name.
3) The Wet Nurse's final scenes that shows Reardon the truth about how society mentally cripples its young. Especially when he equates it to a birds mother ripping the feathers from their young's wings.
4) The Dr. Ferris speech to Hank Reardon where he tell him the scam of government. How governments cannot rule innocent men, and it's only power comes from cracking down on criminals. So it creates laws no one can follow, making everyone a criminal, then cashes in on the guilt.
One is the money speech, and 2 is the story
of the twentieth century motor company
Wayne
The parts I liked best were:
1) The description of the tree that was rotten from the inside and fell over. I still remember seeing in my mind what that tree would look like, and how Caifornia in particular is just like that tree.
2) Rearden's party where Francisco pulls him aside and tells him about how its a war out there, and we must take sides. Boy, is that true today.
3) The passages where the collectivists find out that the mines of Francisco are worthless and they are wiped out. This sort of happened in 2007 with the housing crisis, but our government just bailed out their buddies courtesy of OUR money.
If there were a god, I would tell him that the design of humans is not very good if he expected us to be rational beings.. The strength of emotions are probably turned up a bit too high, such that they get in the way of thinking more than needed.
History is full of examples where emotions are treated as primary, and thinking secondary (like with the liberals of today)
Once it is decided that emotions are to be feared and cant be controlled or mitigated, one tends to adopt liberal ideas about "stronger together" and "political correctness" in an attempt to control their own emotions.
I have been looking for awhile now for the enduring and incredible attraction to collectivism, in the face of the fact that collectivism is a dismal failure over thousands of years, and even today in Venezuels. Perhaps it is indeed rooted in one's ability to deal with one's own emotions. Talk about individuality and rationality fall on deaf ears if the primary goal of ones life is to escape bad feelings and bask in good feelings however they can be had (drugs or otherwise)
That and the tunnel. How the various passengers "earned" their place on the train. Really made me think.
Funny, a friend of mine used to read AS again every Christmas but he would skip right past Galt's 60 page speech - he'd never read it even once.
I couldn't believe it when he told me that. I guess I thought fellow OBJ's would love the same things, but of course....
1) I liked the part where the guy on the train who seems like a nobody tells the story of the horrible shrew at the motor plant. She seems like the worst villain I've seen in any media. It's more poignant because it's some rando on the train, and even though he was never running a company, he was the best at what he did in life. It made him happy. No one can say he was better or worse than Dagny, Jim, or anyone. He was working around stuff he liked. Those young investors bought the plant, introduced socialism, and the nasty shrews rose to the top, taking away his life, the same as gov't tooking away Dagny's company or Rearden's metal.
2) I liked when Dagny was attempting to take it easy up north. She can't help but think of ways to serve more customers by putting in a store and other services, and she says "Just stop!" because she's supposed to be on vacation. She can't stop thinking of ways to meet the needs of potential customers.
Same with John Galt. Why help your captors?
longer , so he can afford to tell them how to repair it.
Yet he helped him keep the mill functioning. I think because he knew Hank needed to decide for himself when to call it quits. Actually I just loved the way Francisco was an enigma to Hank when ever they interacted?
Today's business "leaders" are more PC conscious and their main interest is to have a golden parachute.
If all we get is parasitical humanoids to man our governments then we will have to treat them as such...
Bullcrap!, I still say.
I think more than anything this shows how different people envision in their mind what a writer is saying, and how it differs among many....including the writer!
I have always had difficulty, though, not thinking of Francisco as the hero of AS. Can't help it.
He hadn't read the book but knew the critics were not fond of her writing style.
Galt knew and understood the philosophy, but was some ethereal figure who didnt relate much to humanity. He was more like AR in her everyday life, in that 100% perfection was required all the time.
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