Hello, my name is Faith

Posted by LennoxStudios 5 years, 6 months ago to The Gulch: Introductions
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I cannot describe how happy I am to be here. I recall the first time I read Atlas Shrugged, and I learned of Galt's Gulch, I had to set the book down, as I began to cry. Because all I could think, was that there would never be a place for people like me. This may be an online website, but it's the best thing I've ever found.


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  • Posted by Lucky 5 years, 6 months ago
    LennoxStudios, greetings. Your introduction is brief and authentic.
    Now, I read Atlas Shrugged for the first time a few years before this site started. Many times when reading I had to put the book down to laugh making loud chokes and snorts.
    The book written > 50 years before was accurately describing current political/economic life. ( Place: Australia. Time: years 2010 to 2013. What: Julia-the-Red was then the Prime Minister.)
    You say cry but I think a similar reaction.
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    • Posted by 5 years, 6 months ago
      I also laughed at many scenes, The memory that first comes to mind if Francisco telling James, "Do not solicit your opinion when it is unwanted unless you want to know its exact value to your listener."

      What this book is to me is a slur of irritation, happiness, sadness, and relief, inspiration, and another emotion I've never been able to place.

      I do believe we had a similar reaction.
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  • Posted by EgoPriest 5 years, 6 months ago
    I have a lot of questions, but I don't want to come across as rude. I'll only observe that you have said nothing that commits you to anything, nor what you mean by "people like me."

    The fact that Ayn Rand wrote the novel over 60 years ago along with its widespread popularity should lead one to the opposite conclusion: that there are many people who love the novel and that, for a rational egoist, the place for people like you is in your life. There is no place in such a person's life for people who are not like them.

    Anyway, I do like your name, as a name, but I urge you to take nothing and no one here on faith.

    On that basis, I welcome you and hope to hear from you further.

    -Jae
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    • Posted by 5 years, 6 months ago
      I admire your forthrightness actually. I will be totally honest with you. I am new to this, all of this. When I say people like me, I mean people who aren't afraid of admitting their talents and people who won't be threatened because of mine. There are a great of people, to whom I cannot get rid of, who are not, like me. If you have questions, I am eager for conversation.
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      • Posted by EgoPriest 5 years, 6 months ago
        Thank you Faith. I am not new to this at all having first read (and having read first) Atlas Shrugged over 24 years ago, and then everything else I could get my hands on, plus audio lectures and courses from the old Second Renaissance Books of the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) that are mostly available for free on Youtube or ARI's Ayn Rand Campus website today.

        As a linguist, I too am a glutton for rational discourse (a scarce "commodity" these days). My personal goal for the last couple years has been to gain a deeper understanding of Objectivist principles by progressively memorizing, reciting and thereby inducing the Galt Speech, paragraph by paragraph.

        Though I have an unexceptional memory, as a young child, my religious father was always instructing me to memorize passages of the Bible and I really took to it (not the dogma but the praxis) so it seemed irresistible that I would do that with the "bible" of my philosophy.

        I'm most particularly interested in meeting and working with those of a similar bent. I made it to about GS-106 almost a year ago, but have made no progress since other than to keep up with the daily recitations.

        I could try and guess the answer, but the first question I usually ask of Atlas or Fountainhead readers is which character do they most closely identify with, personally or psychologically. My own answer would likely shock you (it's not Galt).
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        • Posted by 5 years, 6 months ago
          It makes much sense to memorise the John Galt speech. Few things on this earth are more powerful.


          I find that a difficult question to answer actually. Multiple characters spoke out to me, and reminded me of myself. But if it comes down to it, I'd have to say Hank Rearden.

          I'd quite like to know who you related to. Also, what would you have guessed for who I related to? I'm a deductionist, so I always find things like that interesting.
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          • Posted by EgoPriest 5 years, 6 months ago
            Cheryl, the "plant that struggled to mangle its roots." I've since grown new ones, but once a "mangler" always mangled. As was said by the protagonist of a great movie, "it's a lifelong struggle." :-)
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            • Posted by EgoPriest 5 years, 6 months ago
              Based on what you said at first, I thought you might relate to that character as well (funny we both picked characters of the opposite gender). I did go through a wet-nurse phase when I was young (always insisting there were no absolutes).
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              • Posted by 5 years, 6 months ago
                That makes a great deal of sense to me. I like to think when a plant can grow again, it'll be stronger than it was. The paragraph that made me identify with Hank, above the others, and the paragraph that spurred me on to keep reading.

                "He saw an evening when he sat slumped across his desk in that office. It was late and his staff had left; so he could lie there alone, unwitnessed. He was tired. It was as if he had run a race against his own body, and all the exhaustion of years, which he refused to acknowledge, had caught him at once and flattened him against the desktop. He felt nothing, except the desire not to move. He did not have the strength to feel--not even to suffer. He had burned everything there was to burn within him; he had scattered so many sparks to start so many things--and he wondered whether someone could give him now the spark he needed, now when he felt unable ever to rise again. He asked himself who had started him and kept him going. Then he raised his head. Slowly, with the greatest effort of his life, he made his body rise until he was able to sit upright with only one hand pressed to the desk and a trembling arm to support him. He never asked that question again.”
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