• In total there are 2 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 2 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 789 on Tue Mar 19, 2024 5:08 am

Was the strike, a purge?

#111: Sept. - Nov. 2012 (Fiction)
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6499
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2719 times
Been thanked: 2661 times
Contact:
Australia

Re: Was the strike, a purge?

Unread post

LanDroid wrote:I hear what you're saying Mr. Tulip, but I think Mr. A is on to something. Remember Galt's group is not totally passive towards what happens to the rest of society, merely waiting for a collapse caused by others. No, they were hastening the collapse by actively destroying their own companies, unleashing financial panic, stealing property, even sinking ships - and considered themselves heroes for doing so. Also consider the vicious hatred Galt's group expresses for those with opinions different from their own; they're barely sub-human, therefore ripe for a holocaust.
What is interesting is how people become similar to what they oppose. In her vision of communist totalitarian ideology as the great evil of modern history, I wonder if Rand herself expresses some concealed totalitarian tendencies?

You are right that the piracy of Ragnar Danneskjöld and the destruction of the d'Anconia copper company are active rather than passive.

Since Rand constructs Atlas Shrugged as a morality tale, she makes the baddies around Wesley Mouch very slimy, encouraging her readers to hate everything associated with socialism.

I sympathise with Rand, just on the basis of the Biblical injunction "to those who have will be given" in the parable of the talents. It is far more productive to build upon success than to tear down capable people. But the other side of the parable of the talents is also in Matthew 25 'what you do to the least you do to Christ'. How I see it is that capitalist growth provides the resources for charity and peace. So we need a free market, with a social safety net.
User avatar
Mr A
Wearing Out Library Card
Posts: 243
Joined: Tue Oct 30, 2012 2:46 am
11
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 24 times

Re: Was the strike, a purge?

Unread post

LanDroid wrote:Also consider the vicious hatred Galt's group expresses for those with opinions different from their own; they're barely sub-human, therefore ripe for a holocaust.
I don't see hatred as coming across.


More of my thoughts:


In the 1968 introduction to The Fountainhead, Rand writes, "It is those that move the world and give life it's meaning - and it is to those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine."

Galt addressed only them, too. The rest were seemingly of no concern of his. He sought only hiskind.
Those that "want to live" in which He tells them to go to the wilderness, be a rallying point, etc. it's just another way of getting theirkind to perish by getting others still out there to leave them to perish.
He also spoke that the "gates" of the city will only be open to this that deserve to enter it, as in - hiskind.
The goal all along was to get theirkind to perish. That is how to do it. A moral way, easier way, than outright open violence or war against theirkind to get them the hell out of their way.

"To my goal I will go - on my way; over those who hesitate and lad behind I shall leap. Thus let my going be their going under."*

It was.

"Everywhere the voice of those who preach death is heard; and the earth I full of those whom one must preach death […] if only they pass away quickly."*

Perish! In and of your own void! Perish! In and by your own unreality! Galt preaches death to them.
Why did Galt not teach them the Morality of Life in the beginning? Not one single word. Why even do his speech later to them?


*Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Walter Kaufmann translation)
"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."
- Cyril Connolly

My seven published books are available for purchase, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/Steven-L.-Sheppard/e/B00E6KOX12
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6499
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2719 times
Been thanked: 2661 times
Contact:
Australia

Re: Was the strike, a purge?

Unread post

The core moral theme in Atlas Shrugged is the centrality of creative freedom to human existence, with the highest creativity that of the entrepreneur. Rand argues that free creative business spirits are stifled by the conformity of the socialist state, and are naturally unleashed by a free market, so their productivity can bring others along with them.

The identification between creativity and capitalism is an interesting philosophical proposition. It is a genuine question whether creativity requires individuality, or whether a person who expresses a collective sentiment can also be truly creative. There are many creative people who do not find a market for their art. Rand sees the greatest art as utility, using creative genius to makes something that people will want to buy because it is useful. Hank Reardon is her portrait of an artist.

Rand seems to have contempt for artists whose work does nto achieve popularity in their lifetime. I wonder what she would think of Van Gogh?
User avatar
Mr A
Wearing Out Library Card
Posts: 243
Joined: Tue Oct 30, 2012 2:46 am
11
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 24 times

Re: Was the strike, a purge?

Unread post

"If you desire ever again to live in an industrial society, it will be on our moral terms."
"We offer him life as a reward for accepting ours."
And if you don't, perish in and of you own void; you will not stop us.
"We do not need you."
We just need you to get the hell out of the way, "until the wreckage of the morality of sacrifice has been wiped out of our way"
"You will not sneak by with the rest of your lifespan."
"I have foreshortened the usual course of history."
"You had been living on borrowed time - and I am the man who had called in the loan."
"you will mot stay much longer on this earth, which we love and will not permit you to damn."
"Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil."
"This country will once more become a sanctuary for a vanishing species: the rational being."
Hiskind, his "brothers in spirit", heroes, traders, men of the mind.
The rest, well, they "are not a concern of mine."
Only those that "deserve will enter" "by the rules and term of my code"
And when in "You will live in a world of responsible beings, who will be as consistent and reliable as facts."
Remember, "If you desire ever again to live in an industrial society, it will be on our moral terms." "choose to perish, or to learn" it.
"For centuries[…] no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it."
Galt: I didn't either. I'm only saying all this to you now, when so many have perished so much has collapsed, so its easier for mykind to be liberated at last from theirkind. We even have rewritten the Constitution in order to take over, I mean, fully liberate, separate. Remember only those that deserve will enter, "choose to perish, or learn" I could have taught you before, but I didn't want to! Ha Ha Ha, thus laughs John Galt. I, too, could have taught you, Ha Ha Ha, thus also laughs Hugh Akston. Ha Ha Ha, thus laughs Ragnar at this too.
Go on strike, those among you that want to live, against the very last of theirkind: thus shrugging and shaking off the last of them with us!!!
"All-too-many live, and all-too-long they hang on their branches. Would that a storm came to shake all this worm-eaten rot from the tree! Would that there came preachers of quick death! I would like them as the true storms and shakers of the trees of life!"*
Live by our terms or perish!!!! thus spoke John Galt.


*Thus Spoke Zarathustra(Walter Kaufmann translation)
"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."
- Cyril Connolly

My seven published books are available for purchase, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/Steven-L.-Sheppard/e/B00E6KOX12
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6499
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2719 times
Been thanked: 2661 times
Contact:
Australia

Re: Was the strike, a purge?

Unread post

Mr A, mixing Nietzsche and Rand in that way could be deceptive.

None of the Rand quotes are like Nietzsche's prayer for preachers of quick death. Nietzche found his dark angels in Hitler and Stalin, not Rand. Rand argues that modern society will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, not that it needs a purge. Atlas Shrugged argues that people will eventually beg Galt and Dagny to take over.
User avatar
Mr A
Wearing Out Library Card
Posts: 243
Joined: Tue Oct 30, 2012 2:46 am
11
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 24 times

Re: Was the strike, a purge?

Unread post

Just to make a quick note, on this forum for Objectivism, I raised several questions and discussed aspects of this novel and other fiction works of ayn Rand, you can find this current thread there it's long:

http://forum.objectivismonline.com/inde ... owforum=24

Right here:
http://forum.objectivismonline.com/inde ... opic=24646
"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."
- Cyril Connolly

My seven published books are available for purchase, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/Steven-L.-Sheppard/e/B00E6KOX12
Post Reply

Return to “Atlas Shrugged - by Ayn Rand”