atlas shrugged ...then and now..
i read some ayn rand the past couple of weeks... atlas shrugged.
i didn’t know she was from a Russian family… ended up in the usa in 1926 at 21 years. started writing for hollywood. cecil b.demille. (great director)
she started writing atlas shrugged at about the time of the end of the war.. ’46 and it came out in the late 50s.. it’s a bit dated in some ways.. everyone .. even the hero smokes cigarettes.. (yuck)
the dollar sign is said to come from the initials of the united states.. but that is really questionable.. ( it was in use before the formation of the usa. .. see wiki where it is suggested that it is an abbreviation of ‘peso’)
atlas shrugged is a good read. long. huge. its about the crumbling of the usa. under the weight of an undefined emotianalism/hysteria that took hold and strangled the thinking people who went on strike rather than submit to it... and refused to use their minds for the society that was destroying them. with the result that society collapsed. the lights went out in new york.. the book was originally called ‘the strike’.
i think it is about what is happening now. or over the past 30 odd years. is it just a nasty little suspicion that informs me that it has been censored for being subversive..? it would come alive on screen though no movie/mini-series has been made despite the best attempts…..
if what she has written is to be described in any way as prophetic then it wont be long till new york is in darkness. though it is not prophetic (it has plenty to say about the other kind of profit....)--- in fact it basically discredits prophecy …( it is somewhere around here that the line between reason and prophecy lies…) it’s by a very talented lady who loved America and wished to warn her fellows of the real nature of certain people who abandon reason in the name of some social ideal or other… as she had seen happen in Russia in the early 20’s …..
though as it turns out…the real betrayers of the usa were / are the bankers on wall st in cahoots with the white house rather than the entrepreneurs in collaboration with the bureau (dagny up till the final moment) as depicted in atlas shrugged.
as I understand it… a country/society runs on 1. its entrepreneurs.. 2.. its bankers (capital) and 3.. its workers. (all three equally important.) ayn rand stresses the importance of its entrepeneurs.. its heroic figures such as atlas the titan who held up the sky.
i’d say the book is more about Prometheus than atlas. the spark of mind. but heavens above.... she wrote it.. she names it what she wants… hehehe.
atlas shrugged is about morality.. it is about virtue.. money.. happiness. ---- enlightened self- interest is what it is termed today (though I didn’t find the expression in atlas shrugged.)
it defines what is meant by these things….
she calls the philosophy objectivism.. it is an Aristotelian view applied to modernity. but .. these things are fluid..
morality if it is true has the purpose of leading to happiness
happiness is a measure of a man’s self esteem.
there is nothing higher than reason..
it is really good stuff. it is real philosophy.. this is why aristotle is great. its neo- aristotelianism.
well.. I happen to think it’s a great book. ( at the risk of being branded as a neo-liberal or worse which I certainly am not..!) and despite it being 50 years old is well worth the time.. it was the first time I had read it.. though I read the fountainhead (an earlier work by rand) as a teenager and can recall being very impressed though subsequently disillusioned by the ideas that didn’t seem to work. so I quit Aristotelian thought and went to the academy. then I quit that and began to learn.
this is what I learned :-
according to the perennial philosophy, there are spheres higher than the mind though they in no way contradict pure reason. (if there is an apparent contradiction.. check your premises…… J ) the sphere of buddhi (or the sphere of nirvana for that matter.)…. for example are spheres more subtle than reason. it is of course beyond mind and can only be approached by the mental apparatus. not engaged.
reason (and the mind) is not an obstacle to buddhi but the way there.*
of course abandoning reason for any less cause is a regression into emotionalism and will meet with pain sooner or later like the unregenerates in atlas shrugged taking everyone down with them.. transcending reason is another matter.
reason.. the word in English is from (anglo)French raison from latin rationum. from ratus.. the past participle of reri.. to reckon.. think.. (nothing to do with rats)
age of reason was the title of tom pains book of 1794.
it’s a latin word.. the greek would be logos. but it is not an exact translation. not at all .
atlas shrugged is the unhappy story of what can develop when idealism that is not informed by buddhi takes hold of reason.... ..its warning was basically heeded in terms of communism though in the final analysis the warning of a false morality/idealism has been totally ignored.
john galt rocks..
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