Oh my God, i suffered my 12 hours reading Atlas Shrugged. The writing is shiate, especially the chapter, "The Trial of John Galt", which is basically 40 pages of her giving slight variations on the same example over and over and over again. I read maybe 10 pages of it, flipped around the chapter and saw that it was the same throughout, and then just went on to the next chapter. Everyone that I've ever spoken to about Rand has done the same, I think.

Atlas Shrugged is not a great book. Not even a good book. It's a pile of dung masquerading as a book.

In the book, there is a certain irony in Ayn Rand's philosophy in that she held "reason", which she defined roughly as "an objective view of reality," as the ultimate goal of life, and yet psychological studies prove time and again that people, when viewed objectively and scientifically, are fundamentally irrational. Animal training, conditioning with rewards and punishments, is a far more accurate model and effective guide to molding human behavior than any of her nonsense.

Rather than providing a guide for improvement, Rand's philosophy has served mostly as (ironically) a rationalization for discrimination ("if they're poor it's their own fault", "black people are incapable of the same kind of civilized reason that white people are", "women can't be trusted with anything important because they're too emotional", etc.), and consequently a blinder to the inadequacies of capitalism and free markets that arise from humanity's basically impulse-driven nature.

In conclusion, Ayn Rand is a nothing more than just a proto-NeoConservative who thinks that human superiority is above charity. You suck, Ayn Rand.

u know then u still read it until finish..

since TS bought the book already so just read it lor

TS, you risk the chance of selling off this book since you have exposed it here.

nay, if the book is realy that bad, u wont even get through it halfway no matter how expensive the book is.

I'm an Ayn Rand fan and Fountainhead is my favourite novel ever. So there.

I'm curiose that someone who can come up with the line above is incapable of a better Topic Title than "Ayn Rand sucks ass".

Atlas Shrugged & The Fountainhead are terrible, terrible books. But bad as they are, it's the philosophy & the fanbase that makes them really astoundingly bad. It's not so much a proto-Neoconservatism as much as it's an idealised Libertarianism - an idea that elevates selfishness, self-interest & a class-based mentality as THE highest values to be enshrined in any society.
Couple this with the fact that a lot of people seem to read it when they're young (ie, <20 years old) - a time when the pitfalls of such a mindset are not readily visible and the (alleged) benefits are very tempting, it creates the basis for some truly misguided thinking later on in life.
It's only when they realize (and some never do) that Rands' base assumptions are unlikely, if not outright false that they start re-thinking the whole thing.

I can agree that Rand's novels are terrible by the traditional standards of literature. I can also agree that as a philosophy, Objectivism isn't terribly sound either. (Going into further depth on either of these points would require more energy than I'm willing to muster at the moment.) I would disagree that seeing them as a source of inspiration is indefensible. One way to understand Rand's stuff is to see it as an equal and opposite reaction to Marxism. "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" aren't meant to be compared to stuff by James Joyce or F. Scott Fitzgerald. They're meant to be compared to Marx's "The Communist Manifesto" and Mao Zedong's "Little Red Book". As difficult as it is for the current generation to imagine nowadays, both of these books inspired vast numbers of young people, changing the world irrevocably and, in my opinion, for the worst. Even if you disagree with Rand's politics, you must admit that she succeeded in demonstrating that the rhetorical tools and demagoguery that the Marxists relied so heavily upon could just as easily be appropriated to serve a political stance that was stood squarely opposite that of Marxism.

In my case, yes, my politics tend strongly libertarian and, yes, I believe that a value system that is honestly based on enlightened self-interest is more moral than one based on selflessness (Judeo-Christian morality). Note that I first read Rand in my early 20s, after having graduated from university. Ironically, during high school I had a vague sense of admiration for Marxism and a morality based on selflessness that I believe was fostered by made-in-Hollywood films and television shows. I changed my views after attending university in France and seeing first hand the effects of socialism (in particularly the "entitlement mentality").

EDIT:

I note that your screen name and signature here refer to the novel "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson, which depicts as libertarian a scenario as anyone could imagine! Of course, in that novel, it's a somewhat dystopic future, but it's all the more exciting for that!

This post has been edited by wankongyew: Apr 29 2009, 03:22 PM

Because he didn't... google is amazing and:



is from http://digg.com/celebrity/A_1964_Interview...layboy_Magazine



I'll help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand)

why explain when you can link

edit: tbh this objectivism sounds an awful lot like mazlow's hierarchy of needs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs


This post has been edited by Kidicarus: Apr 29 2009, 04:10 PM

No, it is not. What you linked to appears to be a psychological model to explain human behavior. Objectivism attempts to be a complete philosophy, but is really only relevant as a form of ethics. In short, it says that traditional morality is wrong. Instead, all that good comes from selfishness, and all that is evil comes from selflessness.

I have no idea what you mean by traditional morality. I too consider myself a libertarian but i tend to subscribe to an undeveloped form of liberty as espoused by Mills, although I would say that there is a place for utilitarian values in an ethics model.

The reason i linked the Mazlow chart, which you see in just about every management 101 book out there, is your reference to enlightened self-interest which appears to be on the top tier pyramid. Objectivism cannot work as an everyman philosophy simply because not everyone is capable or has met his lower needs.

Marxism was attractive because it gave something to the proleteriat.

Anyway, the reason i posted above wasn't to contribute to this debate. I merely wanted to highlight the act of forum post plagiarism which i was quite chuffed at having discovered.

Oh, you guys have fell for this western media parrot.

He basically views anything from the west as superior and parrots it as his own. He's everything non mainstream.

http://digg.com/celebrity/A_1964_Interview...layboy_Magazine

Search for halcyonic. I doubt it's him, his history has a lot of "Oh, Jesus Christ."

Sorry, already posted above that he copied his opinion/forum post from that link in post 9 above. At least it has resulted in a few paragraphs of pseudo intellectual discourse.

While what he did was lame, posting in these forums just to attack him as a pro-west parrot is even lamer.

Ah, yes. You're right, it's lame.

Just can't stand his parroting behaviour sometimes especially when he decides to branch out and invade the literary lounge. My apologies.

I also fail to see why criticizing Ayn Rand is seen as being pro-Western. If anything, it should be the opposite.

About a third through this book, but I'm on the verge of giving up. Although I'm sympathetic to a lot of what she's trying to say, I think the characters, writing, and plot so far are just terrible. The things said and done by the "bad guys" are just too over the top and unbelievable. The good guys aren't really likeable either.

Making the villains look so stupid, cartoonish, and irrational is just overkill, and they are probably more suitable in a children's storybook. The philosophy they espouse is so stupid it beggars belief that their influence is so large. I know it's fiction and it calls for the suspension of belief, but you do need some realism and strong motives as well to make a good book. For example, I don't come to Tolstoy's heroes' conclusions in "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" but I enjoyed reading the discussions between different characters because he tries to present them honestly and realistically from different view points and I can empathise with most of them.

Finally, the line "Who is John Galt?" strikes me as so silly that every time I read it I can't help but snicker and not take the book too seriously. I guess there are tonnes of people who love the book since it's ranked no 1 by randomhouse's readers (and it was the reason I bought it), but I'm not one of them.