See all of those little comments were rooted with valid arguments except for the last one. You see what I did with the last one? Rand never says you can't enjoy a book or a song as art, in fact she encourages the pursuit of enjoyment. Granted, she believes enjoyment can only happen in a few ways, but regardless. Rand does describe the enjoyment Dagny gets from music as this motivational objectivist state but the point is she allows Dagny to sit and listen to this music and enjoy it as a product. I assume this sort of idea translates well to works of literature, unless of course Rand is an extreme hypocrite... I'm just going to not pursue that train of thought, my time is limited. Anyway, what I did there- with the third comment- is take some of the ideas Rand presents, oversimplified them, and then mocked them. Sound familiar? It should. I think we can all agree that Rand wrote this book to get her ideas out there. With this in mind, of course she had a bias coming in to this, of course she wanted to paint scenarios where objectivism could show off its positive points- but she disregarded any opposition, any disagreeing party in the book is made to sound stupid or evil. By the end of the book Jim Taggart went from being that great guy that just wanted to do right but wasn't ready for the world of business, to a purposefully evil asshole who freaks out when he thinks that people are going to start demanding to be happy. Until the last few chapters, Rand had allowed those Washington types to be ignorant people with good intentions, but suddenly they were smart enough to know the consequences of their actions- IT WAS ALL A PLAN! And Galt told everyone the truth! How did he know!? I get that its Rand's universe, I do, but in creating the universe she created the only time I felt Big Brother was in control was when the disappearances started up. So for me, personally, John Galt was the only Big Brother in the book, the government was just a bunch of idiots trying to do a little bit of good. Maybe I'm alone here, but I saw no transition from "government is stupid and therefore evil" to "government is purposefully evil" before Galt's speech.
You know what was weird? That scene with the kid named Tony after he got shot, the one that sounded like an after school special- and how about when Jim just collapsed because of the RAW POWER OF OBJECTIVISM. I had to mention these scenes simply because they were hilarious to me and this is my last chance to talk about Atlas Shrugged. Oh that's a weird feeling. It just hit me- this is it. We really are done. The book DOES have an end!
Speaking of which, what kind of 'farewell' post would this be without talk of the ending? I think it was appropriate, I feel like it had to end that way, and I think after the big speech Rand kind of allowed for the narrative to take over a bit more, which I am pretty happy about. A part of me wanted to see them fail, and I rationalized the possibility of it with the idea that in a world devoid of objectivist thinking, maybe Rand would argue there would be no way for them to succeed. Then I realized there is ALWAYS a way for objectivists, and there's the fact that Galt's speech led to one guy literally punching a woman in the face for telling her child to give away her toys. Which was hilarious.
While I do want to talk more about the ending I feel like this is not the place nor the time; I said on Sunday that I would talk about the ending more today but this post is supposed to be about the book in general, and I am quite sure I have already hit the required amount of words, but a minimum never stopped me before. I think that despite my long posts there is one thought I have yet to convey on this book, and that is that I do not disagree with a lot of Randian philosophy. Some of her ideas are great, in fact my favorite part of the book is probably Galt's speech because there are some really cool ideas presented in there. But those ideas are presented throughout the book, so why do I choose Galt's speech? Because that is the only part of the book where Rand has made a decision between narrative and message. In those 50 or so pages, Rand is talking straight philosophy with the reader, and I loved it. I disagreed with a good amount of it like the idea that learning something that you do not plan to use practically is a waste of time- I disagree with that, but I still greatly enjoyed it. I think the biggest reason as to why I enjoyed it so much is because that is basically the only time in the book where I felt Ayn Rand was being straight with me- there was a little bit of bullshit but for the most part it was just her telling us what she believes in and giving a few coherent arguments. No straw men, very few metaphors (and the ones that were there made sense), just Rand's ideas. So I do not disagree with objectivism, necessarily, I simply disagree with the way Rand has presented it. I think some of her ideas are flawed, I think she gives objective definitions for things that are clearly subjective matters, I think she makes the same mistake Freud did and assumes that she is the norm and everyone is secretly just like her, but more than anything I think that if she had released the John Galt speech (or something like it) instead of the Bible she published there would be many more objectivists running around today. After reading the Galt speech I realized that some of her ideas that I previously disagreed with because of the disingenuous way in which they were presented were actually quite interesting, and in some cases the speech changed my mind. On these things I was convinced because that part of the philosophy made sense to me, and it was presented in a clear way that everyone could understand.
But who the fuck is convinced by the scenes between Rearden and whatever punching bag happens to be in his office? Who fails to see through the ridiculous scenes presented when only one side is presenting an argument? Who is convinced by this? I recall with a chuckle of the time when the State Science Institute published that work on how nobody should rely on logic or something to that effect and Stadler to Ferris: "The feeblest imbecile should be able to see the glaring contradictions in ever one of your statements." to which Ferris replies: "Let us put it this way, Dr. Stadler. The man who doesn't see that, deserves to believe all my statements." (page 321). In the same way, I believe that any idiot should be able to see through the bullshit scenarios Rand presents her arguments with, but I feel like Rand would say that any idiot who cannot see that deserves to subscribe blindly to her ideas. Not to say her ideas are those of an imbecile, but rather they were constructed for the ignorant masses who just look for ideas to latch on to, as Rand describes. I think that the Galt speech was constructed not only to get her message across, but to convince those who she knew would not be stupid enough to just be convinced by her "narrative". Or maybe I am giving her too much credit. Maybe she actually believed this would convince people, but somehow I doubt that tomorrow I will be attending class with a bunch of objectivists.
I think I have rambled enough, it is time for celebration! We're done! We are free! And in some cruel irony the government shutdown is expected to end tonight, which is pretty hilarious. Now Ayn Rand would not want us to waste all the material in this book, so the question remains: What do we do with it? Do we turn off all our heating and burn the book for warmth? That fire would probably last two months or so. Do we rip out all the pages and make wings with them? Maybe Rand would just want us to use it as a paperweight in an office. I would suggest passing the book on to someone who may want to learn about objectivism but given that they have not yet been enlightened, that would be giving away something of great value to the less fortunate, which Rand would condemn.
No. I know what to do. I'm going to go beat a communist to death with it. It's what Rand would have wanted.
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