Atlas Shrugged and Objectivism

  • 🔧 Actively working on site again.
Objectivism is a joke, it essentially suggests that slave owners are in the right but decorates it as giving more rights to society's actual contributors while simultaneously preaching the removal of what makes them contributors. It would be all flowers & sunshine if it were simply about not stifling idea men & not ripping off inventors and giving everybody their just reward but that's not the reality of what Ayn Rand preached. She hated Native American's and believed it was the white man's right to mug them purely by virtue that they had superior fire power & by that logic had earned their "right" to devastate these races and cultures 'n shit.

The rape scenes she wrote into her books were a demonstration of this ideal: that those in power are deserving of their power by no greater virtue of merely holding that power. The person who commits the rape in Atlas Shrugged was John Galt, the hero of the story. She preached dictatorship & dressed it up as socialism or some shit. Fuck that noise.
 
  • Agree
  • Autistic
Reactions: PacSol, Adamska, autisticdragonkin and 1 other person
MarvinTheParanoidAndroid said:
Objectivism is a joke, it essentially suggests that slave owners are in the right but decorates it as giving more rights to society's actual contributors while simultaneously preaching the removal of what makes them contributors. It would be all flowers & sunshine if it were simply about not stifling idea men & not ripping off inventors and giving everybody their just reward but that's not the reality of what Ayn Rand preached. She hated Native American's and believed it was the white man's right to mug them purely by virtue that they had superior fire power & by that logic had earned their "right" to devastate these races and cultures 'n shit.

The rape scenes she wrote into her books were a demonstration of this ideal: that those in power are deserving of their power by no greater virtue of merely holding that power. The person who commits the rape in Atlas Shrugged was John Galt, the hero of the story. She preached dictatorship & dressed it up as socialism or some shit. Fuck that noise.
Click to expand...
If your description is correct then it actually fixes the problems that I see in objectivism
  1. non aggression principle unjustified
  2. unjustified condemnation of parasitism
 
  • Autistic
Reactions: MarvinTheParanoidAndroid and AnOminous
One thing I've noticed with some writers who are Rand fans is that they sure love themselves some major rape. Terry Goodkind's work is known for its cruelty towards children and women as well as going into detail of sexual violence for several pages. And while Andrew Zarr is nicer than Goodkind, nearly all of his writings have some woman getting raped (sometimes men via women) or someone wants to rape her in graphic detail. Now Steve Ditko, he had some really oddball beliefs, but thankfully, he doesn't think anything with a vagina should be sexually violated.
 
autisticdragonkin said:
I don't know whether you are advocating for Ayn Rand but you made the best point that I have ever heard for her
Click to expand...

Nah, I just read her books from as neutral of a position as one can get. Many books are universally praised or slagged despite most people never having read them. A few examples off the top of my head are "Wealth of Nations", "Utopia", "Twilight", and the Bible. I am a voracious reader. Once I hear about a book enough I go read it to understand what the truth actually is.

Enclave Supremacy said:
They're hardly arguments in Atlas, just a crude way of making all of Rand's detractors look like whinge bags. They just sit around and talk whilst the stalwart protagonists do all the work, back "altruistic" aid work to Europe and complain about how competition isn't fair.

They're not meant to be proto entitled SJWs of the 1940s. The moochers in the book never existed. I refuse to credit Rand with such an observation, she's not that good a writer.
Click to expand...

The "moochers" sitting around and talking was the entire point. Galt's people built their fortunes through actual capital and sweat equity. James's people used political capital and emotional leverage to get what they wanted. The way the "moochers" manipulated things was to remove objectivity from the conversation and try to put everybody into a state of subjective helplessness. Of course the antagonists are caricatures versus characters as we can agree Ayn was writing a manifesto versus a story, but this was a world that Rand believed would come to pass without an embrace of her ideology. I merely think its interesting the parallels you can draw between her future vision and some of what has come to pass. I'm not validating her beliefs.

For those who haven't read the book, cut out the 60 or so page monologue towards the middle/end and you are left with a straightforward science fiction story of good versus evil with trains, cloaking fields, weird sex, and a fight to escape a weapon that kills everybody by dropping the bass. Its not great, I'm not sure why it spawned what is basically a religion, but there are far worse books to read than Atlas Shrugged.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: Marvin
Datiko said:
The "moochers" sitting around and talking was the entire point. Galt's people built their fortunes through actual capital and sweat equity. James's people used political capital and emotional leverage to get what they wanted. The way the "moochers" manipulated things was to remove objectivity from the conversation and try to put everybody into a state of subjective helplessness.
Click to expand...

Yeah and it was ridiculous. This was not a novel, it was intended as a parable of her entire philosophy. She didn't have any actual real villains so she just made up all these super-wealthy businessmen, involved directly with the US Government no-less, who sat around bitching, talking about how competition between businesses and making money was good when they could be sending free aid overseas.

When exactly did this happen in America?

Even during the war when this thing was written people were still making a killing and the US wasn't giving it's stuff away, it was selling it. It also doesn't make for an actually compelling story where the protagonist has to wipe the antagonists arse for them at every-step. They were characters either, just bland emotionless robots that no sane person could ever identify with. In-fact all of the main characters were highly privileged or just naturally gifted whilst Eddie Willers, the every-man stand-in, was some dough-eyed cuck whom all but self-flagellated himself before Dangy's leadership.
 
Enclave Supremacy said:
Yeah and it was ridiculous. This was not a novel, it was intended as a parable of her entire philosophy. She didn't have any actual real villains so she just made up all these super-wealthy businessmen, involved directly with the US Government no-less, who sat around bitching, talking about how competition between businesses and making money was good when they could be sending free aid overseas.

When exactly did this happen in America?

Even during the war when this thing was written people were still making a killing and the US wasn't giving it's stuff away, it was selling it. It also doesn't make for an actually compelling story where the protagonist has to wipe the antagonists arse for them at every-step. They were characters either, just bland emotionless robots that no sane person could ever identify with. In-fact all of the main characters were highly privileged or just naturally gifted whilst Eddie Willers, the every-man stand-in, was some dough-eyed :cuck: whom all but self-flagellated himself before Dangy's leadership.
Click to expand...

The events happening in America is a way to make her point relevant to western readers. Remember that Any Rand witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution do to her family what the US government ended up doing to the people Galt took away.

Rand also experienced first hand the kind of tycoon wealth of the early 20th venture. She would have had firsthand exposure to the Rockefellers and Henry Fords of the time that did seem like the Titans of industry that led to her developing the protagonist.

Your points are valid and I don't think the book was great. I disagree that it made zero sense. Atlas shrugged was the result of an incomplete philosophy written in response to events over 100 years ago. Of course it's going to make less sense to modern readers because they can't understand the context.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: autisticdragonkin
bradsternum said:
I see a lot of overlap between Ayn Rand's philosophy's and Aleister Crowley's. Individualism to the point of narcissism, disregard for the suffering of others, a generally elitist outlook on life.
Click to expand...

Crowley didn't portray his bullshit philosophy as the height of nobility, though.

Instead, he reveled in his degeneracy and trolled the fuck out of the world.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
Reactions: MarvinTheParanoidAndroid, Too Many Crooks, Big Nasty and 3 others
AnOminous said:
Crowley didn't portray his bullshit philosophy as the height of nobility, though.

Instead, he reveled in his degeneracy and trolled the fuck out of the world.
Click to expand...

That's true. I'm just saying the basic principals are similar. Crowley was pretty much just a dick who liked to mess with people, and Rand thought she was a philosopher.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Marvin
Meatman said:
atlas shuggged is a good film #TYCED
Click to expand...
As much as I didn't give a shit about Atlas Shrugged, I really liked how a genre book that's a cult favorite at most was able to get so much movie made of it. Gives me hope for my preferred worthless bullshit cult genre books.
 
Anthem, I will admit, was really good. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Atlas Shrugged was not good. It really disappointed me.

Rand's whole philosophy is so ridiculous.

Utilitarianism is a legitimate view-point.

It's a damn shame that her horrific theory often gets lumped together with utilitarianism as it is a derivative form of it.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: RepQuest
Too Many Crooks said:
Literally criticism isn't their strong point.

Poor Mr. Dickens is spinning in his grave.
Click to expand...

From this thread I found two most amusing quotes.

94e82a8ff966b92576d3cc32de86f2fb.png

This second one I suspect to be a troll. If it isn't then I may have to go and cry.

d8b82c7e85afb5e059a091c3fb6df88e.png

As it so happens, I watch the 1950s Christmas Carol film, (Starring Alastair Simm) every time it's on at Christmas. And every time, the scene near the end when he wakes up and starts dancing around in joy always puts a smile on my face.

EDIT: I found this one as well. SO basically they want Blackadder's Christmas Carol, minus the obvious fact that it's a joke.

53eeac2145f4b687d82a09a86e458a77.png
 
  • Winner
Reactions: Too Many Crooks, Adamska and Marvin
So the ending turns Scrooge from a good guy to a horrible selfish nug, got it.

And I like how they support the very people that would exploit them, even as they scream about getting theirs.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Zeorus and Too Many Crooks
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back