Charles Synyard (@CharlesSynyard)

DONE! Finished Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. During the 60-page speech, I thought I was definitively reading reading the worst book I had ever read. I concede, the final 100 pages were thrilling and mostly enjoyable, however. Prior highlights were, incidentally, also the final chapters in Parts I and II—Wyatt’s Torch: Dagny’s search for the inventor of the motor; and, The Sign of the Dollar: which I consider the best, richly atmospheric and evocative, as Dagny makes a long walk along a railroad track through the prairie at night (all that’s needed to send the plot on a more sensible course is a “magic negro” to point our all-White leads toward some ineffable mysteries that are absent in the book. So Atlas Shrugged joins The Stand, by Stephen King, and Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, as my least favorite books. Yet the reading was not merely displeasure; while no-talent create mediocrity in every field, like the Ferris Persuader, skill, even genius, is required to create a torture device (even one that did, in the end, malfunction and give us a break). A positive overview of Atlas Shrugged by the author’s disciples at the Ayn Rand Institute. Students can get a free ebook. https://aynrand.org/novels/atlas-shrugged/ To briefly sum up my thoughts, —For hundreds of pages, I was baffled by the special and limited meaning of selfishness and greed, to really denote only activities that benefit the public. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/111688712868714032 —I later realized the work’s praise of individualism and free enterprise rested on artfully saying selfishness and greed, but meaning virtue ethics (from the waist up). https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/111818429606649156 —From the waist down, the novel preaches free love, the other as a source of pleasure, but without desire to do good simply to benefit him or her; at most, the loved one is a reflection of one’s values. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/11176914100556280 —In spite of ostensible reverence for man, neither the heroes or the villains act like real people; in the ideology of John Galt, held together by conjoining the requirements of bare survival with an ethic that requires (what we recognize as) immense, ascetical self-sacrifice, nearly every person, in the book or in our world, not only fall hopelessly short, but are construed as wanting to die, and the result is an abiding, pulsating misanthropy. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/111927733790798666 —It follows that family, children, and community are held in contempt; we have no moral duties toward them, and they may be lightly abandoned, while those who remain lack imagination or initiative. https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/111729834757824139 and https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/111730096739452382 —While the villains in the novel are fools impervious to common sense, the economy doesn’t really collapse until the “strike” of producers instigated by John Galt; it is claimed that every last one was unconsciously working from the same “selfish” (virtuous) motives, but is really more like Galt has some hypnotic power of suggestion that makes them give up wealth and comfort to go play house with a few hundred other Ray Krocs. Galt and his friends are clearly responsible for causing civilization to collapse and millions to perish, but feel no guilt—it was necessary to destroy the income tax, welfare, or what have you (the palpable tyranny only comes after the strike has been on for several years, with conditions getting worse and worse for no clear reason). https://gab.com/CharlesSynyard/posts/111835860992480958 A response point by point would be impossibly long; throughout my read, though, a few verities came to mind again and again, which, has they really broached the pages, would have defused the preached ideology, the character’s self-conceptions, and with them the plot. —Love your neighbor AS YOURSELF. Charity does not consist of self-hatred. —Man was created IN THE IMAGE AND LIKENESS OF GOD. Okay, Galt reverses this to assert humans invented God, but the original gives the lie to the idea that helping the less fortunate, even the evil, is helping them because of a deficiency. It is because we want them to be better, as we know from their innate dignity they can be. Perhaps most importantly, but fitting for Ash Wednesday (you probably didn’t guess this one), —In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat BREAD till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return. (Genesis 3:19). In what can seem a discouraging, not too humanistic passage, did you catch that? Unlike in the pagan Prometheus myth mentioned by d’Anconia, in Eden Adam and Eve knew what bread was. You can’t make bread without fire: ADAM AND EVE ALREADY HAD FIRE. Even in the beginning, there was never such a split between faith and reason as Ayn Rand posits. #AynRand #AtlasShrugged #Objectivism #capitalism #greed #selfishness #virtueethics #literature #books