The Speech
Thought provoking question (hopefully)- Would John Galt's speech have any impact if given in modern times? I am doing my yearly reading of AS, and that question kept percolating in my mind. Not whether it is right of wrong, good or evil, but would it have any impact? I'm questioning this from two different angles. First, in today's partisan team sport of politics and economics, would he simply be labeled as a member of one team, and ignored by the others? Second, and sadder, would the vast majority of humans today have the attention span to listen to it in its entirety? In our modern 30 second sound bite world, would anyone actually stay tuned in long enough to gain from it, or simply tune out and wait for someone to interpret it for them? Of course, even in the book, most listeners missed the point, and simply wanted to abdicate their decision making to Galt instead of their current leaders, but it did have an impact. I am pessimistic that it would have any impact today. Thoughts?
Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.
The difference between rational and rationalizing explains many of our ills today.
Lets face it, when people don't agree what are the first words out of their mouths?
"I feel" or "I think"
Maybe it is because I live in New England, but around her "I feel" is the norm, not "I think"
An initial response encouraged daily by the media, public schools, social media, etc.
This is one of the few places I have found where "I think" is more common than "I feel"
If we could have signature lines, mine would be....
Liberalism - the triumph of emotion over reason.
Here is the usage I was speaking of from dictionary.com
verb (used without object), rationalized, rationalizing.
7.
to invent plausible explanations for acts, opinions, etc., that are actually based on other causes:
He tried to prove that he was not at fault, but he was obviously rationalizing.
In the land of "I feel" this is a go to move
When someone rationalizes rather then reasons, is he not then acting as a rationalizing animal? I think in these cases it is fair to call him a rationalizing animal because that is what he is doing.
This is a common technique of the left. For instance, show me your inalienable rights - where are they - people in North Korea do not own themselves. It is a purposeful category mistake.
Man must first be a rational animal before he can rationalize.
Knowledge must be in the proper chronological order.
"Most people can’t think, most of the remainder won’t think, the small fraction who do think mostly can’t do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self -delusion— in the long run, these are the only people who count. "
Patricia:" My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement." - Joe vs the Volcano
Well stated.
Thank you.
However, I think it is true that many liberals and others are better able to ignore reality because we are wealthy - see the anti-vaccine movement or the environmental movement generally. But I don't think they differ from the witch doctor or the priest who reads entrails or the group that throws virgins into volcanoes.
Brief interlude, since I'm kind-of new here: I’m David Kelley. I work at The Atlas Society, which I founded, and I worked with Scott and others on the film adaptation of Atlas. I’m glad to be here as a participant in the Gulch!
I agree that the speech wouldn’t work today, given its length and philosophical depth. Maybe not even in the 50s when it was written. On the other hand, you have to consider the novel’s context: The great producers have been disappearing, society is collapsing, the government is totally corrupt and everyone knows it—and here’s a guy who shows up out of nowhere and explains it all. Imagine in our world if Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and others disappeared mysteriously, Silicon Valley looked like Detroit, we were in another, even worse financial crisis, and then some unknown genius took over the airwaves during an Obama State of the Union address. I can just barely imagine this—for an hour, maybe, though not for three….
Anyway, I like Snoogoo’s idea of a condensed version. We faced that challenge on the script for the film, Atlas Shrugged Part 3, where the speech had to be super-condensed. I’d love to hear comments on it. The script of the speech and comparison with the novel are in a book we published, Atlas Shrugged: The Novel, the Films, the Philosophy (on Amazon), in a chapter called “Scripting the Speeches.”
If anyone’s interested, I’ll see whether we can make that chapter available to Producers.
First let me say I very much enjoyed the extras you provided on each of the DVDs. If people who have the movies, but did not check them out they are missing out.
As for the Galt speech, I remember thinking, how long is this going to go on, but felt a great deal of satisfaction once completed. I would still pay for an audio version of the entire thing read by Mr. Polaha. If your scenario was played out and Obama's State of the Union address was interrupted in such a fashion, I for one would be glued to the set. I might be among too few, but I would see it as the greatest "three..." hours ever to have interrupted the usually scheduled programming. World changing... Just to imagine the detractors puling their hair out. :)
Respectfully,
O.A.
I too would pay to hear a full reading and would read the entire speech once more at the same time.
I am currently facing an employment disciplinary and they don't know what they have coming. Let alone that this saturday is my 9th birthday of being on strike.
Please stay active in this form of the Gulch.
Scott is going to post :Scripting the Speeches" next .week. I'll follow up then....
David
I think in the movie they did a great job of hitting the high points.
I am only vaguely familiar with the term "closed objectivism". Started to research it once, got distracted and never got back to it. This is the first reference to it that I have seen in a few years. Can you point me to some information to research the subject?
More to learn, more to learn.....
This is an awesome question, I love it. And it sucks. Because I know that years ago, had this speech been broadcast I wouldn't have made it through it. It would not have helped me. It was only in the context of the book that my interest was drawn in enough to see the importance of it. A shortened version? I doubt even that. Years of brainwashing, then years of evasion, then years of cynicism coupled with evasion and wishing it would all just go away. Can you break through all that with a speech on a radio? Maybe a mentor. Maybe someone who could see my struggles and... shit
Galt's Euro-American, ego-testicle worldview, politicians and PhD's would insist, is not "inclusive" of follicularly challenged, melanin impoverished, motivationally deficient Chicana lesbian feminists, who are differently logical. Many, I suspect, would find Galt's speech charm free.
Sad but true.
But the audience in Atlas is starving; the strikers aren't.
Would hungry people listen for 3 hours and make connections? I believe many would.
In the book, Galt's speech goes on for about 40 pages. Having given dozens of speeches and listened to thousands, I can tell you that one page of written text takes 1-2 minutes to deliver even for an experienced orator. The math is pretty simple. Even reading Galt's speech out loud would take ~45 minutes in it's present iteration. That's the length of an entire TV show - without commercials - and without any action shots, sex scenes, or plot development. Even with a captive audience as Galt has in the book, he's going to lose a large portion of them after ten minutes. The movie adaptation similarly recognized this and cut the speech down to about five minutes and did a pretty good job.
I'm guessing that like underground schools and churches in Russia the best that could be done is preparation for the next internal war and so do the leftists as you see them prepare the protective echelon (schutzstaffel).
The value of the movie, the book, and the oath is found in the future. This one is over.
Teach your children well, pass the torch, and don't vote even in a worthless election for the Government Party.
However if you can figure out how to do it in a sound bite second you may have a chance.
General public? Lost Cause. Concentrate on those worth the effort. 110,000 precincts. Here's a better statistic of hope.
I read a synopsis of the Bubba Bush race. Precincts and districts having 50% or more voter turn out bragged about 51% and 52%. That was percent of registered voters. That figure ran 50% nationwide. All the sources arrived at approximately those numbers.
There were no statistics on percent voting Democrat or Republic except for Perot.
He took a bit less than ten percent if memory serves and took most of them from the Republicans who were being punished for breaking the word on previous vote for us deals.
The Republicans not the Democrats sent an agent into the Populist Camp who destroyed them. Nowadays they just deny a spot on the General ballot.
But in the following years it went like this. of 50% who registered 50 % voted. One third of the 25% went to the Donkeys and one third to the Elephants and one third (approximations) to the independents, disenfranchised - those who would have read AS. The Government Party took 2/3rds is one way of looking at in including those who flushed their vote down one of the two toilets.The Republicans learned nothing so for those who say give them a chance they HAD their chance and joined the Democrats.
End conclusion about 6.34 percent elected Clinton, it took the vote flushers to do it. About 6.33 voted for Bush, about 6.33 made other choices but if you add in those who didn't vote at all it was much higher.
think about how small the margins truly are.
in which group is your target area for gaining support.
how do you attract them
how do you get them on the ballot
or...how do you get the military to consider them worth the effort.
Anyway that's where I would and do spend my efforts. It only takes a few percent especially in those local precincts.
If you don't have recall and initiative go for it.
Forget the couch potatoes and those who aren't worth the effort. In the end they will do what they are told.
How else to you explain Jews and Blacks supporting the same people they used to call Massa or whose base philosophy killed them by the millions.
Go after that percentage that is obtainable and keep hope alive.
As for those of you who have joined the dark side....a pox on your house and both it's occupants. We do not serve the party.
Very interesting comment.
Well stated.
We will "keep hope alive".
Thanks
Watters segment on O'Reilly? . most people in a
TV audience, say, would have no clue about who or
what causes them to have food, except plastic. . and
an exploiting employer. . maybe.
and your second point -- no chance. . they can
hardly, most of them, connect one sentence with
the next. . and I love most of these people, y'know,
as a member of the finest nation on earth. . way more
than half of our population is beyond the reach
of a rational approach like Galt's. . there must be
another way.
that's why I love the story which I just edited -- the
"fly-over" population decides to pull their States
out of the U.S., taking away much of the food and
water. . the others, deprived of food and water,
become desperate and beg for help. . these left-
and right-coast States decide to join the new U.S.
with its new constitution and laws, to re-integrate
the nation. . so,,, the u.s. is saved. . by force. . it
took force to get their attention. -- j
p.s. http://www.amazon.com/Unsustainable-Tuck...
While some, especially in the intellectual upper classes, embraced communism many turned their backs in favor of leave me alone to exist. Also known as laissez faire nous. As Che the Chump found out when he began stealing their food. Next thing you know the Bolivian rangers showed up.
The US has done very little in supporting moves to wards democracy and a Republic form of government. Sadly mostly supporting dictators. Left the field wide open for the Castro's until some disgusted members of he US military began giving lessons at no charge. Big flap over that thinking of Nicaragua and Uruguay.
The current leftist strategy and some of the tactics though were straight out of the Cycle of Repression handbook written by a Brazileno who ran around with Che and Tanya.What Hillary and company are doing switched roles between rebels and government.
If anything else is happening it's way further south than my location ....and no one is talking.
Meanwhile Treasury Secretary under Bubba on loan from Gold Mon in dem Sacks managed to loot the Social Security and other US government funds held 'in trust'' Rubin. That dude. the turnover between government party officials and corporate office holders continues. Strings are pulled. Nothing changes.
Except bit by bit Latin America is finding it's own way.Latest lesson. Don't depend on the gringo government.
pact if delivered over the radio. In a book, it's dif-
ferent. One can read parts, and then go back to it
and resume later. I read the speech before I read
the rest of the book. ( I was an adolescent, and
although intrigued by Ayn Rand, was afraid of
her, because I feared her philosophy would shat
ter certain cherished delusions I held. It did,
but gradually; I learned not to be so afraid and
hurt by that fact). I looked at the speech in the
library,but would not check the book out for a
while. But I finally did. But I still liked the
speech, for the way it lambasted the evil. On
the radio, to an audience of today?--I don't think
so. But then,in that situation in the book, where
the people had expected to hear more B.S. from
the dictator in charge, and find he is temporari-
ly shut up; maybe. Of course, some would have
Eugene Lawson's reaction.
In today's world, we have a real life example of socialism- Venezuela. We need a documentary outlining how it got to where its at, and then a science fiction part where a rational philosophy takes over- along with how it works in practice. Its a LONG study lesson for sure, but it has to be related to where people ARE today.
I've been hearing the term "self-ownership" for awhile now. Never really saw it defined, but it sounds good. It really does.
Finally someone who can explain it means.
In particular, how a "principle", not to mention a "foundation", has no philosophy behind it?
My reply was to to jdg...either my mistake, or the systems. Makes no difference. Your resonse was totally uncalled for, but I will respond.
FYI:
Read: all of Rand, more than once, fiction and non-fiction. Several times. Starting in 1968...
Plus, Locke's major works, all major philosophers, in total, i.e., their original works, not Cliff's Notes, that Rand opposed, only because, it was important to know the opposition first-hand...Plato, Kant, Hegel...many more...while pursuing an actual undergraduate and graduate degree...
All of the Austrian economists, and likewise, all of Marx and his following, long after but still relevant, in both Cambridge, England, and Massachusetts. Ever hear of the "Two Cambridge Controversy on Capital Theory"? I doubt it.
Wrote a graduate paper on it, showing they were both wrong...at NYU, not downtown at the "Finance School", but Washington Square Liberal Arts...under professors who were students of Mises. And "Liberal Arts" still meant something...
My entire bibliography would go beyond the limit of a single post.
And you, sir?
FYI: in my earlier comment, I perhaps should have made clearer that my only recent experience of the use of the term "self-ownership" has been in (necessarily) futile discussions with anarchists... hence perhaps my overreaction...
I don't remember Rand ever using it, and if Locke did (I will search my eBooks) then I will see how and in what context he uses it...
[minor edits for content]
It is outside the average citizens level of learning today.
The philosophy that you are referring too does exist; it is known as OBJECTIVISM.
Not everyone has to understand genetics or natural rights for us to profit from it.
The speech is the concentrated form of the entire story. In this powerful, condensed form, the speech reinforces everything the story plot represented.
This is the purest form of Rand's philosophy. Unadulterated. It is, in my opinion, a mathematical composition with each thought built upon the other in logical formation verified by laser beam reasoning which allows no contradiction in the entire presentation. It is pure logic and reason and for this it is absolute genius.
The "speech" bares your soul. It leaves you naked. It is exhaustingly detailed. You cannot escape from its logic. You have no defense against it because you "know" that you have found the truth. It is from this "absolute" reasoning that most men run.
That being said, there will always be that few that would listen.
The success of those of the Gulch in Rand's AS was based on those few.
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