Atlas Shrugged -- For Adults Only
The first thing I read by Rand was Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.
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THIS ARTICLE REPURPOSED FROM: http://lamrot-hakol.blogspot.com/2012/10...
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The other day, I was talking to my partner about Atlas Shrugged at the dinner table, and my 12 year old daughter asked what it was. I told her it's a book by Ayn Rand, and that she can't read it until she's 21.
My partner stared at me and asked why. After all, I'm an Objectivist. I think Rand's philosophy is incredibly important. So why would I bar my daughter from reading it until she's an adult?
I've felt this way for at least a decade, but given the President's comments about Ayn Rand's books being something you'd pick up as a 17-18 year old feeling misunderstood, and then get rid of once you realized that thinking only about yourself wasn't enough, I thought it would be worthwhile to explain why kids shouldn't read Atlas Shrugged.
The thing is, Obama is right. In a way. Let me explain that.
I didn't read Atlas Shrugged until I was 33 years old. In fact, other than Anthem, which I may have read in passing in high school, I never read anything of Rand's until I was 32, and I started with her essays. Maybe I'll post about how and why I got into those at a later date. But as someone who didn't get into Rand's philosophy as a kid, it took me a while to realize that for the vast majority of people, reading it as a teenager is almost inevitably going to create the opposite effect that Rand had in mind.
There's a common misconception that Objectivism is about being selfish and grasping and greedy. It's an understandable misunderstanding. After all, Rand wrote a book of essays called The Virtue of Selfishness. She spoke against altruism and in favor of selfishness. The thing is, though, that in Rand's writing, those are "terms of art". A term of art, or jargon, is a word that's used a specific way in a specific field, regardless of how it's used colloquially. In politics, to "depose" means to remove a leader. In law, to "depose" means to have someone give a deposition. In medicine, an "ugly" infection is one that doesn't respond well to antibiotics.
We're all familiar with groups "reclaiming" perogative words. "Queer" was an insult when I was growing up, and it still is for a lot of people. Yet to the younger generation of GLBT teens, "queer" is simply how they identify. Rand used the term "selfish" to mean acting to further ones long term and global well being, given the understanding that we are not alone in the world, and that what I do to others can be done to me as well. There is no other way to describe that in a single world, so far as I'm aware, than selfishness. Or if we allow a modifier, "rational selfishness".
But Rand failed. She failed to communicate this in a way that would be clear enough to get past the negative connotations of selfishness as meaning a blind, grasping devotion to ones short term desires, paying no attention to the world around us. Even expanding the term to "rational selfishness" didn't work, because people understood "rational" to mean "cold and unemotional" and concluded that "rational selfishness" meant cold, hard, unemotional, uncaring selfishness. Like a robot that lacks all empathy.
But adolescents are a different story. Adolescence is a time when we are detaching ourselves from our role as dependent children, and learning to stand on our own, personally empowered. When I was 17, I remember one evening during an argument with my father, exclaiming, "You're a person, and I'm a person. Why should you have any more right to decide than I do!" And I was absolutely convinced of my righteousness. Two years later, when my younger brother was 17, I heard him say virtually the exact same thing. I looked at my father and said, "I'm so sorry, Dad. And I wish there was some way I could explain it to him." But I knew there wasn't. You can't explain that to an adolescent. They have to learn to grow up and realize that the world doesn't revolve around them.
Which is one of the reasons why a lot of adolescents love Atlas Shrugged. They miss the bigger picture, and only pick up on the message that they shouldn't have to sacrifice themselves for others. Which is a good message, but they conflate it with their irrational selfishness. Their self-centered, almost solipsistic view of the world. And when they do grow up, as most of them do, they jettison Objectivism, thinking that it's part and parcel of the adolescent mindset they no longer need.
And that's why Obama said what he did. It's absolutely true that 17 and 18 year olds who are feeling misunderstood, and whose self is feeling threatened would pick up Atlas Shrugged and see it as a vindication of what they're feeling. And it's absolutely true that someone like that reading the book would, in the vast majority of cases, throw it away once they grow up and realize that we're all in this together, so to speak.
And that's why I won't let my daughter read the book. Because it takes a certain amount of maturity to understand that the kind of altruism that says doing for others is always more moral than doing for oneself is evil and anti-human, but that benevolence and empathy are vitally important virtues. The vice of altruism always leads to bad results in the long run, even if it may seem beneficial in the short term. Because giving requires a recipient. And if receiving is a bad thing, there's always going to be someone bad and wretched. More than that, you're always going to need poor people, because without them, you can never be virtuous. It's an ugly world that raises altruism up as the highest virtue.
Perhaps we need to find another term to reflect what Rand called "selfishness". The battle to reclaim that word was lost before it even started. All it does now is feed into the ignorance of the left.
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THIS ARTICLE REPURPOSED FROM: http://lamrot-hakol.blogspot.com/2012/10...
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The other day, I was talking to my partner about Atlas Shrugged at the dinner table, and my 12 year old daughter asked what it was. I told her it's a book by Ayn Rand, and that she can't read it until she's 21.
My partner stared at me and asked why. After all, I'm an Objectivist. I think Rand's philosophy is incredibly important. So why would I bar my daughter from reading it until she's an adult?
I've felt this way for at least a decade, but given the President's comments about Ayn Rand's books being something you'd pick up as a 17-18 year old feeling misunderstood, and then get rid of once you realized that thinking only about yourself wasn't enough, I thought it would be worthwhile to explain why kids shouldn't read Atlas Shrugged.
The thing is, Obama is right. In a way. Let me explain that.
I didn't read Atlas Shrugged until I was 33 years old. In fact, other than Anthem, which I may have read in passing in high school, I never read anything of Rand's until I was 32, and I started with her essays. Maybe I'll post about how and why I got into those at a later date. But as someone who didn't get into Rand's philosophy as a kid, it took me a while to realize that for the vast majority of people, reading it as a teenager is almost inevitably going to create the opposite effect that Rand had in mind.
There's a common misconception that Objectivism is about being selfish and grasping and greedy. It's an understandable misunderstanding. After all, Rand wrote a book of essays called The Virtue of Selfishness. She spoke against altruism and in favor of selfishness. The thing is, though, that in Rand's writing, those are "terms of art". A term of art, or jargon, is a word that's used a specific way in a specific field, regardless of how it's used colloquially. In politics, to "depose" means to remove a leader. In law, to "depose" means to have someone give a deposition. In medicine, an "ugly" infection is one that doesn't respond well to antibiotics.
We're all familiar with groups "reclaiming" perogative words. "Queer" was an insult when I was growing up, and it still is for a lot of people. Yet to the younger generation of GLBT teens, "queer" is simply how they identify. Rand used the term "selfish" to mean acting to further ones long term and global well being, given the understanding that we are not alone in the world, and that what I do to others can be done to me as well. There is no other way to describe that in a single world, so far as I'm aware, than selfishness. Or if we allow a modifier, "rational selfishness".
But Rand failed. She failed to communicate this in a way that would be clear enough to get past the negative connotations of selfishness as meaning a blind, grasping devotion to ones short term desires, paying no attention to the world around us. Even expanding the term to "rational selfishness" didn't work, because people understood "rational" to mean "cold and unemotional" and concluded that "rational selfishness" meant cold, hard, unemotional, uncaring selfishness. Like a robot that lacks all empathy.
But adolescents are a different story. Adolescence is a time when we are detaching ourselves from our role as dependent children, and learning to stand on our own, personally empowered. When I was 17, I remember one evening during an argument with my father, exclaiming, "You're a person, and I'm a person. Why should you have any more right to decide than I do!" And I was absolutely convinced of my righteousness. Two years later, when my younger brother was 17, I heard him say virtually the exact same thing. I looked at my father and said, "I'm so sorry, Dad. And I wish there was some way I could explain it to him." But I knew there wasn't. You can't explain that to an adolescent. They have to learn to grow up and realize that the world doesn't revolve around them.
Which is one of the reasons why a lot of adolescents love Atlas Shrugged. They miss the bigger picture, and only pick up on the message that they shouldn't have to sacrifice themselves for others. Which is a good message, but they conflate it with their irrational selfishness. Their self-centered, almost solipsistic view of the world. And when they do grow up, as most of them do, they jettison Objectivism, thinking that it's part and parcel of the adolescent mindset they no longer need.
And that's why Obama said what he did. It's absolutely true that 17 and 18 year olds who are feeling misunderstood, and whose self is feeling threatened would pick up Atlas Shrugged and see it as a vindication of what they're feeling. And it's absolutely true that someone like that reading the book would, in the vast majority of cases, throw it away once they grow up and realize that we're all in this together, so to speak.
And that's why I won't let my daughter read the book. Because it takes a certain amount of maturity to understand that the kind of altruism that says doing for others is always more moral than doing for oneself is evil and anti-human, but that benevolence and empathy are vitally important virtues. The vice of altruism always leads to bad results in the long run, even if it may seem beneficial in the short term. Because giving requires a recipient. And if receiving is a bad thing, there's always going to be someone bad and wretched. More than that, you're always going to need poor people, because without them, you can never be virtuous. It's an ugly world that raises altruism up as the highest virtue.
Perhaps we need to find another term to reflect what Rand called "selfishness". The battle to reclaim that word was lost before it even started. All it does now is feed into the ignorance of the left.
Productive New Year to you and your family, star.
I think the best age of exposure depends upon the individual. As parent, you get to make that decision. But if any parent can fill in the "backstory" or flesh out Rand's intentions, it would surely be you. What a great opportunity for you and your daughter to share that discovery.
I agree that Rand's ideas are sometimes misused and misinterpreted. But that has been done by adults, too.
The question "Who is John Galt" can only be answered "You are and I am." Its a selfish question whose answer is grounded in self and is something everyone can intimately understand - if their honest with themselves.
I wish I read AS prior to 1998 when I started my business. The validation of what I already knew, as a conservative, and the refinement and application of those tenants surely would have saved my company.
When should AS be Read? High School - Junior or Senior year. College - Freshman year. Also, it should be read by anyone daring to venture out on their own to start a business.
I recall in AS, engineers are prominent among the role models as well as entrepreneurs. When I read again I will look out for who gets looked down on. Yes it could be that medics were dealt a poor hand but as for economists and psychologists.. (I hope few here).
Ayn Rand respected, perhaps even revered, the working man who took pride in his skill. On page 2 of my copy of AS she describes a bus expertly steered, there is no other function for this episode except to express respect for the driver. Again, consider the recruitment for the train driver of the first John Galt train, all the drivers are very sympathetically drawn, the union leader tho' is a clear villain.
When Rand wrote "Atlas Shrugged" psychology was still caught between Freud and Skinner. The "Human Potential" movement of Maslow, gestalt, and all that was just beginning. And it is also fraught with its own errors. I pointed out in another thread that Noam Chomsky totally demolished Skinner, twice. Chomsky, however, was not someone whom Rand would have embraced and he was not a psychologist, but a linguist. Would you fault the book for having no linguists? (Actually, there is an oblique reference. Dagny asks a man who looks like a truck driver if he was a professor of comparative philology. He said, "No, ma'am I was a truck driver...") Nathaniel Branden had only finished his doctorate and had not started to practice. No consistent school of rational psychology existed. So, Rand would not have had any psychologists of merit in the book, only "morale conditioners" of the behaviorist clique.
Atlas has a doctor in the Gulch. Dr. Hendricks treats Dagny first at the crash site and then later for a check-up. He has developed a portable x-ray machine from which the outside world will not benefit.
The Gulch has a professor of economics who could not get a job because he taught that you cannot consume more than you produce.
The lawyer in "Atlas" is Judge Narragansett.
Rearden's accountant is praised for his ability to squeeze a nickel.
More to the point, Rand explained in "The Romantic Manifesto" why such people as she did write about are suitable for fiction that "everyone" can identify with.
I also underscore Lucky's comment about the bus driver. After her revelation speech on the radio, Dagny gets a deep "thank you" from a taxicab driver. Scenes such as those are all through "Atlas Shrugged."
The real credit for getting me started (at age 22), though, has to go to Richard Nixon. When he put in wage and price controls I was outraged, and got into political arguments with everyone I met. Losing most of those taught me that I needed more intellectual ammunition, which led to reading Rand.
After that I went to what was then still celled the Yale Cooperative Store (now known as the Yale University Bookstore) and bought every book by Rand they had available. I still have those titles. though AS is so thick I've now split it in two from reading and rereading it.
One reason why AS should be for adults only is Rand's treatment of sex. One *really* has to be mature to understand why Dagny Taggart and Henry Rearden did what they did.
But the author of that article missed the point: Obama's objection to AS is that it is subversive of the moral order of which he is the latest champion.
Remember, everyone: our fellow travelers elected Mister Thompson as President. If I were casting AS, I would cast an Obama lookalike, not a Nixon lookalike, as Mister Thompson. And for reasons that, I'm sure, everyone reading this can appreciate.
I am not sure I agree. But I take your points. If I had read AS when I began college, I think my experience IN college would have played out differently in some crucial ways. As it was, I read The Fountainhead (first) at the end of my first 4 years in college, and I changed the direction of my life significantly. People always say (including me): "AS changed my life." hehe. only you can change your life. Frankly, I think most people who say they picked up AS when they were young and refuted it as they "grew up" understanding the world-either did not really read the book-perhaps skimmed-or read it in the context of someone telling them to read it because that Rand b***h and corporate greed ruined our world!
Of those I know who read the book later- in their
30-40s, most either are validating what they already knew and just needed the Objectivist Philosophy laid out, or they refute it based on their own inherent biases towards "I own Myself."
I'm sure there are many examples to the contrary-but 17-18 maybe even 16, in my opinion, is a great time to pick up an Ayn Rand novel if you are already a reader. How else do you have the knowledge to refute the completely false claims so many make about the philosophy and that novel in particular. How else to say-hey, that's not what happens in the book or that's not what JG said and discern the legitimacy of the detractors(9-10 college professors for ex)-if they're wrong about THAT-what else are they wrong about?
anyway, you banned the book until your daughter is a certain age. she's sure to sneak read it now....:)
Maybe a younger age would be okay, if the kid is particularly mature.
When I picked up Capitalism, I was actually working on an economic plan for a group I was part of at the time. Truth be told, I didn't have any principles prior to that other than pragmatism. I'd always felt there should be some, but I never saw any evidence.
My father used to tell me when I was growing up that, "You can do anything you want, so long as you don't hurt anyone", which was as close as I came. But I hadn't thought that through to the end, so it sort of lived in a vacuum.
When I read Capitalism, it really did change my life, in much the way that putting on glasses for the first time changed my vision. I was absolutely horrified at what I'd been building in that economic plan (I still am), and I did an awful lot of reevaluating things in a pretty short time. It turned my life upside down in no small measure.
I went looking for everything I could find of Rand's. I was living in Israel, so finding books in English wasn't all that simple, and there was no Amazon.com. It took me a few months to find Atlas. By that time, I'd already read Fountainhead and joined alt.philosophy.objectivism (before it turned into a spam sewer).
Can you tell me more about Euda's post on blogs?
yes, she trusts you. think of yourself , as a 13 year old or 16 year old,. trust but verify was certainly my motto with my parents
searched for more. Found Atlas Shrugged (3 volumes) in Danish translation shortly thereafter.
Fast forward; Attended NBI in New York in 65 and 66. Ayn Rand autographed my American copy of Atlas and answered a couple of modest questions. She was very graceful about it too.
I had always been reading, searching for I did not know what. Those who search, no matter what age, will be ready when they find her writings.
Manifesto too ! I am just re-
reading The New Left- The Anti-
Industrial Revolution. Here we
go again; the Berkley crowd
have been substituted by OWS.
The book was translated by journalist Johan
Hambro who lived in the U.S. from 1939 to 82 and the translation was done in 1943, but the book came out in 1949, not so strange as Norway was in war till May 8, 1945, and all businesses, if not devastated and closed, was
in bad shape.
When he calmed down he took me for a walk during which he introduced me to Ayn Rand and to those that use altruism to enslave the people. On that fateful day I was taught to be a Capitalist and on every single day of the near 40 years that have passed since, I have questioned whether it's right to be a Capitalist. At first, those questions were directed at my father. He basically explained AR's work to me in a way that a pre-teen could understand. Then I started reading AR for myself. I read We The Living when I was 14, The Fountainhead when I was 15 and AS when I was 16. Even then though I realised that I probably only understood 10-20% of the book. In the next two years I read AR's non-fictional works such as The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism and with the understanding they gave me I again read AS when I was 18. This time I reckoned I understood 90% of the book. Alas, in the over 30 years since, I've not read the book (or indeed much of her work) since.
Since my early 20's I have not let a day go by without continually questioning my belief-system. I have realised that, as in science, the only sensible way to determine the best socio-economic system for mankind to adopt to afford the most benefit to all is to use rational argument. I will give up my belief in Capitalism tomorrow if only someone could offer me a rational argument for doing so. My father taught me to be a Capitalist but I remain one today simply because no one has ever offered me a rational argument to stop being one.
One thing I have come to learn is that by the standards of almost every single aspect of our culture the writings of Ayn Rand are mean, nasty, heartless and filthy. From Prometheus to Harry Potter, from the corruption of the Capitalist hero Robin Hood to the way the word profit is spat out in modern TV dramas and news programmes our whole culture is predicated on the concept that the purpose of your life is to live it for the benefit of others. The problem for those that advocate this is that every single organism on the planet, for the entire history of the planet, only ever gets off its fat idle backside if it or its own are the beneficiaries of that effort. Even when Ivy Starnes' real world counterparts used guns and the gulag to force their compatriots to do this un-natural thing, the resultant bread queues showed that it's an unsustainable concept.
I disagree with your argument that AR failed. I seem to remember somewhere in her writing something along the lines of: "If my purpose is to win the propaganda battle then I should choose different words than Selfishness and Greed but if my purpose is to win the argument then they, with their dictionary definitions as they are, will do just fine". (If she didn't say it then I'd like to say it on her behalf!)
The real issue (as identified by AR herself) is that we need to educate the masses that the concept of selflessness is not the ideal it's portrayed as and that the concept of rational-selfishness is not the evil mankind's slave-drivers have taught us it is. Inventing new less-offensive words might help with this task but I doubt it.
As for when it's best to introduce a person to AR? Well, I shudder to think what blind alleys I would have gone down in the last 30 years had I not read AR's works in my late teens. It pains me beyond words that my 18 year old son has read on the internet that AR's writings do not fit in the real world and so seems reluctant to read any of her works. He has gained my right-wing views but without the understanding and guidance that AR's (non-fictional in particular) work offers I fear he will develop to be the sort of bigoted person at the heart of Britain's Conservative and America's Republican parties.
I think the lesson to learn is that AR by no means got everything right (her exaltation of the man who lives by reason alone is one example), she seemed not to have lived her own life by the standards she created (an interview she gives denigrating the Arab people is - by her own teachings - sickening) and the works of AR should be treated as a guide not a bible then I suggest that, with the right guidance, AR's works can indeed be read and understood by a teenager. After all, it worked for me!
So I was probably about 25 when I read AS for the first time. However what I found was that it lined up with many things about who I am better than anything else ever had before. Not to say I had it all figured out, but little things.
For example my family knows I'm stubborn. Not only stubborn but I will not accept help from them, especially monetary help. When I graduated HS it did not occur to me that I could ask my parents to help pay for college, so I joined the military as a way to get out of the house and begin supporting myself in a way.
So while I agree that I may not have gotten as much out of it in High School I think I would have loved it and gotten something out of it even then. And I agree with khalling and many others when I get more out of it every time I read it.
Afterwards, while I attended to the rest room, I found him in a detailed discussion with a gentleman in his 70's about the content, impact and social implications the movie presented and how well it represented the book. I was amazed at his cogent discussion.
I hope he will carry insights into his college years as a foundation to combat the horrendous liberal bias on most/all college campuses. SO far so good I think.
You can never begin to expand your mind too soon but only can do so when your reading comprehension capacity allows it to be so. My grandson was reading Harry Potter with me at age 5 so he got a jump start!
Cheers,
Skip Stein
Management Systems Consulting, Inc.
Dagny called him "The Destroyer." And she was accidentally correct. Before anyone from the outside world entered the Gulch, they had to lose their misunderstanding of how the world truly worked. They had to undergo a very severe mental / social / ethical maturation. None were invited before they were ready. They had to grow up.
I read Anthem in High School but didn't dive into AS and Fountainhead until I was in college. I was ready for them then. After 12 years of Catholics school, it took a little time for me to understand, embrace and cherish the word "ego." Maybe "baby steps" are what I needed. The idea that one should never live one's life for another person would have been monstrous at one stage in my life. Yet it turned out to be lately obvious, sensible and acceptable at a later one. Instead of switching one set of propaganda sermons for another, I was lucky enough to be able to accept a new set of understanding based on logic and reason. I was given the theory, the ability to observe it in action and then decide whether or not it was sound enough for me to accept. I had to take a few Adult extension courses.
Only a few are from the original Class of the Gulch - most of us others are the later freshmen who benefited from their independent study.
I read Atlas Shrugged about six months later. The thing that was hardest for me to accept was her stance against state funding for science. However, within a five years I would see how government funding was being used to distort science. (See the ozone layer and acid rain at that time)
I don't believe it would have matter if I had read in late high school or in college or later. My desire to better understand the details of what she was saying caused me to read all of her non-fiction books that were out at the time.
It drastically changed the way I viewed the world around me and in that sense, yes, it DID "change my life."
The first reading took me about 120 pages to "really get into the book." The second reading, a year or two later, took about five pages.
I've been waiting 40 years for the Movie and with some luck I'll get to see ASIII in my lifetime. Some decades ago when I had a dream of being a screenwriter, I got to talk to someone from deLaurentis films, and he said that someone was actually planning to make the movie, but apparently that was one of the times when AR's grip prevented agreement.
Oh, one more memory... the guy who introduced me to AS accompanied me to a lecture in a nearby city by Nathaniel Branden. As we left, I asked him if he got anything out of the rather psychology-focused talk.
Yes, he admitted: it gave me insight about my relationship with my father that I'd never had before. While we'd often discussed philosophy, the early 70s were a time when psychology and therapy wasn't held in high esteem. That lecture made a bit of a difference in _his_ life.
It has nothing to do with them being a teenager, or being in their formative years. I have a good friend who is on the cusp of understanding why the world is this way. Yet if I put the book in front of her, if I say that this will explain everything, she won't believe it. She won't believe me. You can't tell someone that the hot plate is hot. They need to put their hand on it themselves to find out.
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