Galt's Gulch
15

Dagny Taggart "Draw My Life"

Posted by DavidKelley 7 years, 9 months ago to Philosophy
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The life and love of Ayn Rand's heroine.

SOURCE URL: https://www.facebook.com/AtlasSociety/videos/10154842846635351/

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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 9 months ago
    The presentation makes me want to read the book again. It's a slightly different POV from what I focused on when I read it.
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    • Posted by $ JAG 7 years, 9 months ago
      Thanks...and not surprised diff POV, part of strategy here was to touch on themes that might appeal to women, issues women may find relatable in their same lives...did the same with Hank's video, so he's more in vein of feeling unappreciated by family.
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    • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
      It was a "different point of view" because Atlas Shrugged wasn't about a question of 'quitting to enjoy life' as a 'woman's point of view'.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 7 years, 9 months ago
    This makes me think of my little daughter. Earlier today, while talking with my like-minded coworker, I found myself thinking, "What in the hell did I do, bringing kids into this mess?" All I can do is raise them to see things as they are - to think on their own.
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    Posted by miami-sid 7 years, 9 months ago
    Dagny Taggart=second hander / she inherited her position and her wealth.
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    • Posted by DavidKelley 7 years, 9 months ago
      Miami-sid, you raise an interesting issue about Rand's novel. Some of the heroes in Atlas come from wealthy and/or aristocratic backgrounds (Dagny, Ragnar, Francisco), some of poverty (Rearden, Galt). But consider two passages:

      Dagny's rise (I,3): "Dagny's rise among the men who operated Taggart Transcontinental was swift and uncontested. She took positions of responsibility because there was no one else to take them....Her superiors, who held the authority, seemed afraid to exercise it, they spent their time avoiding decisions, so she told people what to do and they did it. At every step of her rise, she did the work long before she was granted the title. It was like advancing through empty rooms."

      Francisco, the "Money speech" (II,2): "Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth—the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him."

      It's hard to see Dagny as a 2nd-hander in light of her ability and of Francisco's point that it's not where you start that counts but what you do with it.
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      • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
        Going out of his way to gratuitously trash the heroine of the novel was not "raising an interesting issue". It isn't possible to read Atlas Shrugged and conclude that Dagny Taggart was a "second-hander". Looking at his comments reveals a series of drive-by, snide, ideologically 'you didn't build that' leftist trolling, not someone interested in understanding Ayn Rand's ideas. After trashing Dagny Taggart, what is left? Her brother as admirable?
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    • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 9 months ago
      Second-hander isn't about position and wealth. It's about living for other people's reactions instead of going after what you personally want for yourself.
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        Posted by miami-sid 7 years, 9 months ago
        Both you and DavidKelly make strong points but my worldview tells me differently. Ignored in the suggestion that a person's position is due to their character is the very real fact of where they start. People do indeed rise high starting low as do those starting high sometimes end up low. But regardless achievers achieve on their own. Building on other's efforts is the very definition of being a second hander.
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        • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
          "Building on other's efforts" is not the definition of second hander. The two primary values of living in society are accumulated knowledge available to understand and evaluate with your own mind and trade of value for value. Both build on others' efforts and neither are "second hander". Collectivists rig their vocabulary with invalid concepts in a 'narrative' intended to trash individualism by making it impossible to conceptualize it.
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            Posted by miami-sid 7 years, 9 months ago
            "Collectivists rig their vocabulary with invalid concepts in a 'narrative' intended to trash individualism by making it impossible to conceptualize it." Was your intent to attack me to attack my assertion or to argue your point? Make your point [invalid as it is] without personal attacks. Dagny inherited her wealth and Inherited her position. She could be seen, with a little clear thinking, as a second hander. Check [then recheck] your premise.
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            • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
              Your statements are false and non-responsive. The novel describes how she earned her position. It is not "clear thinking" to accuse her of being a "second hander". Mischaracterizing "second hander" as building on the work of others obliterates the concept as defined and described at length in Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and the rest of Ayn Rand's writing. It makes it impossible to conceptualize the achievements of any independent achiever building on the work of others in the manner of the two values of living in society describe to you and which you ignored in your personal polemic.
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              • -1
                Posted by miami-sid 7 years, 9 months ago
                You, as the saying goes, just don't get it. To use an analogy: had Peter Keating improved Howard Roark's original works [by whose standards?] he would not have been less of a second hander. By definition he used another's works. While you inadvertedly seem to have notice a bit of a flaw in the intellectual concept put forth by Rand it is there and it is valid. Dagny, regardless of her skills, used other's works. And while you broadly and vaguely use the Shrugged and the Fountainhead as justification for your worldview you ignore the very core concept: using other's works, regardless whether done nobly or badly, is anathema. Dagny, no less than her brother, was a second hander. That is my point.
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                • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
                  Your point is the obliteration of the concept of second hander and replacing with collectivism to trash Ayn Rand in the name of "exposing a flaw".

                  Building with one's own thought and effort on what has come before in human history and trading value for value to obtain what one needs or wants is not "second hand".

                  Ayn Rand's principle of independence, in contrast to second-handedness, is "acceptance of the responsibility of forming one's own judgments and of living by the work of one's own mind". It does not mean "don't live in society". We do not start over in the cave with everything we do, and no, that is not a "flaw" in Ayn Rand.

                  Collectivist premises of your "world view" declaring everyone to be a second-hander for not living in a vacuum does not invalidate Ayn Rand or any others here who have rejected the absurdity of your personally obnoxious posts and obtuse refusal to understand what Ayn Rand was talking about despite explanation here and elsewhere. Please take your trolling somewhere else. Collectivism is not the standard here.
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                  • -1
                    Posted by miami-sid 7 years, 9 months ago
                    People with strongly held and well thought out intellectual views don't whine and they don't gratuitously insult others. That is Donald Trump territory. You disagree with my interpretation and state why then you go an layer your piece with insults and demands that I either fall in line or leave the discussion completely. Take a deep breath Mr. eww and remember we are talking about archetypes AND not real people. If you are incapable of understanding others might have a different take on things perhaps this philiosophical point of view might not be for you. I think for myself do you?
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                    • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
                      Don't whine and gratuitously insult, smear and falsely accuse others yourself. Your "interpretation", which you pronounced as alleged fact, claiming the heroine of the novel is "second hand" is false for the reasons given to you several times and which you repeatedly do not address. This is obvious to anyone who understands what Ayn Rand wrote about and illustrated in the novels and elsewhere. It doesn't take "deep breaths" and this isn't about "Donald Trump territory". What Ayn Rand in fact wrote isn't arbitrary "interpretation", depending only on whatever antagonistic "point of view" "definition" someone feels like substituting for what she wrote in order for him to push an agenda claiming to have demonstrated a "flaw" in her thinking.

                      I understand very well how your "philosophical point of view" does not allow for a concept of independence. That doesn't justify your throwing out the concept and substituting your own "point of view" for what someone else wrote, expecting that such an approach be taken seriously as rational "interpretation" of the heroine of the novel as "second hand" while you condescendingly trash others for rejecting it as based on a collectivist premise and false.

                      No, collectivism and academic subjectivism are not the standard and base of discussion here. They are not axioms at the base of rationalizations, not to be challenged because of someone's "philosophical point of view". It isn't acceptable as just a "different take" from which you smugly polemicize and personally attack others, immune from challenge to the false premises and arbitrary verbal substitutions you call "thinking for yourself" while you insinuate that anyone who rejects your posts does not "think for himself".

                      Why are you here at all? Your previous posts have been antagonistic, snide one-liners, injected as if you think you have found some silver-bullet refutation. There are a lot of places you can go where traditionalist collectivism and misrepresentations of Ayn Rand or anyone else are assumed without question. This isn't one of them. If you want to seriously and honestly understand and discuss Ayn Rand's ideas you can do that here, but that isn't what you are doing.
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                      • -2
                        Posted by miami-sid 7 years, 9 months ago
                        Check your premise and reread your postings. I suspect you do not like my point of view. And you suggest I am nothing more than a provocateur. You speak of the novels as if they were the actual ten comandments and not open to intrerpretation. Your overt over the top reply is very Trump like: major whining. An inherited position in life, regardless how well the trustifarian has handled the inheritance, can be seen as a form of being a second hander. Dagny is indeed a second hander. I noticed it immediately when I read the novel. Too bad you overlooked it.
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                        • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
                          Drop the stubborn nonsense. It doesn't belong here. Your repetitive rationalizations and arbitrary pronouncements based on arbitrary collectivist replacement "definitions" for simple concepts, and your streaming personal smears and insults, are nothing but your subjective ideology obtusely preventing you from following discussions with simple explanations -- after it prevented you from even understanding the basic actions by two main characters in the plot of a novel. Anyone who can't see the difference between Dagny Taggart and her brother as portrayed in the novel either hasn't read it or has serious problems that are outside the realm of discussion on this forum, which your posts have nothing to offer. This is an Ayn Rand forum for those interested in her novels and ideas. It's not for you.
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                • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 9 months ago
                  "had Peter Keating improved Howard Roark's original works [by whose standards?]..."
                  Isn't "by whose standards?" the whole point? Keating was seeking a reaction from others. Roark was designing all for his own personal pleasure, totally selfishly, following his own standards.
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                  • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
                    Keating did nothing but copy and use the work of others. He had no independent thought and didn't "build" anything. His copying what he thought was acceptable was his sole source of prestige and social "position", neither of which a Howard Roark ever wants. Keating's second-hander "standards" were whatever he thought others wanted of him to gain their adulation. Marxist neurotics have no concept of any of that distinction. They start and end with collectivism in all realms: from psychology to politics.
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        • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 9 months ago
          "Building on other's efforts is the very definition of being a second hander."
          Maybe this is a question of definitions. That definition is radically different from mine.

          "Ignored in the suggestion that a person's position is due to their character."
          I don't agree with this suggestion. The suggestion is easily disproven if you consider that a random thief, natural disaster, or other peril can thwart the efforts of people of good character.

          We're talking about different things when it comes to second-handers. It's not a question of "position" and whether you climbed to that position without help. Seeking any "position" in the eyes of others, with or without help, is my understanding of the second-hander.
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          • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
            His arbitrary "definition" is different than everyone's other than the "you didn't built that" class warfare slogan out of Obama and Elizabeth Warren, both of whom are neo-Marxist nihilistic egalitarian collectivists. They think that if you live in society at all you are a "dependent" in every sense of the word and owe whatever you do to others, especially if you do more than others. Independent thought, "building", creativity, effort, trade, the right to your own life -- none of it matters. You are subservient to the collective.
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