More on Atlas Shrugged and Objectivism
Nov. 3rd, 2010 12:50 pmThings that are broadly positive, but I don't blow me away as ground-breaking insights any more, even if they did once
Various meta-theoretical and epistemological observations elevating rationality that are broadly palatable to an educated twentieth century mind.
Slapping down anyone who achieves anything and instead enforcing some sort of universal mediocrity on society is a bad idea.
Women can have a career and enjoy sexual relationships.
Things that are genuinely good
Respecting and encouraging personal greatness, to include pride in yourself, production of worthwhile things, personal responsibility and personal honour.
Good moments in the book
When the characters actually are overcoming adversity, it is quite exciting.
Bad moments in the book
It's looooooooooooooong and pseudo-intellectual, and hence has a reputation for being intelligent. I couldn't get into it, but do not assert that that is a flaw in that rather than in me.
Plot summary
Society is divided into two groups. (A) Those small-minded people who hate success and take every opportunity to punish it, who refuse to take personal responsibility for even the smallest things, and who live by fuzzy wishy-washy ideals that involve doing whatever is traditional or approved, rather than what common sense would tell you. (B) People who inherit large business concerns and make them even more profitable with a monomaniacal devotion to producing value and profit and to personal honour, at the expense of ever enjoying human contact in any way whatsoever, or of evincing any respect for human life, and openly embracing descriptions as callous or money-seeking.
Judging from my background knowledge and from cues in the text, (B) are supposed to be the good guys.
(A) are jealous of (B) so undermine all the hard work they do in making the country a success. (B) in response decide (A) deserve what they get, so deliberately wreck what remains of the economy and fuck off to a small utopia somewhere where they can run stuff competently. I've not read this far, but apparently in the end (A) beg (B) to come back.
Comments
Small-minded people using the government to prop up dodgy businesses at the expense of more naturally worthwhile ones is definitely a problem with society. Perhaps one more evident if you'd actually lived in soviet russia. And compared to that, praising actually successful businesses is a good message.
But I think that as a proxy for value, money is a prominent and good one, but very very far from perfect. We're all familiar with businesses that make money by manipulation, rather than by creating value -- and not manipulation of the government, but manipulation that would be literally 1000s of times worse if not for the government.
Judging from the book, we are supposed to flock away from these fake, facile businesses, and instead support reliable, honest, hard-working worthwhile businesses. But, unfortunately, it turns out that real life isn't always that easy, and in unbridled capitalism, the best do NOT always win out.
Alan Greenspan, talking about the US mortgage market, said something like: I expected the action of the market to resolve the fraudulent stuff without intervention. But I was wrong.
Things that bugged me
In order to make the point that _some_ amount of pride is ok, the characters take it to a logical extreme of saying making money is the most important thing to them.
Dagny Taggart is a strong, independent woman. Which is a marvellous coup for a book from the 60s. But now it strikes my ear as overcompensating when it repeatedly describes what she's wearing and what she looks like and how she's beautiful but doesn't care about that. (Later on, things get much more controversial, but I've not got that far yet.)
Many "socially approved" parties and gatherings are very tedious. But the characters take it to the extreme of rejecting ANY social contact whatsoever.
A freight train collides with a passenger train head-on. No-one expressed any regret about the passengers.
The incompetence of all the non-main characters is hard to characterise accurately. Yes, people do incompetent stuff all the time, probably MORE incompetent than here. But EVERY SINGLE conversation goes something like "this new metal has been extensively tested and is cheaper, stronger, and longer lasting" "oh, well, then I don't like it and don't want to try it". If it rang truer, you'd be cheering for Dagny to persuade people, but as it is, it just reads like a fake literary device.
Dagny is running the company. But is it enough to accept her underlings are worthwhile or not worthwhile? Mightn't she be able to INSPIRE some of them to start taking responsibility for stuff and being worthwhile human beings?
The worthwhile characters take risks to achieve good rewards. These always come off at exactly the right time for greatest rhetorical triumphs. It's a lot easier to take risks when they always succeed -- it would seem more brave if they had to put up with some risks which DIDN'T succeed as well as the ones which did.
Comparisons
It reminds me off many of the later Anne McCaffrey books, which go
1. Oh, woe is me, people constantly bully me for no particular reason.
2. Yay! Fortunately I turn out to be really special and can rub all their noses in it.
Now, that sounds sarcastic, but I'm not saying wish fulfilment is a bad plot -- it can be very worthwhile and enjoyable done right (eg: see early Anne McCaffrey for very good books). The trouble is, the situation in the first half has to seem sufficiently well-characterised as to ring true. Which is a lot easier for 14-year-olds than 45-year-olds. And also, revenge fantasy is a good fiction but in order to claim it as a major political philosophy, it's not enough to write a book where it's prevalent, you have to actually demonstrate it works in the ACTUAL world.
Various meta-theoretical and epistemological observations elevating rationality that are broadly palatable to an educated twentieth century mind.
Slapping down anyone who achieves anything and instead enforcing some sort of universal mediocrity on society is a bad idea.
Women can have a career and enjoy sexual relationships.
Things that are genuinely good
Respecting and encouraging personal greatness, to include pride in yourself, production of worthwhile things, personal responsibility and personal honour.
Good moments in the book
When the characters actually are overcoming adversity, it is quite exciting.
Bad moments in the book
It's looooooooooooooong and pseudo-intellectual, and hence has a reputation for being intelligent. I couldn't get into it, but do not assert that that is a flaw in that rather than in me.
Plot summary
Society is divided into two groups. (A) Those small-minded people who hate success and take every opportunity to punish it, who refuse to take personal responsibility for even the smallest things, and who live by fuzzy wishy-washy ideals that involve doing whatever is traditional or approved, rather than what common sense would tell you. (B) People who inherit large business concerns and make them even more profitable with a monomaniacal devotion to producing value and profit and to personal honour, at the expense of ever enjoying human contact in any way whatsoever, or of evincing any respect for human life, and openly embracing descriptions as callous or money-seeking.
Judging from my background knowledge and from cues in the text, (B) are supposed to be the good guys.
(A) are jealous of (B) so undermine all the hard work they do in making the country a success. (B) in response decide (A) deserve what they get, so deliberately wreck what remains of the economy and fuck off to a small utopia somewhere where they can run stuff competently. I've not read this far, but apparently in the end (A) beg (B) to come back.
Comments
Small-minded people using the government to prop up dodgy businesses at the expense of more naturally worthwhile ones is definitely a problem with society. Perhaps one more evident if you'd actually lived in soviet russia. And compared to that, praising actually successful businesses is a good message.
But I think that as a proxy for value, money is a prominent and good one, but very very far from perfect. We're all familiar with businesses that make money by manipulation, rather than by creating value -- and not manipulation of the government, but manipulation that would be literally 1000s of times worse if not for the government.
Judging from the book, we are supposed to flock away from these fake, facile businesses, and instead support reliable, honest, hard-working worthwhile businesses. But, unfortunately, it turns out that real life isn't always that easy, and in unbridled capitalism, the best do NOT always win out.
Alan Greenspan, talking about the US mortgage market, said something like: I expected the action of the market to resolve the fraudulent stuff without intervention. But I was wrong.
Things that bugged me
In order to make the point that _some_ amount of pride is ok, the characters take it to a logical extreme of saying making money is the most important thing to them.
Dagny Taggart is a strong, independent woman. Which is a marvellous coup for a book from the 60s. But now it strikes my ear as overcompensating when it repeatedly describes what she's wearing and what she looks like and how she's beautiful but doesn't care about that. (Later on, things get much more controversial, but I've not got that far yet.)
Many "socially approved" parties and gatherings are very tedious. But the characters take it to the extreme of rejecting ANY social contact whatsoever.
A freight train collides with a passenger train head-on. No-one expressed any regret about the passengers.
The incompetence of all the non-main characters is hard to characterise accurately. Yes, people do incompetent stuff all the time, probably MORE incompetent than here. But EVERY SINGLE conversation goes something like "this new metal has been extensively tested and is cheaper, stronger, and longer lasting" "oh, well, then I don't like it and don't want to try it". If it rang truer, you'd be cheering for Dagny to persuade people, but as it is, it just reads like a fake literary device.
Dagny is running the company. But is it enough to accept her underlings are worthwhile or not worthwhile? Mightn't she be able to INSPIRE some of them to start taking responsibility for stuff and being worthwhile human beings?
The worthwhile characters take risks to achieve good rewards. These always come off at exactly the right time for greatest rhetorical triumphs. It's a lot easier to take risks when they always succeed -- it would seem more brave if they had to put up with some risks which DIDN'T succeed as well as the ones which did.
Comparisons
It reminds me off many of the later Anne McCaffrey books, which go
1. Oh, woe is me, people constantly bully me for no particular reason.
2. Yay! Fortunately I turn out to be really special and can rub all their noses in it.
Now, that sounds sarcastic, but I'm not saying wish fulfilment is a bad plot -- it can be very worthwhile and enjoyable done right (eg: see early Anne McCaffrey for very good books). The trouble is, the situation in the first half has to seem sufficiently well-characterised as to ring true. Which is a lot easier for 14-year-olds than 45-year-olds. And also, revenge fantasy is a good fiction but in order to claim it as a major political philosophy, it's not enough to write a book where it's prevalent, you have to actually demonstrate it works in the ACTUAL world.