Atlas Shrugged

I would like to hear opinions of this book.

I haven't read it, and I've only recently read a short biography of the author.

Can anyone give me their impressions of 'Atlas Shrugged'?

 

I always thought it was just easier to play BioShock.

 

A few years ago I read the first fifty pages and my eyes rolled so far back into my head that I could ________________fill this space___________________________!!!!

 

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Ditto. I just wondered if anyone here swallowed it.

It's not the ideas in the book which interest me - they are trite - but the fact that there is a culture of powerful people who subscribe to them.

 

Some people find an algorithm for a result and repeat it endlessly.

 

I haven't read the book, but it is probably the coolest title for anything ever.

 

I watched a documentary about Rand the other day and as far as I understand it, the title refers to what would happen (according to Rand, that is) if the wealthy elite decided to stop "upholding" society. They shut down their factories and disappear, thereby plunging the world into chaos (apparently). Much like what would happen if Atlas decided to refuse holding up the sky.

If you can't be bothered to read the book (which is hardly blameworthy) you can instead watch the films (a trilogy of which only two parts have been released). They have received slightly better reviews than the book, I believe.

It's funny because the films are considered to be quite lousy. HAHAHA, yes.

 

Well before you get too excited about the title, she originally named it "The Strike".

I'd rather read the book than watch the movie, but much I'd rather read something intelligent instead.

However, if it's read by my enemies then i suppose I should read it too.

 

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Do that many people really subscribe to objectivism though? A lot of governments started out being laissez-faire and then had to undergo social reform to please the less privileged; as such and in light of history I can't imagine people would believe a purely capitalist society would work when there's always going to be a social strata who get the raw end of the stick and are unpleased with their lot (usually a large proportion, who have the power to revolt or at least espouse different political ideas and convert others to their cause). Sure Patrick Bateman types might high-five each other and say that objectivism is the way forward, but there's a large difference between saying that and believing it to be an workable model for governance; if so your enemies wouldn't really be able to put anything into practice in the first place.

 

That's what I thought too, but no.

 

Is this about the american shutdown, or is some evil objectivist paying you nightly visits just to kick you in the teeth and then making it rain over your bruised and battered form?

 

During the last presidential election the republicans nominated a tight bag of meat propping up a nice haircut and some deeply set eyes who in turn selected a lizard person to jog with him as his best friend forever. The lizard person went to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, possibly provide himself with three constituent appeasing answers to the question "Where did you go to school?" (Miami! Oxford! Ohio!) Supposedly while he was at this college he took it upon himself to read a book about Ayn Rand and, yes, ever since this moment when the mass media swarmed over the corpse of Ayn Rand like flies on so much hamburger there have been an influx of lizard person worshipping lunatics using Ayn Rand as a buzz word or something.

LITTLE DO THEY KNOW, THERE IS NOTHING THAT CAN STOP THE LIBERAL MEDIA'S (G)A(Y)GENDA

because um, everyone is a lizard person.

 

I see...

 

That's actually pretty close to my answer.

But seriously, the idea that superior people can pick and choose the morality which suits them, however true it may be, is an idea which appeals most to inferior people. I don't think history has produced a more uber mensch than Buddha, except maybe Jesus. Some people just get savage when they realise their personal ambitions are frustrated by a civil society, especially when they're very ambitious.

Besides which, if the industrialists abandoned us i guarantee you that dirty peasant families will come out of the woodwork and start delivering eggs to the city every morning, while redundant factory workers cobble together a cooperative (after breaking into the factories, since the landlord's AWOL).

It's a story which is therefore a wish fulfilment fantasy for the reader: that us poor people need to be herded and one day we'll beg for it; that the top of the pyramid is somehow independent from its base.

Like Arthur C Clarke's work, it would be a harmless wank, except that some wankers out there are taking it seriously.

 

Oh God yes, don't stop, I'm so close...

 

censored this after I realized it might be extreme over-sharing...

Since we're getting all cheery and extra personal about our beliefs and stuff please allow me to share the most horrible nonsense I Sometimes when I can't sleep I have this recurring nightmare, but its more like a recurring irrational thought - that if I kill myself I could undo all the mistakes I made when I was young, as if stopping my future would erase my past. It's a really horrible feeling, and I always wake up with a full on panic attack afterwards as I resolve this bizarre dream induced thought pattern.

Anyway tonight I had this dream for the third time in about 2 months, and afterwards I realized it's the basic premise of time travel twist at the end of Donnie Darko.

 

But not before I'd read it, old chap.

Deary deary me.

 

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I'm not crazy! I just have a vivid imagination combined with anxiety.

I just watched Jackie Brown for the first time and after seeing a certain scene in which Robert Deniro shoots someone... I had a dream that I got into an argument with an acquaintance who pulled out a Colt 1911 .45 caliber pistol and shot me in the stomach. In typical dream fashion I looked down and saw that I had been shot with red paint pellets and then he started asking me if that hadn't been authentic enough for me.