‘Going Galt’ has taken a new meaning in today’s times. The media is taking snippets and references from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and its fictional characters to a new level with their slogan: ‘War on Success’ similar to the out-of-control government, in the novel, that siphoned profits out of the rich. According to The Economist, sales of the book have risen sharply since Obama’s election to office and keeps rising everytime Obama announces a new spending plan. The book has seen the biggest sales in 2008 since its release in 1957. The first three months alone in 2009 have had more sales than those in the same period last year.
People are buying the book coz there are uncanny similarities in the plotlines of the book and the events happening today. (if you haven’t read it already, i’d suggest dropping whatever you are doing and give the book a good read. Of course: Hats off to you if you got to the point of Galt’s speech. If you further made sense – in ONE reading – of the 60 long pages of his expatiation praising selfishness, then you’re my personal hero).
Having read her philosophy ‘Objectivism’ (and most of her literature including her earlier works .. heck, one of my short essays in my admission application for Booth was built around it as well) I have had difficulty in subscribing to her views in their entirety but the current comparison in today’s economy that the media is trying to project, calls for raising your right eye-brow followed by an intriguing mutter of ..’interesting’.
So what does one make of all this?
I liked Stephen Colbert’s interpretation on Colbert Nation the other night. I quote him verbatim: “when millions are losing homes, jobs and hope, there is nothing more important than putting yourself first”. Of course, here, ‘yourself’ is the Type A me-first personality types. Yep ..this sits well with what Atlas Shrugged captured (If you are not convinced, read Ayn Rand’s Virtue of Selfishness where altruism takes on a different meaning). But dear Mr. Colbert did not consider the other pillars of philosophy viz. ethics and epistemology. And what about other social goals ? Do you subordinate society’s social agenda for the progress of humanity to fixing the financial mess ?
I think its only hard economic times that lead people to consider more extreme philosophies which may explain the recent increase in embracing Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Further, do we have to look up to such fictional archetypes to creating a utopian working system thus ’saving the world’ or as Rand put it: ‘prevent the stopping of the motor’ ?
Tut-tut ! Take philosophical lessons from the DC Comics miniseries Watchmen. Alan Moore, the creator, probably had it right. Humans don’t really know what they want so they pass off this responsibility to someone else .. call them superheroes or John Galt and the like.
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Boss Resurfacing
Boss Resurfacing
Comment by Boss Resurfacing — September 6, 2009 @ 9:07 pm |