Sleep or Atlas Shrugged
 

Decisions, decisions...

Atlas Shrugged is the second best book I have ever read.

Not including the scrolls...

First time with Atlas Shrugged? If so, how can sleep even be an option? :)
Top favorite of mine.

i liked The Fountainhead. But the greatest novelist of all time is Dostoevsky.

I enjoyed the theme of Atlas Shrugged, but I felt it was way too long and drawn out.

Sleep.

Ayn Rand is a self-important, whiny bitch, whose great contribution to modern philosophy was "Wah, wah, I'm the center of the universe, and morality=serving me."

Don't bother.

j-

:thumbsup

NOW we're talking.

C'mon literate webmasters, here's a thread to make your own!

j-

Great book.. you can sleep when you are dead. :winkwink:

everyone needs to read crime and punishment

Second best? Which book do you consider the best you ever read then?

I like Dostoevsky, but I have to disagree with you on this one. Brecht, Kafka, Sartre, Camus, Wilde and Mann all either equal or surpass Dostoevsky in my opinion. That's not to say he's not a genius, because quite obviously, he is.

You can't really read Rand as a serious philosopher. Her idea that reason is objective is quite obviously flawed.
What makes her interesting are her outspoken position and her passion for the subject, as well as the clear break she makes with traditional modernist humanism.
If you look at the philosophical side of her argument, though, I think replacing her objectivist framework with a Nietzschean, mainly aesthetical one would yield much better results. An evolutionary relativistic approach might also work, maybe.

Thepoint is, you shouldn't read her as a philosopher, but as someone with an interesting, different view on life.

Read!!!! I just hopped on my bike and picked up some new stuff at the Small World Books on the beach here in Venice, no sleep for me tonight either!

The problem is intelligent women sooner or later discover that altruism (as it applies to them) is fundamentally mysoginistic. So I know all these smart girsl (and I LUV smart girls) who gain empowerment by reading Rand, acquire an anti-male posture and become bitches. Rand's is certainly a survivalist stance. I just wish more people could achieve a feeling of self-determination without having to lose faith in something more important than themselves.

j-

Interesting comments.

I love Rand, not particularly as a source of anything anti-male, but more from knowing her background and the fact that she is, like or dislike the philosophy, a very articulate and intelligent writer with the ability to get her point (albeit on occasion long-winded) across to readers spanning many ages and socio-economic backgrounds.

How do you feel about Tolkien?

Oh, she's an okay writer. I'm either reading an author because I enjoy the style, or agree with the underlying ideas. In Rand's case, I find neither.

Never read Tolkien -- though he wrote a few blocks from where I live in Berkeley.

j-

You're in Berkeley? I'm in Venice so all I get is Jim Morrison ;)

Why do you think altruism is fundamentally misogynistic? I think altruism in it's purest form is completely gender-neutral, it doesn't discern between sexes and stuff like that.

I think the main effect of works like Rand's isn't so much that women gain an anti-male posture, but that they cast off what Nietzsche would consider a slave morality in favor of an egocentric one.
Ofcourse, an immediate effect of that would be them refusing the traditional attitude and behaviour expected from women, and some people might consider that becoming "bitchy".

By the way, why do you consider a lack of beliefs in things bigger than oneself a negative thing? In my opinion, it is the only thing which truly liberates people, and allows them to become creators of their own world and morality.

:thumbsup

Jim's nuthin' to be ashamed of. It's only the drug busts, the pedophilia and the bad voice that keeps his influence on both music and latter-half 20th Century American literature from being fully appreciated. I luv the Doors!

j-

You never read Tolkien?! :eek7
Seriously, pick up the Lord of the Rings trilogy as soon as you can. It's pure genius, entertaining and exciting to a level which almost no other authors could ever even dream of achieving.

Of course, in theory, altruism is gender-neutral and wholly GOOD. It's in practice and application that the ideas of necessary servitude and noble suffering become capriciously associated with the latest System of Power -- and since it's usually men who are defining and enforcing those associations (between compliance and virtue), the implications for women (again, in practice, not in theory) are always enslaving and objectifying. Of course, as advice against this treatment, Rand's Objectivism is absolutely correct.

And yes, I do agree with you that (most of the time) belief systems (whether secular or sprititual) do rob the individual of power and self-determination. But, it is my personal opinion that GROWTH for human beings requires a constant struggling with the question: "Am I God, or am I subject to God" -- just like Milton illuminated in Paradise Lost.

j-

I don't necessarily agree with the idea that altruism is good, to be honest.
You see, the argument you make about altruism in practice forcing women into a subservient, objectified role applies to humanity as a whole, if you look at it closely.
Altruism, the way it has developed under both humanistic and christian modernist traditions, ultimately requires of man that he becomes not only a part of, but also secondary to society as a whole.
The woman who is forced to stay at home and take care of the house and kids is just as heavily influenced by this as the man who spends 70 hours a week working jobs he hates, or is sent of to war to die for the words of politicians.
The problem with this, ofcourse, is that it isn't solved by feminism and female emancipation. The woman who moves from the stove and the children to those 70 hour work weeks remains a slave of the system, she just takes a different position in that system.

What someone like Rand (or Nietzsche) does, is to promote breaking free from the entire "slave morality", and to promote living according to one's own morality, passions and judgements.
If one looks only at women who do this, it will indeed look as if they are merely fighting the traditional patriarchal social forms. The truth, however, is that the difference is a much more fundamental one.

Unfortunately, society as a whole would collapse if everyone did this. For society to continue functioning, it is necessary that many people - if not the majority - live lives they'd rather not have, with jobs they hate and a moral system which mainly consists of what is forced upon them by society.

Just curious, why do you think personal growth requires the involvement of the question of God?

Yes, agreed. But I do believe the "theory" or idea of altruism is defensible in every regard, even if history contains no successful examples. I would describe Altruism in terms as simple as: "a pervasive social principle, governing the large and small choices made by all intellectually mature human beings, built on the unverifiable belief that self-sacrifice improves both the individual and society at large." Though history is empty of succesful Altruistic Utopias (and has very few attempts at all), fiction has many. Consider Tolkien's Rings. Were the Hobbit's behaving like Objectivists?


"God" is a convenient meme, into which much universal signification has already been invested by many cultures. What's important is the question - is there something more important than me? Something I can only occasionally approach with my rational thoughts, because it contains truths beyond my apprehension? Something that beckons to and compels powers within me my senses cannot detect, but which (because my faith in that ineffable "something" that's bigger than me and wholly outside of me stimulates them) I do BELIEVE are there.

Let me give you a more tangible example: I'm a poet. To be great I realize that I must conquer the influence of any poets before me. Yet, I also realize that, if my insecurity and fear of influence prevent me from seeking their influence inside myself and my own work, I will never b anything more than a frightened little creature hiding and shivering in the woods, even as I cry out "Look at me, look at me!"

j-

But what about the claims that Tolkien was using the so-called fantasy realm to thinly veil his rascism among other things?

I love the books, but they certainly have as much of a pro and con following as Rand's do.

if you haven't yet read Huxley's Brave New world. then read the papaer and watch the news and realize that this guy may have been a profit.

Ironically, I've read those claims, though I've never read Tolkien myself. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to represent "Evil" in a book (or a movie, for that matter) without giving it some sort of embodiment -- and those embodiments, for the author's inability to invest the actions and effects of "Evil" with any sympathetic justification, inevitably resemble DUMB, CRUDE BRUTES. And we certainly know where that takes you. Do you think that racist terms like "Slopes" or "Ragheads" enter the conversational lexicon during war times by accident?

j-

PS: I'm gald this thread is here for you. Looks like you've been having a rough day.

A great book, yes. But his prophetic insight is more an acknowledgement of our unfortunate historical tendency to over-civilize and hyper-structure our societies, at the expense of individual expression. Or, said another, he was looking BACK as much as he was looking FORWARD.

j-

I think those claims mainly show how disgustingly far political correctness has dared going.

The reason that Tolkien's works have what would today be considered a slight undertone of racism is that his writings are those of a white intellectual man who was born in the 1890's.

Tolkien said he did not write The Lord of the Rings as an allegory of the real world, and there is no real reason to doubt that.
He simply wrote an epic about one of the world's oldest themes, and naturally most of the symbolism he used stemmed from his own culture.

To blame Tolkien for the "racism" in his books is, in effect, to blame him for not being on the forefront in the fight against racism, or even to blame him for being born white and in the 1890's.
Every writer, every storyteller, every artist is embedded in a culture. Blaming them for this is not only unreasonable, it's ridiculous.


I wouldn't personally dare to say that Tolkien's works have as much of a pro and con following as Rand's works do. The Lord of the Rings was chosen as the best English literary work of all time a while ago, his books are some of the best selling works ever, and I believe the movies based on his books are also among the most successful movies ever made.
Ofcourse, there will always be haters, but a vast majority of people seem to like him :glugglug

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Shit guess I need to pick this one up.

:thumbsup

How high?

j-

Wow, you made my day, thanks ;)

On to the topic -- two of my favorite books of all time are The Lord of the Flies and a book that was out of print for years called The Robe, by Lloyd Douglas, which is about the soldiers who gambled for Christ's robe at the Crucifixion.

Right now I'm off to hop in bed with a new one I got today, Stiff, the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers ;)

If you enjoyed Atlas Shrugged and you're not an emo college girl who believes herself to be wise and all-knowing, you have a very immature mind. Calling Rand a philosopher is like calling Burger King fine cuisine.