Just re-started Atlas Shrugged

[Selene]

Adam,

Although Rand did not explicitly say this, I have always considered the intellectual to be the 4th archetype of people who make history in her categorization. She implies it so strongly, I believe it's there if you look. And it runs in direct correspondence to mind-body.

Attila is bad-guy leader (body).

Producer is good-guy leader (body).

Witch Doctor is bad-guy leader (mind).

Intellectual is good-guy leader (mind).

Attila and Producer reach the masses and change their lives through their bodies.

Witch Doctor and Intellectual reach the masses and change their lives through their minds.

Objectivist yin and yang duality.

Stepping outside of history, this is extremely useful in writing fiction. You can have characters oppose each other on essentials. The Producer is the hero and his nemesis or opponent Attila runs the bad-guy gang. Ditto for Witch Doctor and Intellectual.

Or you can use this as a throughline within the same character, moving one with Attila characteristics to giving them up and acquiring Producer characteristics (or vice-versa). Ditto for Witch Doctor and Intellectual.

Michael

Michael:

I like your distinction.

I sensed it in my post, however you identified it.

Nice balance also.

Essentially, the intellectuals in Atlas would be the Holy Trinity's teacher, and mentor, Hugh Akston and the minor characters who are studying philosophy.

One of my favorite lines in Atlas is when one of the women at a party is listening to Francisco talk about his teacher.

The woman, who thought Dr. Akston was dead, wonders, "Why does no one notices when a philosopher dies?"

Francisco, remarks that, "Eventually they do!"

A...

[Selene]

Curious that Selene and others (the three other sites I looked to for previously written analysis on the conversation) found the the most interesting part to be the Dagny, Rearden, "not your wife" stuff. Curious-er still, is the fact that I find nothing interesting in that portion but ... If scum bag finds more value in raping the company vs production, what can you do in this environment of debt and public shares?

It is complicated because of Ayn Rand's unique and brilliant insight that the Mayor's view of sex is consistent with his view of economics: they stem from the same root. Moreover, it is a theme within Atlas Shrugged that although Rearden is a producer, he shares the Mayor's view of sex. That contradiction within Rearden is why he allows his family to exploit him and why government exploitation is only secondary to that. The sanction of the victim requires the acceptance of an unearned guilt.

....

If you are looking for absolute answers, you will not understand the Objectivist insistence on context. In a mixed economy, government regulations force honest people to engage in immoral actions; and also allow dishonest people to benefit from them. To take the cases we all probably know well, Michael Milken's leveraged buy-outs increased value and improved production and performance.

....

It is an error in perception delivered to us by public schools and the broad tradition of mysticism in education that a steel mill is really production, but that banking is not. A rise in prices is a signal of growth, while falling prices - especially falling corporate joint share ("common stock") prices - cause worry. A company that produces widgets is good, but an investor who shorts their stock is evil. Conservatives join liberals in this fallacy. You find people among Objectivists who say that farmers and rural folk who live "close to the land" really do support themselves but that city people are socialist moochers who cannot support themselves. The common error across all of those fallacies is the failure to conceptualize financial commerce.

....

Later Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden goes around the country buying abandoned tooling and machineries. Suppose he could buy an entire functioning plant in business and profitable, take all the production tools, and ship them back to his own mill, leaving all of the workers to their own devices and resources. Should he not do that?

The difference between Mayor Bascom and Michael Milken is not in the actions but within the persons. To focus on the acts apart from the actors is to commit an epistemological error that leads to an incorrect moral assessment.

Excellent post Michael.

You identify several key comparisons that will be quite instructive to readers.

A...

[Brant Gaede]

It is complicated because of Ayn Rand's unique and brilliant insight that the Mayor's view of sex is consistent with his view of economics: they stem from the same root. Moreover, it is a theme within Atlas Shrugged that although Rearden is a producer, he shares the Mayor's view of sex. That contradiction within Rearden is why he allows his family to exploit him and why government exploitation is only secondary to that. The sanction of the victim requires the acceptance of an unearned guilt.

Not in all cases. If it were generally true then you could begin and end relationships by throwing a switch as soon as you understood this and rejected it. Life ain't that easy. Rand had so many brains it unbalanced her onto the intellectual side of human being at the expense of the psychological-emotional. It cost her, but everything costs something.

--Brant

people stumble all over the place for unique reasons, so too geniuses: Greg (see Greg) is pretty good at avoiding stumbling

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

You find people among Objectivists who say that farmers and rural folk who live "close to the land" really do support themselves but that city people are socialist moochers who cannot support themselves.

Michael,

I once wrote something similar to this, in a manner that lightning and lightning bug are similar to each other (to quote Mark Twain).

It came from an observation by Rabbi Daniel Lapin. He said people who live in rural environments tend to be more individualistic and people who live in cities tend to be more collectivist. (He demonstrated this by showing the voting habits of counties.)

This is because in rural places, there is much you have to do directly with reality. For those cases, it's just you and nature and if you don't do it, nature doesn't give a crap. You learn and you do or you do without.

In a city, just about everything you get comes from the hand of another person. The stuff will have it's own reality, for sure, so you cannot treat a solid like a liquid and so on, but for you get get ahold of it, you will have to make peace with some other human being (or a bunch of them). This means that if you want to get something in a city, interacting with other people is more primary than interacting directly with reality. You need some basic people skills or you are going to do without.

btw - That is also valid for investment banking. Finance and money do not exist without people.

In raw nature, you can try to lay a guilt trip on reality to manipulate it, but like I said, it doesn't give a crap. In the city, you can lay guilt trips on people and lo and behold, this works a lot of the time for you to get stuff.

Thus emerges collectivism.

This does not mean ALL people in the country "really do support themselves," nor that ALL people in cities are "socialist moochers who cannot support themselves."

Free trade among people with specialized skills as a replacement for those with prepper-like skills also emerges in cities in addition to collectivism. The point is, no matter how specialized a person gets in a city, if he doesn't have the minimum people skills to make a trade, he will fair poorly. He either learns "people metaphysics" so to speak to get his stuff, or he goes hungry (or begs, which, come to think of it, is another people skill ). His default perspective on his metaphysical environment--his survival context--includes other people with no way out of it.

But the jack-of-all-trades in the country who has direct hands-on contact with reality can be the worlds biggest asshole who nobody can stand, can be all alone, and still feed himself. His natural perspective is individualistic self-reliance.

These are emergent tendencies that produce similar results in a general way, not categories assigned by an authority of some sort with no exceptions.

So if you were referring to what I wrote before, and I know it was similar to this, I don't know how you got to where you are at from where I was. But I do love a good mystery.

Michael

[syrakusos]

Michael, I did not know what you wrote. I was thinking of Dennis L. May, in fact, but his opinion is not unique. I just went through the same thing on Galt's Gulch. I posted "City Air Makes You Free" and an active conservative replied that city people cannot support themselves, etc.

Carl Sagan held up the Bushmen (or !Kung?) of the Kalahari as natural scientists evoking our own paleolithic ancestors because their survival is so precarious that they cannot afford not to pay attention to their senses and reason correctly. And we honor hunters today.

But they do not make their own rifles. Yes, some do. And it is a nice hobby and an impressive skill. But again, they do that with tools made by and purchased from others. No one truly bootstraps their own machine shop. And even if some person did that, it was based on known ideas from others. That does not denigrate their intelligence but only underscores that we all (or all of us producers) build on what we inherit. In The Fountainhead, Roark speaks of it in those terms to Wynand.

Country people have livestock. Why is milking a cow - or for that matter dressing a deer - more "natural" than trading with another human being. Both behaviors are very far removed from "nature." A "natural" hunter would run the deer to exhaustion, kill it with his bare hands, rip it open with his teeth, and eat it without the benefit of fire.

More to the point, a while back you brought up "The WEIRD People." I tracked that paper and read it and then read the book.They did look at about a dozen so-called "primitive" peoples today, isolated, hunters, farmers, villagers, across South America and Asia. It is shocking but not surprising how un-intelligent they are. Oh, they might be nice people, even more generous than we are. And not stupid. But I mean that we have learned so much over such a short time but have forgotten what it was like only maybe 8000 years ago to have no word for "four." Left to their own devices, truly isolated from the cities, country people would soon devolve to that.'

Even the Amish trade with the cities for the things they want - buttons, not zippers; DC motors, not AC.

The idea that country folk are socially isolated and cannot mooch from nature is also fallacious. Yes, Montana in particular is home to many who avoid social contact, granted. But generally, rural communities are communities, complete with rapists, muggers, bullies, wimps, habitual victims, murderers, thieves, cheats, liars, peeping toms, prostitutes, drug addicts, and everything else that people are. And geniuses come from such communities also. Glenn Seaborg was born in Ishpeming, Michigan (today 7, 000); Robert Millikan was born in Morrison, Illinois (today 6,000) and graduated high school in Maquoketa, Iowa (today 7,000). But they did not stay there anymore than Albert Michelson stayed in Virginia City, Nevada, to live with Hoss and Little Joe.

Cities are magnets for enterprise, invention, innovation, trade, commerce, creation, industry...

To say that city life is dependent on mooching from others is to ignore the fact that (nearly) every human being on Earth lives in a society of some kind.

Think of this: In the mid-20th century, folks who knew farms and villages called the city, the Asphalt Jungle and the Concrete Jungle. We are perceived as having less society, fewer social attachments, more anonymity. And it is true. Dealing with strangers is like dealing with bears and wolves -- or can be... We do not know everyone who knows everyone back three generations so our perceptions must be sharper. All the new things in the environment force constant learning.

As for mooching, again, look at your WEIRD People: other people, primitives around the world, have rules for the sharing of hunts. (Not all tribes do this, of course. In one, hunters wait until after dark to come home so that they do not have to share.) But largely, Hillary Clinton and her gang love those primitive close-to-dirt societies where everyone takes care of everyone else.

The generalizations we offer depend on the facts that we consider important.

[syrakusos]

PS... Michael I just want to add to Adam's nod to you for the symmetrical addition of the Philosopher to the General Types. Nice work.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael,

Thanks for the kind words.

Just to be clear on the city/country thing, Rabbi Lapin made a point to say humans need both. I agree with that.

Another quirk he mentioned was that in the country, everybody knows everybody for miles around. In the city, it's quite common for people who live in apartment buildings not to know who their neighbors are.

I find these distinctions of tendencies useful. And I believe we should take them into account when promoting individualism in cities.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

What made Atlas Shrugged stop?

[Derek McGowan]

Ok, can we just talk about the scene where ragnar meets rearden on the road....

I wish I had the exact wording but - a man in the shadows jumps out, rearden goes for his gun, the notices the shadow man's "proud posture".... And realizes he isn't a robber.... LOL!

I wish I had the radar that some of these characters have... I'm still laughing at that one

[Brant Gaede]

Ok, can we just talk about the scene where ragnar meets rearden on the road....

I wish I had the exact wording but - a man in the shadows jumps out, rearden goes for his gun, the notices the shadow man's "proud posture".... And realizes he isn't a robber.... LOL!

I wish I had the radar that some of these characters have... I'm still laughing at that one

The villains are bald, have bad posture and don't make eye contact. However, they do not mumble. As a character in Atlas Shrugged Hank certainly knew that as well as the author. He also knew that a bad guy at that point of the story didn't fit the plot as well as being non-essential. Only giants would meet that way.

--Brant

think of the rhythm of the story, traduced by your failure-to-go-along mockery--to be swept up in the narrative sweep and carried down Rand's river to the sea of enlightenment, kept afloat only by the life jacket of rationality

(seriously, there's a lot in the novel that squeaks, but you can't make it better by oiling the hinges, you simply keep reading)

[Selene]

I wish I had the radar that some of these characters have... I'm still laughing at that one

Derek:

Did you believe that Clark Kent flew?

Is there not a willing suspension of disbelief that one dons when one enters fiction in it's various mediums?

A...

[Derek McGowan]

I wish I had the radar that some of these characters have... I'm still laughing at that one

Derek:

Did you believe that Clark Kent flew?

Is there not a willing suspension of disbelief that one dons when one enters fiction in it's various mediums?

A...

I understand what you mean Selene, but its like my wife says, (paraphrasing) my level of belief suspension is based on what is presented as the thesis of the story. When something breaks from that thesis then sometimes I just have to laugh.

So, yes Superman can fly in a movie where the opening scenes reveal that aliens of a dying world send an infant across thousands of light years, alone, to earth. On the other hand the world of Atlas Shrugged, while populated by great men and women who have incredible accomplishments under their belts, those men and women could very much be "real" and the world they are presented in is a alternate timeline of our current "real" world.

There are many occurrences of these great men and women recognizing the other's meanings without a word and I'm fine with that. There are occurrences of recognition of greatness by speeches of deep depth and meaning, but I simply thought that this one instance was a little over the top.

That's okay though because I still love the book!

[Selene]

That's okay though because I still love the book!

Understood.

I have been through so many cycles of folks reading a book published in 1957 and critiquing it.

However, I understand what you meant.

Just wanted to make sure.

A...

[BaalChatzaf]

I wish I had the radar that some of these characters have... I'm still laughing at that one

Derek:

Did you believe that Clark Kent flew?

Is there not a willing suspension of disbelief that one dons when one enters fiction in it's various mediums?

A...

I understand what you mean Selene, but its like my wife says, (paraphrasing) my level of belief suspension is based on what is presented as the thesis of the story. When something breaks from that thesis then sometimes I just have to laugh.

So, yes Superman can fly in a movie where the opening scenes reveal that aliens of a dying world send an infant across thousands of light years, alone, to earth. On the other hand the world of Atlas Shrugged, while populated by great men and women who have incredible accomplishments under their belts, those men and women could very much be "real" and the world they are presented in is a alternate timeline of our current "real" world.

There are many occurrences of these great men and women recognizing the other's meanings without a word and I'm fine with that. There are occurrences of recognition of greatness by speeches of deep depth and meaning, but I simply thought that this one instance was a little over the top.

That's okay though because I still love the book!

The Atlasverse is an alternate time line. I am not sure quite where the point of departure from our time line is.

The physical laws of Atlas World are almost the same as in our world. I say almost because Galt's machine violates the second law of thermodynamics, but who cares. It is just a plot McGuffin.

[Jonathan]

The physical laws of Atlas World are almost the same as in our world. I say almost because Galt's machine violates the second law of thermodynamics, but who cares. It is just a plot McGuffin.

Why do you say that Galt's machine violates the 2nd law? I think we've discussed this in the past, but I don't remember your reasoning.

J

[BaalChatzaf]

The physical laws of Atlas World are almost the same as in our world. I say almost because Galt's machine violates the second law of thermodynamics, but who cares. It is just a plot McGuffin.

Why do you say that Galt's machine violates the 2nd law? I think we've discussed this in the past, but I don't remember your reasoning.

J

I have to go back and dig through my notes. But I recall that the Galt Machine could be used to produce perpetual motion which is a no no. Also I recall showing that the Galt Machine (or my version of it) would violate conservation of charge laws.

I will see if I can dig it out.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[jts]

The physical laws of Atlas World are almost the same as in our world. I say almost because Galt's machine violates the second law of thermodynamics, but who cares. It is just a plot McGuffin.

Why do you say that Galt's machine violates the 2nd law? I think we've discussed this in the past, but I don't remember your reasoning.

J

I have to go back and dig through my notes. But I recall that the Galt Machine could be used to produce perpetual motion which is a no no. Also I recall showing that the Galt Machine (or my version of it) would violate conservation of charge laws.

I will see if I can dig it out.

Ba'al Chatzaf

There is a rumor about zero point energy. I don't know if this rumor is true. If it is true and if the Galt motor taps into this zero point energy, then for practical purposes it would resemble a perpetual motion machine without violating physics.

[Brant Gaede]

The universe is the only perpetual motion machine.

--Brant

a fallacious observation

[dldelancey]

Galt's motor wasn't a true perpetual motion machine, though, was it? It had an external power source, if I recall correctly, although it's been years since I read the book. I remember thinking when I read it that all they needed was for a couple of people to rub their feet across the carpet a few times a week to keep it going.

[Brant Gaede]

Galt's motor wasn't a true perpetual motion machine, though, was it? It had an external power source, if I recall correctly, although it's been years since I read the book. I remember thinking when I read it that all they needed was for a couple of people to rub their feet across the carpet a few times a week to keep it going.

Don't think too much about Galt's machine as such. That's not why it's in the novel.

--Brant

it's a McGuffin, but mostly everybody is having a much a do about Galt, not his machine, so Galt is the big McGuffin of Atlas Shrugged

[BaalChatzaf]

Galt's motor wasn't a true perpetual motion machine, though, was it? It had an external power source, if I recall correctly, although it's been years since I read the book. I remember thinking when I read it that all they needed was for a couple of people to rub their feet across the carpet a few times a week to keep it going.

Yes. The main problem with Galt's motor is that it is supposed to tame the discharge of a capacitor. I am doing some digging into capacitance, particularly atmospheric capacitance to see if there is a problem between slow discharge and the second law of thermodynamics, which say that the entropy of a closed system increases until it is in theormodynamic equilibrium.

In any case, there have been hundred of patents on the conversion of atmospheric electricity to direct current, none of which have been particularly efficient.

The best way of converting Heavenly Power to Earthly Electricity is by way of efficient photoelectric conversion. Some improvements have been made in that department in particular extending the width of the spectrum that can be converted efficiently.

The problem with static electricity is how to get it moving slowly. There have been to this date no successful static electrical motors than can produce mechanical motion efficiently. The problem also may be with the breakdown voltage of the atmosphere which constitutes the "innards" of the atmospheric capacitor. If that could be increased indefinitely then the charge in the atmospheric capacitor can be so large one could send up a balloon filled with batteries to "mine" the charge.

There is a lot of work going on to make capacitors more like batteries (and not just for atmospheric electricity). Some progress is being made, but don't hold your breath. We still have to depend on heat energy to get our electricity in industrial size quantities.

I got my blood up again to study some more atmospheric energetics. Now this is the course I would like to take:

http://radarmet.atmos.colostate.edu/AT620/

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Derek McGowan]

Okay, so the conversation between Dagny and the night operator of the other train line. (Right after the train she in on is deserted and she walks with Owen Kellogg down to the track phone to call for help. Reaching the Taggart phone, they find it out of service and resolve to call from the other train company's phone)

So, I know that Rand has Dagny go through a mental transformation where she realizes that she can't help to prop up a dying system, but I'm wondering if this particular conversation is playing out along that same theme. She is upset because the night operator doesn't know how to proceed to help them and appears quite incompetent. He doesn't know what to do and doesn't want to risk doing anything to help. She is struggling to stay calm, but secretly cursing, in order to get help for her train. Owen sits back and just smiles at her struggle. Is he sitting back in silent communion that the guy on the line is an idiot, or is he really looking at her as the poor soul who still doesn't realize that it's useless?

Why does she expect to get help from a competitor anyway? Is this because she hasn't been to the gulch yet and heard the oath? Once she heard the oath, would she no longer ask for help in a similar situation?

Im currently in the chapter where she is having dinner at MIdas's house (I wonder if he asks for payment at the end of dinner?)

The one thing that I have to say that I don't like about the gulch is exactly what she brings up, that many of the inhabitants aren't spending ALL their time working on the things that gave them happiness in the outside world. I fully agree that all work is good work (there are no lowly jobs) but I believe that ALL work isn't for everybody. Just because I'm working for a great man doesn't mean I will get joy out of a profession that I'm not inclined to do so I dont see why they would, especially since they were soo into their chosen fields on the outside.

Also, why do they have to work for someone else anyway? Didnt they get money placed in their accounts by Ragnar? Shouldn't that money be enough to finance their personal business there in the gulch?

[deanwins]

"All I wanna do is BANG BANG BANG And take your money" I like that song for its tune and its rebellious nature, its originality of using the cash register and gunfire in the music, and its example of just that being censored.

Also, why do they have to work for someone else anyway? Didnt they get money placed in their accounts by Ragnar? Shouldn't that money be enough to finance their personal business there in the gulch?

I'll answer that one because its the easiest: Food doesn't grow from a pile of gold. Nor does any other resource or service. So even with a big pile of gold, people in a community still need to produce values for real human needs. Or do you mean why do some of the gulch people actually work out in the world rather than stay full time in the gulch? Maybe to get things that aren't made in the gulch to trade with people who do live full time in the gulch?

[Selene]

...I fully agree that all work is good work (there are no lowly jobs) but I believe that ALL work isn't for everybody.

Really?

So if you were a paid enforcer for one of the Bushwick NY City "community organized groups," aka gangs, that would be ok?

A...

[Derek McGowan]

Selene,

While that job would be immoral (to my standards) and I wouldn't be okay with doing it, I'm just saying that I would be believe that there is someone in the world for which enforcer would be a dream job.

Dean,

I was more asking why do they work for others. Of course things needed to be produced but if I was a professor of history on the outside and I had bankroll, courtesy of ragnar, and freedom from force, courtesy of the gulch's rules, annndd a community that appreciated what I did, I wouldn't work on someone else's farm, I would open a school where I would teach, or open a book store which only sold my books, etc