The Sole Producer

[caroljane]

When Atlas shrugs, will a million Lilliputians pick up the pieces and reassemble their left-handed world?

The idea of the single mind is so central to Ayn Rand's philosophy that it cannot be ignored in the application of that philosophy. The Romantic image of the lonely genius, labouring day and night while scorned and reviled by mindless multitudes,only to emerge triumphant with the one and only solution to the self-caused problems of those multitudes, is so powerful that we are all here,half a century after Atlas Shrugged was published, reading and thinking about it.

Individuals have not changed in those fifty years. We are the same human creatures Ayn Rand knew and dealt with all her life.

Politics have not really changed, in form or in content.

Business has not changed. It is still business with its priorities for quality and profit.

Art, music and literature have not changed, except to reflect the tastes of the current market.

But the way in which we conduct these activities and consume their products has changed. Politics are still hierarchical. Employment structures, also. But the regular conduct of work in most areas is increasingly communal and dependent on the input of others, to many of whom we would not have had access fifty years ago. Nobody is more fiercely protective of his own work than an academic, for example, but nobody is less able to do it alone, or take credit for it alone, than today.Internet cooperation in areas like criminology have superseded the brilliant deductions of a Holmes or a Poirot in the popular imagination. Medical researchers, breakthrough engineers,super-chefs and fashion designers alike (if they are gracious) acknowledge that they all standing on the shoulders of giants, and holding the hands of normal-sized humans.

The Randian hero stands alone. I admit that as I write this I am thinking of one particular talented person (JT) who has posted on this forum. He is a highly skilled computer programmer, who believes that his higher skill in this area makes him superior, as a human being, to everyone who is not as highly skilled. He obviously has many other problems, mainly mental,but his glom-onto the d'Anconia "doing your work well is the highest value in life" has not helped him with any of his problems. He has correctly perceived the Rand universe as hierachical, with the Sole Producers on top and the Barked-Order-Takers and the Getters-out-of-the- way in descending order. He has perceived that the world is not like that, because people are not like that, and even business and science are not like that.

Rand believed that science would validate many of her philosophical claims. She revered science as she revered the brilliant clarity of her own mind. She believed scientific discoveries to be the natural consequences of correct philosophy.

Yet here we all are, still unassorted together,not properly classified as to our value as Thinkers, Producers, Second-Handers etc, in as Stan said to Ollie, another fine mess.

[Selene]

Francisco recognized that D'Anconia Copper was so vast and powerful, that the leeches could feed off it for decades. What did he do Carol?

My favorite male characters in Atlas in order are:

Ragnar

Francisco

Hank

Hugh Akston

Ellis Wyatt

Adam

Edited March 13, 2011 by Selene

[caroljane]

Francisco recognized that D'Anconia Copper was so vast and powerful, that the leeches could feed off it for decades. What did he do Carol?

My favorite male characters in Atlas in order are:

Ragnar

Francisco

Hank

Hugh Akston

Ellis Wyatt

Adam

Mine is Eddie. There's only one.

[sjw]

Daunce,

In my opinion Ayn Rand didn't have the whole truth here, but she had enough of it that your dismissal falls flat.

Yes, there was a streak of Nietzscheanism in her works. She implied that a railroad can't function because a single person goes missing. The truth is that there are many Dagny Taggarts in a given big company, and given our current deranged business environments, these people are down in the trenches, far lower down than Dagny, they are the ones with the responsibility but not the authority.

Our current system with its deranged moral views often but not always favors an inverted hierarchy: the incompetent tend to be promoted. It wasn't necessarily this bad when Rand wrote Atlas and Hewlett and Packard were the engineers who founded a company (as opposed to the MBA's who order engineers around).

The fact is that some people are more competent than others, and when the human race faces big problems like tsunamis and asteroids, we need the best to decide where to direct the resources to help mitigate these things, otherwise in the long run, we're doomed.

Shayne

[Selene]

Daunce,

In my opinion Ayn Rand didn't have the whole truth here, but she had enough of it that your dismissal falls flat.

Yes, there was a streak of Nietzscheanism in her works. She implied that a railroad can't function because a single person goes missing. The truth is that there are many Dagny Taggarts in a given big company, and given our current deranged business environments, these people are down in the trenches, far lower down than Dagny, they are the ones with the responsibility but not the authority.

Our current system with its deranged moral views often but not always favors an inverted hierarchy: the incompetent tend to be promoted. It wasn't necessarily this bad when Rand wrote Atlas and Hewlett and Packard were the engineers who founded a company (as opposed to the MBA's who order engineers around).

The fact is that some people are more competent than others, and when the human race faces big problems like tsunamis and asteroids, we need the best to decide where to direct the resources to help mitigate these things, otherwise in the long run, we're doomed.

Shayne

Yes, completely agree,

Additionally, as Ayn pointed out [and this is very prevalent today], few "down the line" people are willing to put their ass or job on the line by doing what is right and bucking the incompetent managers and bosses. This has a cumulative tipping point whereby the structures collapse of their own weighted incompetency.

[sjw]

Additionally, as Ayn pointed out [and this is very prevalent today], few "down the line" people are willing to put their ass or job on the line by doing what is right and bucking the incompetent managers and bosses. This has a cumulative tipping point whereby the structures collapse of their own weighted incompetency.

Unfortunately the fascist nature of government doesn't give people much choice. Fundamentally the sole reason for the corrupt state of business is the corrupt state of government, if this were not true then those businesses wouldn't exist.

That's one thing ARI Objectivists in their noisy defense of Big Business don't realize. Most of the people bearing the brunt of the problems are not big business, it's the little guy trying to break out on his own and be independent who in various ways is getting squashed (see p. 108 of my book).

Shayne

[caroljane]

Shayne, how apropos that you mentioned tsunamis. Just today the head of the emergency alert department in BC complimented her team on how perfectly the system worked in assessing, warning and preparation for flood danger. The only glitch was an inexplicable announcement by a federal politician that the danger was over, when it officially wasn't.

[sjw]

Shayne, how apropos that you mentioned tsunamis. Just today the head of the emergency alert department in BC complimented her team on how perfectly the system worked in assessing, warning and preparation for flood danger. The only glitch was an inexplicable announcement by a federal politician that the danger was over, when it officially wasn't.

What's your point? That nothing in the entire situation could have possibly turned out better than it did? That our authoritarian, immoral method of governing has created the best possible utopia?

Shayne

[caroljane]

Shayne, how apropos that you mentioned tsunamis. Just today the head of the emergency alert department in BC complimented her team on how perfectly the system worked in assessing, warning and preparation for flood danger. The only glitch was an inexplicable announcement by a federal politician that the danger was over, when it officially wasn't.

What's your point? That nothing in the entire situation could have possibly turned out better than it did? That our authoritarian, immoral method of governing has created the best possible utopia?

Shayne, I thought that my point was illustrating your point. Competent people carried out a task. A superimposed government yakmouth made an uninformed announcement for his own unfathomable political reasons. The tsunami did not destroy parts of our west coast so yes,nothing could have turned out better than it did.

Shayne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

When Atlas shrugs, will a million Lilliputians pick up the pieces and reassemble their left-handed world?

Carol,

Funny analogy, this.

From what I understand of the tale, Gulliver was not an Atlas carrying the Lilliputians on his back. On the contrary, he was a prisoner of them and they finally wanted to blind him for disobedience.

So why shouldn't the "million Lilliputians pick up the pieces and reassemble their left-handed world"? Atlas wasn't even carrying it. All he did was escape from it.

I find your analogy more spot on that I believe you intended.

Michael

[pippi]

Shayne, how apropos that you mentioned tsunamis. Just today the head of the emergency alert department in BC complimented her team on how perfectly the system worked in assessing, warning and preparation for flood danger. The only glitch was an inexplicable announcement by a federal politician that the danger was over, when it officially wasn't.

What's your point? That nothing in the entire situation could have possibly turned out better than it did? That our authoritarian, immoral method of governing has created the best possible utopia?

Shayne, I thought that my point was illustrating your point. Competent people carried out a task. A superimposed government yakmouth made an uninformed announcement for his own unfathomable political reasons. The tsunami did not destroy parts of our west coast so yes,nothing could have turned out better than it did.

Shayne

I couldn't have said it better myself-nice post

[sjw]

What a couple of yahoos.

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/13/when-will-we-learn.html

Shayne

[BaalChatzaf]

What a couple of yahoos.

http://www.newsweek....l-we-learn.html

Shayne

I read that article (thank you for posting the URL).

There is no such thing as a malevolent earthquake or tsunami. These are natural happenings and there is no intention or purpose behind them. The article starts off on an irrational basis.

Yes, we could probably improve our warning systems. Any system can be improved if one is willing to pay for the improvement.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[BaalChatzaf]

Francisco recognized that D'Anconia Copper was so vast and powerful, that the leeches could feed off it for decades. What did he do Carol?

My favorite male characters in Atlas in order are:

Ragnar

Francisco

Hank

Hugh Akston

Ellis Wyatt

Adam

In my ordering:

Francisco, Hank, Hugh, Ragnar, Ellis.

John Galt is not in my list because he is impossible. He is just a place-holder.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[sjw]

What a couple of yahoos.

http://www.newsweek....l-we-learn.html

Shayne

I read that article (thank you for posting the URL).

There is no such thing as a malevolent earthquake or tsunami. These are natural happenings and there is no intention or purpose behind them. The article starts off on an irrational basis.

Yes, we could probably improve our warning systems. Any system can be improved if one is willing to pay for the improvement.

Ba'al Chatzaf

It was just some random article I found searching for tsunami warning systems. It doesn't take much imagination to know that we can do far better in saving lives and property than we have done, but evidently that tiny bit of imagination is too much for Pippi and Daunce. These yahoos evidently want the yahoos who are in charge to stay in charge.

Shayne

[sjw]

Further food for thought:

http://video.l3.fbcdn.net/cfs-l3-snc6/81489/34/1605260179420_2624.mp4?oh=ac31b4d8738221641ba490396dc19636&oe=4D7F9F00&l3s=20110313100648&l3e=20110315101648&lh=0a6cfa5eeaecd6dc12abf

Shayne

[syrakusos]

... Internet cooperation in areas like criminology have superseded the brilliant deductions of a Holmes or a Poirot in the popular imagination. Medical researchers, breakthrough engineers,super-chefs and fashion designers alike (if they are gracious) acknowledge that they all standing on the shoulders of giants, and holding the hands of normal-sized humans.

OK, first of all, regarding criminology, you mistake criminalistics (solving crimes by analysis of physical evidence) for criminology, the academic study of crime, largely as a subset of sociology. (If you think that criminals are "sick" - and we once did - then criminology is a branch of medicine. If you think they are "lost souls" - as the Quakers did when they built the first solitary confinement penitentiaries - then crimiology is a branch of theology. And so on.) Also, Holmes and Poirot were, indeed, fictional. For real life people of those times, look to Alan Pinkerton, William J. Burns (less successful than he appeared in the headlines), J. Edgar Hoover, and Eliot Ness. But they were not criminalists. Ness knew who the perpetrator was. Pinkerton built an organization of criminalists, investigators, and detectives. Hoover, also, was an "industrialist", not an inventor. There was August Vollmer, who created "professional policing" in Berkeley, California, in the 1920s, moving law enforcement away from the politically-appointed ward healer with a billy club. It is a different thing, also, entirely from the admittedly fictional adventures of Holmes, Poirot, Marple, Wolf, Spade, and the many others.

All of that being as it may, if you read anything of Ayn Rand's theory of fiction, you know that as much as it is true that William Hewlett and David Packard, Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, Henry Ford, and many, many others, did, indeed, build great industrial enterprises, right up to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, that was not the "point" of her story, nor the "goal" of her writing. If it was, she might have sold 1000 books - maybe - to just exactly those people, and no one else.

It is possible to write about a grocery clerk heroically getting food from the loading dock to the shelves, each item priced correctly, and set up square, meanwhile pining for the cashier whose husband does not appreciate her, though she cannot leave because of the children. But it would be hard for their boss to get into that story. Nor could the line accountants in the district office or the traffic manager in the line haul division, or that person's doctor, to say nothing of the soldier standing guard or his commanding officer... The way it works, is you write about really alive and interesting people doing really important and consequential things. Then, everyone can read the story.

Tron Legacy was not the greatest movie ever made - perhaps not the worst ever - but if it had been about one guy debugging one module in one day, it would have been a long two hours.

As Howard Roark said, "Of course I need clients. I'm not building mausoleums."

The questions are: Who is the goal of your effort? What motivates you? What do you value?

Edited March 15, 2011 by Michael E. Marotta

[caroljane]

... Internet cooperation in areas like criminology have superseded the brilliant deductions of a Holmes or a Poirot in the popular imagination. Medical researchers, breakthrough engineers,super-chefs and fashion designers alike (if they are gracious) acknowledge that they all standing on the shoulders of giants, and holding the hands of normal-sized humans.

OK, first of all, regarding criminology, you mistake criminalistics (solving crimes by analysis of physical evidence) for criminology, the academic study of crime, largely as a subset of sociology. (If you think that criminals are "sick" - and we once did - then criminology is a branch of medicine. If you think they are "lost souls" - as the Quakers did when they built the first solitary confinement penitentiaries - then crimiology is a branch of theology. And so on.) Also, Holmes and Poirot were, indeed, fictional. For real life people of those times, look to Alan Pinkerton, William J. Burns (less successful than he appeared in the headlines), J. Edgar Hoover, and Eliot Ness. But they were not criminalists. Ness knew who the perpetrator was. Pinkerton built an organization of criminalists, investigators, and detectives. Hoover, also, was an "industrialist", not an inventor. There was August Vollmer, who created "professional policing" in Berkeley, California, in the 1920s, moving law enforcement away from the politically-appointed ward healer with a billy club. It is a different thing, also, entirely from the admittedly fictional adventures of Holmes, Poirot, Marple, Wolf, Spade, and the many others.

All of that being as it may, if you read anything of Ayn Rand's theory of fiction, you know that as much as it is true that William Hewlett and David Packard, Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, Henry Ford, and many, many others, did, indeed, build great industrial enterprises, right up to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, that was not the "point" of her story, nor the "goal" of her writing. If it was, she might have sold 1000 books - maybe - to just exactly those people, and no one else.

It is possible to write about a grocery clerk heroically getting food from the loading dock to the shelves, each item priced correctly, and set up square, meanwhile pining for the cashier whose husband does not appreciate her, though she cannot leave because of the children. But it would be hard for their boss to get into that story. Nor could the line accountants in the district office or the traffic manager in the line haul division, or that person's doctor, to say nothing of the soldier standing guard or his commanding officer... The way it works, is you write about really alive and interesting people doing really important and consequential things. Then, everyone can read the story.

Tron Legacy was not the greatest movie ever made - perhaps not the worst ever - but if it had been about one guy debugging one module in one day, it would have been a long two hours.

As Howard Roark said, "Of course I need clients. I'm not building mausoleums."

The questions are: Who is the goal of your effort? What motivates you? What do you value?

Thanks for the correction about crime-solving. It's a fascinating area, hence my comment about how the "popular imagination" perceives the crime-solvers now. In the days of real legendary "lone" detectives, the fictional Poirots deduced at the top of the mental hierarchy, the assistants assisted and the minions minioned. Now we watch the CSI and Law & Order teams on TV. They're teams, and their only minion-assistant is the computer.

In literature, the lone hero will I think always endure.

[syrakusos]

... the "popular imagination" perceives the crime-solvers now. In the days of real legendary "lone" detectives ... Now we watch the CSI and Law & Order teams on TV. They're teams, ... In literature, the lone hero will I think always endure.

Well, I do not know that much about television, or literature. I do appreciate the nuance, though, and I can accept your claim as a broad generalization: in the past, our heroes were individuals; today, they are teams. You see this as a reflection of cultural collectivism.

You may be right. I spent a couple of days with Gernsback-era science fiction. Heroes, villains, women to be rescued, and fantastic inventions and adventures, but no teams. One night on patrol with a smart young guy on his way to a federal post, I said that I am an individualist. And he replied, "There's no Marotta in team." So, I understand your point. Even so, the quirk may be ours alone. To build the John Galt Line required intense coordination. We never saw more than two people together at once, unless they were bad guys. The industrialists in Atlas Shrugged acted in effect as if in concert, though each took their own path.

Paperback action/adventures do have teams. Even though the "GI Joe" action figure - he is not a doll! - is one guy, when the franchise went into comics, GI Joe became a team. The Justice League of America, the Junior Justice League, the X-Men, perhaps these, too, are artifacts of our collectivist age.

Maybe it is only a maturing of the intellect. Those earlier stories were aimed at juveniles forming their personalities and discovering their identities. ("You mean, I was born on Krypton..." - "From now on, I will be The Lone Ranger.") Sooner or later, you need something else.

I do not know CSI except by reference, but I do know NCIS and NUMB3RS well. NCIS is about a team. They have a leader who is their mentor. They each have their own special skills and can function independently, but they work best together. On the other hand, in NUMB3RS, while the FBI guys are nominally a team - two of them partners - mixing in the academics brings a different texture entirely. Though more skills are brought to bear, it is not clear who the leader is. Though Donald Epps is the SAIC, his brother Charlie, clearly the focus, never asks anything of anyone and delivers what he thinks is best, not what is asked for. Charlie's personal mentor is physicist Larry Flynhart who when not off in a monastery or in orbit is living in the tunnels under campus. So, his skills are called upon when they are available, but he is not likely to take a bullet for someone else.

Maybe your generalization holds. Maybe it is just an interesting evaluation of one trend out of many.

Edited March 16, 2011 by Michael E. Marotta