Dagny and the Guard

[BaalChatzaf]

RTB: "I think there's something fundamentally wrong with you."

Rationally, logically this is most certainly true. There is indeed something very fundamentally wrong. You don't need others to point it out. You know this and you revel in it.

Bob

Fucking-A! I have worked on this for nearly 40 years. I am, as it were, a self made man.

I am, in the tradition of Socrates, a gad-fly. Someday I might even have to drink the Hemlock.

You will notice that the world is still aware of Socrates, after 2300 years.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[bmacwilliam]

RTB: "I think there's something fundamentally wrong with you."

Rationally, logically this is most certainly true. There is indeed something very fundamentally wrong. You don't need others to point it out. You know this and you revel in it.

Bob

Fucking-A! I have worked on this for nearly 40 years. I am, as it were, a self made man.

I am, in the tradition of Socrates, a gad-fly. Someday I might even have to drink the Hemlock.

You will notice that the world is still aware of Socrates, after 2300 years.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Socrates himself, referring to his status as a gadfly, said as his purpose - the gadfly purpose:

"to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

The ultimate end of logic and intelligence should be truth. This is MY ethical foundation.

Where is your truth? Guess what? There's something missing from your grandiose view of yourself and that's truth. You forgot one little thing, the MOST important thing - truth.

Logic and intelligence is not just nothing without truth, it's destructive and it's evil to the extent of how much the person understands the truth but deceives. At your core you're a liar. Any truth wrapped around it just serves to enhance the deception and is not virtuous.

You are not Socrates, you are scum. Drink the hemlock, please.

Bob

[BaalChatzaf]

Socrates himself, referring to his status as a gadfly, said as his purpose - the gadfly purpose:

"to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

The ultimate end of logic and intelligence should be truth. This is MY ethical foundation.

Where is your truth? Guess what? There's something missing from your grandiose view of yourself and that's truth. You

Every one of my positions has been dead on right and empirically supported. I am accurate. I am precise. Unlike some folks here I present evidence for my positions.

Truth is my goal and I do not care who is offended by it.

I have not misled or deceived anyone. If I have made mistakes, then correct them. We all make mistakes.

May I be struck dead if I have lied.

Bob Kolker (true name this time as would be presented to a notary public).

Edited December 31, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Jonathan]

Hypothetical:

You're a corporal under the command of General Casey. He has ordered you to guard a gate and to allow no one to enter. While you're at your post, Bill Gates (or some other famous business person) suddenly shows up and tells you that he's been asked by the President of the United States, your commander in chief, to enter the facility that you're guarding. He has no written proof of his claims.

You politely tell him that your orders are to allow no one to enter. He begins to get upset, and asks if you know who he is. He reminds you of how important he is and tells you that he is there on a vital matter of national security, that time is short, and that you'd better let him in right fucking now if you know what's good for you.

What should you -- a good Objectivist who thinks for him or herself, properly questions authority, has strong convictions about good and evil, and takes responsibility for your own consciousness -- do? Since trying to contact your immediate superior is apparently something that an independent thinker shouldn't do, even when employed as a guard who is supposed to contact his superiors in such a situation, which actions can you take to demonstrate your Objectivist moral and intellectual purity? Might you quiz Gates on his philosophical views to see if he is worthy of entering the facility against the orders of General Casey? Might you try to arrange a three-way philosophical debate between Gates, General Casey and the President to see whose orders you'd prefer to obey (or perhaps "obey" is the wrong word to use among Objectivists, maybe I should say "whose orders you independently find to be 'agreeable suggestions'")? Or should you quit on the spot, abandon your post, and go home?

Seriously. I'd like to know what a good Objectivist guard should do when faced with what appears to be conflicting orders. Or is the correct answer "None of the above: a good Objectivist would never take a job in which he or she is not in charge of all decisions at all times; Objectivists should only be bosses and not employees"?

J

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jonathan,

If Gates had a gun pointed at me, I was without my gun drawn and he told me he would shoot me if I did not step aside, I would step aside. I wouldn't think twice about it. (In that sense, I am not security guard material. )

In your scenario, I would simply do my job. I would make him wait until either I did contact my superior, he produced some compelling credentials, or a clear and present danger or emergency was evident to me. In the absence of those, I would not allow him to pass.

Michael

[John Dailey]

Ba'al:

~ Your points about Eddie being a more problematic concern than 'the guard' (which I'll not comment more upon, as I said [damn, it's tempting though!]), and your admiration for the chronic-questioner-of 'authority' (especially the 'common-knowledge' variety) Socrates, sure raise you several points in my book.

~ Contrary to many, I see Socrates as the original intellectual precurser to Rand: Aristotle was the answer-finder in necessary fundamentals in philosophy, no argument (let's skip his 'science' probs, as you see them, ok?); but Socrates was the chronic, across-the-board, 'questioner' (according to his biographer, anyways.)

LLAP

J:D

Edited January 1, 2008 by John Dailey

[BaalChatzaf]

Ba'al:

~ Your points about Eddie being a more problematic concern than 'the guard' (which I'll not comment more upon, as I said [damn, it's tempting though!]), and your admiration for the chronic-questioner-of 'authority' (especially the 'common-knowledge' variety) Socrates, sure raise you several points in my book.

~ Contrary to many, I see Socrates as the original intellectual precurser to Rand: Aristotle was the answer-finder in necessary fundamentals in philosophy, no argument (let's skip his 'science' probs, as you see them, ok?); but Socrates was the chronic, across-the-board, 'questioner' (according to his biographer, anyways.)

LLAP

J:D

Socrates was Aristotle's intellectual grandfather. Socrates begat Plato and Plato begat Aristotle.

I just re-read Socrates' Apology, at least Plato's version of it. It was a tour de force. He beat up his adversaries. And since Socrates was not afraid to die, they could not best him.

Socrates was and is my favorite pain in the ass. In that department, he even exceeded Galileo and that is going some.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Martin Radwin]

A couple of months ago, over on the Atlantis_II forum, a poster was using the example of Dagny and the guard to argue his point that Rand believed that killing of the innocent was generally consistent with her philosophy. From post # 35066, he wrote:

"This analysis is dead wrong.

Ayn Rand was who she was and believed what she believed. She picked Leonard Piekoff as her intellectual heir for a reason: his beliefs mirrored her beliefs.

In Atlas Shrugged, when attempting to rescue John Galt from governmental captivity she had her heros shoot a guard in cold blood because he did not immediately comply to their orders. "Capitulate or die!," was her literary standard for dealing with those who would oppose her. Why is surprising that her intellectual heir is taking the same "capitulate or die!," approach to Arab Muslims?".

I replied,

"Your analysis is just about as wrong as it is possible to be.

Atlas Shrugged was, in fact, a story about and a tribute to libertarian non-rights-violating resistance. The strike was carried

out accordingly to strictly libertarian principles involving no initiation of force. The strikers simply withdrew from society, depriving society of their productive labor. No one's rights were violated, and the NOIF principle was strictly enforced. Such acts of violence as were committed were strictly retaliatory and defensive.

Ragnar Danneskjold did not seize any private property, only government ships carrying looted goods (not counting Francisco's ships carrying copper, which was done with the cooperation and consent of Francisco). Danneskjold never killed anyone; the crews of the government ships that he seized were set free. Francisco d'Anconia destroyed his own copper mines and Ellis Wyatt destroyed his own oil fields, something both men were entirely within their rights to do. Noone was killed as a result of this destruction, which was carefully planned so as not to kill anyone. John Galt was an almost Christ like figure in his dedication to non-violent resistance.

The example you gave was, in fact, the only example in the book about a person being killed by the strikers. And this was arguably a case of justifiable homicide, being as the guard was working for a bunch of government goons keeping Galt imprisoned. The guard could have easily avoided his fate simply by stepping aside. The whole point of this episode was to illustrate that the guard would rather die than assume responsibility for making an independent decision.

To extrapolate that the philosophy expressed in Atlas Shrugged is consistent with governments slaughtering innocent people in non-defensive wars is beyond ridiculous. Not one innocent person was killed by the strikers, nor did any of them attempt to justify such a thing."

Rand's opposition to the killing of innocent people was also evident in Roark's destruction of the government housing project in "The Fountainhead". Roard made sure to do this in such a way that no people were killed or injured.

Having read through the posts in this thread, I've revised my view expressed above about the killing of the guard. I no longer would view this as "arguably a case of justifiable homicide", unless the guard violently resisted and there was no way short of killing the guard to free Galt. Interestingly, none of the other people guarding Galt was killed. They all surrendered and were just tied up, except for the leader of the guards. He was shot by Francisco, but only in the wrist, after reaching for his gun (he was later shot and killed by one of his fellow guards). So Francisco used only the minimum amount of force necessary to subdue the leader. The case of Dagny killing the guard stands out specifically because it is the only case in either of Rand's two great novels of a person being killed by a "heroic" character. And the circumstances in which the guard was killed did not really justify the killing as self-defense. This did seem like Rand's attempt to illustrate that the guard, via his unquestioning obedience to the regime, deserved his fate.

Martin

[Wolf DeVoon]

[May I be struck dead if I have lied.

Hi,

Never believed for a second that you lied, no matter how often we disagreed.

W.

[Kevin Haggerty]

Hey everybody,

sorry for coming so late to the party, but having not finished AS, I tend to skip threads on the topic (naturally enough). Add to this that I've only read the first 6 pages of this thread and then this last, and perhaps I should really continue lurking, BUUUUUUUUUUUUUT (takes a breath) I have a defense of Dagny that no one seems to have offered as of yet.

The crucial issue here, as always, is context. Without context, yes, she killed a guard because he couldn't make up his mind. Shock! Outrage! Bob isolates the sentence which denotes this and then jumps to whatever conclusion suits him, because without the specific context of WHAT the man couldn't make up his mind ABOUT, that's exactly what Bob gets to do. He drops the context and supplies his own. Wheeeee! Commando ops! Piano wire!

But if we simply include the context: the guard couldn't make up his mind...1...2...3...ABOUT JOHN GALT, then the scene makes the simplest kind of sense. The premise the book rests on is that John Galt is right, righter perhaps than anyone who has ever lived. You don't knowingly interfere with that. If you do, then definitively, you are evil. And if you knowingly vacillate about it, well, the end result is the same, you're sanctioning evil by your inaction; you're stalling because for you, MAYBE evil is right. This guy could not recognize what side he was on and that placed him on the wrong side--he could not recognize the good.

Oh, poor guy, he was just confused! But what AR is saying is that you can't be innocently confused about the good when it's right in front of you. "Okay, so you're confused," says Dagny, "Well, I'm not. Get out of my way!" And he doesn't. Well, in terms of reality, his inaction speaks louder than words. What his behavior told her was that he was a willing pawn of evil. Too bad for him.

To Dagny, John Galt is the good, he is the right. And the narrator agrees with her. So Galt is kind of a litmus test--if you side against him, if you vacillate in doing what you can to aid him when put to the test--you are part of the problem and in a romantically realistic novel, you will come to a bad end. No?

-Kevin

[bmacwilliam]

Every one of my positions has been dead on right and empirically supported. I am accurate. I am precise.

May I be struck dead if I have lied.

Defend racism then - accurately, precisely and without lying.

Bob

[Jonathan]

If Gates had a gun pointed at me, I was without my gun drawn and he told me he would shoot me if I did not step aside, I would step aside. I wouldn't think twice about it. (In that sense, I am not security guard material. )

But then you'd be obeying Gates' orders, and it would be proof of your inability to think for yourself, and Gates would then have the right to think of you as less than an animal.

In your scenario, I would simply do my job. I would make him wait until either I did contact my superior, he produced some compelling credentials, or a clear and present danger or emergency was evident to me. In the absence of those, I would not allow him to pass.

But, again, that's what the guard in Atlas Shrugged did, yet we're supposed to see it as proof that he couldn't think for himself, that he had no convictions about good and evil, and that he didn't take responsibility for his own consciousness.

But if we simply include the context: the guard couldn't make up his mind...1...2...3...ABOUT JOHN GALT, then the scene makes the simplest kind of sense.

Can you point to the part in the book where it is revealed that the guard knows that John Galt is being held at the facility, and the part where Dagny discovers that the guard knows? The guard would have to know that he's being asked to make up his mind about John Galt in order to make up his mind about John Galt.

J

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

You are not Socrates, you are scum. Drink the hemlock, please.

Bob M,

While I sympathize with your abhorrence of racism, this manner of name-calling posting is not the kind I want to encourage on OL. That's about as far as it goes. Actually that went further.

On the other hand, I see no real value in honesty as a stand-alone value as Bob K seems to think it should be. Honesty needs other values to be anything more than a mere type of behavior. For instance, here is a fully honest statement:

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

From the moment when labor can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolized, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.

You must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

This is from Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Here is another honest statement.

If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will, as it did thousands l of years ago, move through the ether devoid of men.

Eternal Nature inexorably avenges the infringement of her commands.

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

That one is from Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.

To paraphrase: "Truth was their goal and they did not care who was offended by it. They have not misled or deceived anyone."

I see no virtue in this paraphrased statement from Bob K with those examples, just like I see no virtue in being honest about being a racist.

Michael

[Wolf DeVoon]

I see no real value in honesty as a stand-alone value

Er...

"When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side." ("The Anatomy Of Compromise" - Ayn Rand, from The Objectivist Newsletter, January, 1964, re-printed in "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal", 1967, part II, "Current State")

Hat tip to Billy Beck for the quoted passage

Edited January 2, 2008 by Wolf DeVoon

[Kevin Haggerty]

Can you point to the part in the book where it is revealed that the guard knows that John Galt is being held at the facility, and the part where Dagny discovers that the guard knows? The guard would have to know that he's being asked to make up his mind about John Galt in order to make up his mind about John Galt.

Ah well, shoulda kept lurking. What excuses can I muster? It was late? The lights from the oncoming cars blinded me? I was posessed by demons? No. I fail. Carry on. Good to see you about, Jonathan.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Wolf,

You are correct. I wanted "value" in that statement to mean "virtue." I was unclear. I obvious see the value in ease of recognition. But I do not see anything worth emulating.

In fact, Rand's thought ties in with a gem of wisdom that has stayed with me for years from a movie called The Confession. Ben Kingsley's character, Harry Fertig, says it (and it was originally written by Sol Yurick).

It's not hard to do the right thing. It's hard to know what the right thing is. But once you know what the right thing is, it's hard not to do it.

Michael

[Wolf DeVoon]

It's not hard to do the right thing. It's hard to know what the right thing is. But once you know what the right thing is, it's hard not to do it.

Michael

Gee, Mike. I always thought it was harder to practice what we preach, to implement what we know to be right and best. For instance, I know I should quit smoking, exercise, eat more vegetables, honor my agreements and whatnot. You saying I have this backward? -- it was easy for Francisco to give up Dagny and play the role of an irresponsible fool, hard to know why he should?

W.

[BaalChatzaf]

Every one of my positions has been dead on right and empirically supported. I am accurate. I am precise.

May I be struck dead if I have lied.

Defend racism then - accurately, precisely and without lying.

Bob

Racism (actually ethnocentric prejudice) against Muslims. Easy, 9/11 and the absence of a Muslim American march or protest against Islamic terrorism. These people are either terrorists, terrorists to be or active or passive accomplices of terrorists except for the young children of course. The children will simply be collateral victims when we decide we have had enough of Islam. Every Mosque in America is an actual or potential site for recruiting still more terrorists. But you won't believe it until the Next Big One, and then you will make excuses for the bastards.

Next question?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Wolf DeVoon]

These [1.5 billion] people [of multiple races, nationalities, divergent classes, sects and ethnicities] are ...

Edited January 2, 2008 by Wolf DeVoon

[Brant Gaede]

Every one of my positions has been dead on right and empirically supported. I am accurate. I am precise.

May I be struck dead if I have lied.

Defend racism then - accurately, precisely and without lying.

Bob

Racism (actually ethnocentric prejudice) against Muslims. Easy, 9/11 and the absence of a Muslim American march or protest against Islamic terrorism. These people are either terrorists, terrorists to be or active or passive accomplices of terrorists except for the young children of course. The children will simply be collateral victims when we decide we have had enough of Islam. Every Mosque in America is an actual or potential site for recruiting still more terrorists. But you won't believe it until the Next Big One, and then you will make excuses for the bastards.

This is collectivism. This is an individualism site. I know why you aren't on a collectivism site: stupid people. Since you aren't stupid, you don't want to preach to the choir.

--Brant

[bmacwilliam]

Bob M,

While I sympathize with your abhorrence of racism, this manner of name-calling posting is not the kind I want to encourage on OL. That's about as far as it goes. Actually that went further.

" While I sympathize with your abhorrence of racism"

I doubt that.

Kolker wrote (the non-indented text) on Dec 25, 2007

"

> You really think that someone who claims to be serious about wanting

> to kill one billion people is likely to be influenced by social pressure?

You could call it killing. But I see it as problem solving in a very

thorough manner. "

Then just now...

"The children will simply be collateral victims when we decide we have had enough of Islam. Every Mosque in America is an actual or potential site for recruiting still more terrorists."

You have more disdain for name-calling than genocide - at least judging by your actions.

This is not acceptable.

Bob

[Brant Gaede]

You have more disdain for name-calling than genocide - at least judging by your actions.

No fair. Michael just isn't taking Bob's genocidal blather seriously because his arguments are so pathetic. If Bob was saying Objectivism supports his nonsense that would be another matter. If others--any others--on OL agreed with Bob, that would be too. Bob is like a marble in a glass of water. You can drink the water and not the marble.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

You have more disdain for name-calling than genocide - at least judging by your actions.

This is not acceptable.

Bob,

You are really good at knowing what someone thinks more than they do. I suggest your try being a professional psychic. There's good money in it.

For the record, nobody kills anybody on my forum. That is not acceptable (but it is pretty damn obvious that it does not happen). Nobody trolls nonstop either. That is not acceptable.

As to what you find acceptable or not here on OL, just deal with it. It ain't your forum. This is called property rights and it is one of the cornerstones of Objectivism.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It's not hard to do the right thing. It's hard to know what the right thing is. But once you know what the right thing is, it's hard not to do it.

Michael

Gee, Mike. I always thought it was harder to practice what we preach, to implement what we know to be right and best. For instance, I know I should quit smoking, exercise, eat more vegetables, honor my agreements and whatnot. You saying I have this backward? -- it was easy for Francisco to give up Dagny and play the role of an irresponsible fool, hard to know why he should?

W.

Wolf,

Do you really know those things, both cognitively and normatively?

Here is a great example. Ayn Rand heard that smoking was bad for you from oodles of sources she respected. She hacked (she had to) and spoke in a growly voice at times from the phlegm. She had other indicators. Yet, in the sense Yurick was saying, she did not know smoking was bad for her. She might have suspected, she might have half-heartedly accepted information she could not contest, but she did not KNOW with capital K-N-O-W.

Then the doctor said she had a tumor in her lungs. Immediately she put out the cigarrette and asked if that would help.

THEN she knew. After that, it would have been hard for her not to do the right thing and go back to smoking.

Before, it was easy for her to do the wrong thing despite a deluge of warning signs (information) and she even cognitively accepted some of them. But normatively, she did not know smoking was bad. There was doubt. After the normative kicked in, she simply put the cigarrette out and that was that.

I believe this works the same for most everybody for just about any value.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This is an old thread I came across doing a search.

I was looking for a place to put the item below.

I skimmed over this thread to make sure and, after looking at all of the back and forth, I think it is the perfect place.

 

If you have to do it, here is how you do it right.

Not just in art, but in life.

The video has been messed with and I don't know if it is from a movie or real life. It even got more color after the cut to the shooting. Then it went to montage.

But the feel is right (except, maybe, the music).

This tweet brought the image of Dagny to my mind.

Bachmeier's emotion, focus, and purpose-driven lack of hesitation is how I see the scene with the guard.

Michael