News: Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns

[Dragonfly]

C’mon Adam, lay off the Germans. I’m about ½ German, and have visited 4 times. Every culture has some historical shame in its past, and has been the victim of oppression at some other time. If you feel an urge to stoop to Xray’s level, try employing gibberish. You’re going too far.

I quite agree, this is a typical collectivist argument, blaming someone for the place he's born or where he lives. It's also a childish argument ("my daddy beats your daddy").

[Selene]

shameful culture

C'mon Adam, lay off the Germans. I'm about ½ German, and have visited 4 times. Every culture has some historical shame in its past, and has been the victim of oppression at some other time. If you feel an urge to stoop to Xray's level, try employing gibberish. You're going too far.

9th:

Out of respect for you, I will back off.

Those icons kinda tip the scale, but how you let that woman get away...lol

Adam

Edited November 20, 2009 by Selene

[James Heaps-Nelson]

C’mon Adam, lay off the Germans. I’m about ½ German, and have visited 4 times. Every culture has some historical shame in its past, and has been the victim of oppression at some other time. If you feel an urge to stoop to Xray’s level, try employing gibberish. You’re going too far.

I quite agree, this is a typical collectivist argument, blaming someone for the place he's born or where he lives. It's also a childish argument ("my daddy beats your daddy").

I disagree, especially in the context of this and similar threads. The vehemence with which Xray slams Rand's supposed lack of empathy might more suitably be directed at those closer to home. Maybe Heidegger or Wagner would be more emblematic of lack of empathy?

Jim

Edited November 20, 2009 by James Heaps-Nelson

[Dragonfly]

I disagree, especially in the context of this and similar threads. The vehemence with which Xray slams Rand's supposed lack of empathy might more suitably be directed at those closer to home. Maybe Heidegger or Wagner would be more emblematic of lack of empathy?

Perhaps, but I think that would rather belong in forums dedicated to respectively Heidegger and Wagner.

[Philip Coates]

Subject: Watch How a Genius Does It

Jennifer Burns said: "Rand's romantic fiction, with its heavy political messages and overdrawn contrasts between good and evil..its cardboard characters.." We should warn Phil. [DF]

Thanks ever so much Snarky Dutch Boy -- your generous solicitude for my literary welfare is, as always, deeply appreciated.

Another example of a great, insightful passage from Rand:

"What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge — he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil — he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor — he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire — he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy — all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man’s fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors they they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was — that robot, in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love — he was not man."

Its virtues are many, if you have the brains to see them: No more thorough, no more unsanswerable "takedown" of Original Sin has ever been penned in fewer exactly-chosen words. It is information-packed, devastatingly logical. Nothing is irrelevant; nothing is wasted. It is clearly and forcefully written. It's an English teacher's dream. A textbook example of a certain kind of rhythmic parallelism. (Note also the reasons behind the -sequence- of points.)

And that memorable, devastating last line which sums it all up.

Decades later, my mind is stocked with brilliant passages and unforgettable lines from Rand. Someday, in a more rational world, they will fill the quotations books as the lines of Shakespeare do today.

Let any one of you who can *even halfway* match Rand's eloquence and mastery of language - chapter after chapter throughout a towering literary and philosophical masterpiece - try to instruct me in her 'faults' as a writer. Better yet, publish something major yourselves.

Oh, yes, and by the way -- anyone who was too 'bored' to read Galt's speech in its entirety, or failed to grasp how it integrates point after point in the novel -- needs to ask for a refund on those thinking courses.

Edited November 21, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Selene]

Oh damn ....

I missed the pomposity lecture again!

Adam

[Alfonso Jones]

Subject: Watch How a Genius Does It

Jennifer Burns said: "Rand's romantic fiction, with its heavy political messages and overdrawn contrasts between good and evil..its cardboard characters.." We should warn Phil. [DF]

Thanks ever so much Snarky Dutch Boy -- your generous solicitude for my literary welfare is, as always, deeply appreciated.

Another example of a great, insightful passage from Rand:

"What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge — he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil — he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor — he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire — he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy — all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man’s fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors they they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was — that robot, in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love — he was not man."

Its virtues are many, if you have the brains to see them: No more thorough, no more unsanswerable "takedown" of Original Sin has ever been penned in fewer exactly-chosen words. It is information-packed, devastatingly logical. Nothing is irrelevant; nothing is wasted. It is clearly and forcefully written. It's an English teacher's dream. A textbook example of a certain kind of rhythmic parallelism. (Note also the reasons behind the -sequence- of points.)

And that memorable, devastating last line which sums it all up.

Decades later, my mind is stocked with brilliant passages and unforgettable lines from Rand. Someday, in a more rational world, they will fill the quotations books as the lines of Shakespeare do today.

Let any one of you who can *even halfway* match Rand's eloquence and mastery of language - chapter after chapter throughout a towering literary and philosophical masterpiece - try to instruct me in her 'faults' as a writer. Better yet, publish something major yourselves.

Oh, yes, and by the way -- anyone who was too 'bored' to read Galt's speech in its entirety, or failed to grasp how it integrates point after point in the novel -- needs to ask for a refund on those thinking courses.

Phil -

Well put. Rand certainly had her faults - and there has never been a shortage of people eager to point them out. Many would pretend to find countless faults in her writing. As you point out, those many seldom offer examples where they have accomplished 10% of what Rand in the area of writing. Often, the "faults" seem to amount to nothing more than "she could have written this differently" or "I wish this character had turned out differently." Well - Rand made a vivid point with the fate of Eddie Willers - one most (but not all) of those critical of that fate seem unable to grasp. Her point - - - that it is the actions of the statists which make the lives of the Eddies hazardous.

And she could certainly make her point vividly, and succinctly.

I've always loved that passage on Original Sin. The best takedown of the malevolent concept of Original Sin which I have ever read.

Bill P

[Xray]

C’mon Adam, lay off the Germans. I’m about ½ German, and have visited 4 times. Every culture has some historical shame in its past, and has been the victim of oppression at some other time. If you feel an urge to stoop to Xray’s level, try employing gibberish. You’re going too far.

I quite agree, this is a typical collectivist argument, blaming someone for the place he's born or where he lives. It's also a childish argument ("my daddy beats your daddy").

I disagree, especially in the context of this and similar threads. The vehemence with which Xray slams Rand's supposed lack of empathy might more suitably be directed at those closer to home. Maybe Heidegger or Wagner would be more emblematic of lack of empathy?

Jim

Rand did lack empathy. I can bring up a plethora of examples indicating this.

Edited November 21, 2009 by Xray

[Xray]

I knew Phil was going to return.

Which makes me quite optimistic about Jeff Riggenbach showing up here again as well.

Edited November 21, 2009 by Xray

[Xray]

Oh, yes, and by the way -- anyone who was too 'bored' to read Galt's speech in its entirety, or failed to grasp how it integrates point after point in the novel -- needs to ask for a refund on those thinking courses.

Imo Galt's verbose speech full of redundancies bulges out of the novel like an atheroma.

Edited November 21, 2009 by Xray

[Jonathan]

Let any one of you who can *even halfway* match Rand's eloquence and mastery of language - chapter after chapter throughout a towering literary and philosophical masterpiece - try to instruct me in her 'faults' as a writer. Better yet, publish something major yourselves.

That's odd. I don't remember the Schoolmarm ever saying the same thing about people who presume to instruct others about the "faults" of great artists other than Rand. In fact, I've seen the Schoolmarm, who couldn't even one one-hundredth of the way match the ability of great writers, painters, sculptors and musicians, instructing others about the "faults" of great artists, as well as the "merits" of mediocre artists.

But maybe the Schoolmarm has changed her ways since instructing everyone on those subjects. If so, I suppose that reading Rand's criticisms of great non-literary artists now upsets the Schoolmarm, since Rand, like the Schoolmarm, never created anything in those art forms yet presumed to offer criticism.

J

[Greybird]

[...] Oh, yes, and by the way - anyone who was too "bored" to read Galt's speech in its entirety, or failed to grasp how it integrates point after point in the novel, needs to ask for a refund on those thinking courses.

Barbara's courses? Leonard's? Very few, among those in the novel's audience, ever even heard of them. Most learned, after all, how to handle written arguments without them. Nonetheless:

Galt's speech is often a stylistic and logical tour de force, as you quote above. It makes a compelling reiteration of many of the arguments raised by characters in the novel. It has its own integration of argument, given its overlay of rhetorical devices.

What it doesn't do, though — and I've never seen a reasonable counterargument — is "integrate points" in the novel that surrounds it. Nothing told or shown to that point is resolved. Not a line of plot is involved. Almost no events or characters (except for the awkward "Do you hear me" callouts) are even mentioned.

Beyond, that is, the single background plot development: Galt is enough of a bad-ass engineer and technical genius to seize the airwaves of the continent for three hours, unchallenged and without being disturbed. And the Powers That Be are supposed to, and do, become very afraid of him indeed.

But that could have been communicated in about a half-dozen pages.

Those who skipped the speech, or most of it, on first reading were not "bored," in my experience and personal queries. Most had one major concern: They'd lose track of the plot, or feared they'd lose interest in the plot, by interrupting it for 60 pages to read a philosophic treatise.

You're trying to suggest that the speech is so riveting, in itself, that those who've been taking up the headlong rush of the plot will gladly sit down to change out their mental gearboxes for many hours. To highly vivid, but nonetheless intricately argued, non-fiction.

Few are capable of this. They rarely had been led, by Rand's writing tone, to expect this. (Even Francisco's money speech had an offsetting flamboyance.) Nothing warned them, in what they had read thus far, about this change of purpose.

Readers are entitled to decide, and have been encouraged by that point to believe, in effect: I'm reading this book on my own terms, and I'll take in that speech when I'm prepared to do so.

That's not being "bored," that's optimizing one's chosen efforts. To suggest mere boredom is to be notably unfair to many millions, by now, of your fellow human beings — who, after all, appreciated enough of Rand's virtues to stay with two-thirds of the novel by that point.

I've not been prepared to call you a "schoolmarm," Phil, unlike others here, but you are coming close to maligning others. You're better than that.

Edited November 21, 2009 by Greybird

[Dragonfly]

Well put. Rand certainly had her faults - and there has never been a shortage of people eager to point them out. Many would pretend to find countless faults in her writing. As you point out, those many seldom offer examples where they have accomplished 10% of what Rand in the area of writing.

Amazing that such a bad argument is brought forward. Rand called the art of Max Parrish "trash". Had she accomplished 1% of what Parrish had in the area of painting? Rand condemned Brahms, had she accomplished 1% of what Brahms had in the area of music?

[Xray]

Well put. Rand certainly had her faults - and there has never been a shortage of people eager to point them out. Many would pretend to find countless faults in her writing. As you point out, those many seldom offer examples where they have accomplished 10% of what Rand in the area of writing.

Amazing that such a bad argument is brought forward. Rand called the art of Max Parrish "trash". Had she accomplished 1% of what Parrish had in the area of painting? Rand condemned Brahms, had she accomplished 1% of what Brahms had in the area of music?

And didn't Beethoven get the thumbs down from Rand too?

[Dragonfly]

And didn't Beethoven get the thumbs down from Rand too?

Beethoven, Bach, Mozart...

[Alfonso Jones]

Well put. Rand certainly had her faults - and there has never been a shortage of people eager to point them out. Many would pretend to find countless faults in her writing. As you point out, those many seldom offer examples where they have accomplished 10% of what Rand in the area of writing.

Amazing that such a bad argument is brought forward. Rand called the art of Max Parrish "trash". Had she accomplished 1% of what Parrish had in the area of painting? Rand condemned Brahms, had she accomplished 1% of what Brahms had in the area of music?

I have agreed about the inappropriateness of many of these condemnations by Rand. Many of them amounted to her declaring what she preferred, nothing more.

Bill P

[Xray]

Subject: Watch How a Genius Does It

Jennifer Burns said: "Rand's romantic fiction, with its heavy political messages and overdrawn contrasts between good and evil..its cardboard characters.." We should warn Phil. [DF]

Thanks ever so much Snarky Dutch Boy -- your generous solicitude for my literary welfare is, as always, deeply appreciated.

Another example of a great, insightful passage from Rand:

"What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge — he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil — he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor — he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire — he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy — all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man’s fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors they they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was — that robot, in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love — he was not man."

Its virtues are many, if you have the brains to see them: No more thorough, no more unsanswerable "takedown" of Original Sin has ever been penned in fewer exactly-chosen words. It is information-packed, devastatingly logical. Nothing is irrelevant; nothing is wasted. It is clearly and forcefully written. It's an English teacher's dream. A textbook example of a certain kind of rhythmic parallelism. (Note also the reasons behind the -sequence- of points.)

And that memorable, devastating last line which sums it all up.

Decades later, my mind is stocked with brilliant passages and unforgettable lines from Rand. Someday, in a more rational world, they will fill the quotations books as the lines of Shakespeare do today.

Let any one of you who can *even halfway* match Rand's eloquence and mastery of language - chapter after chapter throughout a towering literary and philosophical masterpiece - try to instruct me in her 'faults' as a writer. Better yet, publish something major yourselves.

Oh, yes, and by the way -- anyone who was too 'bored' to read Galt's speech in its entirety, or failed to grasp how it integrates point after point in the novel -- needs to ask for a refund on those thinking courses.

What's so so great about that piece?

Every public speaker worth his salt will have up his sleeve some of the rhetoric used here, like e.g. pausing before you dramatically hammer home your points. The piece is quite flamboyant, but flamboyancy is a tool used by many ideologists.

As for content, she presents her cardinal values as opposed to the cardinal values held high by the ideology she is fighting against, assuming just because they are hers they must be everyone else's too.

Edited November 21, 2009 by Xray

[Xray]

I have agreed about the inappropriateness of many of these condemnations by Rand. Many of them amounted to her declaring what she preferred, nothing more.

Rand's whole philosophy is based on this as well: declaring her personal preferences as objective values.

Edited November 21, 2009 by Xray

[Alfonso Jones]

I have agreed about the inappropriateness of many of these condemnations by Rand. Many of them amounted to her declaring what she preferred, nothing more.

Rand's whole philosophy is based on this as well: declaring her personal preferences as objective values.

More arbitrary statements by Xray. Full of sound and fury - signifying nothing.

Bill P

[Xray]

I have agreed about the inappropriateness of many of these condemnations by Rand. Many of them amounted to her declaring what she preferred, nothing more.

Rand's whole philosophy is based on this as well: declaring her personal preferences as objective values.

More arbitrary statements by Xray. Full of sound and fury - signifying nothing.

Bill P

While you seem to realize that Rand when it came to art, confused personal preference with objective analysis, you fail to see that her philosophy was not one iota different.

Edited November 21, 2009 by Xray

[Philip Coates]

Subject: Why I Seldom Post Anymore

In response to my post yesterday evening about the "Original Sin" passage from Galt's Speech, there was one reasonable response and post after post which were bad or misstating or ignored the passage entirely and "blew off" as of no importance the crucial issue I raised of what constitutes effective writing.

I did make a passing statement about, not people who skipped Galt's speech but came back to it in due course, but specifically people who are actually *bored* with it. I.e., they don't like the ideas and points it contains, or find them useless, or worth disregarding. One poster shifted my statement into a different one about those who skipped the speech or found it distracting from the plot. He castigated me for the viewpoint as he had shifted it slightly. He then stated that the speech does not name specific events in the novel, as if that were the only way to do what I said (integrate back to the novel). Or as if it meant that the intelligent reader would be unable to apply its principles to the novel or to have it resonate with the whole course of events of the novel. Another poster transformed a statement about who I personally would be likely to listen to wrt to criticism into a wider 'argument' which I did not make that one who wasn't a great writer should not be listened to more generally. A third poster simply asserted that the opposite of what I said was true, that the Original Sin passage was not good without giving an argument. A fourth and fifth poster simply resorted to sarcasm, taunting, or schoolyard name-calling.

I don't mind engaging in a dialogue where people argue well for a different viewpoint, but I simply don't have time for those who don't read carefully or who want to nitpick and ignore the central topic of a post or for those (at the bottom rung) whose intellectual tools are making fun of people as a primary tactic.

This kind of thing appears on thread after thread. The OL list has gone steeply downhill over the last year or so.

PS, Worst of all, perhaps, is the endless tit-for-tat posting wars in which neither party is willing to let the other have the last expression of personal contempt. Put downs. Insults. Cartoons. "Gotchas." There is a thinly veiled pretense of intellectuality, but in fact this is merely glorified feces-hurling between people who have nothing better to do with their time. The current contest, day after day, between Adam and Xray, is a classic example. And there is absolutely nothing anyone outside can say to get them to stop. The people who find this entertaining are probably those who find cockfighting, dismemberment, beer-guzzling contests, and monster truck rallies entertaining.

Edited November 21, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Selene]

Ohhh the big bad teacher God is angry again...

Phil:

I just love the way you just use pronouns, it makes your posts even more difficult to read. However, I know it is the rest of the entire sentient world that does not understand you.

In my particular case, being the ignorant, immature person that I am, with my infantile manner of addressing your attempts at clear communication, you can continue to waste your valuable time actually returning from your own self imposed exile to hand down your pronouncements and then you can return to your aerie to contemplate your next set of commandments.

I know you write by the glow of the burning bushes you have up on the mountaintop.

Be well.

Can you announce with fanfare and trumpets the next time you are going to come down from the mountain, I will need to go and get a couple of cases of beer.

Adam

<<<<until your return teacher God

[Brant Gaede]

Galt's speech isn't unreadable, but it's a hard, moralizing, anti-intellectual slog. An unentertaining sermon. Contrast it with Toohey's speech to Keating telling him what really was what, based literarily on the Speech of the Grand Inquisitor in "The Brothers Karamazov," the greatest speech I'm aware of in world literature. Galt's speech cognitively assaults the reader instead of cognitively engaging him. You don't argue with God and you don't argue with Rand and Rand's revealed truths. Some people get so enveloped by the polemical power of Ayn Rand they get swept down the Objectivist river into the Objectivist ocean and never really ever come back.

--Brant

[9thdoctor]

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Worst of all, perhaps, is the endless tit-for-tat posting wars in which neither party is willing to let the other have the last expression of personal contempt. Put downs. Insults. Cartoons. "Gotchas."

It’s not worth one more minute of my free time to uncoil that snake.

No indeed, you wouldn't dare to uncoil that snake, even with a ten-foot pole. For some cherised beliefs might be shaken in the process. So you prefer not to go there.

Notice I let Xray have her victory lap, rather than drag out a pointless conversation. My cartoon, which she deleted from her reply, communicated my reason: that I could answer her drivel, but its not enjoyable, it would be frustrating work, and I’m not getting paid.

The current contest, day after day, between Adam and Xray, is a classic example. And there is absolutely nothing anyone outside can say to get them to stop. The people who find this entertaining are probably those who find cockfighting, dismemberment, beer-guzzling contests, and monster truck rallies entertaining.

Adam's backed off the Nazi references, you just have to approach the subject respectfully, which is what you're not doing above. I think the Xray dialogues are pointless, but others disagree ostensively.

[Greybird]

[... Greybird] shifted my statement into a different one about those who skipped the speech or found it distracting from the plot. He castigated me for the viewpoint as he had shifted it slightly.

I "shifted" nothing. I responded directly to your use of "bored," which was tossed in as a barb that was essentially unrelated to the rest of your discussion. You provided no support for that conclusion.

He then stated that the speech does not name specific events in the novel, as if that were the only way to do what I said (integrate back to the novel).

Rand herself stressed that the backbone, to her, of literature was plot. If nothing is made to "integrate" back to plot points, nor even to earlier stretches of dialogue or characterizations, then nothing is brought "back to the novel" in any reasonable sense.

Rand was illustrative, she was reiterative, she was even accomplishing a remarkable non-academic-termed integration of philosophic points — but the one thing she emphatically was not doing was integrating that speech with the plot of the surrounding novel.

(This was not true of other speeches. Even Francisco's money speech touched on actual words that had been spoken earlier by other characters, and took them to their logical absurdities.)

Or as if it meant that the intelligent reader would be unable to apply its principles to the novel or to have it resonate with the whole course of events of the novel.

I said no such thing. In fact, I said quite the opposite. I also noted, though, that this has nothing to do with whether that speech is "integrated" with the novel.

Rand wanted a stylistic and rhetorical hybrid. A thorough statement of "the philosophy" she held — her words (FNI), not mine — that could simultaneously advance the plot of a book. They're two incompatible tasks, with far different demands, and she couldn't manage it.

I can't get any further with you, though, Phil, because you're interpreting disagreement as being dismissal of you. Not everyone is doing that with you. It might be a good idea for you to not dump on those who take seriously what you write — every word of what you write, even what you toss off casually. We're dwindling fast around here.