quote:

ORIGINAL: DagnyTaggart

You're definitely not alone 

quote:

ORIGINAL: Hierodule

I don't believe in elfs, but I do like fairy tales. Does that make sense?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Hierodule

Just to Clarify: I loved both Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead. I could not put  them down. But I read them as fantasy/romance novels. The speech was ths only part that lagged. I understand that it outlines her philosopy. It happens to be a philosophy that I whole heartedly disagree with. That does not diminish the affection and admiration I felt for her characters. I don't believe in elfs, but I do like fairy tales. Does that make sense?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Silence8

Maybe the far left needs to have demonstrations in the manner of the queer movement -- "We're here, we tend to know the facts, get used to it!"

quote:

ORIGINAL: abuddingdom

Silence8 , I'm curious - how do you know that her "sales have soared"?

quote:

We're here, we tend to know the facts, get used to it!

quote:

ORIGINAL: Silence8

Honestly, though, after the financial crisis, I can't imagine anyone of any intellectual capacity still reading Ayn Rand, except with the morbid curiosity of someone passing roadkill on the street.

With 1/3 of the world literally starving, with the Maldives preparing to move, and with new mutant forms of epidemic obviously linked to profit motives, masturbating to the virtue of selfishness appears curiously unhinged from the overwhelming reality of the world order.

Then, again, master / slave dynamics are, by their very nature, excessive. Fantasy is, by its nature, excessive. I suspect we can trace recent obsession with 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Harry Potter' to a type of psychological escapism at the heart of how things are sold and what you like to buy. It's fetish for the masses, the excess of fantasy in a world already fantastically overcharged with farce.

Property rights were always excessive, and slaves, then women, were likely the first forms of property. It's not a coincidence that Ayn Rand is attracted to rape scenes, as force is at the very heart and core of the capitalism that Ayn endlessly advocates. One trillion in Afghanistan per year -- that's capitalism. Goldman-Sachs style socialism for the wealthy -- that's capitalism. Mandatory health insurance that covers near to nothing -- and on and on....

Ayn Rand is the type of fetishist that wants to affirm herself as all good, pure, 'golden'. I've read Atlas Shrugged, not the Fountainhead, but I'll assume that the title of the latter is a reference to some kind of heroic-glorious 'golden shower'. Conspicuous consumption, anyone?

As a BDSM-inflicted, I recognize my inner will toward predation, namely, my inner capitalist. The difference, though, is that, unlike Rand's characters, I have dimensions, and, furthermore, I can recognize these dimensions.

With Obama's election, Ayn Rand's book sales have soared. And Obama is a centrist democrat! The only vaguely libertarian Republican is Ron Paul. The American reality gap at times rivals the Grand Canyon.

The far left needs to put its cards on the table. I'm a social democrat, maybe even a communist, 'so what so what wanna fight'? At least I'm not a fucking tea-bagger. Marx was over 70% right, pretty good for someone who lived nearly 200 years ago. He predicted that capitalism would spread all over the globe way, way before this phenomenon was obvious. If you've been to China recently, you'd know how right he actually was.

Maybe the far left needs to have demonstrations in the manner of the queer movement -- "We're here, we tend to know the facts, get used to it!"

Even Einstein was a socialist: Why Socialism? By Albert Einstein Honestly, do you think that General Relativity somehow resulted from selfishness and the intrinsic virtue of competition?

quote:

ORIGINAL: abuddingdom

Silence8 , I'm curious - how do you know that her "sales have soared"? 

quote:

ORIGINAL: abuddingdom

Silence8 , I'm curious - how do you know that her "sales have soared"? 

If you aren't just trying to push buttons,  you appear to have strong feelings, As do I - in another CM thread I just recently made the old argument - but one which I believe - suggesting legalizing or at the least decriminalizing the "vices" which society has been fruitlessly trying to control by law enforcement(I could almost hear the virtual yawns). But what I  really wanted to say is that I stopped just short of supporting and voting for Paul. I'm so frustrated with partisan politics and the way  words such as "conservative" have been twisted that I sometimes struggle with ambivilence and sometimes flirt with apathy regarding politics. For the sake of discussion, how would you try to  rally me? As "maybe even a communist" who admits even China is losing it's redness do you feel like a lone voice "out there" ?

quote:

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: No, what interests me is, for example, Paul—sorry, Paul Krugman said basically the same thing, which tells us a lot about how ideology works today. He said, what if we make a mental experiment, and all the leading bank people, managers and so on, were to know how it would end two years ago? He said, let’s not delude ourselves; there would have been no change. They would have acted in exactly the same way.

This brings me, as a psychoanalyst, into the play, because I think this makes us aware as to what extent our everyday dealing is controlled by what in psychoanalysis we call the mechanism of fetishist disavowal. “Je sais bien, mais quand même…” “I know very well, but…” You know, we can know very well the possible catastrophic consequences, but somehow you trust the market, you think things will somehow work out, and so on and so on. It’s absolutely crucial to analyze this, not only in economy, but generally. This is the focus of my work: how beliefs function today. What do we mean when we say that someone believes?

So that I don’t get lost, let me tell you a wonderful story, which is my favorite story. I quote it also in the book. You know Niels Bohr, Copenhagen, quantum physics guy. You know, once he was visited in his country house by a friend who saw above the entrance a horseshoe, you know, in Europe, the superstitious item allegedly preventing evil spirits to enter the house. And the friend, also a scientist, asked him, “But listen, do you really believe in this?” Niels Bohr said, “Of course not. I’m not an idiot. I’m a scientist.” Then the friend asked him, “But why do you have it there?” You know what Niels Borh answered? He said, “I don’t believe in it, but I have it there, horseshoe, because I was told that it works even if you don’t believe in it.”

That’s ideology today. We don’t believe in democracy—nobody. You make fun of it and so on, but somehow we act as if it works. It’s a very strange situation, because there are—some of us old enough still remember them, old days when the public face of power was dignity, belief. And privately you mocked it, you made fun, and so on, no? Now we are, I think, approaching a very strange state, where the public face of power is becoming more and more openly indecent, obscene. Look at Sarkozy in France. Look at Berlusconi in Italy, who is systematically undermining, for over five years now, the minimum of dignity of the state power. I mean, you are again and again surprised how is this possible. You know, after those sex scandals, two weeks ago, his lawyer, Berlusconi’s lawyer, made a public official statement, where he said that the claims that Berlusconi is impotent are lies and that Mr. Berlusconi is ready to prove this in court. Now, how? How—what did he mean? You know, there is a level of obscenity, but this shouldn’t deceive us. We really live in cynical times, not just in this cheap sense they don’t take themselves seriously, but in the sense that—how should I put it?—the ironic self-undermining, making fun of yourself, is in a strange way part of the game. It’s as if the system can function even if it makes fun of itself.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Elisabella

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are two of my favourite books

quote:

ORIGINAL: mnottertail

And I only think..........................

Who is John Galt?

quote:

ORIGINAL: MissAnimus

quote:

ORIGINAL: abuddingdom

Silence8 , I'm curious - how do you know that her "sales have soared"? 

"Sales of the book have reportedly spiked." Vague I know, but I read it this weekend in the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/books/review/Kirsch-t.html?em

quote:

Rand’s particular intellectual contribution, the thing that makes her so popular and so American, is the way she managed to mass market elitism — to convince so many people, especially young people, that they could be geniuses without being in any concrete way distinguished. Or, rather, that they could distinguish themselves by the ardor of their commitment to Rand’s teaching. The very form of her novels makes the same point: they are as cartoonish and sexed-up as any best seller, yet they are constantly suggesting that the reader who appreciates them is one of the elect.

quote:

“We have granted you everything you demanded of us, we who had always been the givers, but have only now understood it,” Galt lectures the “looters” and “moochers” who make up the populace. “We have no demands to present you, no terms to bargain about, no compromise to reach. You have nothing to offer us. We do not need you.”