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kedo posted:What starts off as an interesting romp through an alternate reality where titans of industry struggle against the comically inept masses ends as a cringe-worthy, poorly conceived political treaties on why you shouldn't help anyone ever (unless they pay you) delivered with masturbatory intensity by a fictional economic Jesus over the course of a three hour monologue.
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Jun 25, 2015 16:41
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I did read the whole book, when I was about 18, and the main thing I learned from it was that I should not necessarily feel obliged to finish every book I started. So thanks for that, I guess.
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Jun 25, 2015 19:20
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I though she actually genuinely loved her "first" husband and she got bitter when he died because she realized how lonely she really is, without children, without friends...
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Jun 25, 2015 20:29
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I never read Atlas Shrugged, because I read The Fountainhead first, and that was more than enough Rand for me. Why'd I do it? I was 17 and knew Rush's 2112 had something to do with a person named Ayn Rand, so I gave it a shot.(this was pre-Internet, so I didn't have the luxury of 4245 people telling me it was a damnfool thing to do). Even at that young age, I realized the characterizations were horrible and the dialogue atrocious. I also found out that it's a dicey proposition to read books written by speed freaks, Phillip K. Dick notwithstanding.
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Jun 27, 2015 00:02
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When I was living with a philosophy student I bought him a couple of Ayn Rand books just to annoy him. Out of spite for me he read them both so that he could better explain why he hated her. He summarized her philosophy to me like this: "Working is how you get money, therefore the people who work hardest get the most money. Therefore, rich people are harder working people than poor people. Therefore, rich people are good people and poor people are bad people." If you can't see the holes in that logic, you're probably retarded
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Jun 27, 2015 00:54
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There is zero humor in the whole thing.
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Jun 27, 2015 01:43
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I read it in senior English because my old teacher was an overprivileged Rand-lover (we read three or four of her books for class). All I remember is these industry captains have a secret mountain base they have to fly into to get to and the jerks won't share it with anyone. Also I'm pretty sure the female lead is raped because internalized misogyny (it's one of those dubious consent things, still rape).
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Jun 27, 2015 02:29
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SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:Also I'm pretty sure the female lead is raped because internalized misogyny (it's one of those dubious consent things, still rape). This seems to be a pattern in Rand's work.
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Jun 27, 2015 04:38
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I read the book the whole way through in college. It took me about 4 months to finish. The book is pretty drat boring over all but has a few good ideas and a couple exciting parts. It took about 10 pages each night before I was out cold. The book is pro-rational, pro-capitalism, pro-atheist and slightly rapey. A lot of right wingers talk about how great it is but I doubt any of them actually read it.
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Jun 27, 2015 07:31
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Unseen posted:I read the book the whole way through in college. It took me about 4 months to finish. The book is pretty drat boring over all but has a few good ideas and a couple exciting parts. It took about 10 pages each night before I was out cold. "pro-rational"?
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Jun 27, 2015 08:59
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Discendo Vox posted:"pro-rational"? Yeah, if you read Galt's 70 page speach you'd see that to achieve objectivist nirvana you must prove everything you believe. You must work tirelessly until you know everything and can do everything.
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Jun 27, 2015 12:44
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Unseen posted:Yeah, if you read Galt's 70 page speach you'd see that to achieve objectivist nirvana you must prove everything you believe. You must work tirelessly until you know everything and can do everything. Sound pretty irrational.
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Jun 27, 2015 13:54
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Bleusilences posted:I though she actually genuinely loved her "first" husband and she got bitter when he died because she realized how lonely she really is, without children, without friends... Watch 'all watched over by machines of loving grace' by adam curtis for a good story of her life
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Jun 28, 2015 01:10
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Bitter Mushroom posted:Goons love to hate this book, but in 99.9% of cases they've never read it. They hate it out of a sense of primitive tribalism. So I suggest you read it OP, form your judgement and don't be a misguided bernie sanders cultist like these poor gullible fools. Pretty sure 99.9% of goons tried to read it in 11th grade because of that Koch-funded $10,000 essay contest, but realized it was dumb as hell and got high instead.
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Jun 29, 2015 04:18
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Obdicut posted:There is zero humor in the whole thing. Did you not laugh when they got on the roof of his plant with a bunch of rifles and opened fire on a bunch of workers that had unionized and were picketing? poo poo was funny yo. Edit: I'm sorry I mean they were spies that were sent to murder his livelihood.
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Jun 29, 2015 21:03
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By the sounds of it it's a bad book because it's an unrealistic portrayal of what would actually happen if someone attempted to make the libertarian fever-dream utopia a reality. Ie: it doesn't end with the industrialists building a city under the sea and discovering a magic substance in deep sea slugs that turns most citizens into gene-modified addicts that then bring down their would-be utopian society in an insanity/withdrawl-symptom filled riot. And none of the industrialists end up getting their heads stoved in with a nine iron either.
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Jun 30, 2015 04:01
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Just go play Bioshock, everything that happens in that game is taken scene for scene from the book.
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Jun 30, 2015 06:55
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This guy does what looks like a pretty good chapter by chapter run down of the book. I can't say for sure, I value my time too much so it's not in my rational self-interest to read the source material. Also in the book a man commits open and flagrant adultery because his wife has the gall to ask him to spend less time at work or to come home for dinner to see family after he promised he would do exactly that. Henry Rearden's wife is a villain for wanting him to be more involved in their relationship and spend time with her.
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Jun 30, 2015 21:02
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It's a fantasy about how, if all government was stripped away, business owners with lots of money would be in charge. Of course, real life doesn't come with a built in government anyway. Turns out it's people with guns and political acumen who end up in charge. Then they institute a government and give themselves money...
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Jun 30, 2015 21:53
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MikeCrotch posted:Whenever Atlas Shrugged has been performed on stage or live, the full speech has never managed to come in at less than a hour long. Wanna see John Moschitta onstage again and knock that thing out in 15 minutes flat.
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Jun 30, 2015 22:26
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Never so much as read a single page of the book but I had a friend in high school that had the biggest hard on for Ayn Rand to the point where if somebody said he was a libertarian he would correct them and say "Actually I'm more of an objectivist"  In hindsight I don't blame him, I think his dad left him and his mom when he was young and his mom was always working overtime as a secretary just to make ends meat, I'm sure in some hosed up way the idea of his dad rotting away for not being a captain of industry was satisfying to him. The whole plot is complete garbage but I do enjoy the fact that the rich captains of industry basically use union strike tactics to get their point across and it inadvertantly highlights how terrible corporate bureaucracies are (unless you've got some ultra genius wunderkind at the helm your corporation is hosed)
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Jun 30, 2015 22:53
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Obdicut posted:Sound pretty irrational. Oh, it's a ration, all right.
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Jul 1, 2015 02:14
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There's a loving undergrad worthy thesis of some 80 odd pages shoehorned into a fictional narrative. Who loving does that? Cythereal posted:It's political masturbation that relies on people like Donald Trump inventing a perpetual motion machine, force field, and cloaking device, and deciding to gently caress off to a utopian subsistence-level commune rather than make all the money from redefining the laws of physics by inventing those things. A loving tap in a mountainside that peed petroleum. No like a sink or utility sized water tap. TyroneGoldstein fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Jul 1, 2015 |
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Jul 1, 2015 02:35
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I thought it was an interesting piece of of dystopian fiction until someone told me it was supposed to be a legit guide on how to run your life in story format. They got really excited and wanted to talk about how good such a world would be, so I flipped them off and walked away. I might have PTSD from the nightmares that people like this actually exist and could one day end up ruling the world. No thanks.
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Jul 1, 2015 06:08
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I never knew Atlas Shrugged was the length of a Game of Thrones novel until I saw it in Barnes & Noble a few months ago.  Also I don't want to trash a book I've never read but I probably won't read it due to overwhelming negative word of mouth about it. Plus, ever since reading Brave New World & Nineteen Eighty-Four (both are loving amazing & terrifying) I've never felt the need nor interest in pursuing another dystopian novel.
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Jul 1, 2015 07:03
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You should read Fahrenheit 451 because it is excellent. It is the American equivalent of 1984. That is, it's the nightmare world that Americans will come to inhabit. The Handmaiden's Tale is also very good.
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Jul 1, 2015 07:13
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1500quidporsche posted:Never so much as read a single page of the book but I had a friend in high school that had the biggest hard on for Ayn Rand to the point where if somebody said he was a libertarian he would correct them and say "Actually I'm more of an objectivist" I consider myself a libertarian, and I loving hate Atlas Shrugged. It is a horribly written novel, filled with one-dimensional Mary Sue characters. Objectevism falls under the same totalitarian ideology it claims to refute. It's just that a different set of people get to be in charge. gently caress that noise. thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Jul 1, 2015 |
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Jul 1, 2015 08:43
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Atlas Shrugged is completely realistic. All scientific progress happens due to geniuses producing amazing discoveries out of nowhere. If you could get a few of them together, and stop the moochers from taxing them, within a few years we'd have flying trains and robot maids and cigarettes which lasted forever.
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Jul 1, 2015 12:17
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McGiggins posted:I thought it was an interesting piece of of dystopian fiction until someone told me it was supposed to be a legit guide on how to run your life in story format. [TRIGGER WARNING] They do
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Jul 1, 2015 12:42
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cumshitter posted:This guy does what looks like a pretty good chapter by chapter run down of the book.
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Jul 1, 2015 13:18
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I think her prose is very long winded and generally I find Atlas Shrugged to not be very engaging but you shouldn't disregard it out right. She gets a lot of hate but her philosophy outlined in Atlas Shrugged is worthy of a little consideration at least.
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Jul 1, 2015 17:51
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Shayu posted:I think her prose is very long winded and generally I find Atlas Shrugged to not be very engaging but you shouldn't disregard it out right. She gets a lot of hate but her philosophy outlined in Atlas Shrugged is worthy of a little consideration at least. It's a completely inconsistent philosophy that denies absolutely basic facts about human nature and the world.
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Jul 1, 2015 17:59
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Obdicut posted:It's a completely inconsistent philosophy that denies absolutely basic facts about human nature and the world. What are the basic facts of human nature?
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Jul 1, 2015 18:14
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Shayu posted:What are the basic facts of human nature? Free will is not an absolute, emotions are tools of cognition, true altruism exists. To give three.
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Jul 1, 2015 18:36
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Cheesus posted:I read the book a few years ago and can confirm this guy's analysis is spot on (assuming you think the book is wrong). Glad to hear that, I haven't had a chance to hear a response from someone who'd actually read the book. I strongly recommend the summary to anyone interested in Atlas Shrugged who doesn't want to read it. It's been a while, but I remember the commenter being pretty even handed in their criticism of the book. Also each section usually has a couple Randroids defending Ayn in the comments. I forget who linked this comic but it's a short and accessible rundown of Ayn Rand's life. It lead me to believe that Henry Rearden's heroic struggle to stop honoring his marriage vows and not give in to his wife's demands to have any respect whatsoever for her and his family are based on her own marriage.
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Jul 1, 2015 19:00
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Here's why Atlas Shrugged and everyone who follows it and the surrounding Randian bullshit is horrible in a nutshell: The premise of the book is that rich people are rich because they are superior and have won at life. They are important and necessary too; workers may make things, but they need rich people to fund them. Also, if you give money to a charity you are wilfully letting them rob you and suck from you like a leech. In fact, pretty much everyone beneath the rich people is leeching from them and not giving enough back. So the mysterious John Galt encourages all the rich powerful people in the world to vanish, leaving the rest of the world to crumble. That'll show them for not being the rich minority!
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Jul 2, 2015 06:15
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There is only one way to settle this: Put the rich in camps and see what happens. If they all get rickets and typhus then congrats, Atlas Shrugged is bad and dumb and you shouldn't read it.
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Jul 2, 2015 06:37
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McGiggins posted:I thought it was an interesting piece of of dystopian fiction until someone told me it was supposed to be a legit guide on how to run your life in story format. Have you never heard of Alan Greenspan? And that's just the easy one. TROIKA CURES GREEK fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Jul 2, 2015 |
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Jul 2, 2015 14:34
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BiggerJ posted:Here's why Atlas Shrugged and everyone who follows it and the surrounding Randian bullshit is horrible in a nutshell: The complete lack of empathy for children being born in the system they're leaving to burn is part of what makes it such a weird goddamn book.
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Jul 2, 2015 15:35
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Obdicut posted:The complete lack of empathy for children being born in the system they're leaving to burn is part of what makes it such a weird goddamn book. I think it's because Ayn Rand and her followers tend to be literal sociopaths who go beyond not having empathy but thinking that empathy is something that is to be detested
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Jul 2, 2015 15:42
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