Atlas Shrugged

This post is going to be similar to Fountainhead post and if you have not read the book, you might be motivated(unmotivated) to take it up.

I must have spent hours (days) reading this huge book (and also repenting that I could have studied 2/3rd of my course books, had I studied the same amount of time) and although I love some of the philosophies presented in the book but still I would maintain that the books of Ayn Rand are wordy. Once a character starts giving a speech, it goes on forever. Although, she believes that one should respect the intelligence of the human, and believes in the heroic in humans, she treats her readers as fools. Fools, who cannot understand what she is trying to tell with all those illustrious anecdotes and explanations. Fools, who need the repetition of the same things again and again and then a monstrously huge speech by John Galt to summarize the book.

She writes such a good plot with so many examples in favor of Capitalism and presents her dream of an ideal society. Some of the reasons help me confirm what I had always suspected to be wrong with the Indian Economy. For instance, I always wondered when the government can print as many money as they want, why do they need to collect taxes. When they own all the infrastructure, all property, why do the Government agencies, still are the ones always in the losses.

She writes about the moral code of a trader and the policy of viewing money as a means for trading virtues. Her vehement disagreement with any form of charity and philanthropy is backed up with solid reasons and makes one believe in it. She supports monopolies and although Mark Shuttleworth won’t agree with her on this, her points still leave an impact on me. But, all things stated, I am not much into economics, so it might be that while her business anecdotes look logical to me, it might not be as close to real business scenarios.

But I was disappointed with the lack of purposeful ending in the book. Also, I did not like the numerous love affairs portrayed for Dagny Taggart, her choice of John Galt and the ending for Eddie Willers. I did not like the numerous dialogs of self-righteousness between the protagonists of the novel, their way of keeping secrets and talking. I know its Ayn Rand’s signature style which makes her different from others, but I do not approve of it.

In any case, whatever be the down-points, I learnt two very important things from the book. Firstly, that economy is a fairly complicated mechanism, with so many interdependencies, that one action leads to another and then another in a domino effect. It is more or less like the butterfly effect of physics(if you know about it) and I think, economic regulators should learn this fast. They change one small thing, and it may snowball to affect everything, all the more in today’s world.

Secondly, one should always think in terms of absolutes. I like Rearden’s relationship with Wet Nurse(The non absolute). I liked the fact: that there is no middle point sometimes. One should take some hard decisions and never think of relativity(although it is so true in Physics, there is no reason to apply the philosophy of Quantam Physics in real life), otherwise, you might not get the results you want.

But all these are my views, would love to hear your comments on the book.

Fountainhead – A critique

I thought, I will don the hat of a critic and criticize the Fountainhead book. Note that if you have not read the book you might not understand some parts of this post, you can skip them as they are totally unnecessary. You might as well move to the last paragraph of the post, which is important, if you are going to read the book.

So, coming back, if I have to describe the book in one word – I will call it “wordy”. Now you may get the impression that I do not like the book at all. Yes, I don’t like it. Why? Just because of some long and wandering essays, because of extreme meanings given to simple actions and facial expressions, or because of the author trying to manipulate the minds of the reader. No, although these are reasons enough to dislike the book, I dislike it because of one simple reason, it is much too negative. It portrays a character such as Toohey who is a part of a terrifyingly negative world, giving shape to humanity just as Roark did it with the buildings.

You may ask, if I disliked it so much, why did I read it? I read it because I wanted to understand the philosophy of objectivism which is so proudly displayed by many of its readers. I read it because I wanted to understand the potential Roark being displayed by every other individual. I read it because, inspite of all that I said in the previous paragraph, it has a wonderful philosophy. Finally, I read it because “someone” told me not to.

So, behind the lackluster story, pointless explanations and long essays, what was the one thing that has helped the book to remain alive for all these years. It is the re-definition of the word: “Selfish”. The author describes the word in a new light, it is defined in a sense that makes the people proud to say the same as the author said and I quote one friend of mine: ”She has shown her middle finger against the world, to say that fuck you, I am selfish, and redefined it because people use the word sacrifice and selfless indiscriminately and get work out of people.”

The principles behind the protagonist in the book are to perceive reality according to himself. He is such an egoist that he doesn’t care what others think of him, everything he does has a purpose and the purpose is never to serve others. If the things he create, serve others too in the process, it is good, but it doesn’t matter to him.

The antagonist, Ellsworth Toohey, is the exact compliment. He has everything to do with people. He creates puppets by exerting his influence over others, gaining their souls to make them non-thinking and dismal creatures. He does this with many of the other characters in the novel, creates a whole army out of them, for no other purpose than to rule. The negativity of the antagonist is more than any other in any other story. It frightened me, when Mallory likened the society to an unthinking beast, it frightened me as I realized Toohey to be the person who had severed the brain of that beast. I am not the person who cries or gets frightened with the movies or novels, but the negativity of this novel had me. I was frightened and disgusted. But, I still carried on till the end.

So, in the end, I would say that this is a novel not for the fickle-minded, but for a mature and a philosophical mind. The author manipulates you, be on your guard. Take its wonderful philosophy, but not its negativity, the negativity is the creation of years of exploitation in USSR for the author. And yes, if you are looking for a thriller, sorry to disappoint you, but you won’t find it as a cheap thriller to entertain. This novel is taxing and painful to the brain and might change your philosophy if you are not on your guard.