That is, when I consider all these people and their visionary, singular accomplishments throughout World History, as magnificent and humane and life-affirming as they are, they still don't compare - no, they pale by comparison - to what is so obviously (and incontrovertibly), the Single Greatest Achievement in Human History: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.Ītlas Shrugged is about a thinly disguised, pompous, unpretty, and compassion-less Bee-otch (pardon the oh-so-e gregious "ad hominems" - shame on me!), named Ayn Rand (who should've known better, considering the pompous, unpretty, and compassion-less totalitarian regime she hailed from), played by a stick-figure named Dagny Taggart, who decides, like she's Almighty Yahweh, that she's going to rule the World someday via The Railroads and who, unfortunately, and rather awkwardly, stylistically speaking (such wooden prose) also engages in some of the worst written sex ever penned sex so poorly written it made even Norman Mailer cringe (and Tom Pynchon cringes to this day!) When I consider Galileo, Einstein, and the invention of the wheel. When I consider the unparalled invention of the computer, the internet, even LibraryThing. When I contemplate the innovative, miraculous advances made in medicine over the past couple centuries, and the tens of millions of lives that have either been saved as a result of those advances, or whose quality-of-life has been dramatically improved because of the discoveries of compassionate women and men. Show More gargantuan, ancient sundial, in its vast complex of structures - which kept track of the seasons and days of the year as precisely as Big Ben, or a Timex), and did so, obviously, truly amazing, without the benefits of modern technologies. P.s: the book is really big, so it’s really handy for propping open doors and jacking up cars. Me too, I don’t like to see that kind of language in print either. I dropped the book several times during that section coz it's kind of hard to hold with just one hand.Īnyway, I just want to say that I’m really grateful to Ayn Rand for having made life on this planet better for all of us, and for having enriched us all with her brilliant ideas (especially her publisher LOL).Īnd I’m also grateful to her publisher for managing to persuade Ayn to change the name, as I don’t think the book would have sold so many copies if it had been called Atlas Farted (I think Ayn was perhaps misinformed about the meaning of ‘fart’ - she was Russian remember, and very stubborn: did you know that she hated homosexuals and wrote about them that they are so loathsome a sense of life that an accurate commentary would require the kind of language I do not like to see in print. It summarises Ayn’s entire philosophy and method of arguing it – in one sentence!!! The Ancient Greeks had a word for that, I think, something like, acronym, aphorism, arsewipe, epitaph, epigram, telegram, or something, those Greek words are kind of confusing, aren’t they? LOLĪlso, there's some really great soft porn in the middle. I know I know, I cheated a bit, that one isn’t from Atlas Shrugged, but from The Virtue of Selfishness. The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence. I reckon this puts her in the company of other such great philosophers as Dale Carnegie, Warren Buffett, my mate Bill down the pub, and Lord Ron Hubbard. I had to think about it for a whole day before I understood it, the complexity of the language so perfectly echoes the complexity of the thought. Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned.Īll right, that one is a bit difficult. Learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness. Ayn’s great genius is that she can take the thoughts of your average 5 year old who resents the fact that her candy has been stolen by the playground bully but can’t do anything about it coz she’s like you know, too little and weak, and give them the weight and heft of Tolstoy or Nietzsche! (don’t drop the book on your foot, by the way, it bloody hurts.)Ī hymn to unfettered human intelligence (coz you know how fettered human intelligence is, at least, I know mine is LOL) Atlas Shrugged includes such gems as: It was a really good book to practice on, coz Ayn has no long words or difficult ideas, so it’s easy to practice speed reading on. I used it to practice my speed reading on, you know, that technique where you only read the first word of every line and then guess the rest? So cool to learn that the technique was invented by Walter Bosenbonkers at MIT in the mid 1950s at around the same time Ayn was working on her magnum. Orginally entitled Atlas Farted, Ayn was persuaded by her publisher to change the name to Atlas Shrugged. Show More all time: the washing machine (or the adult diaper, I can’t quite decide on that one).
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