O.K. I’m ready to reply to your post now. I have been working a lot of hours but that gave me time to think.
I don’t see Jesus’s actions as altruism. The term altruism was coined by Auguste Compte in 1851. He was was a French philosopher, an advocate of totalitarianism and an atheist. The term means to live for others. He saw egoism or self interest as evil and believed humans could be taught to live for others instead. So selflessness or the absence of self interest is a goal of altruism. But Jesus did not act selflessly in dying on the cross. He definitely had an interest, it was his purpose in coming here. Sacrifice is always portrayed as being painful to the one sacrificing and as a loss or trading something of greater value for something of lesser. While he suffered greatly, he did it to gain a much greater value, the fulfillment of his mission on earth and the re-attainment of his place in heaven.
As far as the characters in Atlas Shrugged I can’t agree with you. Yes they were cold and stilted in their relationships with the looters but that is because they were despised by them and under constant criticism. Just imagine if your wife and family treated you the way Hank Reardon’s did. you would be stilted around them too. Also too I think Ayn Rand was trying to show how much of a toll the hatred and vitriol had taken on them. They were always made to feel guilty for their success and called evil for their ability. plus they were living in very serious times. Dagney is trying to save the railroad because she knows what will happen to the country if it fails. They were working so hard to overcome all the obstacles being put in their way they were seriously stressed out. But you’ll notice that when each one retires or decides to quit he changes. Dan Conway says he wants to read books and go fishing, things which he never had time for. Ken Danneger says there’s a thing he’s always wanted to do and never had time”, to take and excursion trip around the island of Manhattan. Then he says “I’ve always been short on time, never what to do with it”. After the first run of the John Galt line Reardon tells Ellis Wyatt that he’s always wondered what he was like and Wyatt answers “I’ve never had a chance to be what I’m like” and that night while celebrating they are anything but cold as they talk about their achievement. And if you’ll notice when she meets them all in Galt’s Gulch they are like different people because Galt has given them the moral sanction they deserved but never got from the looters. So it’s very realistic the way the characters are portrayed and later in the book she makes a very subtle point. in Galt’s Gulch Ellis Wyatt says that what he and all the rest of them are doing is manufacturing time. By making things better and cheaper they are freeing up time from one task so that they have more time to spend on better things. I never noticed this before until I started thinking about your post. She is showing you that the men of he mind are the life givers and the looters are life takers.
As for the characters being incapable of feeling love I’ll give just one example from many, many I could choose from. One of the most moving scenes in the book, for me, is when Reardon tries to save the wet nurse who has been shot and thrown down a slag heap. In the beginning of the book Reardon feels nothing but contempt for him. After all he is there to enforce the onerous government regulations of the looters. But gradually the boy comes to love and respect Reardon and Reardon him as the boy grows and comes to share Reardon’s values. As he is cradling the dying boy he bends down and kisses him on the forehead as he would a son. This is the cold, Ruthless businessman Hank Reardon. Meanwhile his life’s work is being burned to the ground and he knows it. The boy, who he at first despised, now means more to him than his mills. But his actions would not be altruism because he loves the boy. He doesn’t love him for his power or ability because he has neither. He loves him for the moral virtues he has come to embody and for his character.
Sorry to be so long winded but that book and the ideas in it are very important to me. I’d love to hear what you think.
I think Atlas shrugged is one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written in the history of mankind. It’s second only to the Declaration of Independance because the founders were able to say the same thing, except for the part about the creator, in one paragraph that took Ayn Rand over a thousand pages. Lol.
So selflessness or the absence of self interest is a goal of altruism. But Jesus did not act selflessly in dying on the cross. He definitely had an interest, it was his purpose in coming here. Sacrifice is always portrayed as being painful to the one sacrificing and as a loss or trading something of greater value for something of lesser. While he suffered greatly, he did it to gain a much greater value, the fulfillment of his mission on earth and the re-attainment of his place in heaven.
Here's where I get tripped up on things: altruism is the denial of self interest in favor of the interests of others, but one could counter that "altruism," in that sense, does not involve denial of self interest at all, for the satisfaction one derives from denying one's self interest is the reward for selflessness. Performing charity, for instance, feels good, and that feeling of goodness is a reward for sacrificing whatever it is you're going to sacrifice for the good of someone else.
All well and good.
Let's dabble, then, in the supernatural a bit. If you're a believer, you believe, to some degree, that Jesus was the physical embodiment of God. If you're not a believer, you believe something along the continuum of Jesus didn't exist at all and is purely a myth to Jesus was a really important historical cat to Jesus could've been one of those prophet-types you read about in books. Personally, I'm in the former camp, but that's me personally, and I'm cool with whatever anyone believes about Jesus . . . I'm just trying to describe to you what I take as the "givens" part of the mathematical problem to be solved. So I'm coming to you as one who believes Jesus to be the physical embodiment of God.
Now, God is love, and love is all-consuming. Of course I'm talking about the universal love, all that is good, not the variety of love you have for your Labrador retriever, your wife & children, or your '62 Corvette Stingray. This is the love from which the energy of the universe derives; it consumes, wholly, the notions we regard as good or positive, like feelings of satisfaction, self worth, etc. This is what the Buddhists talk about when they talk about achieving Nirvana. This is it, man: there is no self. No suffering, no pain, no anything, just oneness.
In essence, Jesus to me was a Buddha. He eased suffering because that's what Buddhas do: they show others the path to the elimination of suffering, and thus, the path to God. Is Jesus receiving a "reward" for doing this good, in terms of self-satisfaction? No, because Jesus has no "self." He's a Buddha. He's eliminated self, and he's showing others the path, like I said, because that's what it means to be a Buddha.
Anyway, that's how I see the Jesus/altruism thing. It's not a scale where the things Jesus gives up are on one side and the things he gets in return are on the other. He's a Buddha, or at least in his life we see his progression into becoming one. He has nothing to give up; he has nothing to gain in return; he just is. It's not the perfect equation, it's the universe that consumes all equations and everything else with it.
As for Atlas Shrugged, I think we can find common ground on the notion that the book is very important because of the ideas and the philosophy it illustrates. Where we're going to differ is in its place in the pantheon of English-language literature. Like I wrote earlier, as a novelist, Ayn Rand makes a good political philosopher, and this is truly a matter of the aesthetic here. Some people like Miles Davis, some people don't. Both are right.
Here's why I think she wasn't such a great novelist:
- One-dimensional characters. I think I read once that she thinks her characters are real people or at least the way real people would act in the real world if they were unrestrained; she also exaggerates points of human personality to make points or serve her artistic purpose. This sort of strategy will almost invariably lead to one-dimensional characters, and since plot derives from character, one-dimensional characters are going to give you less of a plot. It's one of the reasons, I think, that Rand has to use so many different characters to drive her plot: each character brings something different to the table, but only one thing.
Take Rearden's wife, for example - you mentioned how she treated Rearden, and wondered why anyone would put up with a woman like her. Exactly. Who the hell would? A captain of industry certainly wouldn't. She had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. She was completely unlovable. The reader was left to wonder what ever brought them together in the first place. Why would a man like Rearden love a reprehensible person like her? He wouldn't. She was set up purely as a foil, like one of those stuffed society ladies in a Three Stooges short. In other words, a one-dimensional character, and just one of a cast of dozens in Atlas Shrugged.
Or take Dagny. She's the female Spock. Or the poor dimestore gal who marries James Taggert . . . straight out of central casting, and not much more.
- Pacing. Awful, just awful. Narrative time flew and then it didn't. And then you were stuck in a Galt radio speech that would've lasted a day and a half if Galt actually spoke it out loud. As many good ideas were contained in that speech is exactly how badly it worked as a narrative device.
- Language. Granted, she wrote that thing in the 1950s and it's now 2012, but her "high-pants, quick talking 1940s newsman" voice does not stand the test of time.
- Melodrama. The love scenes, starring Dagny Taggart, were goofy bodice-rippers. Just not my taste at all. They are what Stalin would write, if Stalin endeavored to be a romance novelist catering to 1950s Soviet tastes.
- Humanity. I don't think Rand had any children, did she? If she did, she wrote like a woman who had no children. And by that I mean I found absolutely no warmth in her writing. I found things that would stick in my head, but not in my heart.
I could go on and on, but you get the point.
We're just debating aesthetics here.