Today's passage comes from Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. On a serious note, I chose it because every time I post a quote or passage they are appropriate to the ideals I advocate. We're gonna switch it up today. The message we are about to read does not reflect my views; while I agree with some of what is said, I cannot support the whole statement. In a way this does reflect the ideals I advocate... it is healthy to explore opposing philosophies, and this is certainly an opposing philosophy. After we explore it, we can shut it down and throw whomever believes such philosophies in prison for life. We don't tolerate differing opinions at VW.*
Quick question before we continue- is it necessary to add a spoiler alert for literature that was released over half a century ago? Is it necessary to add a spoiler alert for a blog that three people read? Whatevs.
*Forreals... As I've explained before, we accept and welcome all philosophies here at VW . In our effort to expose all ideologies there will be more posts in the future expressing views that differ from mine. All viewpoints deserve a fair criticism and review, let's get to it.
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“Through all the ages… the mind has been regarded as evil,
and every form of insult: from heretic to materialist to exploiter—every form
of iniquity: from exile to disenfranchisement to expropriation—every form of
torture: from sneers to rack to firing squad—have been brought down upon those
who assumed the responsibility of looking at the world through the eyes of a
living consciousness and performing the crucial act of rational connection. Yet
only to the extent to which—in chains, in dungeons, in hidden corners, in the
cells of philosophers, in the shops of traders—some men continued to think,
only to that extent was humanity able to survive. Through all the centuries of
the worship of the mindless, what stagnation humanity chose to endure, whatever
brutality to practice—it was only by the grace of the men who perceived that
wheat must have water in order to grow, that stones laid in a curve will form
an arch, that two and two makes four, that love is not served by torture and
life is not fed by destruction—only by the grace of those men did the rest of
them learn to experience moments when they caught the spark of being human, and
only the sum of such moments permitted them to continue to exist. It was the
man of the mind who taught them to bake their bread, to heal their wounds, to
forge their weapons and to build the jails into which they threw him. He was
the man of extravagant energy—and reckless generosity—who knew that stagnation
is not man’s fate, that impotence is not his nature, that the ingenuity of his
mind is his noblest and most joyous power—and in service to that love of
existence he was alone to feel, he went on working, working at any price,
working for his despoilers, for his jailers, for his torturers, paying with his
life for the privilege of saving theirs. This was his glory and his guilt—that
he let them teach him to feel guilty of his glory, to accept the part of a
sacrificial animal and, in punishment for the sin of intelligence, to perish on
the alters of the brutes. The tragic joke of human history is that on any of
the altars men erected, it was always man whom they immolated and the animal
whom they enshrined. It was always the animal’s attributes, not man’s, that
humanity worshiped; the idol of instinct and the idol of force—the mystics and
the kings—the mystics, who longed for an irresponsible consciousness and ruled
by means of the claim that their dark emotions were superior to reason, that
knowledge came in blind, causeless fits, blindly to be followed, not
doubted—and the kings, who rules by means of claws and muscles, with conquest
as their method and looting as their aim, with a club or a gun as sole sanction
of their power. The defenders of man’s soul were concerned with his feelings,
and the defenders of man’s body were concerned with his stomach—but both were
united against his mind. Yet no one, not the lowest of humans, is ever able
fully to renounce his brain. No one has ever believed in the irrational; what
they do believe in is the unjust. Whenever a man denounces the mind, it is
because his goal is of a nature the mind would not permit him to confess. When
he preaches contradictions, he does so in the knowledge that someone will
accept the burden of the impossible, someone will make it work for him at the
price of his own suffering or life; destruction is the price of any
contradiction. It is the victims who made injustice possible. It is the men of
reason who made it possible for the rule of the brute to work. The despoiling
of reason has been the motive of every anti-reason creed on earth. The
despoiling of ability has been the purpose of every creed that preached
self-sacrifice. The despoilers have always known it. We haven’t. The time has
come for us to see. What we are now asked to worship, what had once been dressed
as God or king, is the naked, twisted, mindless figure of the human
Incompetent. This is the new ideal, the goal to aim at, the purpose to live
for, and all men are to be rewarded according to how close they approach it.
This is the age of the common man, they tell us—a title which any man may claim
to the extent of such distinction as he has managed not to achieve. He will
rise to a rank of nobility by means of the effort he has failed to make, he
will be honored for such virtue as he has not displayed, and he will be paid
for the goods which he did not produce. But we—we, who must atone for the guilt
of ability—we will work to support him as he orders, with his pleasure as our
only reward. Since we have the most to contribute, we will have the least to say.
Since we have the better capacity to think, we will not be permitted a thought
of our own. Since we have the judgment to act, we will not be permitted an
action of our choice. We will work under directives and controls, issued by
those who are incapable of working. They will dispose of our energy, because
they have none to offer, and of our product, because they cannot produce. Do
you say that this is impossible, that it cannot be made to work? They know it,
but it is you who don’t—and they are counting on you not to know it. They are
counting on you to go on, to work to the limit of the inhuman and to feed them
while you last—and when you collapse, there will be another victim starting out
and feeding them, while struggling to survive—and the span of each succeeding
victim will be shorter, and while you’ll die to leave them a railroad, your
last descendant-in-spirit will die to leave them a loaf of bread. This does not
worry the looters of the moment. Their plan—like all the plans of all the royal
looters of the past—is only that the loot shall last their lifetime. It has
always lasted before, because in one generation they could not run out of
victims. But this time—it will not last.
The victims are on strike. We are on strike against martyrdom—and against the
moral code that demands it. We are on strike against those who believe that one
man must exist for the sake of another. We are on strike against the morality
of cannibals, be it practiced in body or in spirit. We will not deal with men
on any terms but ours—and our terms are a moral code which holds that man is an
end in himself and not the means to any end of others. We do not seek to force
our code upon them. They are free to believe what they please. But, for once,
they will have to believe it and to exist—without our help. And, once and for
all, they will learn the meaning of their creed. That creed has lasted for
centuries solely by the sanction of the victims—by means of the victims’
acceptance of punishment for breaking a code impossible to practice. But that
code was intended to be broken. It is a code that thrives not on those who
observe it, but on those who don’t, a morality kept in existence not by virtue
of its saints, but by the grace of its sinners. We have decided not to be
sinners any longer. We have ceased breaking that moral code. We shall blast it
out of existence forever by the one method that it can’t withstand: by obeying
it. We are obeying it. We are complying. In dealing with our fellow men, we are
observing their code of values to the letter and sparing them all the evils
they denounce. The mind is evil? We have withdrawn the works of our minds from
society, and not a single idea of ours is to be known or used by men. Ability
is a selfish evil that leaves no chance to those who are less able? We have
withdrawn from the competition and left all chance open to incompetents. The
pursuit of wealth is greed, the root of all evil? We do not seek to make
fortunes any longer. It is evil to earn more than one’s bare sustenance? We
take nothing but the lowliest jobs and we produce, by the effort of our
muscles, no more than we consume for our immediate needs—with not a penny nor
an inventive thought left over to harm the world. It is evil to succeed, since
success is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? We have ceased
burdening the weak with our ambition and have left them free to prosper without
us. It is evil to be an employer? We have no employment to offer. It is evil to
own property? We own nothing. It is evil to enjoy one’s existence in this
world? There is no form of enjoyment that we seek from their world, and—this
was the hardest for us to attain—what we now feel for their world is that
emotion which they preach as an ideal: Indifference—the blank—the zero—the mark
of death… We are giving men everything they’ve professed to want and to seek as
virtue for centuries. Now let them see whether they want it.”
- John Galt in Ayn's Rand novel Atlas Shrugged
just post the whole damn book next time
ReplyDeletethere's so much packed in there, but it seems worthwhile to unpack. so this is the epitome of rational self-interest?
ReplyDelete