reugeneh

reugeneh t1_j22p9sg wrote

Reply to comment by D_Welch in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand by gothiclg

This really isn't the sub for it, but I'm going to do it anyway since you spoke of her beliefs and not the writing.

What you describe as "capitalism" isnt. What you describe is economic exchange, and in this case the exchange of bartering. That decidedly is NOT Capitalism. Capitalism is a very specific form of economic exchange which includes commodification of labor and --for better or worse-- large systems of maneagable private ownership.

And re: selfishness you're addressing an issue that rand doesn't really deal much with. Sure, fine if I give to my starving neighbor that makes me feel good, and so isn't a purely selfless act. Big deal. The controversial take that rand has is that selfishness is, in and of itself, the highest good. Correlary to that: altruism is actually an evil. In other words, she goes beyond saying altruism is just another form of selfishness to saying: altruism exists and is a wrong. It's an asinine view of the world that doesn't take into account the most basic of biological facts, and is totally lacking in self consistency. Her entire make believe world falls apart when you start asking what the "self" is that is the beneficiary of this selfishness.

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reugeneh t1_j2210v9 wrote

Reply to Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand by gothiclg

Some points where her political opinions distracted from the book?

The book is a thinly veiled political manifesto. It absolutely fails on every metric if read as anything else.

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reugeneh t1_iu25h39 wrote

Reply to How do you guys read books? by HalboAngel

Okay, wow. I never realized I did this until reading through this thread. How did I not know this about myself before....

My work requires that I plow through a lot of very dry non fiction stuff daily (court cases, etc.) Through 80% of that, I don't hear the internal voice. When I find something I need to focus on, extrapolate from, etc. I slow down and the monologue comes back.

When I'm reading fiction or non fiction out of interest, the monologue is always there, and in the case of fiction it's quality changes.

With fiction it's like that monologue is part of engaging with the substance of writing and language as a thing itself, not as a carrier for something else.

With non fiction being read out of interest,nthe monologue helps me slow down and more fully grasp things

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