The Holy Bible and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged both come up often on lists of life-changing books. Both are sprawling passionate apocalyptic epics centered around a mysterious hero in whom resides the passion, purpose and paradoxes of the Universe; his pursuit of his Beloved; and his gathering a circle of friends with whom to rebuild the world.
To Ayn Rand, Man is meant to be & can be a heroic rational passionate productive being who belongs on Earth to thrive and strive for joy. As such, Man by nature must have rights of life, liberty, property and pursuit of happiness. Government exists primarily to secure the rights of free minds in free markets by prohibiting & punishing crimes of force or fraud. The best art should reflect Romantic Realism, showing life as it can & should be. The main theme of Atlas Shrugged is the Productive Individuals going on strike against the Parasitical Collective. In a way, it humanistically parallels the Rapture, Tribulation, Second Coming scenario of many Apocalyptic Christians.
As much as I love Ayn's writing, especially Atlas Shrugged, there are difficulties.
Growing up in pre- and post-Bolshevik Russia, Ayn came to see Religion and Statism as two sides of the same irrational oppressive coin. Thus, she was a resolute atheist, yet she regarded the Universe as a Rational and Benevolent system. By this, she meant that the Universe operates with a consistency that can be rationally perceived and that it is geared to produce and nurture life. However, Rationality & Benevolence are also personal attributes, and when applied to the Universe, hints at the possibility of a Universal Personal Rational & Benevolent Force, ergo God.
Ayn confused her ability to rationalize & moralize her views & actions, with Rational & Moral Clarity. Out of this came a dogmatic uncompromising rigidity, personality cultism, contempt for any disagreement or dissent- especially from her disciples, and betrayal of her devoted husband. Also, her contempt for socialist exaltation of altruism & self-sacrifice could easily be confused as contempt for those who need & who give charity & compassion. However, when either she or her fictional characters show such self-giving behavior, it is redefined as investment & integrity to ones' higher values which somehow involve the beneficiary of the sacrifice.
So why do I admire a woman with such a flawed philosophy and personal life?
Because she experiences firsthand the horrors of the Bolshevik Revolution. She fled to America, starting as part of Cecil B. DeMille's secretarial pool and going on to become a best-selling novelist who revered her adopted country. When the intelligensia was selling out America, common sense and free enterprise to internationalism, sentimentalism and statism, she stood out as a champion for her country, reason, rights and liberty. For this cause, she gave us the short parable Anthem, the semi-biographical We The Living, and the epics of integrity & liberty The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
And so God bless Ayn Rand, and I hope she has reconciled with our Lord, embracing the Sacrificial Grace she did not understand in life.
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From the pivotal chapter of Atlas Shrugged~
ReplyDelete"This is John Galt Speaking" ~
"Such is the future you are capable of winning. It requires a struggle; so does any human value. All life is a purposeful struggle, and your only choice is the choice of a goal. Do you wish to continue the battle of your present or do you wish to fight for my world? Do you wish to continue a struggle that consists of clinging to precarious ledges in a sliding descent to the abyss, a struggle where the hardships you endure are irreversible and the victories you win bring you closer to destruction? Or do you wish to undertake a struggle that consists of rising from ledge to ledge in a steady ascent to the top, a struggle where the hardships are investments in your future, and the victories bring you irreversibly closer to the world of your moral ideal, and should you die without reaching full sunlight, you will die on a level touched by its rays? Such is the choice before you. Let your mind and your love of existence decide...
"In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.
"But to win it requires your total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.
"You will win when you are ready to pronounce the oath I have taken at the start of my battle—and for those who wish to know the day of my return, I shall now repeat it to the hearing of the world:
"I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."