/lit/ - Literature

>>18333103
I think in the U.S. specifically, we're living in a technological civilization that was constructed decades ago by these titans of industry whom Ayn Rand worshipped as gods on earth, but most of the people who built all this stuff died awhile ago and we didn't pass the skills down, so everything is running on sheer inertia and people think (or thought until recently) that someone in charge knows how all this stuff works. Like, could we even built another giant dam or suspension bridge? Theoretically, but we'd have to learn how to do it again. So that creates a weird paralyzing effect.

Meanwhile, there's concern China will surpass the U.S., but they have operatic propaganda videos on TV over there celebrating state-owned diesel engine manufacturers:

https://youtu.be/snItPkBxgSM

They do have capitalists and billionaires too of course, but I think they view them as like soldiers over there. They're not good people as individuals necessarily, or it's not necessarily desirable to have them, but soldiers are still necessary to defend the frontiers just like capitalists are necessary to build up private industries (which can later be assimilated into the state). And making money is fine provided everyone benefits, but if you're just "making money from money" or in the form of pure speculation, then that's a problem.

>>14663105
This

Atlas Shrugged

>>14212505
>>14212748
>>14213232
>>14212419
>>14213244
Those are some strong contenders

>>14211723
I liked it, but it is a bit precious, NGL

>>14000780
This

Looting *can* be a great evolutionary strategy in some situations. But in general, cooperating and sincerely thinking about the needs of your neighbors is the way to go.

If I agree with REH barbarians on anything, it's Kull smashing the law tablets with a big battleaxe. Rules can only get you so far. At some point you actually have to learn to judge character and manage risk.

>>11459853

Using literature as the basis of an ideology smacks of strawmen.

>>9367142
>Then again, reading up to nearly page 50 in atlas shrugged must be hard for someone like you, the book doesn't have any pictures.
Getting through Atlas Shrugged is hard because it's so badly written and boring, and because of how infuriatingly stupid it is at times.
Galt's Gulch is a complete fantasy, let's leave aside the infinite energy motor for a second, how the fuck do you grow tobacco in Colorado? How do you operate several mines, farms and factories without hundreds of workers? How do these rich CEOs even know how to do all this stuff?

>>13087

>>9178466
Another one
Atlas Shrugged.
Sure, sure - a million plot holes. But the one that made me embrace the book as unintentional comedy was....
>John Galt has created a hidden enclave high in the Colorado Rockies. Only 3 people live there permanently. One guy plants and orchard. One guy has dairy cows and chickens. Another plants wheat and tobacco.
>Later, after a major event, hundreds of people flood into the enclave, called Galt's Gulch. They are totally isolated from the outside world.
>No one starves to death.
The 'let's plant tobacco in Colorado at 8,000' elevation' part made me laugh out loud for real, BTW.
Colorado at that altitude is dry, windy, cold, and has a very short growing season. Wheat will be one crop a year with low yield. Even a large chicken coop will not produce a lot of eggs and meat ('a chicken in every pot' was a phrase that meant 'great wealth'). Orchards take a minimum of 3 years to produce *anything*. Dairy cows can be steady, but you will need a LOT of pasturage at that altitude and a lot MORE hayfields for the long winters.
Three guys running a dairy/chicken farm, a wheat farm (ignore the idea of tobacco!), and an orchard might, *might*, produce enough excess to feed 20 more people than themselves. And doing so would be brutal, back-breaking labor for 10+ hours every day even with a lot of automation.
Oh. The diet would be almost exclusively whole wheat bread, milk, butter, and farmer's cheese, with an egg or two a day and chicken stew once a week. On special days (2-3 times a year) you get a small piece of beef.
After a few years? Apples, too, 2 medium apples a week. And between about November and about June those will be dried apples.
The logistics of just the food are ridiculous.

>>9174633
...and no one wants to talk about all the starving supermen....

>>9113352
1) Her writing is *at best* mediocre potboiler grade
2) Her "philosophy" is never coherently explained in philosophical terms in one place by her
3) What she does explain in contradictory or incoherent
4) On a personal level she tended to refuse to defend her position or debate others in a real way, instead calling anyone who disagreed with her "evil"
5) She developed a cult of personality that persists to this day and the members of that cult tend to mirror her combativeness and ignorance

>>8971187
why not? i think it was Kathy Lette who published someone else's book, word for word, claiming it was "postmodern appropriation".

if people can do shit like that, anything goes.

>>8961537
She is at best a mediocre writer of potboilers
>tissue-thin characters; idiot plots driven by coincidence; laughable straw-man antagonists; blatant mary sue insert protagonists; cringe-worthy dialogue; sloppy with her fetishes; etc.
and she tried to justify her poor writing by claiming that buried somewhere in the bad pacing is some profound philosophy that she never got around to actually formally presenting.
That would all be fine *except* there is a cadre of sub-literate dolts that BELIEVE HER about the hidden gems of sublime philosophy lurking about and they mistake their 'I read a potboiler with rape' for 'now I know more about philosophy than anyone else'.
Which would be only cringe worthy if they would just shut up about it.
But they won't.

One of my all-time favorites.

>>7966390
No.
This is.

Rand is not a good writer but i good at making a story.

I also noticed that a lot of people (not necessarily on /lit/) shit on this because MUH POLITICS or the fact that Rand was, indeed, batshit insane. For example, I've heard so many people go "lol its a book about the rich being on strike" when in reality many of the people going Galt are not really rich (Galt himself isn't) and some of the major villains are. There's even an anti-materialism theme in one of the plot points involving a bracelet.

Pic very much related. A lot of the people on strike were, in fact, doing hard labor even within their own little community. For fuck's sake, one of the characters is frequently cooking at a diner before he goes on strike.

As for reading it, up to you OP. It is long, and Galt's speech stands out for its length--the "money speech" is much much better in my opinion and nobody seems to give a fuck about that because the character who makes it only spends a page or so to make his point.

>>3653993
>The dialogue imo is awful.
Of course it is, most of the dialogue is just Ayn Rand using stand-in characters to have conversations with herself about how correct she is.

>>2742404
>thinking rationally about an irrational novel that claims to be rational set in an alternate universe

>>2318715
>implying it'd even take that long
Pic related

>>2075009
>>2074953