/lit/ - Literature

>>10991225
Sorry, I can’t.

I haven't read the book or listened to the speech.

It’s probably a very epic and inspiring speech which makes a lot of people feel very good about things.

There is a reason why people only vaguely malign Atlas in general and never address John Galt's Speech specifically. I have never seen a more hard-irrefutable argument and have never seen a clearer portrait of the actual nature of evil in the world around us.

>Atlas Grugged

>>10991225
No man is an island

Mind you, I can refute absolutely anything.

Galt is speaking from an unrealistic position in which he has invented unlimited energy.

If this were ever to occur the world will be at that person's knees. This is just such a stupid premise for the book. You cannot add a fucking neutron star economic singularity like that into the plot an expect it to have any carryover to reality, like cmon rand. Also the fact that there is still an oil magnate dude after this is hilarious.

She also doesn't ever address negative externalities or resource scarcity, which makes sense because this book is getting old now. She writes about oil like it's an infinite resource that belongs to whomever brings it out of the ground. Fine this book was written in the 50s or something

The world has moved on. I someone get the philosophy, but it is so dated now. This is like how they were trying to push afrofuturism in black panther, but the only way they could think of was to put this civilization literally on top of the only pile of this extremely useful vibranium material mine in the entire universe. Like really? That's the only way you could ever imagine a technologically and economically powerful African nation? Natural resource lottery?

>>10991485

Externalities are aggression, it's not hard to incorporate.

And, not to treat lit like a hivemind but you are happy to treat Rand literally to criticise her while treating more favoured authors as writing wise and metaphorical scenarios.

The world hasn't moved on. It is even more twisted. Vague charlatanic bullshitters like Zizek are treated as more worthwhile than bill gates or Elon musk.

>>10991509
Zizek and his Italian kitchen are way more important than those idiots

>>10991485
>This is like how they were trying to push afrofuturism in black panther
Unrelated, but am I the only one that noticed how Black Panther is basically the good old story of the White's man burden, but this time with Black People instead?

>>10991509
>>10991533
They both don’t believe in God, or wholesome nature.

Neither does Rand, and even if she did her philosophy doesn’t reflect it. She is based in, and around, greed.

Like what retards think economics is, that’s basically Ayn Rand

>>10991509
Rand is damaging because she is accessible. There is only one way to interpret it, only one way to follow that policy. Gates and musk are not following Rands policy, they share what they have because money isn't the only term in their cost function, and they know they have societal obligations because what they've achieved is not trivially separable from what they were given.

>>10991545
And the plot of Atlas shrugged is literally the reverse of these both, except with unlucky people instead of black people.

>Yuck you masses are too poor and unfortunate, time to clam up in our recessionist mountain getaway.

>>10991225
>http://amberandchaos.net/?page_id=73
>P# = Paragraph Number


>P1: arguing for eros (self-governed ethics, son of chaos/aphrodite), mind-body duality implied

Galt is advocating for self-governed ethics will simply lead to democracy, in which the combined self-ethics of a majority will outvote the unique self-ethics of the eccentric minority. This appears like a contradiction.

We can stop reading here, his argument is not about self-ethics, and the contradiction must be explored.The argument is about pan-ethics, or rewriting the rules of morality to suit only one type of person, the egoist who is interest in pursuing her love. Again, this will lead to a majority which love the same thing (you have simply exchanged wants/demands for loves) gaining control of society and enforcing a status quo which is abhorrent to those with different loves. To avoid this contradiction exploding her entire book, Ayn Rand uses magic (Galt is some type of meta-god). making her a kind of JK Rowling for rich assholes who see themselves as visionaries and intellectual giants. I think Ayn was a bit of a troll and she was practicing ethics-fortunetelling for a class of wealthy patrons. I noticed the mind-body problem briefly being hinted at, this was probably used as another way to differentiate between the dumb physical workers of the world and the smart mental captains of industry. Rand wrote money porn for rich depraved psychopaths, she probably wont be relevant in 50 years.

I can explain this further, or keep reading and finding more problems with Galt's speech, but I imagine it will be more of the same.

/////

500 years earlier to Rand, Machiavelli explains a far more plausible version of what is going on in the world. Yes true, the ethics of the majority dominate all societies, but their self-ethics are one of being controlled by a strong leader, they are sheep and know they are sheep and desire to be led and controlled, but not abused, shorn periodically maybe but not massacred. In this, some kind of balance is created between leaders and peoples, whereby leaders sometimes need to take their people to war, and people sometimes need to kill their leaders. Machiavelli was trying to guide good rules of thumb to avoid the latter and have plausible reasons for the former, this was during a particularly unstable time in Italy with many different warring factions and social unrest, the document was intended as manual for would be rulers.

Bump

>>10991533
Inventive Bussinessmen on the cusp of innovation and productive excellence
>less important than Slavoj fucking Zizek
The absolute CITY of Marxfags

>>10992609
>Inventive Bussinessmen on the cusp of innovation
What did businessmen ever invent? All they came up with was expropriation of inventions that belonged to intellectual commons of public universities in the first place, and making money on them as private owners, the fact that whole generations of scholars, engineers, educators and inventors were excluded from the scheme was merely "socialized costs" of their "innovative bussinesses" whose profits were privatized by our happy entrepreneurs.

>>10991485
>Like really? That's the only way you could ever imagine a technologically and economically powerful African nation? Natural resource lottery?

Imagine being so ignorant you miss the obvious reference, in a comic book movie no less, to many real African nations possessing huge reserves of highly valuable resources like gold and diamonds that then are exploited by imperialist powers and dictators.

>>10992662
>What did businessmen ever invent?
just shut the fuck up you braindead handicap

>>10992609
*meant to greentext that first line

Any time a philosopher gets into psychological statements it's going to be iffy and this is no exception. There are certain people Galt's speech describes very well, but it's too narrow a model of the world. Like not everyone who is very religious or advocates socialism is an unthinking monster who secretly hates life. Some people have just been led to different conclusions by their personal experiences. The reason most people aren't convinced by stuff like Galt's rant about mystics is that they know of people who don't fit this model.

Rand has no real argument against being a parasite. Parasites do thrive after all, nature is full of them. She can only say that it's not the method of survival "proper" to man. But if some men can survive successfully by doing it, if there are even some who can't survive otherwise, then why not?

Rand's idea that there is no conflict of interests between rational agents is simply absurd. It's easy to point to everyday scenarios where one person's interests conflict with another's. For instance, there's a bit in Atlas Shrugged that says Rearden refused to steal food when he was starving. I find it impossible to see how it could be in your rational self-interest to let yourself starve rather than violate someone's property rights to a small piece of food. Whatever the consequences are of stealing, surely they're better than oblivion. Surely the entire rest of your life wouldn't be so tainted by the knowledge that you stole a piece of food that you wouldn't be able to enjoy it.

Rand's idea of rights is vague and poorly justified. The definition given is
>Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival.
The only part of man's nature Rand acknowledges is his rational nature, but there's more to being human than that. Access to food and shelter is a condition of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival, but Rand doesn't regard this as a right.

I need to finish this one before I hit 27.

>>10992984
I bet you're sucking off Zucc in a thread on /g/ right now.

>>10993324

I'm OP. I do not treat Rand or any big thinker as rigorous or serious. But her characterisation of leftism, especially in the fountainhead, was so dead on it is funny to see people running scared.

Everything she is against, not for, but against, is truly genuine shit that is pervasive throughout society

>>10991674
>Machiavelli was trying to guide good rules of thumb to avoid the latter and have plausible reasons for the former

I don't know why but calling it a good rule of thumb had me in stitches

>>10993324
>The only part of man's nature Rand acknowledges is his rational nature, but there's more to being human than that. Access to food and shelter is a condition of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival, but Rand doesn't regard this as a right.
Because commodities that require man's productive faculty to exist at all are hard-disallowed from being classified as "rights" you fucking idiot.

>>10991225
Imagine living in a society that lets you come in contact with this garbage through osmosis

>>10993516
Sure, but that's ad hoc modification that doesn't follow from the definition. You can custom build any ethics in this way.

>>10993343
Read it for the first time at 24 (now 26) here.
Hardcore Objectivist now. It wasn't Atlas that did it btw. It was The Virtue of Selfishness and Philosophy: Who Needs It that did it.
Atlas is great but all it really is is a mechanism to present he philosophy to the layman. All an intellectual really needs from it is John Galt's Speech. As I'm sure you've gathered.

>>10993535
Bullshit. That is exactly in line with the definition. YOUR dipshit hurr food/comforts should be rights premise erroneously modifies the definition.
Damage control.

>>10993578
>anon delivers well thought out response
>you deliver a slew of ad hominem attacks

Yeah, I'm sure Ayn Rand is for mature adults...

>>10993604
Fresh off of reddit?

>>10991337
It unironically is though

>>10993631
No, I've been here for years. Trying to stem the tide of recent Randposting.

>>10993643
Her system is deficient.

>>10993557
I was memeing greentext frog from london. As I'm sure you've gathered. But anyway nice reply.

>>10993658
He's probably one of the posts ITT.

Phoneposting in his flat, laying on his bed, eating doritos with the signature dip.

This man is your 'Hank Rearden', Randists.

>>10991225
If you read Ayn Rand and dont immediately recognise how she needs to take collectivism to the absolute extreme in order to criticise it, you're a fucking brainlet.
Fucking Jews.

>>10993825

>to the extreme

Liar

>>10991509
>Vague charlatanic bullshitters like Zizek are treated as more worthwhile than bill gates or Elon musk.
you cannot be serious. Musk's book sold gangbusters more than the total combined sales of every single Zizek book. When Musk reccs a book it instantly sells out on Amazon. There's reverential admiration bordering on worship of these entreneurs. Only academe cares about Zizek and even then it's a fraction of a fraction.

>>10993851
We reading the same author?

>>10991225
read Death of Ivan Ilyich instead

>>10991509
>Vague charlatanic bullshitters like Zizek are treated as more worthwhile than bill gates or Elon musk
haha, why capitallets are such crybabies
these demigods of capital are treated better than monarchs, yet you assume your position of offended dignity, like we're too fucking short-sighted and can't spot your infinitely exaggerated bullshit

>>10993825
She only tertiarily maligned collectivism. Secondarily she maligned Altruism but primarily her true enemy was what she termed the "anticonceptual mentality".
And that means Immanuel Kant.

>>10993578
Is access to food and water a required condition for man's proper survival?

>>10991485
Every empire in history is resource lottery caused

>>10994540
No not at all, the Aryans just killed and conquered people and took whatever resources were lying around

>>10994513
Instead of rephrasing in other words link-related, I'm just going to post them.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/individual_rights.html
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/property_rights.html

Her metaethical basis falls for the is/ought problem

OP here. I'm about 40 pages from the end now.

>>10992609
>Inventive Bussinessmen on the cusp of innovation and productive excellence
Bill Gates got rich by getting windows included on mass market computers as the industry standard
Musk got rich off of batteries
That they're treated as revolutionary greater human beings is coming way more from this cultural assumption that rich people are necessarily great than any of their actual ideas or innovations.
Neither of them could hold a candle to somebody like Torvalds in their field, but the man's a nobody because he isn't getting paraded around as one of the new techno-feudalist princes

>>10996452
What do you think of the villian's sound wmd? One can only imagine what Thompson was going to say about it in the speech Galt interrupted. Probably threaten the whole world with it and establish his clique as a dictatorship. I wish Rand had thought to try and write that speech in some supplimentary material.

>>10996661
Intok am a gentoofsg but Bill Fstes producive genius is still a reality worth respecting.
>Musk got rich off of batteries
You say that as if it means something bad. And? They are a commodity.

>>10996661
>Torvalds
You have no idea what you're talking about.

Just finished it, lit. It says a lot about society when the morals in this book, which are obvious, get criticised relentlessly.

>>10996821
I'm sorry you feel that way

>>10996823
>morals which are obvious
Objective morality brainlets pls go

>>10996834
>yay moral relativism allows me to have no cognitive dissonance whatsoever all cultures are beautiful

>>10996834
your parents having a child was objectively wrong

>>10996834
Fuck off subjectivist.

>>10991225
I recently listened to the speech in audiobook format on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F5nhYo5nx4 Fuck me Christopher Hurt's performance was masterful. It's even better in audio.
Anyone who says the speech is too long and doesn't realize literally every word had to there and the speech was exactly as long as it needed to be is a goddamn brainlet.

Hi guys.

I noticed that our dear learned friends over at /sci/ have a fairly extensive 15GB torrent of (text)books on a number of subjects under STEM. I see a LOT of reading lists posted on this board and on the /lit/ wiki, is there any reason why anyone hasn't gone and done this for this board? Or if they have, please link me. I think /lit/'s library would probably be quite a bit larger and it would definitely take a while to create.

>>10991225
>In the name of a return to morality, you have sacrificed all those evils which you held as the cause of your plight. You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty.

>reason to faith

>rrreeeaaasssooonnnn tooo ffffaaaiiithhh

I can feel her cold slimy jewish soul from behind my screen desu

>>10996823
> “Sacrifice could be proper only for those who have nothing to sacrifice—no values, no standards, no judgment—those whose desires are irrational whims, blindly conceived and lightly surrendered. For a man of moral stature, whose desires are born of rational values, sacrifice is the surrender of the right to the wrong, of the good to the evil.

Ayn Rand was probably the closest a physical person has gotten to being an embodiment of the antichrist. She honestly should have been hung or burned at the stake

>>10997120
Why are you posting this here instead of in an Opening Post?

>>10997130
Faith is shit and everyone including the faithful know it.

>>10997139
Redpill Jesus Christ was the antichrist

>>10997210
Faith is the backbone of religion, and goodwill towards others.

>>10997217
>Jesus Christ was the antichrist

Do the mods have the liberty to just ban, like, academically retarded posts? I mean this is just blatantly wrong and he just wants to cause a conflict.

>>10997221
Faith is the backbone of all Mysticism and is unadulterated evil.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/faith.html

>>10997234
Relax. I made a funny almond activator.

>>10992662
why do marxfags always insist on showing everyone they’ve never had a job in every post

>>10997113
>>10991225
I like D'Anconia's Money Speech even better. Its shorter, is exclusively about money, and completely annihilates commie assholes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ2_ZxveT6U

>>10997284
Comes with the territory

>>10997284
Communists don't work. It's what makes their statements so ironic.

Show me a communist who works. Show me ONE communist who has worked a day in their life and I will show you a dumb man.

>>10997234
>Gets lightly mocked with absurdist humor for the equally absurd hyperbole that a philosopher he doesn't like was literally the antichrist
>Ohmigawd mods ban this mean troll now

its not even literature
its just objectivist/motivational drivel

>>10998058
I'm not the other guy, moron.

No one on 4chan is anyone else, this is what you have to accept. You should only debate ideas, not strive for ad hominem attacks.

That idea is purposefully idiotic and you know it. Religion is a net good for the community, whether or not you recognize it as the truth.

>>10998128
>I'm not the other guy, moron.
And I was somehow supposed to know this because...
>That idea is purposefully idiotic and you know it.
Ding ding no fucking shit I knew it. Ya know, the joke?

>>10998128
Your post heavily indicated you were that same guy anon. Apparently you lack the foresight to simply use the common formating technique of
>not him but___

>>10998142
You shouldn't ever need to do that because ad hominem attacks are never present in an actual intellectual discussion.

Ofc I don't know why I'm even really worried, there are no intellectual discussions in an Ayn Rand thread. It's just a bunch of idiots throwing around philosophers' names with a woman who was a severely greedy, and selfish lady. Both in society and real life.

>>10998154
Ad hominems are fine here. The ad hominem FALLACY is what is inexcusable. If I can't call people morons for their moronic argumentation in lightharted/banterly/semi-serious/completely fucking serious ways in whatever (on topic) manner I see fit there is no goddamn point in coming to 4chan.
It's what people come to 4chan for newfag.

You're just singling me out in particular for the purposes of cross implicating Objectivists as mean, fallacious, cultish ect. This aint my first rodeo faggot.

>>10998195
Objectivists are just out of touch with reality. They think that reading a 1000-page book where the writer states that there shouldn't be taxes is intelligent.

It's completely asinine and out of touch with reality. It's the kind of thing someone does when they read Beyond Good and Evil and want to create a system of 'totem morality' like Nietzsche said in muh book I read.

>>10998290
That is not related to my central point anon. This time the ad hominem fallacy IS being performed. By you.
Support your assertion that Objectivists are "out of touch with reality", and why, or this statement can be dismissed just as easily as you made it.
>Nietzsche
This is to be unaware of how different from Nietzsche's Egoism Rand's Egoism really is.
I recommend you listen to link related to become cognizant of the difference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6gV1MUSXMg

Bump

>>10991225
Because it's based upon faulty premises.
Because many of the biggest human achievements were only possible thanks to state support.
Because it negate the lower class suffering just because the "enlightened" ubermensch has some quality useful to society yet fail to understand how the same principle means that the 190cm tall, 120 kg heavy Grug is morally justified to take your food because he's the best mammoth hunter and that is more valuable to the tribe than the frail midget 10 IQ smarter Grog.
Because it's nothing more than reality denial used to make feel Trump and middle class people deserving of their wealth and quell the nagging thought of (in many cases) being nothing more than born lucky.
Because a 64 pages speech of Galt sucking his own dick made even Hayek cringe

>>10996866
>im so scared of others opinions even if human life is completely subjective so i make this objective moral thingy up

brainlets pls leave
>>10996849

>>10998879
I'll quake in ineffectual terror once you explictly posit the wonders of subjectivism and make an embarrassment out of me.
I'm listening.

>>10997988
>work as delivery boy
>on-call 20 h/w contract 1 month contract as trial
>work full time anyway
>never complain, always do a good job, boss imply i'm getting a contract extension
>last 3 days work 12+ hours day + 2 hours commute
>contract ends, boss no longer call, shortly after fire me because he no longer need the extra man
also
>brother work as waiter
>he's sick, spend entire night throwing up
>boss refuse to let him rest because "he has obligations to attend and the bar is full"
>brother go to work
>the boss' "obligations" were riding a motorbike around and fucking his new gf
wtf I love marx now

>>10997217
Wow, really makes me think

>>10991337
It inspired me

lolbertarians need to be drenched in white phosphorus

>>11000730
Objectivism is not Libertarianism. Reminder that "libertarian" is only valid as a technical classifier as distinct from authoritarian. Libertarianism is essentially incomplete Objectivism insofar as the former completely abandons and disregards epistemology and metaphysics as inconsequential to it's preferred branches of focus; politics and economics. Marginally ethics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erytcpYpzRk
Libertarianism does not deserve the ism appended to it. But since they insist on treating liberty as a philosophically unsupported primary and insist on LibertarianISM; they should not be refered to as Libertarians and instead "Libertarianists". Objectivists are libertarian in classification only but Libertarianism is a self contradictory fallacy as a "philosophy".
Libertarianist's fundamental error is in that they treat the Non Aggression Principle as an axiom and refuse to allow their observations and tenets to be integrated into a sum.

>>11001242
Jesus christ calm down you fucking nerd

>>11001381

if you read rand's philosophical work before you read her novels it's so fucking blaringly clear that her characters are just an exercise in philosophy and nothing more. it's so damn predictable, everything they do. her characters aren't human beings, they're canisters for her philosophy. i haven't read atlas shrugged but i read the fountainhead and i heaved a sigh of relief once i finished it. her philosophy is fine imo and i haven't so far found any fatal flaws in it but seeing it heavyhandedly translated into a fictional work made me wanna die. just read her nonfiction

>>11000730

>>11001513
Philosphy Who Needs It is my favorite book of all time. I only require John Galt's Speech, Francisco's Money Speech, wnd Rearden's Trial from Atlas.
So this.

>>10991485
>Like really? That's the only way you could ever imagine a technologically and economically powerful African nation? Natural resource lottery?
Have you read Jared Diamond? Environmental determinism is now the dominant leftist explanation for why some societies succeed more than others. See this idiot>>10994540

>>11000730
Socialism is for people too weak and stupid to make it under capitalism.

Ayn Rand premise is that people being rich doesn't affect other people.
But it does, it was proven in 1850's by karl marx.
When somebody has massive amount of capital they'll just keep getting rich at the workers expense until the rich have sucked every last dollar from the working class and the system collapses.

It's wrong in the sense that it is one of the most excruciatingly boring and misplaced self-insert rants in any work of fiction. At the time when I read Atlas Shrugged I generally agreed with Rand (I don't anymore because I'm notbig12) but that part was aweful, some 50 odd pages of bullshit best summarized as tl;dr.

>>11002780
> But it does, it was proven in 1850's by karl marx
> Karl
> Marx

Consider a rope

>>11003726
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/dec/14/world-richest-increased-wealth-same-amount-as-poorest-half
k

>>11003736
> k

nigger, give me a solution to the problem then. It’s easy to say that there is a problem, but are you going to solve it? Fucking degenerate Antifa faggot

>>11003756
eliminate all welfare (not medical assistence). give a basic income calculated around the actual poverty line. if you waste it you can starve on the streets. working give you extra income capping at 5x. all strategic industries nationalized. private sector think about wants economy. ban on marketing and advertising. technical advancement goes towards reducing work hours and raise basic income.
to make this work you need a state self sufficient for energy, food and most natural resources
>b-but people how will i afford my annual iPhone and 50k car?
you don't, we're already wasting too many resources on useless garbage that we throw away the next year

>>10991225
>Having this shit taste
If you're convinced of it being right in its grandiose claims and viewpoints, just by reading it and without further study, you are already beyond help.

>>10997130
Faith in this context isn't fedora but a critic on wishful thinking and the divinization of an idea, in this case socialism.
That's why Rand said "I have no faith, I have convictions" She rejected the substitution of reason by feelings.

>>11002780
>When someone has a massive amount of capital
And that massive amount of capital appears out of nowhere, right? There is just no way that someone acquired wealth by honest and earned means and wanted to secure and prosper his wealth for himself and his sons.

A bit ironic how libertarians use the same "our system would work perfectly if everyone in society subscribed to it" line that communists use.

Because you're not an atom, you're a constitute being of a polis; an organ of a nation organism that extends into the past and future by DNA, that you have an obligation to. Galt is a der ewige Juden who doesn't want to pay taxes to alien goyim; are you as alienated from other men and women of your race as Jews are from goyim?

>>10991485
Africa has natural resource abundance and still live as primitives. Only genetic selection can give the racial capital necessary to produce, maintain, and defend, advanced society.

>>11004117
I figured out why nogs and abos have low IQs: no real winter. I have a theory that it's winter and the way it forces a human to need foresight and plan ahead to not die that selects for high intelligence over millennia.
Just a thought and I don't know how accurate that is. And surely someone has written a paper on something like this.

>>11004105
echoesposters proving once again that they're all crypto-commies

>>11001381
>w-whoa man calm down and let me shitpost, who the fucks actually wants to make good debate around here?

>>11003957
Every single person and creed who posits a system of their own worth following does that numbnuts. It's almost as if it can be true for some but not for others.

>>11004370
>attempting to debate with shitposters
Who's the real idiot here?

>>11005274

>>11004333
Except this entirely falls through when you realize civilization rose from areas of the world without real winter and that Northern Europe was home to less developed hordes of barbarians until they were civilized by Southern civilizations. The Egyptians, Persians, Babylonians, and Greek were far more accomplished thousands of years before Northern Europeans and Germanics had a single noteworthy accomplishment as a civilization. Fact of the matter is Africa is where it’s at direcy due European Imperialism and colonialism.

>>11005462
>muh Imperialism
It's not even close to directly dumdum. Contributory? Sure.

>>10997210
rip