Albany, NY -- Who is John Galt? I Know!
I'm on vacation (finally) now for a bit, and it's allowed me to get through all 1,200-odd pages of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. It goes without saying that given my stances on poverty, government regulation, and corporate society, I wouldn't have agreed with much of the book. In fact, Officer Barbrady from South Park's statement about it isn't so far off the mark:"At first I was happy to be learning to read... and then I read this: 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of shit I'm never reading again!"
The book was long, it was thick (it took her several pages to say things better writers could say in a few sentences -- one monologue near the end exceeds 50 single-spaced pages!), and it was selfish.
But, there was one aspect of Rand's work that I liked -- her views on love and sex. Whoever wrote this bit of the Wikipedia entry on the book explained it well:
Rand introduces a theory of sex in Atlas Shrugged that is based in her broader ethical and psychological theories. Far from being a debasing animal instinct, sex to Rand is the highest celebration of our values, a physical response to intellectual and spiritual values that gives concrete expression to what could otherwise only be experienced in the abstract. This is a general idea of sexual desire as a response to the embodiment of our values reminiscent of that found in Plato's Symposium.
In Atlas Shrugged, characters are sexually attracted to those who embody their values. Characters who have base values are attracted to those that embody their base values. Characters who lack clear purpose find sex devoid of meaning. Characters with higher values respond sexually to those who embody them. This is illustrated in the contrasting relationships of Hank Rearden with Lillian Rearden and Dagny Taggart, and later with Taggart and John Galt.
From a conversation between Hank Rearden and Francisco D'Anconia: "The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer..."
posted by jbrzoska @ 6:20 PM Trackback Link
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