[HN Gopher] Our Daughter Isn't a Selfish Brat, Your Son Just Has...
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Our Daughter Isn't a Selfish Brat, Your Son Just Hasn't Read Atlas
Shrugged (2010)
Author : belkarx
Score : 47 points
Date : 2022-10-13 17:44 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mcsweeneys.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mcsweeneys.net)
| kderbyma wrote:
| Most people who have a dislike for Atlas Shrugged have a poor
| understanding due to having only engorged themselves on satire
| about the book, poor rendered assumptions about the nature of the
| messages written by enraged people who take offense at what I can
| only assume stems from seeing themselves as part of the groups
| which Rand disparages (collectivism) and frankly tend to have
| never read the book in its entirety let alone anything else
| written by her to have a sense of the ongoing themes and an
| improvement to her writing style.
|
| the book inspires the idea of individual potential....which if
| you have no personal desire to achieve tends to enrage and put
| one on the defence, but for those who have a spark of fire they
| get inspired.
|
| I like the book, and would love to have an honest discourse on
| its flaws that is equally willing to acknowledge the depths of
| its actual arguments and the strengths of propositions when taken
| into account the underlying presumptions that are at the heart of
| the novel. It is a novel after all and not an academic treatise
| which many liken it to because of the marketing.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| I've read about 2/3rds of it. It's a terribly written book -
| too drawn out and on the nose and the "message" is obvious
| since chapter two or so. It's like one of those idiotic self
| help books where if you read first couple chapters you've read
| the whole thing
|
| Same thing with Fountainhead which i read whole
| kderbyma wrote:
| I agree it has flaws and needed an editor.
|
| The book is about 30-40% too long, and does repeat the ideas,
| but if you ignore that aspect which is fair given many books
| suffer from that which are popular and well loved. The
| biggest flaw is the repetition and the final monologue is 5x
| too long.
|
| it is much better when you see the fountainhead. which is
| very similar themes, but has a lot less of those writing
| problems.
| kderbyma wrote:
| Also...it is a novel...so the message part isn't the whole
| point.
|
| There is a plot...
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Yeas but a special kind of novel - more of a manifesto.
| Compare it with something like 1984 which is similar kind
| of manifesto-book but a much more captivating read.
| floor2 wrote:
| My experience is that 99% of the people who hate Atlas Shrugged
| never read the book, they just heard that the people they hate
| like it, so they hate it.
|
| I don't even really understand why people map it onto politics
| in the way they do. It seems to me fundamentally a story about
| people trying to accomplish something big, innovative and
| disruptive but being stymied by the various forces who resist
| or fear change, whether because they're profiting from the
| status quo or they're lazy or ignorant or entitled or whatever.
|
| Like one of the central set of "bad guys" are the rival owners
| of other railroad companies, who are trying to maintain their
| monopoly/cartel. Another set of "bad guys" are the privileged
| family members who expect to have wealth and power by
| birthright. I don't see why a person who had left or far left
| political views wouldn't resonate with the protagonists
| struggles against these various entrenched, privileged rent
| seekers.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Nowhere near as funny as the very seasonally appropriate "It's
| Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers."
|
| -- https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/its-decorative-gourd-
| sea...
| dublin wrote:
| Now THAT'S funny, I don't care who you are. (Although it will
| certainly gag pretty much any content filter that can't buffer
| more than a few dozen F-bombs...)
| jleyank wrote:
| I don't know whose or what philosophy it is but I try to live by
| "don't be an asshole". By extension, "don't associate with
| assholes whenever possible" guides my daily life. Sometimes, I
| can't, so "work allows me to do what I like" helps lessen the
| sting.
|
| I'm also far too lazy and unskilled to write satire and
| admittedly not really patient enough to read it.
| ttfkam wrote:
| "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year
| old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a
| childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with
| its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted,
| socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
| The other, of course, involves orcs."
|
| - John Rogers
| tryptophan wrote:
| I've never understood why Atlas Shrugged gets so much more hate
| than any other book that ever gets mentioned. Its like a rule
| of the internet that anytime it is mentioned, people must show
| up and dunk on it.
| YuriNiyazov wrote:
| Because later on in life, you meet people in corporate
| boardrooms who love doing layoffs and say things like "Atlas
| Shrugged was the best book I've ever read, it changed my
| life"
| redbar0n wrote:
| Seems like the author satirically argues against Objectivism by
| putting up lack of charity and generosity as a straw man
| characterization to attack. He completely ignores the fact that
| taxation is collected irrespective of goodwill attitude, and
| under the threat of force (violence/jail).
|
| I frankly would have hoped the argument was not a straw man and
| that he argued against the actual essence of the philosophy of
| Objectivism. Instead of taking the cheap way out to argue against
| a mere peripheral unfortunate potential consequence of it (when
| taken to an extreme).
| bananarchist wrote:
| This isn't an argument it's a comical story, but no one has
| ever mistaken an objectivist for having a sense of humor, so I
| don't know why I'm surprised by this response.
| bennysonething wrote:
| It's a self righteous rant trying to disguise itself as a
| comical story. Fails due to lack of laughs.
| bananarchist wrote:
| You shoulda been in the room where I was reading it.
| Uncharted chortles. I guess humor is _sub_jective tho...
| benj111 wrote:
| How many Objectivists does it take to change a lightbulb?
| aaron695 wrote:
| redbar0n wrote:
| But it seems you have mistaken me for an Objectivist.
|
| I was hoping for a good satire of Objectivism, one that
| really hit the nail on the head.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Then play Bioshock.
| redbar0n wrote:
| Oh my, it's on my to-play list, so this might just
| inspire me to buy it!
| thedrexster wrote:
| Here's another strong, strong recommendation you do so :D
| bananarchist wrote:
| My mistake. Personally I always smash my thumb whenever I
| swing a hammer.
| [deleted]
| bennysonething wrote:
| Came here to say the same thing, gave up reading article after
| half way through when it became apparent it was a straw man.
| undoware wrote:
| A "straw man" is a variety of argument.
|
| This makes no argument; it is satire -- a caricature -- as
| has been repeatedly pointed out; hence, it cannot be a straw
| man.
|
| Now, this is not to say that it might not blamelessly strike
| you as unfunny; in this case, though, you may want to reword
| your comment as "not funny IMO".
|
| _Shrugs_ I liked it
| Yaa101 wrote:
| Nah, the author is just really sad that poor Johanna will never
| have any real friends...
| benj111 wrote:
| The tag line is "daily humour every day since 1998"
|
| It is, as you point out, satire.
|
| It is a quite common device in satire to set up a less than
| accurate scenario, in order to highlight a single failing. It
| isn't aiming to be a well balanced essay on the pros and cons
| of anything.
| redbar0n wrote:
| Yeah, but there is good satire (which hits the mark, even
| remotely), and there's bad satire.
| gota wrote:
| My dear comrade; you are publicly and repeatedly
| complaining about something not being funny. That is never
| a good sign of dettachment.
|
| No one will ever believe you are not offended by the
| article because everyone knows that, if it were the case,
| you'd simply not have posted (much less replied several
| times)
|
| Let us chill and drink some delicious juice made out of
| these misterious fruits of our labor
| redbar0n wrote:
| I'm not complaining that it wasn't funny. I'm belaboring
| that it was vacuous and disappointing. I want good satire
| that hits something and has a punch!
| skinnymuch wrote:
| I don't think the specifics of why you're complaining is
| the point of the commenter you responded to. It's that
| you're complaining so much. Note the parent comment
| brought up you not being offended or deattached.
| redbar0n wrote:
| I made a single legitimate criticism of the article. I'm
| no objectivist, as mentioned in another reply thread. The
| parent comment did actually assume I took offense from
| the article or is particularly attached to it, both of
| which is false. My only attachment here is to clearing up
| false speculation about my motive.
| moomin wrote:
| You're getting heavily dunked on here, but personally I think
| your parody of an Ayn Rand fan is even more on point than the
| author's.
| jti107 wrote:
| i cant think of any successful/stable long term
| civilization/tribe/country/society/city state that is based on
| this concept.
|
| might work if you're a hermit or lone monk.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It also works for people who have enough weight to throw around
| so that they don't have to care about the consequences of their
| actions. You would think that the social repercussions of doing
| such would be enough to alert someone that they were self-
| sabotaging, but the mindset has a built in mechanism that
| prevents this insight from occurring, namely that it allows the
| user to reframe such feedback as other's attempts at looting
| them from their rewards. It's a bit of a strange mental
| attractor in that respect, once a stable orbit of the
| assemblage of ideas takes place, it is very difficult to
| perturb one out of it.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| I've often been surprised by how many women are fans of Atlas
| Shrugged but I guess having a female main character written by a
| woman has something to do with it as the philosophical themes
| usually aren't aligned with those reader's ideological
| preferences. Male Ayn Rand fans much more frequently prefer The
| Fountainhead, which also features strong female characters but is
| told from a male's perspective. No idea if this is just a
| reflection of people I know or true in the larger societal
| context.
| tinglymintyfrsh wrote:
| Possibly the reader-hero/-author mirror effect. I wouldn't
| ascribe too much to gender equating to philosophical
| tendencies.
|
| I'm often disappointed by the lack of philosophical depth and
| nuance objectivist adherents display. Plus, the arrogance of
| assuming one's perception is exactly the way reality is when
| there are as many viewpoints as there are individuals. Beyond
| math and gravity, subjectivity and ambiguity are the norm.
| Furthermore, no one is an island and cannot scale their efforts
| beyond themselves without cooperation and friendships that
| require solidarity.
|
| Modern libertarianism, the political extension of hyper-
| individualist objectivism, is largely an ideology sold and
| popularized by billionaire climate deniers to cynically benefit
| themselves.
| bjourne wrote:
| Spoiler alert: there is no hardcore sex in Atlas Shrugged.
| mikestew wrote:
| Spoiler alert: it's a humor piece. There's sex in Atlas
| Shrugged, maybe it just doesn't fall into your category of
| "hard core", but again I will point out that it could have been
| described as such for humorous effect.
| [deleted]
| lukewrites wrote:
| Gore Vidal wrote my favorite summation of Ayn Rand:
| This odd little woman is attempting to give a moral sanction to
| greed and self interest, and to pull it off she must at times
| indulge in purest Orwellian newspeak of the "freedom is slavery"
| sort. What interests me most about her is not the absurdity of
| her "philosophy," but the size of her audience (in my campaign
| for the House she was the one writer people knew and talked
| about). She has a great attraction for simple people who are
| puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who
| dislike the "welfare" state, who feel guilt at the thought of the
| suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts.
| For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root
| of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you're dumb
| or incompetent that's your lookout. ...For to justify
| and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral,
| but evil. For one thing, it is gratuitous to advise any human
| being to look out for himself. You can be sure that he will. It
| is far more difficult to persuade him to help his neighbor to
| build a dam or to defend a town or to give food he has
| accumulated to the victims of a famine. But since we must live
| together, dependent upon one another for many things and
| services, altruism is necessary to survival. To get people to do
| needed things is the perennial hard task of government, not to
| mention of religion and philosophy. That it is right to help
| someone less fortunate is an idea which ahs figured in most
| systems of conduct since the beginning of the race. We often
| fail. That predatory demon "I" is difficult to contain but until
| now we have all agreed that to help others is a right action.
| ... Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life a right action
| is consideration for the welfare of others. In the one case,
| through a state which was to wither away, in the other through
| the private exercise of the moral sense. Miss Rand now tells us
| that what we have thought was right is really wrong. The lesson
| should have read: One for one and none for all.
|
| https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a4595/comment-0761/
| theGnuMe wrote:
| I remember the early days of Hacker News (different account)
| where Ayn Rand was praised to high heavens. Libertarianism ad
| nauseum.
| tinglymintyfrsh wrote:
| There's a good reason Julian Assange was dragged out of the
| Ecuadorian embassy holding "History of the National Security
| State".
|
| If we don't live for others, he who dies with most toys still
| wins a lonely, meaningless death. I believe Ayn had a chip on
| her shoulder from growing up in the Soviet Union and took an
| extremist contrarian view rather than a moderate one. Extremism
| is often what catapults people into fame.
|
| _" There is only one party in the United States, the Property
| Party...and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.
| Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in
| their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are
| cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt - until recently... and
| more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments
| when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of
| hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two
| parties."_ -G.V.
| tinglymintyfrsh wrote:
| Is it satire? It reads like a narcissism-rationalizing shitpost
| in the spirit of "throwing trash on the ground creates jobs".
| There is quite a difference in culture between US military
| families and Europeans on one-side and "It's all about me" on the
| other.
| etrevino wrote:
| This is satire. _McSweeney 's_ is a humor literary journal.
| mikestew wrote:
| It would probably be helpful had you previously read _Atlas
| Shrugged_. I am by no means recommending the book (in fact, I
| 'd advise avoiding such poor writing and childish naivety), but
| having been one of the unfortunate folks who wasted hours on
| that book, I knew what the author was going for from the first
| paragraph. And I found it quite humorous.
| [deleted]
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