Dagny is at the Taggart Lodge trying to learn to live without the railroad. Francisco comes and says he can now tell her everything. As he is explaining, an announcement comes over the radio about the Taggart Tunnel disaster. Dagny leaves immediately for TT. Jim wrote a resignation letter only to tear it up after Dagny returns. Dagny tells Eddie they’re going back to the days of Nat Taggart. Dagny lets Mr. Weatherby know she is going to blatantly break the Law. Mr. Weatherby says he’ll help her.
SUBPLOT (loose ends)
Dagny knows Francisco loves her. “She knew that it was the statement she had never heard from him, the greatest confession of love a man could make."
Francisco found out Dagny was at the Lodge even though Eddie was the only one who knew and Francisco hasn’t talked to Eddie in over a year.
Francisco says he is destroying d’Anconia Copper “consciously, deliberately, by plan and my own hand”.
Francisco says he was the first deserter.
COMMENTS
This chapter demonstrates the four ways of thinking.
JIM IN THE OFFICE (EVASION)
He’s going more negative. “He sat, looking down at his desk, keeping his eyes and his mind out of focus.” He’s intentionally losing focus. “He had always regarded thought and words as inconclusive, but a material shape was that which he had spent his life escaping: a commitment.” He has spent his life trying to escape commitment. No focus, no commitment…can he get any more negative?
DAGNY AT WOODSTOCK (DRIFT)
Dagny's thinking at Woodstock consisted of three objectives, with at least one of them being a DON'T. The result is she doesn't make any progress...
"The progression of the dates on that paper was the only movement in the stillness of her days, like the record kept by a prisoner on a desert island."
"She had intended the dates to lead to a purpose, but she could not say whether she had reached it or not."
What she actually did was "go backward" and worked towards restoring:
"She cleared the brush from under her walls, she reshingled the roof, she repainted the door and the frames of the windows."
"The work gave her the calm she needed; she had not noticed how she began it or why; she had started without conscious intention, but she saw it growing under her hands, pulling her forward, giving her a sense of peace."
She couldn't intentionally state this purpose...she found it by drifting. The purposes she did state are even more interesting:
"She had come here with three assignments, given, as orders, to herself: rest - learn to live without the railroad - get the pain out of the way."
I think I could make the case all three were a DON'T, but here is the main point: You cannot do a don't.
"...don't think of that..."
Actually, our brains are made in such a way we are three times more likely to do what we are told not to do. If a person is walking over a rug and you say, "Don't trip!", that person is now three times MORE likely to trip. Did your intentional purpose help the person by saying, "Don't trip" or hurt them? If you wanted to help the person stay focused, you would say, "Be careful" or "Lift your knees when you walk over that rug."
I teach both the positive and negative implications of this to executives, teachers, coaches, and parents. For instance, if you want an opponent to miss a free-throw, you don't say, "Miss it"...you say, "Don't miss it"...and they are now three times more likely to miss it.
Notice, Dagny says some form of "Stop, it!" five times while she is at Woodstock. THAT implies she was unable to accomplish this DON'T objective at least four times. If she was focused, she would have only had to say it once.
Dagny is trying to live at EVASION, however, she is only happy at DRIFT.
DAGNY IN HER OFFICE (FOCUS)
In the office, Dagny has one objective and she makes progress. In fact, her one objective is the same as what she tangibly accomplished at Woodstock through drifting! It's just now she is doing it intentionally:
"Here face did not change, but a faint note in her voice acknowledged him, a note of gentleness, not reproof: "The old maps of the days before the tunnel. We're going back Eddie. Let's hope we can."
Again, I believe this novel was years ahead of its time in understanding the human condition and, when properly applied, is the second greatest self help book ever written. So, I'm going to pause here to make this point in hopes it will help people:
If you have more than one objective, rank them and then focus on the first one. Even when you have one objective, it is made up of steps. Determine the first step, focus on accomplishing it, AND ONLY IT, then focus on the next step:
"Phone the Terminal manager downstairs and tell him to put all the transcontinental trains back on the schedule at once, including tonight's Comet. Then come back here."
Ayn does an excellent job of describing Dagny in the office as focused and intentional. Here are a couple of excerpts:
"Her face gave no sign of acknowledgement to anyone, no greeting, as if her presence here were inevitable and no words were necessary. She went straight to the door of her office; passing the desk of her secretary, she said, her voice like the sound of a business machine, neither rude nor gentle, "Ask Eddie to come in."
"She heard - with the attentive look of a machine equipped to record, not to react - Eddie's account of what one month had done to the railroad."
She even focused past Jim:
"Then he saw the faintest change in her face, merely the indication of perceiving a human presence, but she was looking past him and he turned and saw that Eddie Willers had entered the office."
Dagny wants progress, but I believe progress means getting nearer to the tangible result she wants. If the railroad has taken a wrong turn, going forward does not get her nearer to her result. Progress means first doing a U-turn and going back to a previous right result.
In fact, the person who turns back the soonest is the most excellent person. The measure isn't right and wrong, in and of itself. The measure is our response to wrong. Notice, everyone in this novel is wrong at least once.
Continuing forward and evading the fact we are wrong is evil. Admitting we are wrong and going backwards takes focus...and the most excellent people admit their mistakes the quickest. (This is the real measure of "growth mindset".)
Dagny is at FOCUS in the moment, but she is not happy about it.
FRANCISCO (?)
Francisco gives Dagny an explanation of the dangers of splitting the mind and body with contradictions and Dagny doesn't understand. Do you think Dagny is unable or unwilling to understand Francisco?
My question to first time readers is: Which thought process do you think Francisco is following?
A. Jim's evasive thought process
B. Dagny's drifting thought process at Woodstock
C. Dagny's focused thought process in her office
D. None of the above
PRACTICAL APPLICATION (worth rereading)
Francisco’s explanation to Dagny is worth rereading. Here are the highlights:
“We produced the wealth of the world – but we let our enemies write its moral code. They know that you’ll bear anything in order to work and produce, because you know that achievement is man’s highest moral purpose, that he can’t exist without it, and your love of virtue is your love of life. They know it. You don’t. The day when you’ll discover it is the only thing they dread. You must learn to understand them. You won’t be free of them, until you do. We’re the only ones who know how little value or meaning there is in material objects as such, because we’re the ones who create their value and meaning. You do not have to depend on any material possessions, they depend on you, you create them, you own the one and only tool of production. Wherever you are, you will always be able to produce. Leave them the carcass of that railroad – but don’t leave them your mind!”
Notice anyone who states "Atlas Shrugged" is about material wealth is proving they didn't get passed the halfway point of this novel. Here are more passages to consider:
"Dagny, this is not a battle over material goods."
"Dagny, we who've been called 'materialists' by the killers of the human spirit, we're the only ones who know how little value or meaning there is in material objects as such, because we're the ones who create their value and meaning. We can afford to give them up, for a short while, in order to redeem something much more precious. We are the soul..."
"By the grace of the same love as yours," he answered quietly, "my love for d'Anconia Copper, for the spirit of which it was the shape."
The themes are coming together. Like all great models, there comes a point when the main pieces need to be fitted together. This is what we’ve been witnessing in the last several chapters. Themes are overlapping. Francisco’s main point is Dagny uses her mind to create life for her enemies. The Law of Causality: Her mind is the cause and material goods are the result. Francisco is telling Dagny she, above all people, should know the mind is more important than her railroad (possessions). The intangible is the cause and the material is the effect...
In the last chapter we discussed Robin Hood and the Core Business concept. Around 1996, there was a modern day (semi) Robin Hood. There was a person who got money from the rich and gave it to the poor. (This person also gave a million dollars of their own money, hence “semi”.) This Robin Hood stated the cause was lack of money and once the poor got it the problem would be solved. So she gave a group of poor people money. A year later she evaluated their situations. To her surprise, these people were worse off. They were in DEEPER debt. In fact, the story that struck her hardest was the person who wouldn’t give up their cell phone even though they couldn’t afford it.
Our Robin Hood was Oprah Winfrey. Whatever you may think about her, you have to admire her response. She decided the old adage was true: “Give a person a fish, feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish, feed them for life.” She realized she had been focused on the result, not the cause. She changed her show’s format, began an institution of higher learning and even charged handsomely for the opportunity to learn from her. Why are we so insistent on treating the result and throwing money away? Why are we so insistent on taking resources away from the people who can create? Let’s face it, we are all responsible for running this “company” (we’re all shareholders) and we’ve all ignored the Core Business concept. Resources should be put towards an organization’s #1 priority and this priority should be done with excellence. If this #1 priority isn’t done with excellence, problems will occur and it will HAVE TO be dealt with eventually. Is it more profitable to deal with the #1 priority up front or after a catastrophe? What OUGHT to be our government’s #1 priority?
Francisco is starting to make sense. He is tough to place on our scale. For the majority of the novel, it has looked like his immorality with Hank and Dagny is either intentional or due to incompetence. Either he is trying to do it or he’s screwing up. However, we may have to consider the only other possibility: he may be moral beyond Hank and Dagny’s comprehension. He may be orders of magnitude ahead of them. Let’s run with this theory…
What if the scale was logarithmic? That is, each unit is ten times greater than the previous unit, similar to the Richter scale and pH scale. Let’s go one step further. If our scale were two dimensional, a person at +1 would be one unit high. That would make +2 ten units high, +3 one hundred units high, etc.
We started with Dagny at +5 (10,000 units high) and James at –5 (10,000 units low). They seemed to be able to communicate. However, Dagny has since moved to around +7 (a million high) and is having a hard time seeing James or being seen by Mr. Weatherby (who are more negative than –5). “They (Dagny and Eddie) did not notice Taggart (Jim), as they did not notice the furniture around them.” “But whenever his (Mr. Weatherby’s) glance rested upon her (Dagny), it registered nothing; she was the only person in the room whom he did not see.” (AS 2:5) Perhaps people can only see 100,000 units or so without effort. That may explain why negative people exhaust positive people, because the effort necessary to bridge the gap is always required from the more positive person. It may be the only way to progress is to have someone of superior ability “lend a hand”.
If Francisco were at +8 or more, he would be 9 million units away from Dagny and Hank. It may be in order to bridge this gap it takes a tremendous amount of energy on Francisco’s part to bring people along. However, when Francisco was interrupted during this process with Hank, Hank was able to defeat Francisco’s argument. Again, Francisco was interrupted during this process while talking to Dagny. He didn’t seem to be taking it as a defeat when Dagny left.
Bottom line: Francisco is either incompetent, a premeditated killer, or on a superior plane.
SUPPLEMENT
“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.” (CSL-MC)
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Proverbs)
“Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all your getting get understanding.” (Proverbs)
“My son, attend to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. For they are life to those that find them, and health to all their flesh.” (Proverbs)
“Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is your life.” (Proverbs)
“How much better is it to get wisdom than gold! And to get understanding rather to be chosen than silver!” (Proverbs)
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about Him being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (CSL-MC)
Next Chapter: The Face Without Pain or Fear or Guilt
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