AS 3:7 This is John Galt Speaking

PLOT
Jim tells Dagny that Hank has deserted. Dagny gets a note from Hank saying he has met John Galt and Hank doesn't blame Dagny. Mr. Thompson is scheduled to speak to the nation on November 22 about the world crisis. His message is interrupted by John Galt's three-hour speech.


SUBPLOT (loose ends)
Mr. Boyle has had a nervous breakdown.

Eddie, Dr. Stadler, and Dagny are the only ones who recognize Galt's voice.


COMMENTS
Model - The model is now complete. This speech is long because it ties up ALL the loose ends. It shows how all the themes are connected in minute detail. This speech is essentially the whole novel, but it is so concentrated, it took 900 pages to set it up. In fact, the reader has to have made his or her own journey in order to understand the speech. This speech could be seen as Judgment Day. However, John Galt has spent the last twelve years removing people who produce through refining their moral code. This is analogous to the Rapture where people with a sound moral code are removed from the earth. The Bible alludes to the Rapture happening in the twinkling of an eye instead of over twelve years. There are two ways to learn: understanding and experience. Dagny believes the world will learn by understanding. That is why she left the valley. Galt believes the world will only learn by experience, however, this speech is him giving everyone one last opportunity to learn by understanding. Throughout the Bible, God always approached people through understanding first. When they chose not to think, He had them learn the hard way, by experience.

Outline - Allan Gotthelf ("Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged") summarized the speech in five sentences. Here are the five sentences with the page numbers from the standard version of Atlas Shrugged:
1. The world is perishing from the morality of sacrifice, and the men of the mind are on strike against this morality, which is speeding up the process of destruction. (1009-11)
2. The proper, rational morality for man is one of life and reason, based on the axiom that existence exists. (1011-24)
3. The morality of sacrifice is the morality of death, for it demands renunciation of that which makes life possible: the mind—and thus of any enjoyment of life on earth. (1024-34)
4. This code is taught by men who, having renounced their mind, seek power over the consciousnesses of other men, by attempting to convince these others to renounce their own minds and accept the morality of sacrifice; the deepest motive of these teachers of sacrifice is hatred of existence, of life, of man, of themselves—and their goal is to destroy their victims and themselves. (1034-47)
5. If all men of reason reject—as we the strikers have—their doctrines of mysticism and sacrifice, realizing that no compromise is possible, and refuse to support them, demanding instead a society of rights and freedom, then the society of the mystics and looters will perish, and then we will have a world of reason, freedom, achievement, and joy. (1047-69)

The titles of each section can be seen as:
1. Introduction
2. Morality of Life
3. Morality of Death
4. Your Teachers (The cause of what is wrong in the world.)
5. Choose Life

One key point that eludes many Objectivists is Ayn didn't have a problem with the Bible. She had a problem with people who teach the Bible, because their interpretation is contradictory. From the beginning of the novel, Dagny and Hank wondered why there was a problem in the world. This speech says the answer is: "People don't think for themselves. Instead, they rely on teachers to think for them and these teachers present a contradictory model for life." The rest of this post goes into the specific aspects of the model for life.

3-D – Everyone knows the physical realm is unfulfilling. Everyone wants to get to the spiritual realm (feelings). The progression is physical to spiritual through the process of thinking. Thinking is the key. Eastern philosophy tries to attain the spiritual by avoiding thinking; they skip over it and say things are unexplainable. This chapter proves once and for all the importance of thinking in order to attain the spiritual (joy).

Proof – That’s why the speech is long: it is a proof thinking is essential to move from a physical focus (where emotions are causeless, i.e., emotions are the CAUSE) to a spiritual focus (where emotions are the EFFECT). Ayn wanted the speech to be able to defend itself for eternity, so with each major section she had to include all the other options and why they are contradictory in order to prove the truth.

Blank-out – This is the ultimate negative response people can have to their only moral responsibility (to think). Now that you are aware of it, you’ll be shocked at the lengths people will go in order not to think. What amazes me is the number of religion experts who won’t address tough questions logically. They just blank out. They feel “what they don’t know won’t hurt them”. When they say, “it takes faith”, they are telling you not to think and just feel. It’s rare to find people pursuing the truth and trying to understand it. "Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which you all practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think." We need to make a commitment to pursue the truth and try to understand for ourselves what is the truth. "An inventor is a man who asks ‘Why?’ of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and the mind." I'm always amazed at people who let others think for them. "There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. Every form of causeless self-doubt, every feeling of inferiority and secret unworthiness is, in fact, man’s hidden dread of his inability to deal with existence." Blanking out doesn’t make the problem go away. The way to solve problems is to think (recognize patterns and understand) and create knowledge that didn’t exist before. The most popular way to blank out is to let others think for you, hence, the "Your Teachers' section.

Press - There are so many examples of letting others think for you, but the press is my favorite. People seem to think they are getting all the facts when they really get 95% opinion. Another fallacy is if it isn't reported then it must not be news or must not be worth knowing. This is another example of "blanking-out" and letting someone else think for you. "At the crossroads of the choice between ‘I know’ and ‘They say,’ he chose the authority of others, he chose to submit rather than to understand, to believe rather than to think. From then on, afraid to think, he is left at the mercy of unidentified feelings. As there can be no causeless wealth, so there can be no causeless love or any sort of causeless emotion. Observe that he does not expect you to feel a causeless fear."

God - God is Right and Just. I have found every religion believes this model; they are just contradictory in their explanation. However, I found the Bible completely meshes with this model and the tools for determining truth. Atlas Shrugged actually agrees with the Bible.

Bible Notes - In fact, rather than try to hit all the points that are made in the speech, I'd like to focus on a handful of points and show how AS really matches up well with the Bible. The confusing part of AS is Galt is God the Creator, yet Ms. Rand wants to also make him the ideal man (Jesus). God would be the ideal man. However, the story makes more sense if we realize when Galt focuses on ideas he is the Creator and when he focuses on action he is the romantic lead (Jesus). Here are my extremely abbreviated Bible notes.

Eden - Ms. Rand is correct with her evaluation of the immorality of organized religion's interpretation of Eden. However, the Bible is more in line with Ms. Rand. God created Adam and Eve without the knowledge of good and evil, therefore there was no guilt. God said not to eat of a specific tree. They did. Was it the fruit or the act that allowed them to know evil? I believe it was the act. They didn’t follow grace. But they did NOT get kicked out of Eden because of disobedience. God (being moral) asked Adam why he did it. Adam could have done the moral thing: and told the truth (confessed) and repented. Everything that's written in the Bible says Adam would have been forgiven and possibly continued to live in Eden. However Adam’s answer was to ignore reality and shift the blame to Eve. THAT was the cause for leaving Eden. Eve was given a chance to answer God. She could have done the moral thing and told the truth and repented. Then she could have stayed. Instead, she shifted the blame. THAT was the cause for leaving Eden. In the Bible, it says Eve looked at the fruit comparatively. She saw what agreed with eating it. She didn’t look contrastively. Thinking comparatively actually let evil into the world. If you want to know the source of evil: it is comparative thinking. If Adam and Eve always thought contrastively, they would still be in Eden.

Grace Review - Your goal is to modify your moral code to match your unique sound moral code. The ability to recognize and retain truth for yourself (self awareness?) will determine your ability to attain your sound moral code. The extent you let your sound moral code direct your action is the measure of grace you demonstrate. This process is completely dependent upon the individual's ability to think. Understanding there are hundreds of principles, there are almost an infinite number of moral codes and sound moral codes. To take this model another step, the difference between your moral code and your sound moral code may be great or slight depending on the individual. Some people may have very little difference between their original moral code and their sound moral code (like Jesus?). Some people may have huge differences or may have made the differences greater through their lack of acquiring and retaining truth, or just not thinking. Remember, your moral code is proven by what you do, NOT what you say you'll do.

Original Sin - Original sin comes from the fact each man's original moral code is not sound. That is, man's instinct (first response without thinking) is to be comparative (sin). Sin is that which is done apart from faith, and faith is based on experience and understanding. However, it is only sin if you KNOW better. (Recall, Stadler was the guiltiest because he knew better. Hank was the guiltiest man in the room at the party.) If you don’t think, instinct (original moral code) will cause you to sin, but we know better because we have the choice over whether we want to think or not. Ms. Rand agrees with all of this. "Man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. Man has no automatic code of survival. An ‘instinct’ is an unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct." However, organized religion presents all of this the way Ms. Rand says they present it: "Faith is the opposite of understanding and sin is out of our control". The term "Original Sin" is not in the Bible. The way to look at "Original Sin" is to ask yourself, What is the root cause of your (and everyone else's) sin? The answer from the Bible is NOT bad behavior (e.g., Adam eating the fruit). The answer is your response to being proven wrong. If you respond to being proven wrong by thinking comparatively and justifying yourself in pride, you are evil. If you respond by humbling yourself and admitting you are wrong, you are not evil. John Galt said the same thing this way: "An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge human beings by the standard of an impossible, automatic omniscience." and "But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought." Ayn and the Bible believe in the same root cause of man's sin!

Hell – The Bible says hell will be cast into the lake of fire where people are in constant torment. Why? Could it be because these people chose not to think? Profitability (creation) is based on thinking about the truth. The people in torment will not create anything. How is this possible? Perhaps God is giving them what they want: blank out. Certainly the constant torment will not allow them the opportunity to think.

Dispensations – God has a specific way for people to remain profitable forever. However, God is Right and Just. If God instituted this plan against the will of the individual, then God would no longer be Just. Also, if God instituted the plan and someone said, “I think it could have worked another way.” God would not be Just. In order for God to prove this specific way is Right, God has to use deconfirmatory thinking to prove all the other possible scenarios don’t work. These different scenarios are called Dispensations. The first involved the Garden of Eden. People had direct contact with God and no knowledge of good and evil. The results showed this scenario was flawed. The second scenario allowed people to live hundreds of years. The thought may have been given enough time, people would realize morality is profitable and evil is not. The result was there was only one moral person: Noah. The third scenario shortened the lives of people after the Flood. The thought may have been having less time and seeing others die would give people a sense of urgency to figure out what was moral. However, it appears these people focused on the physical and built a tower. God mixed their languages and created nations. The fourth scenario involved God finding a person (Abram) and focusing on the resulting nation to try and turn things around, but this fourth scenario didn't work.

Moses – In the fifth scenario, God gave Moses the Law. Before the law was given, people couldn't realize they were wrong until after having guilt immediately after immorality. The Law was given to help people better realize they were sinful without having to sin. It also showed forcing everyone to do the right thing, by objectively defining specific sin, doesn't result in people doing the right thing. God proved being a looter and a moocher doesn't work in the long term. However, the Law itself is truth. This is a subtle point. The Law says lying won't be profitable to you in the long term. (It's amazing how many times the word profitable is used in the Bible.) John Galt says lying makes you a slave and isn't profitable to you in the long term. However, God and John Galt both want to leave it up to the individual to decide if they are going to lie. They want the individual to be motivated from the inside (grace). Organized religion wants to force you not to lie (looter) or make sure you feel bad if you lie (moocher).

Jesus - The Gospels show Jesus as the most purposeful person that ever lived. (Recall Francisco "could always name the purpose of his every random moment". AS 1:5) Jesus constantly talked about profitability and gave a reason for everything He did. In earlier notes I asked, "Why should we be kind to our enemies?" The reasons given in the Old Testament and New Testament are the same, "So we will get a reward". Think about that. Jesus gives us a reason (rational) and a value why it benefits us (self-interest) to be kind to our enemies. (Justice says we all get exactly what we deserve, both good and bad. If we give value to our enemies then the only way we will get what we deserve is from God. Being kind to your enemies is a guaranteed way to get value directly from God.) Jesus was the first person to preach the Gospel of "rational self-interest" (Yikes!). This is the easiest way to fluster a second-hand Christian. Organized religion has told them Jesus preached selflessness, however the Gospels record He gave a value and a reason why it benefits us to do everything He said. You don't HAVE to do what Jesus (or John Galt) says, but it makes you profitable in the long term. (By the way, “The Matrix: Reloaded” states Neo is in the sixth version of the Matrix. We live in the sixth dispensation. In “The Matrix”, Agent Smith says the first version of the matrix was a paradise but was rejected by humans. Our first dispensation, the Garden of Eden, was also a paradise rejected by humans.) So is this sixth scenario a success?

Cross - Most of the confusion surrounding Jesus occurs because people don't determine where they are relative to the cross. When someone quotes Jesus they need to determine if they are prior to the cross (when Jesus fulfilled Jewish Law) or after the cross (when Jesus demonstrated Christianity).

Rapture - Just like in AS, God takes all the "producers" out of the world to prove their value. It's the only Just thing to do. All other religions believe this world needs to be purified by removing the “bad” people. Terrorism is being fueled by this belief. It is interesting to note Christianity is the only religion that believes the people with a sound moral code will be removed and the earth will be left to the people with an unprofitable moral code (just like Ayn wrote). For that reason, everyone else will unite when the sound moral code people are gone because it fits all of their beliefs.

Millennium - During the Millennial Reign (seventh scenario), the Devil is locked up. I know Christians who think that will be Heaven. However, the Bible says after 1000 years the Devil will be loosed and he will deceive people. How? Well I always ask Christians how they convert people. (Basically, what is their John Galt destroyer speech?) About 99.9% of the time it has to do with how to avoid sickness, hell, and depression. Then I say, "It looks like you NEED the Devil, otherwise, how would you explain to people why they need to know God (be moral)?" During the Millennial Reign, people will have to learn to be moral enough to resist the thing they've never experienced. Worse, people may say, “I can do whatever I want and repent in 900 years just before the Devil comes back.” Obviously, this isn't a profitable scenario. The only option is God’s. By the way, is it more profitable to know or not to know when Jesus is coming back?

Joy - Joy results in the creation of energy (life). This is different for each individual. What things do you do that result in you having more energy? That is, when you are done, you feel more alive. These are the principles that should be high in your moral code. Joy is spoken of repeatedly in the Bible. The Bible says it is our strength and is so important it should be tied to something we have control over. "Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live." God very definitely states being moral makes you happiest in the long term. "You who are worshippers of the zero – you have never discovered that achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. Joy is not ‘the absence of pain,’ intelligence is not ‘the absence of stupidity,’ building is not done by abstaining from demolition. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy. Happiness is only possible to a rational man." The Bible does give us things to aspire to, benefits and reasons. Yet, organized religion seems to focus on removing negatives. It's a subtle point, but this seems to be inherent in people. They look at things as being less bad rather than short of good. The biggest example is…

Life – "Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence." Galt thinks "life" and "existence" are two different things! The ultimate value to aspire for is life (the ability to create/repair), which isn't the same as ‘not death’. What do most people think ‘life’ or ‘living’ is? "Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it. A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death." Life (like profitability) requires a specific course. "Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is his only means to gain it." Life is dependent on knowledge. "You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island – it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today." Life is dependent on morality. In fact, it is all fitted together at the beginning of the speech. The speech is essentially God telling the individual knowledge that creates life, which is the same as “grace” (the divine influence on the heart and its reflection in the life). The heart of the John Galt speech centers around contrasting life and death:

"My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists – and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason – Purpose – Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge – Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve – Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living." (The trinity of reason, purpose, and self-esteem can be seen as being embodied by Ragnar, Francisco, and Galt, respectively.)


PRACTICAL APPLICATION (worth rereading)
The whole speech is ultimately the section worth rereading from the standpoint of the entire novel. I'm going to just focus on four key points.

Sacrifice - Sacrifice means "to kill flesh". However, people use it to mean when they give a greater value in order to get a lesser value in return. When sacrifice is used in this manner, Ms. Rand is right; it is immoral. However, Ms. Rand agrees with the Bible's view of sacrifice. That is, man needs to chose to kill their fleshly, instinctual desires and follow their mind. Another way of saying this is a person needs to exhibit grace: ignore their original moral code and act according to their unique sound moral code. "‘Sacrifice’ is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t. If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty." Now the example makes sense. The mother needs to kill her flesh and do what is more profitable in the long term.

Control - "To undercut your consciousness has always been their only purpose throughout the ages – and power, the power to rule you by force, has always been their only lust." It is ALL about control. The Eastern mystics try to control people by getting them to blank-out. Organized religion tries to control people by telling them they can't understand God and need not think. The Bible and God don't try to control people. They focus on freedom. It takes intelligence and character to exhibit grace (divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life), the same as it took Hank to refine and follow his sound moral code.

Government - Government loves to control people. That is not its purpose. "The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law." The democrats try to control your money. The republicans try and control your social conduct. Neither of them trust (or want?) people to live free. September 11th caused our government to return to their #1 purpose: protection. Remember, a business that doesn’t successfully address its #1 purpose will be forced to address it.

Childlike - It all starts during childhood. "Somewhere in the starting years of your childhood, before you had learned to submit, to absorb the terror of unreason and to doubt the value of your mind, you had known a radiant state of existence, you had known the independence of a rational consciousness facing an open universe. That is the paradise you have lost, which you seek – which is yours for the taking." Is this the ultimate cause of our problems? If so, what is the ultimate solution?


SUPPLEMENT
"I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it’s juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss." (Cypher, The Matrix)

"To deny our impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human." (Mouse, The Matrix)

"The matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy...and when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen. Teachers. Lawyers. Carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemies. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged...and many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it." (Morpheus, The Matrix)

“Over a hundred years ago, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis noticed that maternity patients were dying at an alarming rate. He made the connection that the patients were being treated by students who had just finished working on cadavers! After insisting that the students wash their hands before treating the mothers, the number of deaths decreased fivefold.” Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (It’s a good thing Dr. Ignaz didn’t decide to ignore the problem and hope maybe it would go away.)

"He looks on men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it didn't profit me; He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life will see the light." (Job, Old Testament)

"A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work today in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not; but afterward he repented, and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir; and went not. Whether of them twain did the will of his father?" (Bible)

"If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; for in doing so, …the Lord will reward you. (Proverbs)

"But I tell you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. For if you love those who love you, what reward can you have?" (Jesus)

"For the joy of the Lord is your strength." (Bible)

"Notwithstanding don't rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven." (Bible)

"Therefore you will draw water out of the wells of salvation with joy." (Bible)

"I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." (Jesus)

"I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is the matrix? Control. The matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control." (Morpheus, the Matrix)

"Prudence means practical common sense, taking the trouble to think out what you are doing and what is likely to come of it. Nowadays most people hardly think of Prudence as one of the 'virtues'. In fact, because Christ said we could only get into His world by being like children, many Christians have the idea that, provided you are 'good,' it does not matter being a fool. But that is a misunderstanding. In the first place, most children show plenty of ‘prudence’ about doing the things they are really interested in, and think them out quite sensibly. In the second place, as St. Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to remain children in intelligence: on the contrary, He told us to be not only 'as harmless as doves,' but also 'as wise as serpents'. He wants a child’s heart, but a grown-up’s head. He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate, and teachable, as good children are; but He also wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in first class fighting trim. The fact that what you are thinking about is God Himself (for example, when you are praying) does not mean that you can be content with the same babyish ideas which you had when you were a five-year-old. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all. But, fortunately, it works the other way round. Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened." (CSL-MC)


Next Chapter: The Egoist

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