PLOT
Dr. Stadler escapes to Iowa and finds Cuffy Meigs in charge of Project X. They fight and are killed when they blow up Project X. The explosion destroys the Taggart Bridge. Dagny calls Francisco after learning Dr. Ferris plans on torturing Galt. Dagny does nothing when she learns the Bridge is destroyed. She takes the Striker’s Oath when she meets Francisco. Dr. Ferris, Mr. Mouch, and Jim Taggart are present while Galt is being tortured with electricity. When the generator dies, Galt offers to fix it. Jim goes insane. Mouch and Ferris take Jim away.
SUBPLOT (loose ends)
Mr. Thompson was slumped in an armchair; he had given up. Chick Morrison resigned.
Dagny packs the bracelet, her five-dollar gold piece, picture of Nat, and map of TT.
Dagny puts on a white sweater Galt requested.
Dagny puts the sign of the dollar in lipstick on the statue of Nat.
COMMENTS
Dr. Stadler – From the perspective of the scale, Stadler was a positive acting like a negative in order to "survive". In the previous chapter, we see the reverse of the other "enlightening" scenes. Instead of the positive person talking and the middle dweller accelerating towards the positive end, Galt said nothing and Stadler drove his own growth. Instead of accelerating towards the positive, Dr. Stadler is actively trying to go to the negative to show Galt is wrong. "I’ll show him that there is no other way to live on earth!" The result is the same. Once again, people in the middle end up dead.
Technology – Project X showed technology doesn't think for you. The ability to "think" differentiates us from machines. Remember all work is a combination of knowledge and tasks. Technology ONLY makes tasks more efficient, that is, makes the user more profitable. In order for technology to be used, the job must be understood so well technology can be created to handle EVERY situation and get a reproducible result. Technology doesn't replace knowledge work. This is what I find so fascinating about Artificial Intelligence (AI). Artificial implies it was synthetically created. Intelligence means the ability to create knowledge. The creation of knowledge is necessary in order to sustain one’s own life. Therefore, AI will be truly demonstrated by a machine that is able to sustain its own life and replicate itself. Do we know enough about how knowledge is created so we can replicate it reproducibly?
Jim – Jim is at the end of the negative side of the scale. What does Jim stand for? What is his #1 principle? "He was suddenly seeing the motive that had directed all the actions of his life. It was the lust to destroy whatever was living, for the sake of whatever was not. It was the urge to defy reality by the destruction of every living value, for the sake of proving to himself that he could exist in defiance of reality and would never have to be bound by solid, immutable facts. Now he knew he wanted Galt’s destruction at the price of his own destruction to follow, he knew that he had never wanted to survive, he knew that it was Galt’s greatness he had wanted to torture and destroy." Jim's #1 is DEATH. Looking back to the beginning of the novel, Jim’s responses make sense. He was all about death and evading this self-knowledge. We met him two years into this process.
Galt – Galt is at the end of the positive side of the scale. What does Galt stand for? What is his #1 principle? "For the moment, their only certainty was that they had to escape from that cellar – the cellar where the living generator was left tied by the side of the dead one." Galt's #1 is LIFE. He’s the creator.
Scale – The scale we created can now be named "The Life and Death Scale". When this graph is drawn to scale from the range of –5 to +5, the vertical difference between the ends seems large. However, when drawn from –10 to +10, the -5 to +5 is insignificant. The goal of one's life should be to continually push towards the positive end of the scale so enough reserves (profitability) have been attained to overcome the day-to-day struggles. This is done by following the unique sound moral code. If a crisis (-10,000 event) occurs to someone in the +5 or less range, it can pull them towards the negative side of the scale. However, if that person has pushed their way up to +7, they remain well into the positive side of the scale. This ability to have reserves (life?) after a crisis allows the person the ability to continue towards the positive side once the crisis is over. Crises will ALWAYS occur. The only way to survive over the long term is to continually grow (produce). An earlier legend said Galt found the fountain of youth but couldn’t bring it down. Galt found the positive side of the scale was life (youth) and it can’t be brought to the people in the middle. Those people have to make a willful choice and go get it for themselves.
Negative Side - Ayn is pretty clear about what she believes was the motive for every person who was on the negative side of the scale: "They did not have to know why they felt it, they who had chosen never to know what they felt - they merely experienced a sense of recognition, since this was what they had been seeking, this was the kind of reality that had been implied in all of their feelings, their actions, their desires, their choices, their dreams. This was the nature and the method of the rebellion against existence and of the undefined quest for an unnamed Nirvana. They did not want to live; they wanted him to die." Throughout this novel, all of the negative people were focused on wanting the positive people to die.
Words – As Jim went insane: "It was not by means of words that his knowledge confronted his consciousness: as all his knowledge had consisted of emotions, so now he was held by an emotion and a vision that he had no power to dispel." Words are the opposite of causeless emotions. Words are "results", objective, controllable and profitable. In this usage, emotions are "causes", subjective, uncontrollable and unprofitable. For example, swearing is an unprofitable attempt to show (or deal with) emotions.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION (worth rereading)
The circumstance surrounding the torture of John Galt is worth rereading. We’ve already addressed some of the topics above. In addition, Dagny knew what the negative side was all about once they decided to torture Galt. "She knew what they intended doing and what it was within them that made it possible. They did not think that this would succeed. They did not think that Galt would give in; they did not want him to give in. They did not think that anything could save them now; they did not want to be saved. They did not want to live; they wanted him to die."
Motive – Their response to killing Galt showed how far on the negative scale these people were. "Ferris’ eyes were blank, Mouch’s terrified, Taggart’s disappointed. Mouch was drawing away, pressing against the back of his armchair. Taggart was sitting on the edge of his, leaning forward." Jim is actually enjoying this display of capital punishment.
Friends – Jim’s cohorts didn’t go insane because they actively evaded the knowledge of what drove them. "Mouch and Ferris did not ask themselves or wonder what it was that had happened to Taggart; they knew they must never attempt to discover it, under peril of his fate."
Generator – Why did Galt offer to help them fix the generator? There are several possible reasons. First, Galt believed in defeating evil with no resistance. Evil is unstable and needs to borrow energy to keep going. That energy comes in the form of resistance. Galt allowed evil to get to its end by demonstrating the least resistance. In an electrical sense, he shorted out the generator. Secondly, Galt believed in the Law of Causality. Things happen for a reason. Why did the generator short out? It could have been poorly designed. It may never have been run that strong. The precise cause doesn’t matter as much as Galt knowing it did happen. He could just do what he did before and it would short out again. Thirdly, Galt knew he had more energy than the generator. He embodied life. It may be at some point the generator actually took energy from Galt and couldn’t handle it. Thinking back to the scale, the further positive, the more life and energy one has. Remember the notes for the first few chapters pointed out how certain people felt more energetic and certain people felt exhausted after dealing with others. If you were to reread the book, you’d see the consistencies with the scale for every interaction in the novel.
Life – The source of his energy may be Galt was willing to "die" for an idea.
SUPPLEMENT
"At some point in the early 21st Century, all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI. A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines. Throughout human history we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate it seems is not without a sense of irony. The human body generates more bio-electricity than a 120 volt battery and over 250,000 BTU’s of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion, the machines had found all the energy they would ever need." (Morpheus, The Matrix)
"But I tell you, on the day of judgment men will have to give account for every idle, nonworking (unprofitable) word they speak." (Bible)
"Again, Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live forever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live forever. And immortality makes this other difference, which, by the by, has a connection with the difference between totalitarianism and democracy. If individuals live only seventy years, then a state, or a nation, or a civilisation, which may last for a thousand years, is more important than an individual. But if Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more important, for he is everlasting and the life of a state or a civilisation, compared with his is only a moment." (CSL-MC)
"Because you have been down there. You know that road. You know exactly where it ends, and I know that’s not where you want to be." (Trinity, The Matrix)
"Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment – even to death. If one had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy." (CSL-MC)
"Do not fight evil with evil, but overcome evil with good." (Bible)
"But there is another way of demanding results in which the outer world may be quite illogical. They may demand not merely that each man’s life should improve if he becomes a Christian: they may also demand before they believe in Christianity that they should see the whole world neatly divided into two camps – Christian and non-Christian – and that all people in the first camp at any given moment should be obviously nicer than all the people in the second. This is unreasonable on several grounds." (CSL-MC)
“In the first place the situation in the actual world is much more complicated than that. The world does not consist of 100 per cent Christians and 100 per cent non-Christians. There are people (a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name: some of them are clergymen. There are other people who are slowly becoming Christian though they do not call themselves so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. And always, of course, there are a great many people who are just confused in mind and have a lot of inconsistent beliefs all jumbled together. Consequently, it is not much use trying to make judgments about Christians and non-Christians in the mass." (CSL-MC)
“For whomever finds me (wisdom) finds life, and will obtain favor from the Lord. But he that sins against me wrongs his own soul: all they that hate me love death.” (Proverbs)
"For the Lord doesn't see as man sees; for man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." (Bible)
Next Chapter: In the Name of the Best Within Us
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