Atlas Shrugged Conclusion

PRACTICAL APPLICATION (worth rereading)
The entire novel is worth rereading if a person doesn't understand and take the next steps...

During a 1961 lecture tour, Ayn was asked a question after her presentation at Purdue University: "Should all of us go on strike? If not, what should we be doing?"

Ayn stated the events of Atlas Shrugged are meant to take place ten years in the future from the reader's time. She then said once a culture goes through the things in the novel, it would be moral to go on strike. However, she did have an answer for what each of us ought to be doing now and I call this "Ayn's Objective":

"One has to break relationships with the culture. Meaning, while you live in this society, break all cultural relationships, meaning, withdraw your sanction from those people, groups, schools, or theories which preach the ideas that are destroying you. If you read Atlas Shrugged, you will understand what I mean by the sanction of the victim. It's the situation where the good people are helping their own destroyers and I show how in many ways people are guilty of that, through generosity and ignorance. Men are supporting their own destroyers materially and spiritually, in their private lives and in their public lives."

"Now what we have to do today: anyone who is serious about saving the world would have to first, discard all the kind of ideas, the entire cultural philosophy that is dominant today.
-Do not accept any of their ideas.
-Stand on your own as much as if you had to go into a separate valley like in Atlas Shrugged.
-Stand on your own---your own mind.
-Check your premises.
-Define your convictions.
-Define them rationally.
-Do not take anyone on faith, and do not believe that your elders know what they are doing, because they don't."

"You have to be the responsible creators of a new culture, if there is to be any culture. That is the sense in which Atlas Shrugged is applicable to our period."

"More than that: the enemy ideologies of today---I mean all collectivism and altruism---are so bankrupt that nothing holds them up except inertia and default. People are still mouthing those slogans because that is all they know. The innovators or initiators in the realm of ideas are very rare---most particularly, moral ideals."

"You may observe in the history of philosophy that all ideas change in various periods but morality is the one realm that did not change. Only superficial forms change. Men have always been taught that they have to live for others, and they have to be sacrificial animals or that the opposite would be some kind of brute force, dog-eat-dog situation, in which every man destroys or sacrifices every other man. And, in practice, you see that this dog-eat-dog situation is applicable to socialism and collectivism, but never to a free society."

"In other words, morality is the one issue in which men are afraid to challenge and that is what you have to challenge today.
-Break with the morality of altruism.
-Don't be afraid to assert your right to exist.
-But don't assert it as an arbitrary whim."

"You would have to know how to justify it rationally, philosophically and why you have that right and why if men practice the rational morality of self-interest, their interests would not clash. Men, then, would not have to sacrifice one another, so long as nobody demands or expects or gives the unearned and undeserved."

"If no man regards others as potentially sacrificial material for himself, or for his idea of what would be good for a third party when man drops all those ramifications of altruism then you will see what a benevolent, ideal society one could have."

"Break with altruism and with every idea that is based upon it. At least make the effort to think it out very carefully. You'll be surprised how easily that revolution will be, and how difficult it appears now, but it isn't. Just give it one day's thought, and you'll have a different view."

"Now, I don't mean that's all it will take, I mean to just give it that to consider whether it's possible, after which you will have to do harder thinking that you've ever attempted before because you'll have to be totally on your own, totally relying on your own judgment and the logic of the arguments you hear or consider, rejecting all authorities, all bromides, and taking nothing on faith. But if you try it, you'll be surprised how close the Renaissance is to us. And it's up to each human being to work for it."

For those who want a step-by-step explanation of the process:

People who focus on growth by making a conscious moral effort to improve their understanding of their uniqueness and their responsibilities will see progress. Progress comes from acquiring and retaining truth. This is done with purpose and motion, that is, identifying a goal (or belief) and moving towards it (actively refining the belief). In order to have the energy to make this change, the individual must determine the activities that bring them joy, that is, the activities that give them energy. To do nothing, ignore truth, evade the knowledge, and try to stay in the middle is evil, but everybody is ultimately responsible for himself or herself. Live and let live.

The premise of this novel: it is immoral for someone to use a skill they have to help a needy person which the person in need demonizes. The goal is growth. The needy person will never grow and develop the necessary skill if they demonize people who have it AND are helped by the people who have it. The helpers need to serve the needy by teaching the skill. If the needy don’t want to grow and learn the skill, then the only moral thing for the helper to do is stop helping the needy person. This is the only way the needy person will grow in the long term.

Ayn has written the plot-theme of Atlas Shrugged is: "The men of the mind going on strike against an altruist-collective society." Looking back, Dagny and Hank were completely immoral until the end of the book. They were the problem. People who think Dagny and Hank were the heroes (the solution) have completely misunderstood the premise of this book.

The real goal of ALL of Ayn's writings is to encourage the individual towards happiness! Here is Ayn in her own words (transcript and explanation below):


"The pursuit of happiness means a man's right to set his own goals, to choose his values and to achieve them." (Intangible cause: set your goals and specifically know your values well enough to define them. This is a CONJUNCTIVE. Result: ACTUALLY DOING THIS TANGIBLY without contradiction. Notice, talking about and explaining happiness is NOT DOING something.)

"Happiness means that state of consciousness which comes from achievement of your values." (Cause: getting into the conjunctive of achieving your goals and values..."achievement" means doing something and NOT only analyzing and discussing. Effect: State of consciousness!)

"Now, what can be more important than happiness?" (Unconscious confrontation! Your unconscious has answered this question and now it is looking for your conscious answer and if you don't answer, it will look at your actual actions. If you do answer and it is different than what you are actually doing, your unconscious will make you feel unsettled. If you consciously interpret this unsettled feeling as there being something wrong with Ayn, then you are actually going to make yourself worse.)

"But happiness does not mean simply monetary pleasures or any kind of mindless self-indulgence." (Contrastive explanation: Happiness is not Drift or Evasion. She is showing her definition of happiness cannot occur outside the conjunctive. Analyzing and discussing without actions is "mindless self-indulgence.")

"Happiness means a profound, guiltless, rational feeling of self-esteem and of pride of one's own achievement." (Another conjunctive explanation that results in a FEELING!!!!! We've already defined the conjunctive of self-esteem and how it would be tied to pride in one's own achievement. We've even given an objective measure so people would be able to know how to get there!)

"It means the enjoyment of life, which is possible only to a rational man on a rational code of morality." (Flow: enjoyment of life. Only possible to those who first get to Focus, which is a conjunctive.)

"What that code is I couldn't possibly tell you in a brief interview, but those who are interested in my books, particularly Atlas Shrugged." (Ayn knows her best explanation is in Atlas Shrugged; even better than her taking three hours to give a conscious brain explanation. Ultimately, she knew she had the answer unconsciously.)

NOTICE:
-Atlas Shrugged is Ayn's unconscious answer to HOW to achieve happiness.
-John Galt's speech is Ayn's conscious explanation to how to achieve happiness.
-While writing the speech, Ayn wrote notes trying to come up with a model for psychology.

THEREFORE: It is pointless to try and achieve happiness (or even explain this novel) if a person doesn't have non-contradictory definitions for the various "mental states"!

Here they are:
-Evasion is intentionally focusing on anything other than a "hot-button" thought.
-Drift is NOT focusing on a thought long enough to progress it toward a profitable application.
-Focus is focusing on a thought toward a profitable application.
-Ease is the unconscious trying to make the person's mind/soul aware of a truth through feelings.
-Flow is the toggling between Focus and Ease.

Ayn saw the spirit (soul) of the person to be the first cause; to be the immovable mover. Ayn believed each person was actually INTANGIBLE.

How does the INTANGIBLE cease to exist?
How do you cause the principles of Justice, Right, Non-contradiction, and Causality to cease to exist?

You can't. Only the tangible can cease to exist.

It looks like Ayn believed each of us is going to exist forever.


SUPPLEMENT
"People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’ I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other." (CSL-MC)

"You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up." (Morpheus, The Matrix)

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then will I know even as also I am known." (Bible)

"What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain." (Morpheus, The Matrix)

"Where the search for the truth is conducted with a wink and nod
And where power and position are equated with the grace of God
These times are famine for the soul while for the senses it’s a feast
From the edge of my country, as far as you see, looking east." (Jackson Browne)

"The Christian Way (to deal with this) – The Christian says, ‘Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing'." (CSL-MC)

"You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more." (Morpheus, The Matrix)

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