I'm sorry... I didn't make it to the local protest

I was planning on going to the local protest to protect families... but with the heat and humidity I calculated that I would be more of a liability than a help. I'm less tolerant of the heat than I was in my youth.

I have registered my disapproval with my local - and unhelpful - congress critter.

The fight goes on...

-m

Ayn and I...

A sort of follow up on my Randian Horror post... because I have a history with Ayn Rand and "Atlas Shrugged".

I think I first discovered Rand in middle school. To a person living in a Republican, Catholic and conservative family the concept of a free mind was revolutionary. It was the era of staunch anti-Communism and - unfortunately - the Vietnam war. I embraced the concept of Individualism and the free mind heartily.

Of the novel itself I found... problematic. I reread it multiple times - both as a teenager, in my early twenties and early thirties - and once again now in my *cough* old age. There are places where I race excitedly over her words because they can pull one along, yet her dialog oscillates between choppy and preachy. I understand why she wrote it that way but it's contrived in the former and turgid in the later.

I was always puzzled by peoples complaints about her 'love scenes' with its themes of male dominance and physical abuse. Upon recent re-reading I realized that I *always* skipped over those sections as either uninteresting or just plain disturbing. When her main heroine Dagny was involved it *just didn't make sense* - such a strong character allowing herself to be physically abused, owned like property and dominated by her lovers.

It also didn't make sense because all her heroes were supposed to be the best of the best - supermen - not real people but the examples of the highest of human ideals - just like her villains are the lowest of the low. And if the best of the best of the men treat their woman they desire most abusively, how can they be the best? They are little more than the brutes Rand so rages against.

I think a friend of mine said it best when she first saw I had a copy of Atlas Shrugged. "Oh, you read it when you were 13 and out grew it." Pretty much. The worth and dignity of the individual I still hold as true, and the concept that A is A and Reality Exist also holds true. It is the later which made me unable to hold on to Objectivism because the Reality is we are social beings, the Reality is we are interconnected, the Reality is climate change is real and we're the cause of it. The Reality is if you respect the individual as a single person you must respect them when they are in a group.

The reality is capitalism needs to be kept in check or else it's just a game for the looters and moochers. The reality is it's not how much money you've collected but HOW you've collected it.

-m