I’ve been fascinated by how people have responded to the ideas in Atlas Shrugged and the specific notion of a producer’s strike. However, the book provides no easy blueprint for success because of the lack of a real Atlantis in which to retreat and regroup. Thus, a literal attempt to “go John Galt” is not an option. So what options remain?
Untold numbers are (and have been) “going Owen Kellogg” already. Personally, it was somewhere around five or six years ago that I realized I felt no desire to pursue any meaningful advancement of my prior career. Whatever personal rewards one can reap, it can become unbearable to think about what one’s efforts are enabling.
Some of my commenters speak of having largely withdrawn from the economy and engaging in some form of barter or subsistence living. ”Going Quentin Daniels”, maybe. These folks are willing to keep their minds mostly to themselves (and perhaps a few trusted neighbors) to avoid putting them in the service of those who would enslave them.
I’ve got a lot of respect and sympathy for these people, and under different circumstances, I’d be right there with them. I also think it’s important to be mentally prepared to go that route if it turns out that society cannot be salvaged.
But I’m tied to the world still. And willingly. It’s a world of wonders and beauty. Of horrors too, and those horrors have their parasitic tendrils wrapped tightly around all that is good. But I’m unwilling to give the good up. Yet. I’m still convinced that there’s a way to cause/convince the parasites release their grip. I don’t believe the world is so thoroughly corrupt as to be irredeemable. Most people still admire heroes. They admire achievement. I think they fundamentally want to live; they’ve just been being fed bad data about how to go about it. And not just by “the establishment” either, but by the producers as well, by not vocally resisting each time our lives were squeezed a little more, and a little more still.
Dagny Taggart is not the hero of Atlas Shrugged. Indeed, until the end, she is “part of the problem”. But, parallels notwithstanding, this is not the world of Atlas Shrugged. I believe there’s a chance to undo the damage we ourselves (and our forefathers in spirit) have done. I don’t just want to save the world, I want to save this world. So I guess I’m “going Dagny Taggart”.
I’d really like to hear from my regular and my irregular commenters about where you stand. Is the world salvage or scrap? How one personally answers this question will shape the strategies they develop to deal with our accelerating loss of freedom.
(By the way, if any of you happen to be “going Ragnar Danneskjöld”, we’ll just keep that on the Q.T..)
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You already know my position, Dagny. =) And I am really, truly hoping that you can prove me wrong, that society in general is worth saving. After all, this is the same civilization that brought us candles, orchestra music, the Internet, art deco, and Metroid, a few of my favorite things. Or is it? Aristocracy has been democratized here in America, and we peasants are forced to toil for their comfort. Oddly enough, numerous peasant revolts have been orchestrated by a member or members of the reigning aristocracy or from elsewhere. Why? Because peasants traditionally hold a fatalistic philosophy, a “death and taxes” attitude toward the world. You and I are going to break that cycle of fatalism, because we have what no peasant in history has ever had: certainty of our own efficacy.
Notwithstanding, there are going to be horrors in the days and years ahead: some hauntingly similar to Rand’s predictions, but many that even Lovecraft would refuse to contemplate, figuratively speaking. Don’t let those horrors break your resolve! You are on a right path, and your efforts will succeed if you keep after them. Stick to your guns, like I will stick to mine. We’ll meet somewhere on the field of battle. =)
This is where I stand: this world we live in is a continuous perpetual struggle between the parasites and the producers. There is no singular course of action that can be taken to change this. My position is to persevere as long as I’m alive, to pursue my Happiness to the exhaustion of my ability (aka my death). Big part of my pursuit and commitment to it is truth – finding it and commiting to it.
Beyond that, I refuse to subsrcribe to anyone’s wars – be that the wars of any religious fanatics or that of “liberators of the opressed”, or the opressors, for I feel that all of those groups are guided by parasites.
Think the following over: historically, ANY AND ALL evils of statism started to materialise with mass calls for patriotism (go back to history books and read about any tyrant and oppressive regime, from Roman Empire to Nazi Germany to Soviet Russia, to…) We are now several years past these calls for Patriotism in the U.S. (and tasteless displays of flags everywhere) of 2001, and there are some other nations that are building up patriotism (among them Iran, Russia, North Korea, China – to name just a few of the most powerful ones); consider where we are being lead and what kind of weapons are now available for deployment… first, we are going to be lead to into voting ourselves economically insolvent (we’re about half-way there, with all the wars and bail-outs), what do you think will be next??? And remember, we have no Atlantis to go to, no John Galt to come for us in a private plane and wisk us away from cities running out of food and failing electrical grids… you wanna see “scaremongering”? I don’t have to reason with fiction – I have only facts to produce a reasonable prediction!