Jam Man

Concerning the longetivity of our species, first take ten minutes to listen to Carl Sagan: http://youtu.be/LDIo_SpFI60 If you're that terribly concerned with events that won't occur for billions (and billions!) of years, take some solace in the fact that, if we do become able to "soar through the lightyears", our descendants will have aquired knowledge about the universe that we cannot even begin to imagine to understand. Perhaps they will have the ability to jump from universe to universe, or dimension to dimension, or they will have mastered technology which actually prevents the end of the universe. Who can imagine? Who can know? Maybe we have it all wrong to begin with... maybe our understanding of the universe and its fate is as simplistic a view -- compared with what our far-flung descendants will understand -- as the ancient understanding that the Earth was flat. It makes perfect sense, until you know better.

"Those that really drove the economy were bringing it to an abrupt halt, throwing 'theirkind' off head first onto the pavement, plus any 'neutrals' as Galt called them, which I am assuming are children, babies, etc...." I was referring to Galt's capitivity in the hotel, when Mr. Thompson, Dr. Ferris, and such each confronted him tete-a-tete. Ragnar to Cuffy: "Mr. Meigs, kindly pull out your copy of Prior Analytics and define for me a syllogism, please?"

Dear me. I've committed a horrible error, then, if I assumed that "Galt, Ragnar, et al., are murderers who are purging the world of not theirkind so that they may rule it" is your main premise. And I've committed further errors still, if I assumed that "Galt, Ragnar, et al. ought to have picked up chalk and taught the world how to live rather than destroying it" was implicit in your main premise, and explicit in your posts. Are you not condemning them for striking? Are you not damning them for murdering the globe? Are you not pronouncing them guilty for wanting to live free? Are you not holding their retaliation to the use of force -- by forceful and non-forceful means -- as immoral is the initiation of it? But you do. Galt spoke with almost each one of them, and they each ran out of the room screaming when they heard what you wanted him to teach them. Just because they are helpless does not give them the moral sanction to rule men by force. Just because they have built their society to rely upon the sanction of the victim, does not mean that the victims are morally obligated to sanction such a society.

And post #11 wasn't rhetorical. Please do answer.

Every post you've made in any of these inter-connecting threads is based on the premise that it is immoral to break the bonds that tie the abuser and the abused; that one adversary doesn't have the right to withdrawl from the other, but instead must continue taking abuse in order to teach the other why abuse is wrong. Especially if breaking those bonds would cause harm to the abuser. Consider that a kid at school takes my lunch money every day. According to you, I would not only have to continue to let him take it, but take the trouble to explain to him why it's wrong for him to take it -- the lesson being delivered, presumeably, through a bloody nose. Well look, it's not like my missing lunch money is breaking me; and I still continue to study and excel at my main goal, which is keeping up with my scholastics; and in fact when I leave school for the day I don't have him to worry about, and all in all life is pretty damn good. You would tell me: "Suck it up. You know how to live, he doesn't. Teach him, even as he pummels you." You also teach me that I am in fact responsible for the consequences of his own actions. What happens if I leave that school, and without my lunch money he starves to death? Or is malnourished to the point that his success is impossible? You would say "He needed your lunch money and you knew it: you starved him." What if I went further, and rallied my classmates to oppose bullying? Or if I went further still, and built my own school where there would be no bullies allowed? Then you would say I was purging the world of bullies, that I was a murderer and responsible for all the things that the bullies ought to have known, even as I taught them and they rejected the lesson.

I'll ask again: what would mind and chalk have done to persuade a man like Cuffy Meigs? Or Dr. Ferris? Or Orren Boyle? Or even Jim Taggart, who had his sister there with him his entire life, perpetually at the chalkboard, constantly showing him the right way?

At risk of assuming the nature of a broken record, I'll restate: "You seem to imply that if they were not his "kind" (you keep forgetting a space between those two words), then Galt would hunt them down and continue the purge; or, if he stumbled across of a band of altruists in the wilderness, he'd exterminate them on the spot. You curse Galt for wanting to live, and damn him for not caring enough to stop living his life long enough to show you how to live yours. It's his life! That's kind of the theme of the novel, that Atlas has a right to his own life, no matter what the demands of the entire globe might be. Galt doesn't want to plie-drive the globe, Ragnar doesn't want to teach them a lesson they'll never forget, they just wanna be fuckin' free, man, and the easiest way to do it AIN'T going door to door with pamphlets extolling the virtues of freedom. They saw that the world was going to shit, and they withdrew to a safe location... one where whatever the rest of assholes on the planet did to themselves didn't affect them, one where they could be free. What could Galt have said to Cuffy Meigs that would have made a man like that want to give it all up?" And what about the babies... all the babies, so innocent, so unentangled with the affairs of the world.... Indeed, unentangled and and innocent they may be, but John Galt's responsibility they are not. Should he remain a slave, because society has rigged it so that if he frees himself, innocents suffer? Why wage war or commit violence against a society that is already committing suicide? Why do you equate the recognition of the fact that a society is comitting suicide, with the murder of that society by the one who recognizes that fact and steps out of its influence? You even admit that it's moral to let a society act how it wants, rather than wage war against it, which is just what Galt did. What exactly is your beef?

You seem to imply that if they were not his "kind" (you keep forgetting a space between those two words), then Galt would hunt them down and continue the purge; or, if he stumbled across of a band of altruists in the wilderness, he'd exterminate them on the spot. You curse Galt for wanting to live, and damn him for not caring enough to stop living his life long enough to show you how to live yours. It's his life! That's kind of the theme of the novel, that Atlas has a right to his own life, no matter what the demands of the entire globe might be. Galt doesn't want to plie-drive the globe, Ragnar doesn't want to teach them a lesson they'll never forget, they just wanna be fuckin' free, man, and the easiest way to do it AIN'T going door to door with pamphlets extolling the virtues of freedom. They saw that the world was going to shit, and they withdrew to a safe location... one where whatever the rest of assholes on the planet did to themselves didn't affect them, one where they could be free. What could Galt have said to Cuffy Meigs that would have made a man like that want to give it all up?

Looks like Rearden is already signed up. Extrapolate from that. Before he could teach, he had to answer brute force with mind and force.

Why would they choose the alternative: to spend their lives living in a world which hates them as much as it needs them, and which takes from them as much as it damns them, and then turn all their energies to the task of lecturing to that world (while it sucks their life out of them) "Let me be free; here's why"? Why choose to live as livestock professors who attempt to educate their farmers, when they can choose to live as free men?

About Ragnar: He was metaphorically slaying Robin Hood. His exact agenda was to repatriate the money with its rightful owners. Observe the detailed records he obtained from the IRS, and the accounts he had set up in the rightful owners' names with the rightful owners' money in them, waiting for the rightful owners to collect it. About converting the shrugged world: It was never about "them" to begin with. The strike was not to teach them or convert them or to purge them, it was to get out of their path of evil and destruction and, in fact, to stop feeding and sanctioning the evil by remaining active in an evil system. That was the main purpose: for the strikers to live as free men, removed from a society of evil. Did they forsee the collapse of such a society (which had engulfed the globe) when they withdrew their minds and sanction from it? They did. Did they wish to become educators and instill the same virtue of foresight upon the rest of the world? They did not. They wished to live, apart and seperate from the rest of world who (implicitly or explicity) didn't. That a group of men is walking off a cliff doesn't obligate another group of men to stop them, particularly when the second group of men was formerly a part of the first and has been trying to steer the first away all along (if only by showing the rest how to avoid the cliff -- how to live -- by example, if not by explicit education) and all they get for it is damned and used on the way to it, only to be taken over the edge of it with the rest, to boot.

Ragnar recovered stolen money. The stolen money, before it was repatriated, was being shipped off to prop-up Peope's States across the globe... states who have already drained themselves of resources and capital and who were now looking at the US as the last apple on the tree. Yes, Ragnar took money that was to keep it all from falling apart, thus allowing it to fall apart. What you fail to recognize is that he didn't steal the money in the first place, he was recovering it for its rightful owners; he didn't promise the citizens of the People's States stolen wealth from abroad, the leaders of those states did; he didn't organize the collapse of those states, the states' leaders did when they erected their society upon the moral foundation of a tapeworm. Ragnar destroyed nothing except a criminal enterprise. I'm sure there are innocent benefactors of the mafia who suffer when a local don is gunned down or arrested. Giving to the poor is an effective and popular method of maintaining favorability within a community, particularly when you want the community to turn a blind eye to some of your less-moral endeavors. That an entire continent was dependant upon criminals to steal and extort money from productive men for their survival was a non-issue for our just pirate Ragnar. The criminals -- the leaders, the politicians, the dictators -- were dooming themselves and their people when they began to rely upon force for their livelihood.

Obviously, the country was deteriorating. As was mentioned, the very first words of the novel you read describe the dilapidated condition of America. Nowhere in the novel do you even begin to consider thinking about getting a vague impression that just maybe everything was possibly somehow A-OK and hunky-dory. We get that idea about America's past: we read about Nat Taggart, and the former greatness of The 20th Century M.C., and of Dagny's youth, etc.. But everything written about the novel's present conveys that sense of denouement. Therefore I cannot accept the premise that Galt was the cause of it all. Instead, he was being swept up in it, along with the rest of humanity, until he decided to remove himself and his sanction from it.

The title itself may give you some insight. Why did Atlas shrug? Because "...he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders." In short, he was quickly approaching a point where he had to make a choice: It's either me, or the world. He shrugged to save himself. As was proper. Your concern lies with the shrugged world. That it was to perish was a given in either circumstance. Either it would crush Atlas and therefore cause its own destruction, by removing the support upon which it depended; or, it would perish after Atlas removed himself as that support. Atlas had no choice about the destruction of the world. Neither did Galt. That the world set itself on its own path towards doom was beyond their power to alter. To use your metaphor, the world was already gassing itself, whether Galt took he and his friends into the clean air chamber or not. You're confusing an act of self-defense for an act of agression. You're mistaking the shrug for a body-slam. And you're mistaking the strike for a purge. "Hey guys, look: the world's going to shit. You see it, I see it. And besides that, you see how they're riding us like jockeys? Stealing from us to survive, then damning us for having something to steal? I don't know about you, but I'm out. Who's with me? I got some nice land in the mountains, we'll be free and live as men.... Well, what about the rest of them? They have no right to weigh upon our backs. I'm not forcing them to do anything at all, except live without including me in their unspeakable evil. Sure, their ways will bring death and destruction. But not to me... or you, if you strike with me." Yes, Galt knew that defending his own life against another who claimed it for himself was the highest moral feeling (it stems from "I am worthy to be alive"). Not an act of murder, but of self-defense. What he went out to do, that night after the meeting in the factory, was defend himself against that unspeakable evil. He spoke in terms of motors, but you could also say that he collected all the good meat and kept it ziplocked while the parasites consumed the rest of the contaminated meat. Of course, the unprotected meat and the parasites would both perish: the meat by being consumed by the parasites, and the parasites by having no more meat on which to feed. All Galt really did was step aside and let nature take its course. He didn't have to purge the world of the parasites. He knew they would purge themselves. He just went on strike against being food.