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Ragnar's lesson

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intellectualammo

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Ragnar: They "will learn the lesson of what happens when brute force encounters mind and force."

Galt: "They've learned it." "Isn't that the particular lesson you have been teaching them for twelve years?"

Ragnar: "I?Yes. Bit the semester is over. Tonight was the last act of violence that I'll ever have to perform." " I will start getting ready to give a different course of lessons. I think I'll have to brush up on the works of our teachers first teacher."

That would be Akston, and Aristotle.

Rearden: "I'd like to be present at your first lecture on philosophy in a university classroom."

Later at the end of the novel, as Kay Ludlow is sitting in front of a mirror, thoughtfully studying film make- up in a battered case, Ragnar is reading/studying his teachers first teacher,Aristotle, while stretches on the couch.

Pray tell, where does and how does and to whom does he think he's going to be teaching, when the earth is "desolated", the country ruined, by the time he and the others go back? And, aboveall, why is he going into teaching, then, rather than beforehand?

To me, his method of teaching was "I'll teach them alright!!!!"

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Countries have historically come back quickly from wars, famines, plagues and various natural disasters. At least some of the material for an educational system was still there, and he and others could build the rest, starting small.

He plans to go back to academic philosophy for the same reason he went into it in the first place. It's his career, and he loves it. His other line of business was decidedly his second choice, and he wouldn't have found much demand for it anyway.

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Pray tell, where does and how does and to whom does he think he's going to be teaching, when the earth is "desolated", the country ruined, by the time he and the others go back? And, aboveall, why is he going into teaching, then, rather than beforehand?

Looks like Rearden is already signed up. Extrapolate from that.

Before he could teach, he had to answer brute force with mind and force.

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Mulligan's Valley was nearly self supporting. How many souls does that require? While the earth is described as "desolated", does this necessarily mean that not a single living soul remained?

I wouldn't think so. In real world catastrophes, desolation never uniform or total.

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While the earth is described as "desolated", does this necessarily mean that not a single living soul remained?

I've wondered that myself in another thread. In his speech, Galt did urge some to go off into the wilderness if they could. How much of a population, and what kind of people that population would consist of, I do not know. Not sure if they'd be hiskind or what.

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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?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ragnar on what him and Galt are doing: "He's draining the soul of the world, I'm draining body. His is the lesson they have to learn, only I'm impatient and I'm hastening their scholastic progress."

Not by teaching anything, but by destroying. I wonder why he never picked up chalk first, went straight to mind and force, instead of mind and chalk?

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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?

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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.

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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'm about to unlike this post just so I can like it again.

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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?

Nothing really. Cuffy was an outright thug and Jim Taggart was a thug who wore a business suit. These folks believed they could have what they wanted just by apply force in the right place and in the right way. What can one do with specimens like this except avoid them or destroy them?

ruveyn1

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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.

None of the posts I made have such a premise.

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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.

None of the posts I made have such a premise.

If just about everyone who is following your series of posts is wrong would you might instructing us as to why?

Because everything you've written about thus far seems to most to come down to:

When they saw the world turning against reason and against them the strikers, instead of persuading the looters and teaching them left and took the other non looters with them.

Thus the strikers, not the looters are responsible for destroying society.

If we are all so far off in our interpretation please tell us what you really mean.

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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?

I don't know what it would have done to them.

Edited by intellectualammo
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None of the posts I made have such a premise.

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?

I don't know what it would have done to them.

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.

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I have a clue.
You say this, but provide nothing substantial. No wonder others do not know what you are trying to say. "Teasers" are fine and dandy for a bit, but they grow old; after all, this is primarily a discussion forum, not a journal of lyrical poetry. Edited by softwareNerd
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I never said they were murderers or that I was condemning them.

"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...."

What Galt said in his speech and their reaction is not relevant to this discussion.

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?"

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"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?"

Cuffy would have invoked a disjunctive dilemma: do it or I will shoot you.

ruveyn1

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You say this, but provide nothing substantial. No wonder others do not know what you are trying to say. "Teasers" are fine and dandy for a bit, but they grow old; after all, this is primarily a discussion forum, not a journal of lyrical poetry.

Again, I already said that I do not know what he would have taught. The only clue is what he said about teaching, and his reading of his teachers first teacher, which would be Aristotle.

I have been discussing, not journaling lyrical poetry. Asking questions and sharing my thoughts.

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