It's the Best. Book. Ever ... that allowed the Best. Election. Ever ... ... ... because Trump is one of those people who's just a pure reflection of what's inside him, and Ayn is a big part of what's inside him.
Roarke's life, in some ways, actually parallels Trump's (I'm going to guess that Trump would have loved to have been an architect, and has more admiration for Roarke's talent than his own in business, which is obviously connected to architecture.) The interesting thing about Trump is that on the outside he trolls his enemies by appearing to be the exact opposite of what Ayn is talking about. She would be smiling.
And of course Ayn came from the USSR, so this is more where Atlas Shrugged comes from -> the political/economical expression of her personal values. But the sickness that is the USSR is actually experienced at the personal level. I lived with and almost married a girl who came here from St. Petersburg when she was 19, was in school during Breshnev.
Getting back to the family stuff -> an oppressive and sick family is no different from an oppressive and sick government when it comes to the effect on the human spirit. You can call it God's or nature's way -> all things are created with an inheritant integrity that is neither good nor bad -> it's that 'they are what they are' -> anything that introduces chaos into that integrity will cause resistence within that things essense, and that is what we as humans call negativity or misery.
The thing is, we don't get to choose the nature of our integrity -> that is, what we were designed to be -> we only get to choose whether we keep it and maintain it, express it 'as it is'.
For me, that gets to what is the humility of being Christian, the ability to accept that you are not your creator, you can't 'be whatever you want to be' -> you are only what in fact you are, no words or concepts will change that, and you go from there.
Most of life is a hostile challenge to what that is. The Liberals are of course an outright assault on it ... and ... sick families ... getting back to the thread ... are an even more insidious poison to the integrity of how humans are designed, and it's why mental illness takes so many forms, can never really be categorized. We all know what an intact crystal wine glass should look like. Shatter it on the ground - that is - disintegrate its integrity as a crystal wine glass ... and you'd be hard pressed to look at 1000 instances of that and characterize them in terms of 'how they deviate from a normal wine glass.'
So ... it's all about integrity vis a vis an original design none of us chose, but which we're bound to maintain. Don't maintain it -> becuase of family -> or because of society/government -> and you may survive physically, but you perish spiritually.
It's very odd that Ayn was an atheist. Ann Barnhardt in one of her older videos brings this up too ... Ayn Rand was like one one-billionth of a millimeter from hopping from the conceptual/philosophical understanding of what it is to be human to absolute faith in God. Her grasp of integrity actually is faith in God. And one could argue that the words 'faith in God' are themselves only conceptual, not that actual faith, so in that sense it's not important, the end result is the same. Probably what Ayn rejected, and rightfully so, was the conceptual representation of God which of course man has twisted to his own liking and hence from which man has removed the integrity.
Lastly, I would say that I'm thankful for the dysfunctional family in which I grew up - but you can only say this if you first survived it, then left it. You DO learn about what Evil is, and no one in my family, as far as I know, is intentionally evil. Evil is distance from integrity, of which keeping your word to others is a necessary minuscule grain, and not proof of actual integrity. (Note the enormous weight, though, that Trump places on keeping the promises he made in the physical world to physical people -> that's not just some isolated quality. He consciously chooses this because understands that his own integrity rests on it. It's not a favor he does you or me. It's him saying 'I understand what I am, what is my design.')
Come to think of it, it is my tagline. It's the only true thing you can ever say. And corruption is corruption, and to willingly engage with corruption once you've been shown enough evidence there is no changing it, or to refuse to confirm that and choose instead to tell oneself stories and concepts and narratives to fool oneself otherwise ... ... ... in the Garden of Eden ... that is what the snake was.
So, original sin is really no different from corrupting one's integrity either due to willful choice, intentional lack of awareness, or ignorance of one's design. But to be ignorant of one's design, one must willfully look away from oneself, so already there has been a corruption.
The Bible points out that throughout his history, man does this consistently as part of his nature, and therefore the only choice is a life of maintenance of integrity and repairing of integrity. The 'World' as Jesus called it, is hostile to it. It just is. Our nature is hostile to it. Buddhism's way of referring to this to say 'Life is suffering, and ... there is a solution.'
Ayn's way is to tell the story of Roarke, but the story is told entirely separate from any philosophy or religion, She came up with this on her own ... which points to the notion that we are already born with this silent knowledge. To hold onto it religion may be and probably is important and in many cases necessary, but a man born on the moon alone who never hears a word about religion is no less capable of knowing God or Enlightenment. All of it comes down to integrity -> that A is A.
Ok well back to vacuuming :-)
Fantastic post, tiny owl!
Thank you!