Posted on 02/11/2007 2:15:16 PM PST by saganite
Ayn Rand is one of the most controversial writers in modern American literature, known for her tireless advocacy of the right to selfishness and her hatred of big government. She has been derided and loved in equal measure and her books have sold millions of copies, attracting followers as diverse as banker Alan Greenspan, President Ronald Reagan and architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
Her most famous book, Atlas Shrugged, has long been a target of Hollywood producers and attracted such big names as Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch and Sharon Stone. But each project collapsed in the face of turning a 1,200-page philosophical novel into a watchable movie. Now that is to change. The latest attempt to film Atlas Shrugged is set to star Angelina Jolie in the role of Rand's railroad heiress heroine Dagny Taggart. Unlike past efforts, this one seems likely to succeed. A two-hour screenplay is almost complete and filming is to start this year with release in 2008. It is being written by Randall Wallace, who wrote the Mel Gibson epic Braveheart, and is backed by Lion's Gate Entertainment.
Atlas Shrugged is one of the most controversial books in modern literature. It is a passionate defence of Rand's belief that the world is best served when individuals act entirely in their own rational self-interest. Or, to put it more bluntly, they act selfishly. Rand, who died in 1982, founded the objectivist school of philosophy and still has millions of followers. Atlas Shrugged and another novel The Fountainhead promote her views. In financial circles Atlas Shrugged has been dubbed 'the bible of selfishness'.
(Excerpt) Read more at observer.guardian.co.uk ...
http://www.nndb.com/people/097/000030007/
This site says she died of heart failure at 77.
A trilogy makes sense, if they can sell it.
Darn those old selfish rich believers in free enterprise who worked hard to become rich and believe that the money is theirs to do with what they want. How dare them!! (sarcasm)
So she pegged this world right on but made a little mistake on the next one.
My vote for John Galt is Wentworth Miller (Prison Break)
This is encouraging news. We can expect that the philosophical themes won't be watered down. Or worse.
If God wanted us to be ants He would have made us ants. If the Founding Fathers wanted us to be ants they would have written a communist manifesto.
Ayn Rand demonstrates that rational self-interest is the antithesis of selfishness. Rational self-interest is the robust blossoming of one's inherent talents and desires engaged in positive and productive activities. Selfishness is irrational self-absorption in fear and aggression which leads to egocentric activities centered on paranoid withdrawal from the world and attempts to dominate and control others. AKA socialism on the political level.
ping
And no, I haven't forgotten the Christmas-week discussions...
My job is still trying to eat my brain.
Cheers!
Wow....that's deep. I'm on the edge of my seat. Trying not to fall over in my fit of laughter. :)
It wouldn't be Gilliam. There's no schizophrenia in the story at all. lol. How about Ridley Scott?
I'm with you.
Ed Norton always surprises me. He is a brilliant actor.
Not sure he could pull it off. I have not yet seen "The Prestige". If he was good in that he might be able to pull off Galt.
I disagree...I think it is more the bible of envy. Dependency is merely relying on others to provide you some of what they have. Envy on the other hand, is a burning rage that would rather see something not exist than be enjoyed by someone other than yourself...I believe the latter more aptly describes the worldview of the contemporary left.
From the December 2004/January 2005 issue of the Fraser Forum.
People do generous things. They give directions to strangers, contribute to charities, volunteer in hospitals, send food and supplies to earthquake victims. Actions like these are usually described as altruistic, in contrast to the pursuit of self-interest. In a free society, most of our interactions with people involve trade: we provide values to others only on terms that benefit ourselves. Generosity, however, means providing someone with a value that is not part of a definite trade, without the expectation of a definite return.
But this dichotomy between self-interest and generosity is a false one. Trading and giving are different, to be sure, but the conventional view overstates and misrepresents the difference. The chief cause of this confusion is a narrow definition of self-interest as the satisfaction of short-term desires, particularly for material gain. A rational person knows that what serves his interest in a given situation depends on his long-term goals; that it is in his interest to take responsibility for achieving his goals through productive effort; and that he is more likely to gain the values of living in society—everything from economic exchange to intimate personal relationships—by dealing with others fairly and honestly than by cheating.
What role could generosity play in the pursuit of enlightened self-interest?
One role pertains to emergencies where people are in trouble and we can help at little cost to ourselves. This serves our long-term interests in part because of the potential value that the other person represents. He might become a friend, or a partner in an economic exchange. But there's a more fundamental reason for aiding others in emergencies.
Humans live together partly because there is safety in numbers. Throughout much of their existence as a species, human beings lived in small tribes whose solidarity was the only protection each individual had against the risks of starvation, predators, and attack by other tribes; reciprocity within the tribe was relatively open-ended, one-for-all and all-for-one. By and large, the progress of civilization has replaced this form of reciprocity with contractual relationships. We do not pool the harvest and share it among us; we buy our food in the market. Even emergencies are largely handled through contract and the division of labor: we hire firefighters, police, Coast Guard sailors, and other specialists. But there are residual cases in which we can help each other avoid harm and risk, or gain benefits, in ways that are not easily reduced to contract, such as calling the police when we see a crime, helping a neighbor put out a fire, or contributing to relief organizations like the Red Cross.
Each of us benefits from living in a society where people extend such help. If I am a victim, it is certainly to my benefit to receive it; my life may depend on it. But such help will be available only if people extend it when they can. A social custom is sustained in large part by the expectation that it will be observed. One man giving his seat on a bus to a pregnant woman sets an example for everyone else on the bus. Conversely, it takes but a few teenagers with blaring boom boxes to convey a sense of civic disorder.
The custom of mutual aid among strangers is analogous to insurance. An insurance contract gives one protection against the risk of catastrophic loss in exchange for a series of predictable, affordable payments. In the same way, the custom of mutual aid gives us the prospect of help in emergencies in exchange for offering low-cost help to others. Notice that this explanation of helping strangers involves an implicit trade. But the trade in this case is not with the particular person we help; it is with all other members of our society.
Someone who would accept help in an emergency but would not provide it to others is acting as a free-rider, hoping to benefit from the custom without the effort of helping to sustain it. The virtues of independence and responsibility require that we make our own actions the causes of the benefits we enjoy, rather than depending on others to provide those benefits for us. The rationality of extending aid is of course dependent on one's circumstances; it is not in one's interest to help if it means incurring great risk or depriving oneself and one's family of necessities, as a purely altruistic standard would require.
A second motive for generosity involves a kind of investment. In our personal lives we invest in people in the hope that the gift of money, time, or care will help them tap an unrealized potential, as when a teacher goes beyond the call of duty to help a troubled student. In the same way, wealthy donors to nonprofit organizations often speak of their gifts as investments in education, research, art, and other causes the organizations serve. Of course these are not investments in the literal sense, as when we loan money or buy stocks in exchange for a contractual return. But the metaphor of investment is nevertheless a good one, in two respects.
First, generosity of this kind often springs from a sense that one's own life is improved by living in a world with better, happier, more fully realized people in it. This is a creative impulse broadly similar to that involved in productive work. A truly productive person is motivated not only by the monetary return for his work but also by the satisfaction of creating value in the world. The money one earns is a social recognition of that value but cannot replace one's own judgment and commitment as its source. In the same way, there is a satisfaction in creating value in one's social environment, a satisfaction that remains even when the value cannot be returned in the form of a definite trade.
Secondly, generosity of this kind is an investment in the infrastructure of society. Successful people often say they want to "give something back" to society. The debt they feel they owe is, once again, a metaphorical one. If they acquired their wealth by voluntary exchange, without force or fraud, they owe nothing to other individuals nor to "society" as a collective entity; and governments have no warrant collecting such "debts" by force to fund transfer programs. Nevertheless, we all benefit from the knowledge, culture, institutions, technology, and wealth produced by previous generations. Contributing to help sustain and expand this infrastructure reflects the desire not to be a free-rider, to take full responsibility for the benefits one enjoys—as in the case of giving aid in emergencies.
Such generosity is not altruistic. Altruism would mean giving purely in response to need. But donors who give from enlightened self-interest invest in response to the promise and potential for creating value. They support organizations they think can use the money productively. And they choose which causes to support and at what levels by consulting their own specific interests and hierarchy of personal values—the same way they choose between more work and more leisure, how much to save for retirement, how much insurance to buy, whether to read a book or weed the garden.
Doubtless there are other ways in which generosity serves our interests. But these two—supporting the custom of mutual aid and investing in social infrastructure—are the easiest to understand philosophically. In my experience as head of a nonprofit organization, they are also the most common.
References
Rand, Ayn (1964). "The Objectivist Ethics." In Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: New American Library, 1964.
Kelley, David (2003). Unrugged Individualism: the Selfish Basis of Benevolence, rev. ed. Poughkeepsie, NY: The Objectivist Center.
They are actors. They play dress up and pretend. They don't have to BE the characters, just PRETEND to be the characters.
Wow! Who knew?
Greg Kinnear is a freeper. I loved you in "As Good As It Gets," Greg.
Eddie Willers ping
They're talkin about you.
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