Posted on 02/07/2009 11:11:19 AM PST by Publius
Yes, this lack of work ethic that is becoming more and more acceptable quite noticeable. I have worked for an organization that tolerated haphazard performance and employees who I could only describe as ducks, every day brings a whole new world. Out and out carelessness and lack of work ethic was a hallmark of the late USSR. I have become increasingly concerned over this,
Bless you, Gracie, for bringing this up. The social contract of the old USSR could be defined, "As long as the government pretends to pay, we will pretend to work."
That we're seeing this here at home is alarming.
Or we know the One Whom we are really serving. Beside a strong work ethic learned from my parents, I realize that one day I will stand before my Maker. He gave me my talents and will inquire of me what I did with them. No other motivation needed.
Terrible post!!!
I will now have to break an arm or a leg to prevent me from dragging out my new special edition of Atlas Shrugged, dust it off and start reading it again. Dread, Dread , Dread
I think their fatal flaw is that they don’t realize some people have given up. And other people like the way the world is changing, as it allows them to blame someone else for their own failures. And then there are the lazy people, who will be there no matter what. It is easier to be a slacker than an innovator, especially when you have permission.....morally, that is.
BTTT
Dagny and Hank think that the dementia is self-defeating. They don't perceive that the nationl insanity is creating a new construct with its own rules, and a stable one at that. This construct will go on until it reaches a point of genuine self destruction -- but that might well take years to unfold.
Hank and Dagny have more faith in the people than they deserve. Rand didn't live long enough to encounter the word sheeple, but I think she would have understood.
Ping to Chapter 4. Previous chapter links are in Post #2.
That is motivation that drives you, but what drives people who are non-christian? And even in yourself, do you fight how to give your best when you are working for a corporation who will have any number of flaws?
If one is a Christian working for Dow Chemical or Dupont or Boeing, these companies do not always have a reputation as the best corporate citizens for any number of reasons. But a specific agency may have a sterling reputation. Is there a conflict? How good or bad does a business have to be for a Christian to work there?
Like Rand, I'm an atheist. What motivates me is personal pride and a sense that I should give good value for the money I'm being paid. I don't worry about some Cosmic Cop punishing me after death. I do it because I believe it is the right thing for me to do.
Not sure I understand your post. The companies you mention have had break-through research that actually make our lives better. They are a producer of something, not like an agency. And they also provide benefits second to none. As far as DuPont is concerned, my dad retired from there and my brother works there, contribution and work ethic are rewarded; with money, recognition and opportunity.
A couple of thoughts before we get into the main argument. Rand takes a long time to set the table in this 1100-page monster but the supper will be worth it. Lots of courses in this meal.
What James Taggart and Orren Boyle (another great character name there IMHO) accomplish through the auspices of the National Alliance of Railroads is a restraint of trade that is nominally illegal in the United States since the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. It is a textbook example of a cartel, in fact, an old economics professor of mine actually used this selection as an illustration of how, and why, this sort of anticompetitive behavior takes place.
Meanwhile James Taggart deftly takes credit for his sister’s actions in moving railroad assets out of Mexico before the nationalization, taking caddishness to a new height. It’s perfectly in character. Very nice touch. Rand makes the point here that Dagny’s was the risk and his the reward, which is actually the premise of the entire novel in miniature. In view of the later historical nationalization by Mexico of her privately-held oil industry one has to tip one’s hat to Rand for prescience.
Well, here we are at the third chapter and we find ourselves discussing Aristotle. Aristotle? Yep. Rand’s philosophy is heavily dependent on Aristotle and she isn’t shy about informing us of that in the chapter title. The “Immovable Mover” (also translated as “unmoved mover”) is straight from Aristotle’s Metaphysics. If that weren’t clue enough, Rand entitled the three sections of Atlas Shrugged after the three axioms of Aristotlean logic: non-contradiction, either/or, and identity. She and her Objectivist followers add a fourth, the axiom of consciousness, more pertinent, in my opinion, to epistemology than logic, but that’s a topic for another day.
We’re also going to encounter a heavy dose of Nietzsche in AS. Rand studied both Aristotle and Nietzsche in Petrograd before emigrating to the United States, and Chris Sciabarra (Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical) informs us that Thus Spake Zarathustra was the first book she purchased upon arriving here. I’ll touch on Nietzsche a little in the following paragraphs.
First Aristotle. Rand’s persistent evocation of reason in all her works is to a great degree an invocation of Aristotle’s body of thought. The “immovable mover” of the chapter title is God, both for Aristotle and his subsequent interpreters, the brilliant rabbi Maimonides with respect to Judaism, the philosopher Averroes with respect to Islam and Christianity, and of course St. Thomas Aquinas with respect to Christianity. Here the existence of God is not so much “proven” by Aristotle’s system of logic but appears as a necessary consequence. Students of medieval philosophy will immediately recognize it in the roots of the Ontological argument for the existence of God, an argument that impressed even that unrepentant old atheist Bertrand Russell.
But there are difficulties inherent in having the existence of God dependent on the congruence of a system of logic to the bones of actual reality. That involves Russell and Kurt Godel and is the topic for another day.
And yet Rand herself was an atheist. How are we to reconcile the two positions? Enter Nietzsche. I think that far from denying it, Rand embraces Aristotle’s conclusion, moving not God but the functions of godhead into men and women, Dagny and Reardon, to be specific, at the end of the chapter. That is what she meant by her statement in the first paragraph that the skyscraper was dependent on motion for its existence. The building – the society – is not, in her view the immovable movers, certain creative, productive people are. Atlas shrugs when they decline to move it.
Nietzsche is most famous for his asseveration that God is dead, by which he did not mean that the Big Fellow was literally pushing up cosmological daisies but that God, being in Nietzsche’s view an imaginary collective construct, ceases to exist when His reality is rejected (as Nietzsche felt that it was in Europe at the time), and that when that happens God ceases to be a source of values and morals, not to mention spiritual comfort. Further, that this deficiency in the basis of morals needed to be addressed lest humanity slide into nihilism. (Jews, Christians, and Muslims might have some difficulties with the notion of God as Tinkerbelle but that need not impede the discussion of Nietzsche’s philosophy). I will note in Nietzsche’s defense that nihilism is, IMHO, the root of the multiculturalism that is gripping the cultural leadership of Europe at the present time, and that one cause is the popular rejection of religion as a cultural anchor. God may not be dead but He’s probably bored.
Nietzsche’s answer to this was the advent of an Ubermensch, imperfectly translated as “Superman” and carrying with it the unfortunate connotations of a fellow with a cape flying through the air. “Overman” is as good, but the basic idea was that this creature transcended humanity, being a more perfect version of its progenitor, exempt from the strictures that originally were necessary to circumscribe his behavior. And that once expressed, this new creature would be not only a paragon of a new morality but its very source and origin. One hears echoes of this in both the Blond Beast of Nazism and the New Soviet Man. One hears less malevolent echoes of it in Rand.
The reason Rand’s overmen and –women are less malevolent is something Rand commented on herself. The difference between her philosophy and Nietzsche’s is that “his epistemology subordinates reason to ‘will’, or feeling or instance of blood or innate virtues of character.” (introduction to The Fountainhead) . Hers celebrates the subordination of man only to reason. Enter Aristotle.
But before we put Nietzsche back on the shelf a few side comments. First, that his Zarathustra has so little to do with the historical character of that name that real Zoroastrians – there are quite a few – must be scratching their heads wondering how the old fellow could have come up with this stuff. Second, that Nietzsche places his statement that “God is dead” in the mouth of a madman, which is ironic inasmuch as Nietzsche himself later wound up in a psychiatric clinic in Basel. But nuts or not, it was Nietzsche who brought to my reluctant attention the difficulties encountered in rejecting God as a source of morality. Whether one can replace Him with will, reason, or even politics seems to me to be a very contemporary question.
Objectivism as a body of philosophy is taken less seriously than it otherwise might be in academia due to this necessarily derivative character. It is far more Aristotlean than Nietzschean. Atlas Shrugged, however, seems to me to circle the two in an irregular orbit like a planet circling a binary star system, now lurching one direction, now the other.
The novel is also taken less seriously than it otherwise might be in academia due to a couple of fairly serious flaws, most notably the brick wall it hits at chapter VII of the third section, “This Is John Galt Speaking,” wherein the dramatic narrative gives way- probably necessarily, we’ll discuss it - to a polemic. We’re not there yet so I’ll say little about it other than likening that brick wall to the building with which this chapter opens, a great edifice that must be supported by the motions of its occupants.
One last thought – my copy of AS has a different illustration from its predecessor (which I lost through lending), which was, logically enough, a fellow bent over with the world on his back. The new illustration is that of a tunnel from which two rails of Reardon Metal emerge toward the viewer. There is, as well, a circle of light that represents an oncoming train. Given recent events I find that more than a little disturbing. ;-)
Thank you. You add so much to these threads. I learn a lot from your work.
My point? Easy - for all their good, they have done bad. Boeing supplies weapons that kill, Dupont has supplied materials used in war, Dow has killed people through faulty safety precautions. Yes, they have done good, but they have not been perfect.
If you look at my post, I even mentioned that certain divisions may be sterling, but the whole may be tarred
So, the quetion is the same, how good or bad does a corporate entity have to be for a Christian to work there?
Taking it back to the book - are the people in this book giving up because they dont really believe they are in an area doing ‘good’ or because they themselves are not doing good.
BTW, I meant no offense to you dad and brother.
Ping to Chapter 4. Links to previous chapters are in Post #2.
“The chief problems I had with this otherwise delightful and empowering work was it’s notable lack of crowds and children.”
“I’ve noticed that too. Not even a teenager has shown up. I wondered if they were all being raised in a commune-type brainwashing camp.”
Two thoughts tying it to today.
First, I have long observed that in today’s society, there is an atmosphere of ever increasing societal expection for children to hurry, and grow up. The, “It’s the real world, and they need to learn to deal with it.” mentality, that usually is voiced by adults who do not want any restrictions placed on anything they want to do, see, or hear. Consequently, we now have 8 and 10 year olds dressing, and behaving like “teenagers” : / And it is not restricted to the U.S. In the Middle East, you have children, even toddlers, being dressed up, by their families, as Jihadist fighters. Might the lack of children be a symbolic absence, signifying the deterioration of society?
Secondly, about Obama’s National Service Camps....
Tatt : |
Rand was absolutely opposed to any form of self destructive behavior.Her standard of value for morality was survival not self destruction. Addictive behavior was considered self destructive.
Re: the rusted out locomotive.
The engine of progress has stopped, it has more than stopped it is running in reverse.
The world isn’t moving into the future, it is moving into the dark ages.
When management has an attitude that it expects excellence, it rewards excellence and will tolerate nothing else, People tend to deliver.
The high achievers will hold their coworkers to a similar standard.
When management puts up with substandard performance it is demoralizing to people who try to do well and over all performance will fall.
Slime begets slime.
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