Atlas Shrugged, 2010 reading journal/notes/? Part 1

Quotes from Atlas Shrugged that need answers:

"Dagny, the whole world's in a terrible state right now. I don't know what's wrong with it, but something's very wrong. Men have to get together and find a way out. But who's to decide which way to take unless it's the majority? I guess that's the only fair method of deciding, I don't see any other. I suppose somebody's got to be sacrificed. If it turned out to be me, I have no right to complain...."
This is Dan Conway, talking to Dagny right after the Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog rule passed, p.80 in my current copy of the book. In this quote we get the idea of valuing the collective good over that of any individual, the power of numbers over that of facts and realty, and individual sacrifice. Rand has definite answers for each of these components, but it is less clear what happens to these answers when one throws in the idea of sustainability, a goal which Rand would either have to reject, or situate within the context of the individual. I think maybe the problem with Objectivist sustainability might not be that it is a contradiction in terms, but that it doesn't allow the government to use force to implement sustainability at all. Rand assumes businessmen are good, but as Murray Rothbard pointed out in his critique of Rand's work, big-businessmen are also politicians, and they play dirty, so that while a man like Francisco d'Anconia or Hank Reardon would be honest and honorable and would not need government supervision, real business as it is done now requires more regulation and regular supervision. This is not to say it would be impossible for 'good' businessmen to come to power in the absence of the more paternalistic or restrictive regulations, and surely some of the big businessmen now are better than people want to admit.

[ Not that I've met people that really remind me of the other men in this book, but it is a very different experience reading about Hank Rearden this time. I never liked him all that much before, but mostly because I had a rather hard time picturing him in my mind. He always wound up looking like Jimmy Stewart, which works well enough for the character, but I was never attracted to Jimmy Stewart. This time someone else's manner is creeping into Hank's character, and he is much improved.]

I still find the term 'Rearden metal' obnoxious, but then again we have Bessemer steel in real life, which is almost certainly the real-world version of Rand's story here. Henry Bessemer was British, and the details of his story are different, but he did end up financing his own development of steel production using his method, because no one else wanted to use it.

Note to self for later: Ayn Rand refers to differential equations in such a way as makes me wonder just how far Rand got in math. I know she liked math and studied it in college, but I also know that the expectations for bachelor of arts degrees have shifted since she graduated. For me, ordinary differential equations was the most advanced course I was required to take for a math minor. Had I continued to finish the major I would have had to take partial differential equations, and a few other higher-level courses. How much math did Rand know? I have always considered the concept of a differential equation quite straightforward, at least since someone told me what they meant by the term. (ref. p 93)

I think I have at least some idea now why Dagny had to choose John Galt over Francisco. Francisco d'Anconia wasn't in love with Dagny. He loved her, but because she was the embodiment of Taggart Transcontinental. John Galt was in love with her; while both men could recognize that she was the true motive power behind her company, Galt's interest in her was personal, in response to who she was as an individual very capable woman, in full recognition of the fact that in the absence of her company she could begin a new one. And, a John Galt played by Brad Pitt would almost have to be sexier than any man they could cast for d'Anconia.

Ayn Rand seems to have believed that it was impossible, or perhaps just unacceptably immoral, to work towards fixing people, and as firmly felt she was alone, having never truly met her equal. Surely since she built up her philosophy, she might consider those who needed her to teach them her philosophy to be less than her full equals, and if she couldn't accept the idea that people could be fixed psychologically, she'd not be able to accept Nathaniel Branden's ideas even if they hadn't had their bizarre romantic drama.

Depressive episodes from seeing too much?

Probably not, but you never know. In less than 6 hours, I went from something approximating normal to this sort of moodiness bordering on depression, with no new stimuli. Sure, I am still not sure how the hell I can arrange written exams so that I can physically complete them, and I will still be somewhat worried about that until I have talked to all my professors who administer such exams and after I have successfully found a solution, really, but that is the sort of problem that is fairly routine. I am still a bit frustrated at not having anyone with whom I can discuss the ideas in my head, but there has never really been anyone, so nothing has really changed. If I had to characterize in more detail the state of my mind, moreover, I would say it is more tired than depressed, and not as in sleepy. I can still feel the sensation from my reading this weekend, the same sort of 'awareness' that I always feel when constructing lattices of information in my head, or when I am trying to wrap my head around the universe. That is in fact exactly what I was doing this weekend, using the model Mr. Latour created, and drawing it out, using all I know about space and time, and all the bits of science I have ever absorbed, only more of it fit together this time. In fact, it wasn't so much that I had bits I couldn't fit, as I am just not sure how to translate what I ended up with into text, to communicate it to others, let alone how to make it useful.

The Urantia Book, something rather bizarre that can be found in most city libraries, a rather entertaining romp worth trying to wrap your head around just for practice, btw, talked a lot about the idea of the limits to human understanding, and offered the reader challenges to just try to imagine the unimaginable. As a kid, and this was in about 6th grade, so a while ago, I fancied that some of what this book took as impossible for us to imagine was not so hard after all. In college, in physics classes, occasionally professors would mention the gulf between what even the poorer students in those classes could imagine and what they could, especially in quantum physics, because we started out from different assumptions.

All this may not 'go anywhere' tonight, but it came to mind as linked to this tired brain I am about to send off to bed for the night. At the end of the first season of the revived Doctor Who, the Doctor's life is saved by Rose, who takes the whole of the time vortex in her head, and while it might have killed her eventually, she survived a small dose of it. Donna Noble, several seasons later, is forcibly retired from accompanying the Doctor, because she has a timelord's consciousness stuffed in her brain. This all begs the question, what are the limits to what humans can understand. Every so often someone has the balls to suggest that we have solved all the big problems in science and are now just mopping up the details. (So far they all have balls, but if we wait long enough I am sure a woman will come up with something silly like that too.) So far, something has always come along to stir things up shortly after, and if Latour's model, and the glorious 4-D thing in my head are right, there is no end to science, just an expanding event horizon of our collective human understanding.