As I was reading this I noticed that Erik makes the same logical mistake that is often made when people contemplate evolutionary theory... the notion that natural selection happens to the group rather than to the individual.
It came as a sort of entertaining surprise, then, to read a bit further and notice that Erik explicitly attempts a metaphor about group selection to underscore his comments about how a human social system ought to work.
To those who haven't read the book in question: I recommend reading it for yourself before you waste much time reading essays like Erik's.
selection doesn't even apply directly to the individual, but to the survival of individual genes through individuals.
if a gene establishes itself within the genepool of a group, that is because it has been beneficial to every individual (and the genes that survive through that individual), by it's own merit - not by merit of being widespread in the group already, along the way.
Some form of "Group Selection" works, with stuff like the Green Beard Effect. There can be subgroups where sexual attraction is influenced by something like that. If group selection can work with a pair of traits in two halves of a population, it seems like it could work for a single trait in both halves of a population.
If you treat "race" as a word meaning "extended families that reproduce to some extent," then you have a great evolutionary argument for in-group altruism. By being slightly sensitive to race, you allocate slightly more resources to your own set of genes, meaning that people who share your genes, in turn, have more resources they can allocate back to you. In conditions of scarcity, that really helps. However, I don't know if it helps enough to deal with defectors (i.e. if there's a group that allocates lots of resources to group members, someone born with a "mooching" gene could afford lots of kids. It is basically the same math that wrecks cartels, just on a longer timeline).
That doesn't really matter for my point, which was that group selection is a very wrongheaded way to look at the issue. Abstracting an organism's genotype and phenotype as "an individual" is accurate shorthand, while group selection just doesn't happen.
Well, a gene can spread in a small group through drift (even if detrimental). If it allows that group to out-compete the next tribe over, it will spread farther.
Of course, no one has ever seen this in action, so it's pretty unlikely that group selection is very important in evolutionary history.
My surgery likely butchered the original. Errors in where I inserted paragraph and section boundaries will correspond to limitations in my understanding. I'm putting it up partly so you can tell me what I've totally missed.
Erik Naggum wrote a piece about Atlas Shrugged that is rife with errors and confusions regarding Ayn Rand and her ideas. Most, if not all, of his errors are addressed in Rand's non-fiction work. At the end of the article Erik wrote "It is just as impossible to become a contributor to a free, humane society without having read Ayn Rand as it is to become one having only read Ayn Rand" which I agree with. Read Ayn Rand's works (and other thinkers) and judge for yourself.
The scene you are referring to is pretty blunt alright, but you're twisting it.
The train enters the tunnel at hands of the 'baddies' (the irresponsible incompetents). And the passengers are not 'people critical of aspects of capitalism' (Though we are led to believe that they weren't entirely innocent)
This is different to the 'people critical of aspects of capitalism are sent by train into a tunnel and killed.'
It's not. It's a slightly more complex setup than I wrote, but the end message is the same.
The passage in question opens with this:
It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them.
It then gives a list of the people on the Comet, and lists in effect their sins. It ends:
These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas. As the train went into the tunnel, the flame of Wyatt’s Torch was the last thing they saw on earth.
So, quite explicitly, it debunks the idea that "the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible", and concludes with "There was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas."
It's not just sentencing these people to death, it's supernaturalism. It makes the claim implicitly that catastrophes only happen to people that deserve them — a claim that's repeated at several points in the novel.
Thanks for pointing this out. I recall reading Rand's work years ago and thinking there appeared to be some element of "cosmic justice" leaking into her allegedly rational world. Perhaps the name Comet eludes directly to this, as it certain fits into Rand's heavy-handed and often clumsy way of story-telling.
You may be right. Her storytelling is free of the sort of opaque language that lets people interpret it any way they like... such language is sometimes poetic and inspiring, but would not be a good fit for Rand's novel. Thus it is not a weakness of the novel that she avoided it.
The passengers on the train symbolize the unwitting half-participants in the travesty that led to the train's malfunction. Surely none of them would have expected that their half-hearted support of the system that led to the crash would result in their own deaths.
The reader is intended to focus on the thoughts of the passengers and the consequences of their prior beliefs. The point being that few would expect there to be any consequences, which is why the train crash is an effective plot element. The crash is not intended to symbolize the killing of those who oppose capitalism but to show the folly of loose, whimsically held beliefs.
You may be right. Her storytelling is free of the sort of opaque language that lets people interpret it any way they like... such language is sometimes poetic and inspiring, but would not be a good fit for Rand's novel. Thus it is not a weakness of the novel that she avoided it.
Opaque language, or simply shallow? Not everything lacking depth ought to be commended for the fact.
The reader is intended to focus on the thoughts of the passengers and the consequences of their prior beliefs.
That's because the reader of Atlas Shrugged is intended to either think very small, very simple thoughts, or to be semipsychotic. Indeed, this idea that people with "whimsically held beliefs" should deserve to die unwittingly in a train crash is exactly what Erik Naggum was writing about in this thread! So we've come full circle.
Naggum writes that his interpretation of freedom has to do with an acceptance of risk, which is an interesting way to look at the concept. In Rand's society, as he notes, there is no acceptance of risk. Either you do things exactly how Rand would like you to, or you die in a fiery train crash. Or you die like Eddie Willers, who supports Dagny the entire time but isn't quite special enough to avoid dying with the rest of society, as Dagny instantly forgets about him and goes whimsically on her way.
Look, I know what Rand was intending. I had my phase of thinking she wasn't a deluded psychopath too. My point was that her intent led to her thinking it was perfectly okay to write a scene featuring people dying in a train crash for thinking bad thoughts, and that furthermore it was okay to found an entire "school" of philosophy around the concepts laid out in the same book, which, for all its strict observances of "objective" reality, also has a scene where scientists build a torture device that miraculously doesn't work on John Galt.
A rational philosophical assault on that scene might proceed as follows: How much control did the people on that train have over their beliefs? Is it possible for somebody to believe wholesale in something harmful, without ever having a chance to doubt themselves? Then we can actually look at how people act in real life and realize that, in many cases, our inbred beliefs aren't entirely under our control. So when those people are killed for their whimsical beliefs, perhaps it's not their beliefs that they die for. Perhaps it's the beliefs of their parents, who raised them not to question certain things and so blinded them to the future. These people might be rehabilitated, but no, in Atlas Shrugged they will die without a questioning of their motives.
It's one of those scenes that's suspiciously close to Christianity — these pop up everywhere in Rand's writing. She believes that people are born evil or born good, that their character just pops out of the womb, that there's no chance to change. No character has a change of heart in the entire book. So by her logic it's okay to sentence evil people to die — not just in the train scene, but when Dagny shoots a guard, or when Ragnar destroys ship after ship because not a single talented captain on the planet will argue with him so he's just killing off virtual retards. It's the world ending in fire, with John Galt delivering the good people into salvation — and, let's remember, nobody is as pure as Galt in this story, and all of them would have died were it not for his brilliant idea.
It's not worth further arguing here. Atlas Shrugged is a brittle enough novel that a sharp tap crumbles it. It's certainly not the sort of writing that deserves to be taken seriously.
I think you are reading way too much into that scene.
There are lots of characters who have changes of heart, just not the abrupt kind you are used to. Rearden starts out serving and appreciating his family, but finally realizes that they hate and resent him... Painfully, he decides to pursue his dreams even though his mother and wife are profoundly hurt by his decision. What began as a guilty pleasure turned (appropriately) into a great labor of love.
The book is full of exaggerations and is intended to portray an unrealistic world ... and it works to illustrate Rand's philosphical concepts.
If you look at the world as you seem to, then you might as well defend murderers and genocidal dictators, for they are just innocent holders of beliefs, etc.
* The crash is not intended to symbolize the killing of those who oppose capitalism but to show the folly of loose, whimsically held beliefs.*
Yes, A is A. If you are a capitalist then you may not have any ideological compromise at all, even if it appeals to you, and even if there's strong evidence that it's a smart political and economic decision.
A is A. The world is black and white. Anybody who sees shades of grey must be killed.
It has nothing to do with supernaturalism; it's a parable of suicide by stupidity, made more explicit to make it clearer, at least to those without an ideological axe to grind.
Perhaps if that scene hadn't been mirrored elsewhere in the book, you'd have an argument; however, as somebody else said in this thread, Rand doesn't leave her writing up to interpretation. She clearly states multiple times that she doesn't believe catastrophe is capable of hurting good people. Note how while bad countries are hit by hurricanes and floods, Dagny never once has to worry about the weather, or about anything other than the bad people in her way.
it's a parable of suicide by stupidity
Do you realize how ghastly a concept that is? To say that if you think things Ayn Rand thinks are bad, you're essentially killing yourself? We call that fascism.
> Do you realize how ghastly a concept that is? To say that if you think things Ayn Rand thinks are bad, you're essentially killing yourself? We call that fascism.
Actually, we don't. We don't call it racism, fundamentalism, or homophobia for that matter. Unless, of course, you think that those words mean "you're poopy-head and I don't like you".
I realize that you think that calling someone "fascist" is a winning "argument", but that doesn't mean that all of your opponents are fascists.
I didn't call them any of those things. Projecting much?
You don't have to be a fascist to think fascist thoughts. I was saying Rand espoused a fascist philosophy. People endorsing Objectivism are endorsing a line of thought that's fascist in nature. That doesn't necessarily make them fascists. Could be they're merely ignorant.
> I was saying Rand espoused a fascist philosophy.
Nice attempt to try to move to something defensible. I'll quote your first attempt before following you. "To say that if you think things Ayn Rand thinks are bad, you're essentially killing yourself? We call that fascism."
> People endorsing Objectivism are endorsing a line of thought that's fascist in nature.
Oh really? Where in Objectivism do folks use the power of the state to control others? Where in objectivism do folks assume that the state will take care of their needs? Or, is the connection that you think that objectivists dress better than standard leftist totalitarians?
All of Rand's nonfiction tends to treat Atlas Shrugged as a fiction piece that carries out as real life ought to. I don't at all doubt that Rand thought catastrophes were the responsibility of the leeches of society. She wasn't entirely sane.
(This belief of mine is backed up by the fact that Rand worshipped a man who kidnapped, raped, and dismembered a 12-year-old girl, because she thought he was a perfect example of a man doing anything he pleased. In fact, the motto of Objectivism comes directly from one of that man's court statements.)
"Rand worshipped a man who kidnapped, raped, and dismembered a 12-year-old girl"
Never heard that one before. Any references?
(Fwiw, I personally think taking Ayn Rand seriously is a phase teenagers go through and (should) grow out of. I can't imagine anyone taking her seriously. Kind of like taking "Twilight" seriously imo)
At the rendezvous, Mr. Parker handed over the money to a young man who was waiting for him in a parked car. When Mr. Parker paid the ransom, he could see his daughter, Marion, sitting in the passenger seat next to the suspect. As soon as the money was exchanged, the suspect drove off with the victim still in the car. At the end of the street, Marion's corpse was dumped onto the pavement. She was dead. Her legs had been chopped off and her eyes had been wired open to appear as if she was still alive. Her internal organs had been cut out and pieces of her body were later found strewn all over the Los Angeles area.
Ayn Rand, writing about formulating one of her early protagonists:
The outside of Hickman, but not the inside. Much deeper and much more. A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me.
Other people have no right, no hold, no interest or influence on him. And this is not affected or chosen -- it's inborn, absolute, it can't be changed, he has 'no organ' to be otherwise. In this respect, he has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.
No that is a gross mischaracterization. Rand is talking about the degradation of society as a whole, rather than the depradations of just one person in a society..
..which is shown to the reader as a scene with people sitting in a train, riding to their deaths, with a lengthy exposition explaining they deserve it.
It came as a sort of entertaining surprise, then, to read a bit further and notice that Erik explicitly attempts a metaphor about group selection to underscore his comments about how a human social system ought to work.
To those who haven't read the book in question: I recommend reading it for yourself before you waste much time reading essays like Erik's.