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ramrodd · 1 year ago

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What are the merits and demerits of "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand?

The essential merit is the triangulation of Dagny Taggart, Barbie and the shower scene in Starship Troopers. The essential demerit is the glorification of the domestic terrorism of John Galt.

COMMENTARY:

The singular merit of Atlas Shrugged is Dagny Taggart. She is the most fully realized female character in literature. She is a masterpiece of characterization. If Ayn Rand had any useful capacity in objective personal inventory, she would have cut the novel by a third around her and written a third novel to complete a portrait of the “sense of life” at the core of her collage of sound bites and syllogisms she assembled around the Virtue of Selfishness. Dagny Taggart is the Princess Leia hologram her narrative created in my mind. Dagny Taggart springs in Technicolor from the drab industrial environment of Pittsburgh when its rivers caught on fire.

There is an important cultural consequence of Dagny Taggart in the popular imagination of the Boomer Generation at the moment birth control became safe, cheap, effective and legal along with Barbie and actual women like Audrey Hepburn and Jackie O and Lauren Bacall and a whole range of Hollywood women. Ayn Rand didn’t understand sex until she took what amounted to a straight Twink as a lover when she was in her 40s and married. She was married, but her marriage to Frank O’Connor was a desperate strategy to remain in America by marriage. Frank is one of the people she sincerely loved, but it was a very porcelain relationship, a sort of running New Yorker cover. But she was entirely submitted to getting fucked on her living room floor on a full length mink coat by Nathaniel Branden, a psychologist who isolated Self-Esteem as a significant structure of the ego when he was in his twenties and married to his college sweat heart, who was later murdered by post-hypnotic suggesting during a telephone conversation with Ayn Rand. Rand fucked with her mind in some way Rand knew Barbara was vulnerable to strobe paralysis, that thing that happened in Discos from people becoming dazzled by the light display like a deer in headlights. Barbara apparently was dazzled by light flickering off the water of an indoor pool and she checked out, mentally, and tripped into the pool and drowned.

And Dagny Taggart was who Ayn Rand was when she was fucking Nathaniel Branden Dagny was an active California Sport Fucker and Ayn Rand wouldn’t have know what that meant until the day she died.

Now, I need to go see Barbie. The connection between Barbie and Dagny and the Cosmo Woman is inescapable. The Sex in the City was the adventures of pre-Reagan Sport Fuckers in a Joffrey Ballet/Studio 54 Tucker Carlson-free Woodstock Nation play ground.

You see, the third of the book I would cut out was when John Galt appears and she becomes her BDSM dungeon master and all the Technicolor disappears and becomes the grubby industrial black and white of the dystopian universe of Donald Trump’s business culture.

John Galt is a domestic terrorist committed to dismantling the administrative state.

Now, everything about Atlas Shrugged is fantasy. When I first started to read it in 1962, I thought it was science fiction like Frank Herbert but with the promise of a lot more sex, with Dagny Taggart the literary come-on of a sideshow bait and switch. I had read Anthem before my sister had a paperback version of the book and encouraged me to read it because it had some interesting ideas. Her idea of interesting ideas were totally elusive to me over the years, but she was a serious campus intellectual and lived that way her entire life.

I don’t think it was her. Most of Women’s Literature is lost on me. There’s a real Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus thing going on for me in terms of women’s literature, but there it is.

So, I’m not sure what the interesting ideas were for her in Atlas Shrugged, but I wasn’t hooked and decided it wasn’t ever begin to work as an adventure story like, say, Robert Heinlein. And, except for Dagny Taggart, there wasn’t enough sex explicit for my pleasure. By and large, everything sexy happens off stage, sort of like Dezi and Lucy sleeping in twin beds. I mean, i figured out John Galt was the mysterious friend of Dagny’s brother. I quit reading in 1962 when I realized that the play date between Dagny’s brother and the mysterious stranger, was supposed to be a pericope of great subtlety and artistry.

I read it completely in 1995, during a market adjustment when Clinton’s economic policy shrugged off the speculative foam lingering from Vietnam and Stagflation and we almost became the Green New Deal. If his election hadn’t been stolen by the butterfly ballots, Gore would have extended Clinton’s sallt water economics another 4 years that would have completed the paradigm shift from the Military Industrial Complex to the Green New Deal and we would have a permanent lunar colony by 2010,

And during this market flat-line, I discovered that Alan Greenspan was a disciple of Ayn Rand and I was trying to understand what he said was goin on in the markets, which I now know was the Fresh Water economics of the University of Chicago. I could tell that he realized the Fresh Water models weren’t working and was trying to find the language for what was going on.

As a consequence, I had to read Atlas Shrugged. Her collection of essays describing Objectivism didn’t connect with any dots I could discern in Greenspan’s economic modeling. They didn’t share any map sheet with each other nor with anything I found useful. Paul Krugman’s Salt Water economics in the dynamical economies of scale in his Peddling Prosperity is pretty much what I was seeing in the NYSE in 1994 after the Triple Witching in March. Because of electronic trading, there is always a certain level of “chatter” in the markets that didn’t exist before 1979. Nixon’s banking and securities policies anticipated electronic trading and created the structures that created Silicon Valley. During August of 1994, virtually all the speculative and inflationary froth lingering from the financing for the Vietnam war was flushed out of the NYSE as everyone went to the beach and let the programs keep the markets open. In addition, Clinton’s salt water economics fixed a great deal of what Reaganomics had fucked up with the Fresh Water economics of Supply Side Free Market class warfare.

But people who embrace Atlas Shrugged as the operators manual for Reaganomics don’t have any more idea how the economy actually works than Alan Greenspan did in 1994. What no one saw coming was Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House and the transfer of the legislative processes from elected constitutional officers to Grover Norquist, who began dictating economic policy to the January 6 Republicans-in-training as MAGA service dogs.

If Dagny Taggart had exposed John Galt as a domestic terrorist seemingly determined to dismantling the administrative state but actually enthralled by the enchantment of an evil cabal of Criminal Fascists and that she and Hank Reardon embarked on a quest to free John Balt from CAW, the evil cadre causing the social collapse of Atlas Shrugged . She could have ended Atlas Shrugged as a cliff hanger, as thy are bale to co-opt John Galt’s television address that stalls the CAW insurgency from achieving the constitutional overthrow at the end of Atlas Shrugged,

And the third volume in the Sense of Life trilogy would have Dagny saving John Galt and turning the whole world to Technicolor and ending in the Pink Dream House of Barbie, the Movie, on the beach at Malibu with a naked, coed beach volley ball court out the patio in the back. The subtitle for the trilogy would be “Escape from the Parable of the Cave”..

So, the essential merit of Atlas Shrugged is Dagny Taggart.

The essential demerit is is Objectivism is total Free Market, Fres Water Economics, Commercial Fascism crap. It’s the Harvard MBA program business model that the Studio Executives are trying to shove down the throat of Fran Drescher and SAG in opposition to the superior Salt Water Quality Assurance business model of organized labor.

But that’s another story.

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randomnumbers751650 · 4 years ago

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It’s weird how stuff works. I read Atlas Shrugged for research and now I’m starting to think of how Ayn Rand was influenced by his Marxist teachers in university. So I sent an abstract to conference of a ficticious article in which I propose Ayn Rand was actually a critic of capitalism.

But...I’m also studying Marxist political economy for an assignment and I keep noticing how it’s essentially what Rand wrote in a few things. It’s like she picked Marxist political economy and put a capitalist varnish over it. She cites some libertarian concepts (like Mises’s argument of the impossibility of socialist calculation), but it feels like she cites what she heard in a discussion, not what she truly studied.

Like, people read Atlas Shrugged to “empower” themselves (the fact it’s also a self-help book is thoroughly ignored), but they never really take John Galt’s work ethic, only that it’s okay to crush those who oppose the “movers and shakers” and that’s what they do - you can’t go a week without some Amazon/Tesla Motors/any company horror story, usually managed by a reader of Ayn Rand.

I studied Marxist economics but it never truly interested me, but now it makes more sense. It’s funny, because from a Christian point of view, Atlas Shrugged made me appreciate the doctrine of the Grace of God more, because the world of that book is a world devoid of Grace.

I want to quote in length G. K. Chesterton’s introduction to his essay “On Smart Novelists and the Smart Set”, from his book Heretics:

In one sense, at any rate, it is more valuable to read bad literature than good literature. Good literature may tell us the mind of one man; but bad literature may tell us the mind of many men. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. It does much more than that, it tells us the truth about its readers; and, oddly enough, it tells us this all the more the more cynical and immoral be the motive of its manufacture. The more dishonest a book is as a book the more honest it is as a public document. A sincere novel exhibits the simplicity of one particular man; an insincere novel exhibits the simplicity of mankind. The pedantic decisions and definable readjustments of man may be found in scrolls and statute books and scriptures; but men's basic assumptions and everlasting energies are to be found in penny dreadfuls and halfpenny novelettes. Thus a man, like many men of real culture in our day, might learn from good literature nothing except the power to appreciate good literature. But from bad literature he might learn to govern empires and look over the map of mankind.

Atlas Shrugged does fit that. It’s not the worst book ever, but its badness was enough to change the world. For worse, I’d say. But, even so, we can still learn about it.

#the irony #ayn rand making me more of a commie #haha

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jflashandclash · 4 years ago

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Tales from Mount Othrys

Alabaster: Delicate Dance of Chance IV

Alabaster found Pax in Camp Othrys, hiding with the laundry bins. There were few places Axel couldn’t smell his little brother out. This laundry room was one of them. A logical choice if Pax wanted to avoid being found. Alabaster almost forfeited his plan at the reek of towels soaked in demigod sweat and monster ooze—all cottony causalities from that morning’s training session.

One blanket trembled in the far corner of the room. Judging from its lack of filth, Pax, fortunately, must have swiped it from a clean pile. The blanket went still when Alabaster stepped alongside of it.

He hoped he hadn’t mistaken his friend for two demigods getting intimate. No. The sheet tucked tight enough to show Pax’s form: his legs curled up and arms folded atop them, looking like the grumpiest B-rate ghost. Alabaster nudged dirty towels away with his foot and settled down beside the blanket.

Alabaster lifted the small paperback from his stack of two books. The cover had a few stains and was a little too dingy for Alabaster to have kept in a library if he was a librarian. He cracked it open. The coarseness of the pages felt wonderful, even if he didn’t prefer the first page’s sketch of a baby. At an utter, a reading rune glowed on his necklace, bringing the font to proper focus.

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much,” Alabaster read, “They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.”

The blanket ghost stopped shaking and sniffling. Alabaster paused in his oration, as though about to turn a page—a ridiculous notion. What book had a page turn after one short paragraph? He berated himself, forgetting the beautiful opening of, It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness… The best example of a necessary run-on sentence. Regardless of A Tale of Two Cities, Alabaster had paused here so Pax could comment.

“Is—is that Harry Potter?” Pax squeaked.

Instead of answering, Alabaster continued to read, past the turn of a page, until he came upon the sentence, “It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar—a cat reading a map.” [1]

Alabaster hadn’t meant to stop there. His breath choked. Sphinx, Lelly’s late cat, had been able to read maps. A brilliant Mist form, she’d been able to do so much more than that: a utilitarian helper in the lab and a compassionate friend to his little sister.

For the first time since he, Pax, and Axel had almost been captured by Romans, Alabaster pressed a hand over his mouth. His eyes felt warm. Every time he’d let Lou Ellen cry in his arms, he’d kept focused on his hatred of the Romans and on their own undiscovered traitor. Why, now, with this stupid, juvenile book, did he find himself choking up over the loss? Over a cat that could read a map?

Pax misunderstood his silence as another page break. “You… You said you would only read me books for educational purposes. And, and that Harry Potter was a ‘gross misrepresentation of magic and b-better as a study of plot holes,’” the words came out a rapid jumble of—presumably—snot and hiccups. They were a distracting relief to Alabaster.

“You wanted to read it. No one would read it to you. This is an apology, not for my unrequited feelings, but for the boarish delivery of my response. This is my attempt, over the next seven hours of reading, an hour per evening this week, to prove that nothing needs to change between us, that we can still be friends.”

The sheet ghost crept closer. “Friends,” Pax echoed, “We’re friends?”

He didn’t even know if we were friends, but was still willing to express his infatuation? Alabaster growled. Instead of pointing out the error in logic, he said, “Don’t get cocky. It’s not every day that I get a willing lab assistant with no sense of self-preservation.”

The next noise sounded like a choked laugh.

“Is your arm functional?” Alabaster asked, examining the blanket. “Jack never found you to tend to it.”

The ghost extended its limb out without any apparent pain or struggle.

Alabaster sighed in relief as Pax lowered his arm back down. He tapped two fingers on the edge of the book. This will be fine, he assured. Nothing needs to change. All he needed was the affirmation from Pax. “Are my terms acceptable to you?”

Pax laughed. The chime was more genuine. “You don’t have a lot of practice apologizing, do you?”

“Ajax.”

The sheet ghost rested its head against Alabaster’s thigh. After a pause, Pax squirmed further into his lap. Something familial, Alabaster decided. He wouldn’t know. He didn’t grow up with any of his half-siblings and his grandparents hadn’t been touchy. In his fatherly charades, Jack often let Pax curl up on his lap. Axel spent plenty of time shoving Pax off him when Pax was sleepy and wanted a nap.

“Will you read it in a British accent?” Pax asked, poking the book’s binding.

Six to seven hours of reading in a fake British accent? Alabaster weighed his options. He could double check to assure there was no recording equipment in the room, though he doubted Pax would press their fragile friendship with such antics. “…yes.”

“Will you make Ron’s voice higher in pitch?”

“Shut up and let me read to you.” Alabaster found where he left off and pressed his lips at the cat reading a map. He continued, lilting his words in what he hoped was a British accent. He never had the ease with accents that the Pax brothers did.

Pax didn’t complain. His breathing eased by the time Alabaster finished the next page.

At the end of the third chapter, Alabaster decided he would send Pax to bed with the other book in hand, the one for Axel (who had better not ask Alabaster to read to him). That was the other half of his plan. That book had a passage marked with a simple question, “Who is John Galt to you?” The question and passage should be subtle enough. They would strike conversations with Axel about tyranny and freewill without rousing suspicion from others. Then…

Alabaster scowled.

What would happen? What would happen if their talk of evil tyranny led to discussions of overthrowing Luke? The three of them, Pax, Axel, and he, worked well together in a stressful situation. The crowds took well to them when they were on stage. Alabaster was irritated to think a name like the Triple A Chimera (Pax didn’t even go by his first “a” name) could be useful, let alone a symbol for change, but what if it could? A symbol for liberation through insurrection.

He needed to reflect on this with his mother. Her wisdom was years beyond his own, and she could reveal their different potential futures, one that might involve the “Triple A Chimera” slaying a corrupt titan.

“We work well together. With our skill sets combined, we could make an excellent assassination team,” Alabaster muttered.

“Um… Uncle Vernon started to assassinate wizards?” Pax asked. He pulled the sheet partially off and rolled to stare up at Alabaster. His eyes were wide.

Alabaster hadn’t meant to speak aloud. “No—well—we don’t know yet. He might, judging off their insistence to break into his house.”

“But, the wizards could just magic him to pieces, right?”

“No. No, bullets work quite effectively against wizards.” Though, less so against brats with the Achilles’ curse. Luke’s weak spot was under his arm, where Axel had hefted him out of the River Styx. Kelly and Jack were the only two that Luke would let close enough to touch him there. And, Kelly would immediately rat Alabaster out if he suggested killing Kronos after the war.

What about poison? Could you kill a cursed of Achilles from the inside?

Pax pulled the sheet the rest of the way off. His amber and black eyes were so startled, they might roll out of their sockets. “Are you thinking about assassinating wizards?” With the sheet off and his sleeves rolled up, Alabaster could see bruises along Pax’s arm. The injury must have hurt more than he let on.

Alabaster sighed.

Pax wasn’t ready to talk about this sort of thing. Although the child of Eris held it together against the Romans, Alabaster noted how Pax tried not to kill anyone. Besides, right now, Alabaster was supposed to focus on being nice to Pax, not using him as a tool in this cosmic power struggle.

Alabaster removed a blank spell card from his stash and placed it between the pages as a bookmarker. “What you don’t realize Pax, is, after the events of the book series, and after he went mad with power, that I killed Harry Potter.”

Pax’s jaw dropped open at the thought. “That is a fanficiton I would read.”

“I’m sure you would. I forbid you from having Jack compose a ballad about it. [2] Come on. Let’s get you back to your tent. I have something I need to give to Axel.”

As they made their way back through camp, others were trickling in from the party. From what Alabaster heard, buses had been rented (in place of giant-carting death traps like Alabaster had to take). Some were loud with revelry; others were quiet with subtle glances tender touches, all hinting at future intimacy.

Pax didn’t speak as they walked. Under typical circumstances, Alabaster would have prayed for this. Faced with the silence, only occasionally alleviated by passing partiers, tension dug Alabaster’s fingers into his library books. Would the lab be like this in the upcoming weeks? Awkwardly quiet? Pax’s chatter and excitement made for soothing white noise. “Not that I’m regretting the ability to think without interruption, but are you alright?” he asked.

Pax’s jammed his hands into his punk jacket, toying with something in his left pocket. Alabaster knew it was probably one of those apples—the ones Pax’s mother gave him each morning to turn into someone else. “Just thinking.”

A warm breeze slithered through camp and Alabaster realized how exhausted he was. Emotional stress was tiring. He cleared his throat. “Ajax—”

“Matthias and I were talking about sneaking into the girl’s bath house again. He perfectly measured the amount of water you need to fill a balloon to simulate a realistically filled bra, and I think he makes a lovely lady when he raises his voice a few octaves,” Pax spoke quickly and adverted his gaze. This mustn’t have been what he wanted to talk about.

Another sigh choked in Alabaster’s throat. “Wait—you’re not thinking about turning into one of the girls, are you?! Ajax, that’s absolutely unethical—”

“What? No!” Pax cried. “I would not! Then, I couldn’t prove that my hair can be tamed by no amount of conditioner! Lucille thinks I just don’t use enough.”

“Prometheus and I should place a bet on how quickly you’ll be kicked out.” Alabaster shook his head. “I forbid Lou Ellen from helping you in any way, shape, or form and I certainly hope you haven’t discovered a new gift of magic, only to debut it with something so juvenile.”

“Hey!” Pax protested, “Mercedes would agree: if Matthias and I do a security test on the girl’s bath house and find it wanting, then we’ve done a favor in pointing out its weakness.”

“I’m not even the one you’re spying on and I get catharsis at the thought of your comeuppance.”

They neared the Pax brothers’ tent.

Alabaster debated whether he should give Mercedes a warning about their plan or if she’d find that insulting to her skills as an intelligence gatherer. If the Nord was strapping on a bosom and a wig and walking in the front, then it would probably be the latter.

Still, he was obligated to ask, “You haven’t found an alternative non-magic route to become invisible or a woman—”

Pax withdrew the golden apple from his pocket and nipped it.

Nothing happened, which was peculiar. Eris’ apples of mischief were never duds. Godly item only malfunctioned by intentional design. Usually, Pax turned into someone when he ate his apples, something Mercedes was thrilled to use for spy missions and something she’d only allowed Pax to tell Alabaster, Lou Ellen, Jack, and Flynn. (Alabaster suspected Mercedes’ fear—that Luke would abuse this to see Annabeth sooner, even if it wasn’t really her.)

The longer Alabaster examined Pax, the more he noticed subtleties: Pax’s jaw line softened, his shoulders looked slimmer, something far less subtle about his curvature—

“It worked!” Pax laughed, grabbing at his—no—no—her—chest and lifting. “Oh my gods—Alabaster—they dance! You put your right tit in, you put your right tit out, you put your right tit in and you shake it all about—ow.”

Alabaster shrieked and jumped backwards.

Pax, didn’t seem to notice. He—she was too busy turning to do the Hokey Pokey and giggling. “Oo! Ow, okay. Gentle with the titties. I’ll have to name them. Huh, weird that I never thought to name them before—”

“Ajax!” Alabaster repeated in horror. He was at such a loss for logical words, he resorted to profanities. “What the fuck?!”

Alabaster’s heartbeat pounded so loud in his head that he couldn’t think. He adverted his gaze to the ground. His face felt like it was on fire. Panic, it dawned, I’m panicking more than I did during Rome’s attack.

A bloodcurdling comment came from the tent as someone stepped out.

“Ajax! I’m glad you’re….” The word “back” died on Axel’s lips. “You’re a girl.”

Alabaster looked at Axel, keeping one hand firmly between his eyes and where Pax was dancing. He assumed Axel would be staring at his little brother with the same shock Alabaster felt. Instead, Axel scowled at Alabaster with the intent of a crouching jaguar. “Torrington.” Threat and accusation rolled out with the growl. Tension made the muscles in Axel’s neck strain.

Alabaster’s jaw dropped. “It—it wasn’t me!”

“It had better not have been.”

The movement behind Alabaster’s hand minimized. “Am…. Am I not allowed to be a girl?” Pax’s question was quiet and insecure.

Axel’s response was immediate. From his lack of surprise or hesitation, Alabaster wondered if Axel had been expecting this for years. “You can be whatever you want.” Axel gently ruffled Pax’s unruly hair. Alabaster lowered his hand to watch the interaction, to see Pax’s fragile smile at her brother’s approval.

Seeing Pax like this troubled Alabaster, striking some uncanny valley in the approximation to his friend. All the other times Pax had shifted around Alabaster, it had been into completely different people (pretending to be Jason Grace or Luke Castellan) or completely different species (mostly weasels since Lou Ellen struggled to turn people into much else). The scientific and magic-loving part of Alabaster’s brain should have found this fascinating—could Pax alter individual features about himself? Maybe give himself freckles, change his hair, skin, or eye color, or have a pincer in place of a hand? Why did he feel uncomfortable instead?

Axel had continued to speak, “As long as you want to be one and aren’t doing it for someone else.”

Pax tilted her head, spilling her hair off to the side. “Why would I do it for someone else?”

Axel glared at Alabaster again. Word must have spread about why Pax ran from the dance. With the ordering of events, the potential problem was obvious, though Alabaster had hoped that Axel would think better of him. “Oh, for Kronos’ sake!” he hissed. “Axel—I—he just did this! I didn’t ask him to.”

Axel finally broke eye contact to glance at Pax’s continued dancing. “Ajax,” he sighed, “What did we talk about with touching yourself in public?”

“That it’s inappropriate—oh!” Pax dropped her chest. She made quite the buxom lady and it furthered Alabaster’s discomfort. “My chest is inappropriate now… Man, that doesn’t seem fair for girls. I get why Lucille says it’s sexist bullshit. The titties should fly free—”

“Ajax!” both Alabaster and Axel snapped.

“Sorry. I normally can’t touch myself when I turn into other people because, uh, I turned into someone else, that’s their body, and that would be creepy—”

“At least you have some moral sense,” Alabaster muttered.

“But, I’m just me right now—”

“You’re just you in public,” Axel said, “And, you’re my sibling. Don’t do that in front of me. Or anyone for that matter.” Whatever Axel had predicted about this situation, Pax’s unorthodox dancing hadn’t been part of it.[3] “And don’t think Flynn is going to let us off dawn training just because there was a party in our honor.” Despite Axel’s suspicion of Alabaster, he flashed both of them a smile that might have been… cocky? Proud?

This party had been for them. Although they assuredly would have died without Jack and Flynn’s rescue, Jack happily spun the tale as an exclusively victory for the Triple A Chimera. They had worked well together, with Pax’s expert surveillance granting the opportunity to prepare, Axel’s mastery of terror and tactic, and Alabaster’s magical subterfuge. The books in Alabaster’s hands felt heavy. He withdrew the one thick enough to glaze the eyes of the feeble and handed it to Axel.

“Some light philosophy for meditation.” Alabaster hoped his voice sounded metered and not high with residual panic. “If you grow bored with the length, I marked the chapter that best encapsulates the theory. Well, the primary one of discussion.” Axel was smart, but could grow tired of things he found meandering. Worry made Alabaster swallow. What if Axel mistook the recommendation as idle chatter? What if he understood and reported him to Mercedes? Or worse, Luke himself?

Alabaster visualized Axel’s rigid posture as he stood between Luke and Annabeth’s door. There were details Luke had surely missed: the way Alabaster prepped a spell, the way Mercedes reached for darts that she kept pinned under her shirt, the accumulation of Axel’s energy as he prepped a jaguar transformation. In that room, Alabaster learned these were people who would fight for what was ethically correct, even to defend an enemy, even against a titan.

All of them were probably afraid of the same thing: expressing that their leader had lost his mind. Maybe, Axel needed a nudge in the form of a book.

Axel took it and frowned at the cover. “Atlas shrugged?” he read aloud, “That’s a little tasteless considering what happened to the General on Mount Tam.”

Alabaster smirked. He’d never liked Atlas much in the first place. “I’m glad we’re all alive. Good night, Axel.” He nodded his head and turned to Pax. In the moment, he’d forgotten Pax wasn’t his typical self.

She threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly, making it ever more apparent how differently she was shaped. “Thanks for staying my friend,” she whispered into his shirt.

Alabaster’s face felt hot. Although he hated the word, he could find no better adjective to address the situation other than, “This is weird.”

“Yea, this is weird.” Axel grumbled. Alabaster could hear his eye roll. “But turning us into weasels and polecats? Completely normal.”

“That is normal!” Alabaster snapped. My normal. One of Pax’s swirling black hairs had slid against his chin and he blew it away. The indents of her face felt warm as she burrowed against his chest. A puff of mint—Pax must have been chewing gum—flooded Alabaster’s senses, sending them into hyper-awareness.

Alabaster gently put a hand on either of Pax’s shoulders and removed her. Holding Pax a foot away, Alabaster flashed back to the first time they’d met. “Can you really do magic?” she’d asked, tugging at his sleeve and batting her lashes. He thought Pax was a girl, then, and been humiliated upon finding his mistake. What made someone a boy or a girl? Belief? And if it was belief, and not biological presets, what did that belief entail?

He cleared his throat. Her amber and black eyes were wide, a little afraid, and Alabaster slipped his grip from her shoulders, hoping they hadn’t been there for an inappropriate amount of time.

“Are you okay?” Pax asked. “Do you need another hug? Prometheus approved: he says my hugs are cure alls.”

“No,” Alabaster said quickly. In attempt to make the denial seem less desperate, he added, “No, I think the only person who might be able to claim panacea hugs is Apollo.”

“And no one should hug that creep,” Pax said. From the way she glanced off in the distance, Alabaster wondered if that was data in Jack’s seminar: What To Do When Pursued By a God and You Can’t Turn into a Tree. “But… are you okay? You’ve been acting funny since…” Her eyes widened. She glanced down at her curves, then back up at Alabaster. Her lips quirked into a half-smirk.

Horror clogged Alabaster’s throat. Pax knew. Alabaster wasn’t exactly sure what elusive information Pax knew, but she did, and Alabaster had to leave before she used it against him.

“You—you think I’m hot! You’re—you’re just straight—!”

There was no viable response to either of those comments. Disagreement would make him sound cruel and any compliment would require Alabaster to (both) lock himself in his lab in a vow of humiliated solitude and hide from Axel for that eternity.

Axel scowled critically at Alabaster’s pause.

This. This is what would be different if Pax was Axel’s little sister instead of little brother. Axel would have an excuse to hunt Alabaster down on unwarranted suspicions and make a sign out of his lanky frame that read, Reasons Not to Hit on My Little Sister.

With nothing else to say, Alabaster nodded to Axel. He hoped that he had managed a calm exterior: his thoughts were uselessly incoherent. His voice sounded shrill. “That’s on loan from the local library and is due in 21 days. I expect it returned to me on time and in prime condition. I hope both of you sleep well.”

Before Pax could respond further, Alabaster rigidly turned and strode away. Although the night had taken on a chill, Alabaster wiped a line of sweat from his forehead.

Stupid. Trivial. Distracting.

He harnessed his focus, tuning out the unnecessary emotions. This was something he was more accustomed to doing with shame, shutting out his grandfather’s and house servants comments about, “Witch,” and “bastard child.” It was harder with this current emotion—whatever it was that made his heart thud.

He grasped at the other thoughts drifting on his consciousness: Sleep. Axel’s nightmares. Recognizing the Pax brothers as his friends. The three of them making an excellent team. Potential for assassinations. Luke’s increasing failures as a leader. How to lead an army without their golden boy mascot.

They couldn’t. Alabaster swallowed. The chilly air cleared his head. They needed Luke for the rest of the war effort. Disposing of him now would create a rift in Camp Othrys, one that they couldn’t afford. Alabaster knew some of his siblings wouldn’t follow him if a divide happens. If something happened to Kronos, the titans would split into opposing parties. Lamia and any children of Hecate that opposed Alabaster would surely fall on that other side. They didn’t have a replacement leader strong enough to lead the war, other than… who? Flynn?

Alabaster’s stomach churned. Axel was popular, but an outsider. None of the Titans, xenophobic by Hellanistic nature, would listen to him, other than, maybe, Prometheus. Flynn, thanks the roll of luck, had no interest in being a leader. That kind of power vacuum would likely lead Krios and Hyperion to sibling rivalry.

They would have to dispose of Luke after the war. They would need a plan to dispose of Luke after the war, assuming Axel and Pax would agree.

An idea slithered along the seams of Alabaster’s awareness, one involving the murky silhouettes of a lion, a snake, and a ram. Maybe Alabaster could rid Axel of his nightmares at the same time as making a weapon to defeat Luke. The Triple A Chimera…

Magic couldn’t save his dying father, but maybe it could save the world from the return of an ancient tyranny. With thoughts of this new death machine, Alabaster walked back towards his room, blissfully unaware that—for the next week—he’d spend an hour every night reading to a curvaceous, flirty female Pax.

***

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed! (Sorry for falling off the face of the earth again >>’‘‘) I rewrote this ending, like, three times XD I hope it worked! Stay tuned in two weeks (hopefully >>’‘ in the theoretical universe) where a certain maniac redhead finds himself on an island with a population of two. Love you guys. Thanks for your support! <3

***

footnotes:

[1] When everyone stopped reading Tales from Mount Othrys, to pick up on a much more nostalgic work XD If it is not obvious enough, I do not have any rights to this book. There are not enough weasels or evil parents for me to have written it.

[2] Maybe, guys. I’ll consider it XD

[3] Pax’s playing the part of Captain Cook and the Isles of the Titties. Don’t ask questions.

#Tales from Mount Othrys #TOO #Heroes of Olympus #percy jackson #Alabaster #Pax #Axel #My favorite part is--if Axel thought Alabaster could be into dudes--he would have been JUST as paranoid before this.#Nothing actually changes XD #More opportunities for Axel to go full Big Bro mode

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donars-oak · 5 years ago

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Worshipping the Woods - The Destruction of Pagan, Celtic, and Native American Forest Legacies

Lately I’ve been obsessed with learning the history of the once massive forests and huge trees that covered North America. When Europeans first colonized/invaded America in the 1600s they were completely blown away by the size of the trees they found. There was nothing like that in Europe. They would write letters home, in shock and in awe of the size of trees.

In Europe mass deforestation had been been happening for centuries. The Celtic and Pagan traditions that saw trees as conscious, living beings, had practically vanished as Rome and Christendom saw these traditions as witchcraft and satanism. Pagans in Germany were hunted and killed for their woodland ceremonies. Celtics in Ireland watched their dense forest almost completely vanish from their island as the British turned into farmland to support their feudalism goals.

For Pagans and Celts, the forests were their temples, places of magic and beauty. Trees that would give structure for their homes, food for their bellies, cures for their diseases, and the ultimate aesthetic spiritual experiences. But to Christendom and the growing power of capitalism, forests could not be trusted. They were dark and evil. They stood in the way of progress.

A story in particular that has stood out me - and inspired this blog of the same name - is the story of Donar’s Oak. Winfrith Boniface, better known as “Saint” Boniface, was sent in the 8th century by the pope to convert the large pagan communities that still existed in Germany. Seeking to, as he explained, show pagans their was no spiritual power in nature, Boniface decided to cut down a oak of incredibly massive size. This oak was worshipped by the pagans as Donar’s Oak (Thor’s Oak).

Boniface, surrounded and protect by soldiers, chopped down the the tree as pagans watched and cursed his name. He then, after the pagans watched in shock as the tree fell, proceeded to add insult to injury, and began building a Christian Church from the wood of this tree. Wow. Not only did he kill their god, but he built a monument to his god, from the bones of their god.

History tends to repeat itself and a similar scene occurred a thousand years later and six thousand miles away.

John Galt, a British-Scottish explorer, colonizer, and a key figure in the British invasion of what soon became Ontario, Canada, was staring up at the most massive tree he had ever seen. Walking through an “uncleared portion of the primeval forest” somewhere in what is now Hamilton in the 1820s, Galt had come across an oak tree so big he praised it as the “Goliath of oaks” and “the greatest known.”

I had a similar feeling to what Galt had about a year ago. I was walking through what remains of undisturbed forest in Guelph, Ontario (A city Galt founded), and I stumbled upon a massive oak. Tiny by historical standards, probably a quarter of the size of tree Galt saw, but massive in comparison to what I was used to. Like Galt described the Oak he found, it dwarfed the other trees around it and made it seemed like it ruled over them, as the “monarch of the woods”.

Galt however also had a very Boniface-like reaction mixed in with his awe. He immediately fantasized about “cutting it down, and sending home planks of it to Windsor Castle”.

What?

To stumble upon something that amazing and immediately think about destroying it....

Like Boniface saw Donar’s Oak as standing in the way of progress and built a church out of it, Galt saw this massive Ontario Oak as something to be felled, sent across the ocean to Britain, and turned into fancy furniture. Boniface and his Christian God. Galt and the British Empire. No patience or time for something that took a thousand years to grow.

As Boniface stole something important from pagans, Galt was there to steal the forests from Native Americans.

I recently visited Huron Natural Area in Kitchener, Ontario. When I hike around Ontario, I’m so used to seeing forests dominated by invasive species that lack anything nearing old growth or diversity. However sometimes you find these incredible stretches of old forests. Areas that have never been cleared for homes or farmland or golf courses. They don’t have the massive trees they would have had centuries ago (these likely were selectively logged or died from new diseases and threats brought by the Europeans), but they have their descendants. Huron Natural Area was one of those old forests. It was incredible. The friend I was hiking with commented ‘how we were going to be here all day’ because I couldn’t stop examining every single tree.

Something I especially loved though, was the information on the signs (designed by @EmilyDamstra) at the entrance. These let you know that the Huron Natural Area wasn’t really a “natural” environment, in the sense that we think of “natural“ as being undisturbed. This incredible forest had been the home to multiple Native American groups over thousands of years. Groups that had grown with the forest, used it, shaped it, and most importantly, sustained it.

There is an old lie about Native Americans that we can’t seem to dismiss. The lie that America was mostly empty when the Europeans came. That America was full of forests that were untouched by human hands. These are the “truths” taught to us in school that we can’t seem to dismiss despite the growing evidence. The evidence that the population of Native Americans rivaled that of Europe at the time of first contact. The evidence that Native Americans didn’t so much “live in the wild”, as designed and cared for it. (Highly recommend the book 1491 by Charles C. Mann to help kick these misunderstandings).

That Oak tree Galt wanted so badly to cut down, was likely a tree Native Americans groups in the area were well aware of. They probably made use of the acorns, the bark, and the twigs. Hell, its possible they even planted it. Lots of Native Americans planted and grew oak trees and other nut trees for food. They maintained Oak Savannas, which look much like European parks with grass and spaced shade trees, which allowed the tree branches to spread low so acorns can be picked. It shocked European settlers who came upon them because they appeared to be so obviously human maintained, which in their eyes couldn’t be possible for these savage Indians.

Currently I am reading an autobiography by Diana Beresford-Kroeger, an Irish botanist now living in Canada, who was raised as a child with old Celtic traditions and knowledge about nature. In it she talks about her anger at discovering that the great Irish forests, where this Celtic knowledge was created and passed down by ancestors, were no more due to the invasion of Christianity and the British. She also talks about her wonder and thanks for the Native American people of Canada for maintaining the Canadian Forests. For not letting Canada turn into a forest-less county like Ireland.A theme throughout is her concern for the future as forests are still vanishing.

It saddens me, learning about these massive forests that I’ll never get to see. But like Beresford-Kroeger, I am in awe of the forests we still have in Canada and thankful for them.

Just a few nights ago, I decided to do something I hadn’t done in a long time. I went camping all by myself. I packed my tent, sleeping bag, and some food and walked about 5 hours north from my place in Guelph. Just as the sun was beginning to go down, I found an incredible old forest between two farms. Much like the forest of the Huron Natural area, it was area that had been sustained and allowed to grow old. There were some incredible trees, like the Blue Beach, the muscle-wood tree, that can only be found in older forests like this. I claimed a spot on the top of a hill where i would get lots of light and wouldn’t have to worry about rain. As I sat watching the sun peak through the trees as darkness fell on the wood, I noticed I had camped near a large oak, that would protect me that night.

#forest #trees #celtics #nature #pagans #nativeamericans

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isenvs3000-19-blog · 5 years ago

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Making the Past Lasting

I found it interesting that this guided tour stood out to me so much despite it not being related to my personal interests as much as other labs in my nature interpretation class. Earlier this fall, we went on a guided tour of downtown Guelph.

Our walk, guided by Ken, started at the Guelph Civic Museum and made a loop of the area, describing the history of how the city was created, significant buildings and their former purposes, and very prominent aspects of the lives of people that walked down the same streets that I do now.

Stories that were shared sparked wonder, sadness, humour and all resonated as quite interesting. Many questions that I had about the unique city’s layout and architecture were answered, but also far more than I could have imagined were revealed.

As I walk down the same streets now, I pay far more attention to the features around me. If I am with a friend, I eagerly reveal the cool facts that I have picked up.

This is a photo of the Basilica of Our Lady Immaculate, Guelph. I had always wondered about the history of this stunning church, and I was lucky to learn this. For example, this is the 3rd time this church has been rebuilt. Photo from catholicregister.org.

But it was not simply the facts of the city’s past that made the guided tour so impressionable. The tour guide and his methods were notable. There are some gifts of interpretation from Beck and Cable’s book that I identified with this activity:

1. The gift of targeted programs

It’s clear that there was effort and success in tailoring the walk to our group as an audience of young adults in University. Many points of conversation included the history of the local bars and fun facts of celebrities that occurred in our city’s past.

2. The gift of story

It is clear that there was a great deal of research, thought, organization and care within this interpretation, which are gifts to the audience.

Ken certainly included many valuable strategies that brought forth imagination through his story telling; we experienced emotions being put into the shoes of those from Guelph’s past. And now the stories are carried with us.

3. Of course, personalizing the past.

This tour brought life to the past. We learned the happenings in ways that we could relate to our current lives and even learn from.

A statue of the founder of Guelph, John Galt. Photo by guelphtoday.com.

Although I do not think this is necessary, it could be beneficial to further develop the gift of illumination through technology.

Having the path that we took electronically mapped out would be very cool, as well as helpful to visualize the development of the city through roads over time since establishment. During the walk, Ken mentioned a few times about how the founder, John Galt, designed the city, and how the center seemed to sprawl out like fingers from a hand. Seeing this map could add new significance.

While reflecting on the readings of the textbook in the context of this interpretation, I realized that I couldn’t decide if the gift of wholeness was represented well or if it would have been beneficial to further develop this. If you attended this interpretation, do you think the gift of a wholeness was represented?

Reference:

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berniesrevolution · 7 years ago

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HUFFINGTON POST | Stephanie Kelton Has The Biggest Idea In Washington

Once an outsider, her radical economic thinking won over Wall Street. Now she’s changing the Democratic Party.

For most of her career, Stephanie Kelton was accustomed to being ridiculed. It started in grad school.

At Cambridge University in the late 1990s, she signed up for an economics course taught by Willem Buiter, who later became the chief economist at Citigroup. When she asked a question about money in a particular model, he turned, red-faced with fury, and unloaded on her. “If you are the type of person who thinks money is important,” she recalls him saying, “then you are probably the same type of person who enjoys sitting in your basement and beating yourself with a rubber hose.”

The words obviously left an impression. Kelton ― who is now 48 and has been teaching economics herself for more than 16 years ― repeats them, twice, to make sure they’re transcribed correctly. Buiter didn’t respond to a request for comment.

She’s been receiving (slightly) more polite versions of the same dressing down ever since. Conservatives have accused her of worshipping a “magic money tree,” and Paul Krugman dismissed her ideas in a 2011 New York Times column as a naive blueprint for hyperinflation that carried “a sort of eerie resemblance to John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged” ― a ruthless insult among her left-leaning friends.

Kelton’s core idea ― that the government can’t run out of money or go bankrupt, no matter how much it spends ― hasn’t really changed since the days when Buiter and Krugman were trashing her thinking. But it seems the world has. Today she is a full-fledged member of the American power elite, juggling television bookings with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Bloomberg TV’s Joe Wiesenthal, writing op-eds for The New York Times and being quoted in The Wall Street Journal.

Pod Save America and Financial Times want her on their podcasts. She’s got a book deal with Public Affairs, and Bloomberg View has signed her up as its newest columnist ― but she isn’t sure that gig is worth the time, given her packed speaking schedule. In May alone, she’s being flown to Las Vegas to debate a former International Monetary Fund chief economist before heading to Monaco to moderate a panel on artificial intelligence. After that, the House of Lords in London.

Everybody wants a piece of Kelton these days because a simple, radical idea she has been workshopping her entire career is the next big thing in Democratic Party politics. She calls it the job guarantee ― a federal program offering a decent job to every American who wants to work, in every county in the country, at any phase of the business cycle.

“Money doesn’t grow on rich people.”

--Stephanie Kelton

It’s a practical expression of her monetary thinking. To her, governments aren’t directly constrained by how much programs cost. The serious concern is inflation, and a job guarantee would revolutionize the way the United States manages the value of the dollar, forcing the Federal Reserve to stop creating unemployment when it wants to keep prices down.

Politicians like the job guarantee for a simpler reason: Everybody gets a decent job. The idea is getting traction in the Senate. Bernie Sanders’ office is writing a bill that would create such a program, with help from Elizabeth Warren’s office and support from Kirsten Gillibrand. Even supercentrist Cory Booker has signed off on a pilot version. The Center for American Progress, a leading Democratic think tank, is subtly trying to take credit for the concept (while watering it down).

The sudden respect for Kelton’s big idea isn’t the result of a public clamor for cutting-edge economic theory or an impromptu burst of self-reflection among Washington policymakers. It is instead a story about power and political legitimacy, about the way public officials use economists to block or advance social change and about how economists build credibility by circulating through the cocktail parties, expense-account dinners and conference rooms of high finance.

A onetime college dropout at California State University in Sacramento, Kelton has managed to earn the esteem of both Sanders and an oddball clique of multimillionaire Wall Street traders. Even in hindsight, her journey through this heady milieu seems improbable, almost impossible.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #stephanie kelton #MMT #modern monetary theory #economics #progressive #progressive movement #bernie sanders

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whileiamdying · 3 years ago

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"Atlas Shrugged: Part II — The Strike"

is consistent with its predecessor as a somewhat awkward translation of Ayn Rand's 1957 novel to our current era, handled with bAtlas Shrugged: Part II — The Strike

By Dennis Harvey, Variety Oct 13, 2012 1:20am PT

Though it flopped in wide release following surprisingly strong limited play, last year’s “Atlas Shrugged: Part I” evidently did well enough — or its producers are simply committed enough — for this second of a projected trilogy to be made. “Atlas Shrugged: Part II — The Strike” has a whole new director, cast and crew, with slightly higher production polish and more familiar faces onscreen. Nonetheless, it’s consistent with its predecessor as a somewhat awkward translation of Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel to our current era, handled with bland telepic-style competency. Theatrical biz will be middling, ancillary better.

With the economy collapsing, the government shutting down private industry and the “best minds” all mysteriously disappearing, Taggart Transcontinental chief operating officer Dagny (Samantha Mathis) and self-made Rearden Steel magnate Henry (Jason Beghe) are the last bold individualists who give a damn about this once-glorious nation in a sea of lily-livered takers, including her weak brother (Patrick Fabian) and his bitchy wife (Kim Rhodes). Naturally this only makes our heroes hotter for one another, though it’s hard to find time for mashing lips when so many crises must be contended with from sea to shining sea.

As the dread too-big government increasingly legislates their own businesses out of their control, Dagny tries to unlock two secrets: how to work an electromagnetic motor she’s found laying about (with help from Diedrich Bader’s wacky rogue scientist), and figuring how who the hell that John Galt guy is anyway. In a plane-pursuit sequence that begins and ends the film, she finally gets her wish — though auds will have to wait until “Part III” to see Mr. G. (D.B. Sweeney) in more than just silhouette.

As before, Randheads will be divided between those who find the pic insufficiently grandiose enough to be the “Atlas” of their dreams, and those so in thrall to the author’s ideas that any reasonably professional product will suffice. Others, particularly those who haven’t read the book, will simply find it silly, talky and dull. That said, John Putch (a more experienced TV helmer replacing the first film’s Paul Johansson, another actor-turned-director) maintains a decent pace and a straight face. Still, the whole project remains hobbled by the initially budget-minded decision to set the story more or less in the present rather than the 1950s, when it already seemed somewhat improbable.

This renders the story’s railroad emphasis wildly anachronistic, despite some attempted explanation. It also requires the pic to pretend ours is still a primarily self-contained national economy, rather than bound to the modern global one. (The filmmakers themselves couldn’t quite pull that off, as the end credits reveal substantial post-production work was done in China.)

Thus, a time-warp air hangs over the whole affair, though the film’s three scenarists have dropped a few up-to-the-moment buzz phrases into the mix to seize their just-in-time-for-elections moment; Rand’s cartoonish conflict between industrious quality people and lazy, effete quasi-socialists is now “job creators” vs. “looters.” There are repeated glimpses of Occupy-like protestors, who eventually turn against their alleged government benefactors, although notably, none of them gets so much as a single line to speak.

Though the actors this time come with higher-profile track records, they’re surprisingly not much of an improvement, and in some cases (notably Esai Morales as decadent playboy-cum-secret-free-market superhero Francisco d’Anconia), quite the opposite. Of course, with dialogue this clunky and expository, one can hardly blame them; with no attempt at finding a stylistic equivalent to Rand’s heightened worldview (a la King Vidor’s 1949 film of “The Fountainhead”), they’re stuck playing real in a context that feels unaware of its unreality.

The mostly blah corporate and hotel settings are in a sense apt, but add no flavor. While “Part II’s” attempt to encompass Rand’s sweeping narrative on a far-below-major-studio budget is admirable, the underwhelming f/x dampen its few opportunities for action sequences.

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imnothinginparticular · 3 years ago

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#finishedbooks The Measure of our Lives by Toni Morrison. I couldn't quite grasp what this book actually was skimming around online, but as soon as I picked it up from the library I understood. It is made up of quotations from all of her writings, essentially one per a page where some are a few words and some are a couple sentences at most. Even down to the small handheld size of the book it reminds me of that series, "Life's Little Instruction", book that was on top of every middle class American toilet in the 90s....the presumption being before smart phones they could be read a few pages at a time and one could come out the bathroom with some sort of gained wisdom lol. This is also somewhat akin to the Ayn Rand book made of quotations that I used to have but didnt work as affectively because it literally just gave you pages at a time, think it even included that 60 page John Galt speech from "Atlas Shrugged" that as a book in itself really didn't work. This Morrison book comes with an added bonus of a Zadie Smith introduction really placing Morrison legacy properly into her now mythical status and with this book you can get some of that presumably in short bursts on the toilet or really on a coffee table, etc. The themes range from anger, "Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging" to society "Our past is bleak. Our future dim. But I am unreasonable. A reasonable man adjusts to his environment. And unreasonable man does not. All progress, therefore, depends on the unreasonable man. I prefer not to adjust to my environment. I refuse the prison of 'I' and chose the open spaces of 'we'." Some are simple, "What a man leaves behind is what a man is" and some are complex, "The visionary language of the doomed reaches heights and of linguistic ardor with which language of the blessed and saved cannot compete." Perhaps the statement of the latter sums up this book perfectly.

#finishedbooks

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tpusauic · 7 years ago

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5 Books Every Conservative Should Read

I have never been very much of a reader. In high school, I was the type of person who wouldn’t read any of the books assigned in English class but instead made sure to open my bookmarked link to Sparknotes, and freshen up on the chapter I was supposed to read that day. It wasn’t until I started reading the Twilight Saga that I had actually finished a “grown-up” book. I couldn’t read anything other than books about vampires and romance novels. No matter how hard I tried, I would stop reading and lose interest in books on topics other than those two genres. Then I attended my first Turning Point USA conference in Dallas, Texas and I was, simply put, amazed. Everyone around me was so smart and had so much to say about a whole range of topics. I asked how they knew all this stuff and how I could learn more. The answer I kept receiving was that they read books! I couldn’t believe the answer was so simple until one of the constant themes of the conference became about all these different books that open minds to different types of ideas. Ever since then, I now have a new genre that I am able to read and that is, broadly states, books about conservative ideas. So for those of you who aren’t big readers, or those of you who like to read but have trouble finding books that interest you, I offer you the following list of books that, even I, was able to LOVE and finish!

Time for a Turning Point by Charlie Kirk

This suggestion may seem super cheesy and unauthentic, but I swear Turning Point USA and Charlie are not paying me to say this. It was one of the first non-fiction books that I finished and absolutely enjoyed that wasn’t about vampires or romance. It is a great place to start for those of you who don’t really like to read. Kirk does a great job explaining conservative/libertarian ideals in a way that makes it understandable and relatable. He talks about some of his personal experiences when he started the TPUSA organization but also provides all the ammo you need to become a freedom activist on your campus. That is what also makes it relatable to the college student reader. I still refer to it when I am forming arguments and shaped the kind of activist that I am today. It’s great for people who are new to the political scene and want to learn what we stand for.

Brainwashed by Ben Shapiro

Before I get into this book, I have to admit, this one took me a while to finish and is a little wordy. Then again it is written by Ben Shapiro so I could just imagine him saying everything he wrote in the book super fast in a 50-minute speech anyway. But honestly, it isn’t that long. It made it on my list because Shapiro’s humor and sarcasm are expressed on almost every page of the book and make you laugh to yourself as you are reading. It’s Ben Shapiro after all and the experiences he writes about in the book feel like he sits with me in class every day at our liberal Chicago public university.

Free to Choose: A Personal Statement by Milton Friedman

I know this book is an old one, especially since it was published in 1980, but it does a great job explaining and advocating for capitalism, free markets, and taking government out of our life. It uses real-life examples about the problems with gas and tobacco taxes, public education, the Federal Reserve, welfare, the FDA, and labor unions. This one is a classic and must read.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Warning! This is a long book! It took me a while to finish this book but it was worth it. What I loved about this book was the fact that it was told like a story instead of all these other books where the author lays out facts to prove her point. If you’re looking to read a book with conservative principles but explained through a narrative than this is for you. The book is centered around a “dystopian America” where the government is oppressing its people be intervening in their lives. Then most of the productive population disappears, John Galt (the main character) helps input our values into society.

The American Will by Bobby Jindal

This is my favorite book of all time! (For now at least) This book touches on everything from faith, freedom, and fiscal responsibility. I learned so much, not only about these principles but also about our own history that they don’t teach us in schools. Get ready to shed some tears too! It may just be because I am a very emotional person, but for anyone who has parents who immigrated to this country, this book will reach into your soul and say things on paper that you have always thought but never had the right words to say. I may be slightly dramatic but if you only have time to read one book on this list, let this be the one!

Dianna Bosak is Junior at the University of Illinois at Chicago studying Psychology and Political Science. She is the President of the Turning Point Chapter at UIC.

#books #conservative #turningpoint #Dianna Bosak

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stephenjaymorrisblog · 6 years ago

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In a Libertarian World

(Fiction)

Stephen Jay Morris

2/3/2019

©Scientific Morality

(Taken from my manuscript “2 Cents Short”)

Who is John Galt? “Who gives a shit?!” remarked Howard Roark, laughing as he read the first line of “Atlas Shrugged,” as he lounged on a luxurious, antique love seat next to a roaring fireplace. Suddenly, he tossed the book into the fireplace and a spark hit the sleeve of his exquisitely woven, silk pajamas. He attempted to extinguish the flame that was rapidly engulfing his garment, desperately slapping at it. Panicked, he dialed 911, almost knocking the gold plated phone off of the table next to him.

911: (A pre-recorded voice came on the line) “This is 9-1-1 by the Aryan Corporation. This call will coast you one dollar a minute and will appear on your telephone bill. Please stand by and have your account number ready. An operator will be with you shortly. Your call is very important to us, please be patient.”

Then, a live operator: “Hello. This is 9-1-1. What is your emergency?”

Roark: “Help! I am on fire!”

911: “So sorry to hear that, Sir. What is your account number?”

Roark: “I don’t have one! Send somebody! Help!!!”

911: “I’m sorry, sir. “But I can’t help you unless you have an account number.”

Roark: “I thought this was is an emergency number!”

9-11: “It is! The Aryan Corporation privatized 9-1-1 years ago, so you must be a member to use our services.”

Roark: “But, what can I do?!”

911: “Sorry sir, I can’t help you. I hope you find help soon. Goodbye. Have a nice day!”

Soon, Roark was engulfed in flames and ultimately burned to death. He was reduced to hill of ashes. As luck would have it, however, his mansion was spared.

A middle aged, black maid came in the next morning to begin her daily duties. She soon surveyed the living room and fixed her gaze on the hill of ashes in the middle of the room. The sight infuriated her.

In a tone of disgust, she exclaimed, “These white rich pigs are such slobs!”

Once she got closer to the pile, she realized it was Roark’s remains.

Silently, she said, ‘What chew gone and done now? You got all burned up!’

She continued aloud, “Architect, ha! Some architect you are! You build these big ass monster buildings. They are ugly ass buildings! You had to do it your way! Well, you genius, you are one dumb motherfucker! You done burned yourself to a crisp! Now, I am out of a job, thanks to your stupid honky ass! Well, as Reverent Willie says, ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ In your case, Shit to shit!”

The maid knew where Roark had kept his cash box, his “petty cash box,” as he’d called it. Overall, he didn’t believe in credit. He didn’t even have a bank account. He didn’t trust the banks. He didn’t want the Jews to watch over his money. All of his money was hidden in some undisclosed location. However, his so-called petty cash box was inside of the piano bench.

She lifted the bench top and removed the box, placing it on top of a 17th century antique table. This table had been one of Roark’s prized possessions. His mansion was filled with antique furniture, worth millions. Roark didn’t care about artistic aesthetics; his interest was about exclusive possession. The only people who ever saw these possessions, however, were his butlers, maids, and chauffeurs. The maid had polished his furniture for years.

Suddenly, she gave a swift kick to an antique chair. It fell backwards onto the floor.

“I won’t be polishing this shit no more! This is my liberation day!”

The maid was surprised to find the petty cash box wide open. She looked over at the pile of ashes.

“You senile old fool! You forgot to lock the box again. Well you swanky chump! I just gave myself a raise!” She found a paper bag and transferred the wads of cash into it. “I’ll count this blood money later.”

She grabbed her purse and coat, along with the paper sack. She spat on the pile of ashes and said, “So long, sucker!” She left the oversized house.

Ayn Rand had once said, “Check your premises.”

Well, only police detectives would do that now.

It was a nice day in Bel Air, California. The maid scurried down the meandering road that led to the large, iron gate. She opened the gate, stepped through, and shut it closed. She gave the mansion one last look and said to herself, ‘10 years of my life I spent cleaning after that rich pig! Never again!’ For one last time, she walked the two-mile trek to the main boulevard, where she’d reach her bus stop. Every morning, for 10 years, she’d climbed those two miles up that hilly, Bel Air road, to get to her job. It had been an arduous walk for a woman her age. But, that would no longer lay claim to her.

She arrived at her destination, dog-tired. The bench’s wood was warped and needed new paint. She set the paper bag next to her on the bench. The next bus wouldn’t come for another 45 minutes. She dozed off.

When the bus arrived, the roaring diesel engine startled the maid. She awoke in a disoriented state. In a Pavlovian response, she arose from the bench and got onto the bus, leaving the paper bag behind.

The bus dashed away, carrying a maid who was the unluckiest woman in the world!

#fiction #satire #aynrand #humor #poets on tumblr #stephenjaymorris

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whoisjohngalt25 · 8 years ago

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You seem to have picked the best of the bunch so I'm gonna shoot them back at you: 1, 5, 13, 15, 27, 31, 36, 38-47, 55, 56, 59, 77, 81, 87, 94, and 95

@deathbeforednf sorry it took a few days to answer, I had to get to a laptop and wasn’t about to try answering these on mobile haha

1. Is a kiss considered cheating?

Unless it’s a platonic kiss like a kiss on the cheek or forehead for a friend or family member, yes

5. Tell us some funny drunk story

I’ve actually never had liquor, sorry haha

13. If the whole world listened to you right now, what would you say?

Take time to properly figure out who you are, right down to the core, and then be it, completely and unapologetically. As much as it may sound like a cat poster, it’s easier to deal with other people hating you if you’re not hating you too. Be confident in who you are and you can deal with much more than you probably think

15. If you could choose only one food to eat for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Gyro meat, it’s sooo good. I would get sick after like two days but mmm

27. What was the last book/movie that really impressed you?

I’m reading Atlas Shrugged now and that never fails to impress. Before that maybe the last time I watched 10 Commandments? We’ve been to see a few movies in theaters and watched some at home but nothing really great haha

31. Something you did and you are proud of?

Mostly learning cello I suppose, I can’t think of anything else at the immediate moment

36. What would you name your daughter/son?

We’ve jokingly decided on Conan for a son, after the protagonists of a few anime that we like haha, but we haven’t been able to come up with a name for a daughter

38. Is there someone you want to punch in the face right now?

Probably a few people from work who are so obnoxious or immature to deal with in any rational or proper manner

39. What was the last gift you received?

My birthday present was a 250 gb chip for my phone to expand it’s memory and that’s pretty dope

40. What was the last gift you gave?

The last one I distinctly remember was a green satin scarf with golden music themed designs on it

41. What was the last concert you went to?

Eternal Voyage, Ascendia, Need, and Seven Kingdoms opened for Evergrey

42. Favorite place to shop at?

Barnes and Noble

43. Who inspires you?

Ayn Rand

44. How old were you when you first got drunk?

Never have

45. How old were you when you first got high?

Never have

46. How old were you when you first had sex?

47. When was your first kiss?

October 18th or 19th of 2013

55. What is your favorite flower?

Rose!

56. Any bad habits you have?

I pick at my fingers/cuticles like other people do their nails, so that’s irritating. Also generally being too open and expressive and loose around people, I wish I had more self control than I do

59. Is there something you don’t eat? Some food that really disgusts you?

Fruits and veggies, seriously. I think it comes from not being made to eat them as a kid or something but I won’t go near the stuff and it gives me major anxiety even thinking about trying them

77. Favorite TV series?

MASH

81. How long have you been on tumblr?

Since April of 2012, so 5 and a half years? Geez

87. Meaning behind your blog name?

Who is John Galt is from Atlas Shrugged, and the 25 comes from June 25th, my birthday; whoisjohngalt by itself was taken so I just tacked on the 25

94. Do you watch Youtube? Who is your favorite youtuber?

I do! I like JonTron, Nostalgia Critic, Brooklyn Duo, and ReacttotheK

95. Share your favorite quote

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine

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jam2289 · 6 years ago

Text

A New Plan for the International Society For Philosophers

I need to reassess my original plan and formulate a new one for the International Society For Philosophers.

I wrote one essay for the ISFP quite a while ago on this blog. The director liked it so much that he put a link on his website, but I never officially submitted it. Then, I didn't do the other three that I need to do to complete their Associate certification.

My original four ideas were: The Meaning of Life, The Most Important Question in Philosophy, The Creative Ape, and Violence and Society. Here's the original article on those four ideas.

http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/10/concerning-international-society-for.html

I did four blog posts on the most important question in philosophy. It came out well. Here's the link to the first in the series.

http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/10/the-most-important-question-in.html

I didn't do the other three ideas, even though I have published something like 100 blog posts since then. The meaning of life subject is a big one, maybe it has been too big. I've hit on that subject in several of my articles, but I haven't attacked it so directly. One of the most famous works on the subject is "Meaning in Life and Why It Matters" by Susan Wolf. I don't think that book is very good. Before I really formulate my own article I think I might do an extensive critical commentary on her work. I will need to get copyright permission to do that. Then, after that, maybe that would be the time to tackle my own view on the meaning of life. Or, to write them at the same time.

The idea of the creative ape is to dive into epistemology, or the theory of knowledge and knowing. I often comment on that subject in my other articles too. But, it's another huge subject. I think I shy from writing on these so directly because I'm still working out my thoughts on them. The issue with that is that my thoughts on these subjects will never be fully worked out. These are not things that you can fully solve, so it's easy to keep putting off writing about it. That's an issue that I've been getting over more and more. My starting to get past that personal hangup has been why I've been able to write on some controversial subjects like global warming, IQ, politics, and flat earth even though I would've preferred to know more about them before I did so. At some point you have to stop waiting. Studying can be good, but at some point you have to be productive. That's been a hard thing for me to enact.

The article about violence and society I'm not particularly interested in writing now. I recently wrote an article called "On Resentment as the Path to Destruction". In there I talked about a number of mass murderers and such. That's not very fun to write about. But, I do have notes on articles about political corruption and jurisprudence. Those subjects partially overlap. The resentment article is here.

http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2019/02/on-resentment-as-path-to-destruction.html

The word count for these four essays is between 2,500 and 4,000 words each. I already have the one article done, so I only need three more. I was thinking about new subjects, or adapting some of what I've already written. I also have notes for over 100 articles that I haven't written and published yet.

I've written two articles on Harry Potter that focused on evil, and one article where I talked about him as a hero. So, I thought about writing an article like "The Presentation of Good and Evil in Harry Potter". Here are the Potter articles.

http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2019/01/why-is-slytherin-house-bad.html

http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2019/01/what-makes-voldemort-grindelwald-and.html

http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2019/02/john-galt-harry-potter-and-hero-problems.html

A few articles that might work which I have notes on but haven't written yet would be about communication and the semantic triangle, motivation in literature and when a plot ends, closure in literature and how that works psychologically, and the fallacy of the association fallacy.

I've written two things that might work great. I'm just a little hesitant about them still because I named them after myself and that still seems a bit odd to me. But hey, I thought it was as good a name as any. The first is Jeff's Razor, which is the idea that the overall peace and prosperity of a society is directly proportional to the voluntary to involuntary transaction ratio. That has some strong supporters, but it was also ignored by several people I know in economics. It's more of a moral argument anyway. There's also Jeff's Hammer, which is an epistemological concept. It's a metaphor that helps to explain why any given thing is always more complex than your current conception of it. That article was oddly popular. I was surprised and happy with that. Here are the links for those.

Jeff's Razor

http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2018/11/introducing-jeffs-razor-framework-for.html

Jeff's Hammer

http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2019/02/jeffs-hammer-conceptual-tool.html

I wrote an article on why people may be turning towards the flat earth idea that is the best discussion I've ever heard of on the subject. But, it seems that there really isn't anyone that's interested. All of the people that like flat earth don't like it because I'm not on their side. Everyone else doesn't really care about it enough to read an article on it. Here's that article.

http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2019/01/flat-earth-truth-and-conspiracies.html

I wrote an article in favor of global warming that earned me both love and hate mail. That was interesting. It's polarizing, that's for sure. I'll probably write another article on that either way. Here's that one.

http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2019/01/pro-global-warming.html

I wrote an article on suicide that has had a lot of support, quite a number of shares in psychology groups on Facebook and positive comments from a number of psychologists. That also goes with my first philosophy essay that I already have done. So, that might be worth exploring as an option. That one is here.

http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2019/01/an-interesting-note-on-suicide-from.html

I wrote an article on the political spectrum and why it doesn't work that drew some attention. The major issue is that I didn't present a solution because I didn't have one. If I could work on a better solution that might be a worthy subject. That one's here.

http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2019/01/two-problems-with-current-political.html

I've also been thinking about a new theory and practice of literary analysis, but I haven't developed it yet. There's also Theoconceptualism, which is a religion that I've been working on laying the foundations for. I have a few articles on that, but it's still just emerging. Here's one of them.

http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2018/12/the-impetus-for-theoconceptualism.html

I have a major issue with deciding things like this. It has probably been the main problem in my life. If you can't decide what you want it's hard to get anything, if you can't decide where you want to go it's hard to get anywhere. It's an emotional issue. I have a sufficient intellect. But, even if you have a high IQ you can't figure out the outcomes for basically any decision. There are people that have a disconnection between the emotional and intellectual processing centers in the brain. These people can do just fine on IQ tests. But, they can't choose whether they want a black or blue pen. There are just too many possible consequences for such a choice, so they get stuck trying to analyze them. I'm not that bad, but it's the same problem. (I have tried many self-development methods for making these decisions, with little success. I have designed several myself without much success either, although they were probably as good as the famous self-development ones. I am in the process of designing a new one now. I have some hope for it. It currently has no name.)

Alright, let's list the ideas here and see what we're dealing with.

1 - The Meaning of Life

2 - The Most Important Question in Philosophy

3 - The Creative Ape

4 - Violence and Society

5 - On Resentment as the Path to Destruction

6 - Systemic Legal Political Corruption

7 - Truth and Jurisprudence

8 - Good and Evil in Harry Potter

9 - Squaring the Semantic Triangle

10 - When Does a Story End?

11 - Epistemological Closure in Literature

12 - The Association Fallacy Fallacy

13 - Jeff's Razor

14 - Jeff's Hammer

15 - The Flat Earth Mind

16 - Pro Global Warming

17 - Why Stay Alive?

18 - A Better Political Spectrum

19 - Towards a Better Religion

Well, those are the ideas that come to mind right now. I already did number 2, I would just have to edit it, which might be quite the job. I just need three more, but which three are the best options? Decisions, decisions.

I'm shying away from 1, and 3, and 4. I don't think I would like writing 5. I think Bastiat did pretty good at 6. I still need to work out what I'm doing with 7. 8 could be good, but is it cut out for this type of thing? Maybe. It might be so long that it would work for the dissertation though. 9 could be good. 10 will probably be too short. 11 will probably be pretty short too. I might do that one as an essay to go in a coffee table book as part of an art contest. 12 is probably going to get crazy the way I'll do it. I'll just do that on the blog I think. 13 is good, I just need to come at it from a different angle. 14 is good, I think. It seems like a small deal to me, but people seemed to connect with it. 15 seems to be boring to others. 16 probably won't work because I don't really want to study it enough. 17 could be good. 18, I'm not sure if I'll come up with a good solution. Even if I do it probably won't be anything profound. 19 won't do. That's really a different project entirely. We'll see if I get to that one in this lifetime. I forgot to put literary analysis on the list, but I'll skip that for now.

That means our real options are: 8, 9, 13, 14, and 17. Alright, that's more than three, but those are the ones I'll be thinking about. 9 is the only one out of those that I haven't written articles on yet, so I think I'll do that and then decide which ones I want to adapt for the final essays that I'll submit to the ISFP. Well, that's a plan at least.

________________________________________________

You can find more of what I'm doing at http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

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