Atlas Shrugged - aftermath

"Who is John Galt?"

Despite popular sentiments about Ayn Rand--- my English teacher's relentless efforts to stop me from advocating the objectivist philosophy and my well-read counterparts advertising equally riveting schools of thoughts--- I enjoyed Anthem, The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and the Romantic Manifesto. 

It is quite contrarian: the Russian-American novelist intended this in her characters. 

Dagny Taggart's journey from D'anconia, to Rearden, to Galt can easily be summed up in this quote: "it contained her pride in herself and that it should be she whom he had chosen as his mirror."

Earth-movers, labor generators, progress-drivers sit at the center of Atlas Shrugged's plot. They cherish ethical passivity of self-interest. It urges a maximization of means of production from every member of society. 

It is easy to idolize the railroad operating president, when she is laced in a description as gorgeous as brocade--- "she threw her cape back and stood in the raw glare of light, under the sooted columns, like a figure at a formal reception, sternly erect, flaunting the luxury of naked arms, of glowing black satin, of a diamond flashing like military cross."

And now compared to those who Rand deem antithesis to objectivism--- leeches of the common society. They are distinguished "by their clothes and their manner--- ostentatiously prosperous clothes and a manner of overbearing timidity, as if they were guilty trying to pretend that they were what they appeared to be for that moment. "

Placatingly, there is an appeal of casting away suffering not because it is unimportant. Instead, it is to acknowledge that pain is to be fought, not to be accepted. We must live and act within the limit of our knowledge, and keep expanding it to the extent of our lives. 

Triumphant, unenslaved energy drives this world of achievement. It is a joyous deliverance of the conscious mind, not blind following of mysticism. 

Here I included a picture of sunburst. It renders all decoys of light ornamental. This will be my last Ayn Rand book, it would be interesting to see which philosopher I pick up next.