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What is a popular book that everyone buys but nobody reads?
(midwest.social)
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this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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Asklemmy
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Atlas Shrugged.
It's a massive paperback and looks impressive on a bookshelf but it's a dull narrative. I got about 200 pages in and was like fuck all these people and these stupid trains.
That was legit one of the few books I read halfway through then put down in disgust at how banal, ridiculous, and repetitive it was. The first part was okish because there’s something of a mystery, but the “revelation” that all the industrialists moved to a sort of entrepreneur’s shangri-la and that life without government created this perfect utopian society, it was just such a stupid thing and I was so tired of all the dead horse beating. Anybody who says they like this book is either lying or has mental problems.
Wow, I didn't know this author, and it seems I wasn't missing much.
Her writing is simplistic, but conservatives and libertarians have pushed her as an “intellectual” because it gives them a well-known writer that supports their trash values. She was strongly against the welfare state and altruism, yet she herself received social security, so she was a bit of a hypocrite as well.
She was also an unabashed atheist, which is why she was able to promote the idea of selfishness being good.
What's funny is it's the mostly Christian right-wing which has embraced her.
I guess they're okay with atheism as long as its playing for the right "team."
I mean, they’ve elevated Trump as their God-Emperor and he’s very likely an atheist, had multiple affairs, and paid women to get abortions, but whatever, none of that matters when you’ve been conditioned all your life to believe impossible things. Next to Jesus walking on water and two of every animal fitting on a boat, the rest of it is child’s play.
What the hell is this non-sequitur?
Nearly every religion preaches to be giving and kind to those in need. It's absolutely not a non-sequitor to admit that a large number of atheists don't believe there is any guiding morality to the universe and that we have to come to our own conclusions about morals and ethics. Moral relativism is a generally accepted thing among many atheists. This does not mean all atheists are selfish, I would classify most as Humanists. Rand was mostly an outlier.
She was able to promote the idea that selfishness could be good because she didn't ascribe to any religion that defined that as a sin.
So basically she profited from existing bullshit to promote her own brand of bullshit. That's even worse.
It is indeed worse, I agree.
I do think it is odd she was embraced by Christians.
I'm not an atheist and even to me, that's a really transparent dig at people who believe something you disagree with. You don't need religion to be altruistic as you are implying.
I'm not implying that, the OP was. (Or so I thought. Apparently they are saying that Rand was riding on that idea.)
I'm a fucking atheist and I think Ayn Rand was a loser sack of shit who leaned on every government assistance she preached against existing.
So yeah, Rand was riding on it. I would like to think most fellow atheists reject her power-worship bullshit wrapped in "Objectivism."
To clarify, I agree with you on every word.
She wrote anotehr novel, 'The Fountainhead,' with all the same ideas but much easier read. I finished 'The Fountainhead,' but it was mostly WTF comes next kind of book. There's an old B+W movie that sums up her ideas pretty well.
As a teenager I had a crush on Dominique Françon and her sexual assertiveness until I understood how deeply perturbed she was.
She and Howard are supposed to be the sane ones.
[sigh]
It worth reading, because you get perspective on how anarcho capatalist view the world.
Read the whole thing. It's OK.
The worst part of the book is that stupid chapter in the last third. Which summarizes the previous 2/3.