A while back I finally got around to reading Atlas Shrugged. It took me a while to get around to it because it wasn't something I'd ever been required to read, and the ideas presented in it's pages don't align well with my personal views about the rights and responsibilities of man in a civilized society. Much like the Bible, it's not a book that I'm going to derive pleasure from reading, so it had to wait until I was willing to invest the time and energy into it for no other reason than to work at understanding a conflicting point of view. I recently saw an article about a piece of legislation introduced somewhere requiring that every high school student in some state or another read Ms. Rand's masterpiece as part of their mandated curriculum, and it made me sit and think about whether that was a good idea or not. Ultimately I have to say no. Not because no one should ever read it, but because I don't think that the ideas put forth in the novel should be presented as a blueprint for building the ideal society, which is what the author and the writer's of this legislation seem to view it as. The purpose of educating our youth, in my opinion, is to teach them how to think about abstract concepts- not what to think. Atlas Shrugged outlines the opinions of one individual, born in a foreign land during a time that was as similar to ours in some ways as it was very different in others. She was no more or less brilliant than other authors who wrote novels with opposing viewpoints about the same themes.
Again, not to say that no one should ever read the book. Anyone willing to invest the time and effort into reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Animal Farm or 1984 by George Orwell, really anyone interested in devoting their time to understanding the role of the individual in wider society, should add it to their list. If for no other reason than to acquaint oneself with the ideas that others have based their opinions on, before falling into the trap of believing that the ideas and experiences they themselves have been exposed to and based their own opinions upon are the only ones that matter. It is impossible for any one person to experience life from every perspective, but it is in our nature as humans to try and control the actions and behavior of those around us whether we understand their motivations for acting and behaving differently or not. It benefits us as individuals to achieve at least some level of conformity among members of disparate groups. The easy way to achieve this beneficial conformity is through the use of force and domination, but that will always only achieve fleeting success. A much better way to bring about conformity is through compromise and understanding of just how much sameness is required of the individual in order to bring about a positive result for the whole of society.
While reading Atlas Shrugged was an interesting- if sometimes frustrating- intellectual pursuit, ultimately it wasn't helpful to me and would not be helpful to the youth of our nation in deciding upon how to address and remedy the ills within our present society, nor does it assist those of us who are seeking ideas on how to set our country and society upon a path for future success. Rand's philosophy is at best a picture of how to create an entirely new society, with no solutions offered for saving or maintaining and existing one such as we have. I strongly suspect that there are many pitfalls not addressed in Atlas that would render the type of Utopian society she describes just as doomed for eventual failure as those societies already in existence. Luckily for Ms. Rand and her adoring fans, Atlas is a work of fiction and thus she was able to end it on a high note without having to follow through and discover the results of her ideas being put into practice by real living people.
For those of us living our lives outside the pages of a novel, the world and the process of navigating through it from birth to death is more complicated and nuanced than the one Dagny Taggert and her peers reside in. In our world the lines between makers and takers are more blurred. The unspoken context that allows for a Dagny to be who and what she was, and disallows her sister in-law from achieving the same success, must be spoken and addressed by our public policies. The case made within those pages for innate intelligence, ambition, and work ethic being the only drivers and measures of success cannot be argued convincingly even by the author, and therefore the remedies proposed- simply withdrawing the support of those who possess them and leaving everyone else to perish or survive among the rubble if only they posses enough of those abilities and character traits to do so- is not a reasonable solution.
Society and the benefits it affords to the individual cannot be built and maintained by subscribing to the beliefs of Darwin or Ayn Rand. The theory of survival of the fittest may well be an accurate description of the intentions of God or nature or whatever Creator exists as it pertains to the individual, but it is a theory that only applies to the individual. To try and expand upon that theory and scale it up to cover groups of individuals, nations, or an entire species is bad science and a recipe for disaster. On the individual level, each individual is entitled to the life they are able to build and maintain for as long as they are able to protect their life and the products of their labor from a stronger individual. Once they become the weaker individual, their life is ended and the fruits of their labors are picked up or discarded by the individual that overcame them. Society exists as a means to protect individuals from that natural order and allow individuals the opportunity to enjoy fruits they could not possibly create and maintain throughout their lifetimes solely on their own. The idea of creating and maintaining societies runs directly counter to the principles of survival of the fittest, and therefore a society based upon the theory of survival of the fittest is illogical.
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