[ SECRET POST #3153 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3153 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 060 secrets from Secret Submission Post #451.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

NA

Eeee! Friends!

I, too, loved this book, and very much agree with what you say about people not understanding what Rand is trying to say. Honestly? I would LOVE it if capitalism worked like Rand thinks it should work. Then everyone gets paid fairly for the work they do, and everyone takes responsibility for their actions, with the higher up you go, the more responsibility you take on. You pay good labor good wages, and if people earn it, they receive it. And apparently there aren't issues like workers losing time for being injured on the job, ridiculous hospital costs if something goes wrong with your health, racism, sexism, or other prejudices that can seriously affect your salary, and a whole host of other real-world issues that come into play.

On the other hand, I read this at a time when I personally needed the bootstraps message. It did change my perspective on some things and got me less focused on some not-really-major problems and more focused on solving them, so I really appreciate the novel and her philosophy for that. But my problems were largely of my own making, so the bootstrap message was appropriate.

I still love the book and reread it once every few years. (Except, like the nonnie above, that awful 60-page speech.) But I certainly don't use it as a guide to voting or how people should live their lives in general. But I'm always happier and more focused on active solution after I read it, so it works well for me.

AYRT

[(Anonymous)]

(I'm kind of over-sharing here. Definitely feel free to not read/reply if over-sharing bugs you.)

On the other hand, I read this at a time when I personally needed the bootstraps message.

Yeah, that whole bootstrap thing is...complicated. On the one hand, I really love a lot of what she has to say about autonomy and self-knowledge and taking as much personal responsibility for one's life and one's choices and one's feelings as possible. She writes her characters according to those principles and it's at the core of why I like them so much. It's also at the core of how I try to live myself.

That said, I'm also in my late twenties and struggling with an non-visible disability (extreme anxiety and some depression, mostly) meaning that I receive money from the government in order to get by. I am very aware that Rand would have considered me a moocher. Even by modern standards, knowing what we now know about mental disabilities, she probably still would have been among those who think I'm being lazy and sucking up the tax dollars being unfairly given to me by my "lousy socialist government." (Canada, eh.)

Even so, I think that IF Rand had been of the mind to believe in my disability, she probably would have said something like: you must exert your efforts towards becoming as able and as active as you can, for your own sake as a human being. And I believe that. Which is why I do work, as much as I am currently able, even though it's very hard and I don't have to do it. Because personal effort is ultimately the only way for us, as individuals, to make our lives non-empty.

Not that our lives cannot be shape by circumstances beyond our control, mind you. There are so many people in the world whose lives would be difficult and painful no matter how hard they tried, and I think Rand's philosophy kind of disregards that. Her books are full of characters with first-world privileges, and she tends to frame "effort" in first world terms. I wonder what her response would have been to sweat-shop workers, for example, who work fifteen hour days merely to survive. Would she have blamed them for their circumstances because they "accept" their drudge work? Or would she have seen them as the tragic victims of a lazy, crooked, mooching capitalism that's nothing like what she had in mind all those years ago?