Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 1992.) 1168 pp.
Reviewed by Mark Twain,Los Osos High School Rancho Cucamonga , CA
It is the 1950s, a time of robber barons and transcontinental railroads, with the barons of the rail and plunder providing the necessary genius required to run human society. Since apparently an IQ of 100 means that you're too stupid to hammer nails in this universe, huh, I don't remember humanity losing 99% of it's most intelligent population until the average became dumber than chimps. Thus enters our hero, Dagny Taggart, the brains behind Taggart Transcontinental, a railroad company that may or may not be the biggest in the fictional States of America. (Odd as it might seem in a world where the average human is too stupid to eat without it being fed to him, this one is of normal intelligence, that is, normal for us, almost.)
In between sleeping with as many intelligent (Someone doesn't understand standard deviation and bell curves, if the average human is too stupid to live, the most intelligent human on the damned fictional planet would also be too stupid to live. Unless the standard deviation is huge, say if the difference between the dumbest person and the smartest is the difference in computing power between one bit of ram and the entire bloody universe. Then the intelligent people can be actually smart, problem is, if that's the case, evolution would have made the fictional world filled with hyper intelligent people aeons ago, people too stupid to live tend to leave the gene pool, increasing the average.) men as possible our hero attempts to save Taggart Transcontinental, spoiler: she fails. All the while society increasing converges against the people smart enough to run their own companies, by taking everything they worked for away from them. (Explain to me how you can be not too stupid to live and still be capable of getting everything you own taken away from you by people too stupid to live. Cause that sounds like a pretty major case of being too stupid to live to me. On second thought, the intelligence bell curve thing is completely plausible.)
The moral of the story?
"Don't take away the work of those more intelligent than you, because apparently that's possible and you won't fail or die in the attempt."
I did not speak of characterization as all of the characters may be summarized in one sentence, one short sentence. With the phrase "and is stupid" appended to the end of all of them.
Reviewed by Mark Twain,
It is the 1950s, a time of robber barons and transcontinental railroads, with the barons of the rail and plunder providing the necessary genius required to run human society. Since apparently an IQ of 100 means that you're too stupid to hammer nails in this universe, huh, I don't remember humanity losing 99% of it's most intelligent population until the average became dumber than chimps. Thus enters our hero, Dagny Taggart, the brains behind Taggart Transcontinental, a railroad company that may or may not be the biggest in the fictional States of America. (Odd as it might seem in a world where the average human is too stupid to eat without it being fed to him, this one is of normal intelligence, that is, normal for us, almost.)
In between sleeping with as many intelligent (Someone doesn't understand standard deviation and bell curves, if the average human is too stupid to live, the most intelligent human on the damned fictional planet would also be too stupid to live. Unless the standard deviation is huge, say if the difference between the dumbest person and the smartest is the difference in computing power between one bit of ram and the entire bloody universe. Then the intelligent people can be actually smart, problem is, if that's the case, evolution would have made the fictional world filled with hyper intelligent people aeons ago, people too stupid to live tend to leave the gene pool, increasing the average.) men as possible our hero attempts to save Taggart Transcontinental, spoiler: she fails. All the while society increasing converges against the people smart enough to run their own companies, by taking everything they worked for away from them. (Explain to me how you can be not too stupid to live and still be capable of getting everything you own taken away from you by people too stupid to live. Cause that sounds like a pretty major case of being too stupid to live to me. On second thought, the intelligence bell curve thing is completely plausible.)
The moral of the story?
"Don't take away the work of those more intelligent than you, because apparently that's possible and you won't fail or die in the attempt."
I did not speak of characterization as all of the characters may be summarized in one sentence, one short sentence. With the phrase "and is stupid" appended to the end of all of them.
Oh god the stupid blogger system ate my comment, since I don't feel like trying to remember what I wrote, I'll simply leave this here to get credit for commenting.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note: I should really download one of those automated CAPTCHA completer programs so I don't have to do one every time I need to post, to prove that I'm not a bot. Because robots can't use computer programs, I guess.
K. Lin
I don't really understand the intelligence factor that seems to dominate this book--how does the intelligent quotient of the world affect the place it has become? And who is the protagonist? It seems that in a world where one is either smart or deemed vacuous, proving oneself is of the utmost importance in finding some sort of career.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Didn't the robber barons live during the late 19th century?
-Jillian D.
It's a world where the average person is too stupid to hammer nails, this means that the employers are also too stupid to distinguish between people who can or can not hammer nails. The one who deems them retarded (like the word vacuous) is the author, and the one who determines the effects of the same is the same. That is, the author is playing god in her world, she fabricates a fictional, emphasis on fictional, world where the average is too stupid to hammer nails, then she puts them into positions of power, and then she manufactures some statistically improbable (the quote by Douglas Adams comes to mind) specimens of intelligence being subservient to them, and then the world explodes. Note that to describe her world one needs to postulate its entirety, since each additional fact cannot be derived from the ones proceeding, and thus needs to be dictated as by word of god.
ReplyDelete"Thus enters our hero, Dagny Taggart"
Hero
Noun: The chief male character in a book, play, or movie, who is typically identified with good qualities.
Protagonist
Noun: The leading character or a major character in a drama, movie, novel, or other fictional text.
From wikipedia: Robber baron is a term used for a powerful 19th century American businessman. By the 1890s, the term was typically applied to businessmen who were viewed as having used questionable practices to amass their wealth. It combines the sense of criminal ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy ("baron").
From the book: "Aristocracy of money."
Aristocracy implies nobility, nobility implies lineage, lineages implies inheritance. Dagny Taggart is the grandaughter or something of the person who founded Taggart Transcontinental, who was what can be described as being capable of being called a robber baron. And, just like regular good old nobility, titles can be inherited. Blue blood is refering to the person's blood, or ancestry, not some freak mutation that spontaneously turns random members of the population's blood blue.
The second part of my argument might be suprising, but it is succinctly stated: "money can be inherited." There, I said it. I totally said it. You can leave your money to your children. That is a thing that is possible. And it did not stop being a thing during the period I or Ayn Rand was writing.
K. Lin
How I wish I could comment on your posts, but I can't seem to do that since you cover every single detail without any discontinuities. So I will begin and end with this, from the bottom of my heart, regretfully, "I like this post and hope to see more from you."
ReplyDeleteAGH, I feel like blowing my brains out right now since I just typed that out... The consequences for having NOTHING to comment on, etc. etc.
-D. Lim