The Gulch and the Cave
So I read Atlas Shrugged and I liked it. I ended up heading over to UCLA and attending a lecture on Objectivism and Ayn Rand philosophy just to hear more about it. But here is what I don’t like about it–the idea that it is somehow noble to just quit and leave. Yeah sure, society was awful to them and the weak used the virtues of the strong against themselves, so on and so forth. How is this not any different than the Allegory of the Cave?
I thought Plato wrapped it up nicely for us. Suppose all we could see were shadows against the wall of a cave, couldn’t we be forgiven for thinking that that was reality? Let’s say you escape from the cave, and you see the situation for what it was: an illusion. The burden–the Philosopher’s Burden–is the price you pay for a peek outside the darkness. If you’ve been privileged enough to be exposed to the good life, if you start to figure out some truth and see the shadows and dust for all that they are–you have to go back. Of course that’s not the best incentive, but if it was about weighing what was easier or came with the fewest consequences, we’d just lay around all day.
They might beat you, or mock you, or laugh at you for your persistence but it is all we have–to try and move collectively from one plane to the next. As Alinsky said, history is a relay race of runners with the torch of idealism.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me but I agree with that. You have to get up each morning and try again–even if it never works, even if they never listen. I’m not saying that the world needs more evangelists, in fact, they’re part of the problem (they propagated the illusions in the first place) . What we need more of though, are people willing to head back down to the Cave. There is that Roosevelt quote about the gladiators in the arena, or the Aurelius line about how nothing provokes change like seeing the virtues embodied in the people around you.
Even if you push it just one step forward, so long as you hand it off to the next in line. Maybe it’s just me but it seems like there is more dignity in that than in cavorting around in a hidden valley in Colorado reciting verbose creeds to unlock magical doors. I’m not saying I want to die on a train like Eddie Willers, not knowing what I was working for or why, but if they’d never turned it around and the world had ended, I’d have rather gone out as Dagny Taggart than as John Galt. Because at least she tried.
Thoughts?
Someone who has a true love of knowledge, a thirst for truth, a thinker, even he might think twice about risking losing the good life but would abandon the past to grasp what he believes is fundamentally what is most important to him (the truth). Nietzsche did that, that hard choice to isolation, not unlike McCarthy. You did that, to a lesser extent with your family with your big decision.
As a person who considers himself to have left the cave, I interpret what you say of going back as a choice with many different options. For example, say I (and both have occurred) wanted to “enlighten” some people at the possible expense of losing the friendship to leave their hopeless marriages, to seek a more purposeful existence, I must choose the most intelligent choice available to me: whether dragging them out by starting a fire at their feet, forcing them to look at the fire and thus the outside or try to explain a metaphor of the outside to them within the confines of their knowledge. I can talk about the outside in a way that makes them curious about reality and get into their heads.
I am greatly reminded of the book “Who Moved My Cheese?”, the Hem Character, trapped in his “cave”/Cheese Station C. I consider myself the Haw character, writing messages on the way to Cheese Station N for whenever that they are ready, to see. I bring back a tiny bit of cheese to them to show them bits of the truth, to possibly inspire them that something out there might be worth taking the risk to see.
I think the allegory of the cave is disanalogous to Atlas Shrugged. Atlas is more about a clashing of ideologies between those that have “left the cave”. Or imagine if after leaving the cave, upon returning, those in the cave force you to act without regard to what you learned outside of the cave – i.e. they would not allow you to try and enlighten them. Also, it is central to the philosophy that one has no obligation to help others.
I don’t know if it’s just you. I do know, however, that you haven’t been at anything long enough to be able to know how long you will be able to do it and/or what it will take to make you leave. (Your age is in your profile.)
Not that you’re not entitled to an opinion, of course. But when the duration of your adult working life (and the possible productivity thereof) equals or exceeds your chronological age in 2007, you’ll be in a much better position to talk about all of this with some degree of authority. (Your own authority, not the authority of your personal book-of-the-week club.)
Some hidden valley in Colorado might look pretty good to you in twenty or thirty years, you know? And you won’t even have to worry about handing it off to someone. I promise you that you’ll have your share of 20 year olds just waiting to tell you how it really ought to be.
Spoken like a true jaded person who hates what they do.
Isn’t that the thing? Plato acknowledged that they would try and force you out of the cave. His point–and I think it is a good one–is that burden of knowledge and progress and improvement rests on those who’ve peeked outside.
I’m not married to any of this btw, and would love to be proven wrong. I’m just saying, I think Galt’s abdication of his role as a thinker doesn’t seem to me to be as noble as it does to Rand
“Spoken like a true jaded person who hates what they do.”
No, I was jaded when I was 20. ;^)
Actually, I loved what I did for a very long time. When I stopped loving it, I stopped doing it. The world did not come to an end and neither did I. Now I do other stuff and I love that.
What was your point again? Oh yes, that I’m jaded. Well, you’ll be pleased to know that I’m not headed for a hidden valley in Colorado. Mine’s in Europe.
I didn’t read atlas shrugged but according to wikipedia he is very similar to the guy in fountainhead. I only got 150 pages into it until I was convinced that Rand just gets really wet for those types of uncompromising intellectual men and she based an entire system of philosophy around it
My AP English teacher told me something very wise about Ayn Rand. He said that all teenagers should read her fiction, so that they can become Objectivists…and then grow out of it.
The funniest thing about Ayn Rand is that her and her philosophy became what she hated: A dogmatism based around a cult of personality. The history of the Objectivism is very interesting, and you can perhaps learn more about the world from that than from her writings.
I guess, at some point, you need to ask yourself what is the benefit to you and is it worth it? I think this is the idea behind Atlas Shrugged. People do need to make selfish choices at points of their lives even if it means saying “screw you” to everyone else. Do you want to work for other peoples concept of “honour” or do you want to work for your own benefit?
I think the moochers of the Atlas Shrugged society can be compared to the Nazi concentration camp workers. If you were Victor Frankl at Auschwitz and you’re faced with a choice, are you really going to choose to stay at Auschwitz with your oppressors?
There’s a great talk by Dan Dennett at TED (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/116) where he asks what you are willing to die for.
Right. It just seemed rather petty to me that since society wasn’t exactly how Galt wanted it, he got up and left. That doesn’t make him my hero.
I got the impression that Galt (and the other two important male characters that I can’t remember) were sacrificing a great deal before he went to that valley in Colorado. Dagny tried to fix things within the system as it existed. She failed. Galt convinced others to actively undermine the system so society could start over. It’s been a few years since I read it, but they were blowing up their own ships loaded with copper to hasten the economic collapse?
Say what you want about the methods, but they were certainly involved.
To the anonymous poster: it seems clear that many of Ryan’s postings are not concrete, that many of them are what he believes at a certain point in time (correct me if I’m wrong, as I may just be tying my thought process to yours); this is made especially clear when he asks for your thoughts. To comment on how long he has been working is to show that you have truly missed the point of what he is writing about.
I believe that those are capable of taking an objective view of the world around them and leave the path that so many others have taken are those that have left the cave. However, is everyone that is tied down and staring at their shadow capable of seeing the world as it is? I think not. Ignorance truly is bliss, and not every man is capable of leaving it behind. Though fictional, a perfect example of this is in the movie The Matrix. The betrayal of the character Cypher occurred because he wanted to live in the fake world, as it was a nicer place than the real world. This leads me to argue that those who are convinced to leave the cave and those who leave by themselves are composed of a small group that is truly capable of change, and that outside of this group, there is only ignorance.
Thoughts?
Rasteinb,
Exactly. I’m 20. Very little of what I know is for certain. The book has been around (and been read) for far longer than I have been alive so I’d like to tap into that knowledge. If you fix one of you inputs you chain yourself to the law of diminishing returns–something I am not ready for.
I don’t know if hero would be how I would describe John Galt but I can see where he is coming from.
Many times, when a system or structure is failing, it is better to completely demolish it and build it again from the ground up. This is what the Gulchers planned to do in Atlas Shrugged. They didn’t just disappear to live out the rest of their lives. In the end, they planned to come back and work for a better society. They chose to let it collapse first rather than patching on band-aids.
When a building is failing what happens? It gets imploded into rubble so developers have a fresh start to build what they want.
I’m not American but I believe your founding fathers wrote something like this into your constitution. Correct me if I’m wrong but there’s something along the lines of when the country’s government has become corrupt and no longer functions, there is a procedure for dissolving it so a new, better government can be formed from scratch.
That is one of the concepts I took away from Atlas Shrugged.
Matt,
It’s too simplistic. The idea to blow up the system and rebuild it from the ground up is a dystopian utopia. What happens after you’ve destroyed YOUR society? Should we now believe that the progeny of these creators will become supermen? Or will they be culled? History and human nature has always shown that a parent will almost always protect their kids. Will shield them from true meritocracy. Any sort of inheritance will ensure this.
If you take the track of continuous revolution, you wind up with Maoist. In fact Maoist did in fact try to rebuild a system from the ground up in Cambodia in the 1970s. What objectivism misses entirely is that while selfishness in sometimes necessary-if that is the main pillar holding up one’s philosophy, it’s a lost cause. It will invariably lead to some form of oligarchy or complete totalitarianism. Not by intent, but by design. True selfishness misses that we are social animals.
As I am 18, I can identify with your not feeling ready to acknowledge what is a grim view. In fact, I hope to see something that points otherwise. It is my belief that it isn’t worth it to set too much by this view, however, as I know how little I know about the world.
Great post Ryan. And some just can’t fathom why those supporting Ron Paul are as passionate as they are about his campaign. Having now seen what’s behind the curtain, they’d rather go down swinging (worst case) for what they believe in than have to look back and say they didn’t do anything to stop what’s happening in this country.
To the anonymous poster: it seems clear that many of Ryan’s postings are not concrete, that many of them are what he believes at a certain point in time (correct me if I’m wrong, as I may just be tying my thought process to yours); this is made especially clear when he asks for your thoughts. To comment on how long he has been working is to show that you have truly missed the point of what he is writing about.
Look, I thought Ayn Rand was extraordinary when I read her in high school and these days I just want to say “oh please.” Life is funny sometimes, isn’t it?
But seriously, I don’t think I missed his point at all. He asked for the thoughts of others, I gave him mine, he pronounced me to be speaking “like a true jaded person who hates what they do.” Rather, I think he (or perhaps you, or perhaps both of you) missed my point.
No offense to you because of your youth, but the reality is that few (if any) of us, regardless of our respective ages, know how we’re going to be looking at the world, or at what we’re doing in it, after another twenty years has passed. Whatever we think/feel/believe now is exactly that and subject to change.
I assure you that the I of twenty years ago would never have imagined myself making the choice to throw in the towel in 2007 — it would have gone against everything I believed in at the time. On multiple levels.
Now not only did I throw in the towel (theoretically an unheroic act), but I’m going on to the next phase of my life with absolutely no concrete plans for the future beyond the next three to six months, which is the amount of time it will take me to make the move I’m in process of. It’s a little odd in that I’ve never (not even in childhood) not had the next ten years or so mapped out, but it’s kind of interesting.
Please note that “absolutely no concrete plans” does not equate to “absolutely no sense of purpose.”
I think you’re both confusing “how long someone has worked” with “the amount of someone’s life experience.” (They’re intertwined up to a point, perhaps especially if we’re speaking of meaningful work mindfully performed, but they’re not the same thing.) Childhood and adolescence, while providing the foundation for what happens once one has Gone Out Into The World, don’t qualify as life experience on the same level as the life experience acquired once one has completed the process of adolescing. A person who’s been at the business of adult life for, say, twenty years is likely to be at least a bit more knowledgeable about adult life than a person who’s been alive for twenty years. That’s simple reality.
It’s also simple reality that often the person who’s been alive for twenty years finds it easy to dismiss the thoughts of someone who says “get back to me when you’ve been at it for a while,” especially if he thinks he himself is being dismissed for being a kid.
But that pesky “it” isn’t just one’s work history, and there are some aspects of living for which time, and what can be learned and accomplished in that time, is absolutely a requirement.
Whew! It’s getting kind of deep in here. I’d like to think some more about the other part of your post before responding to it.
What I saw: Anonymous spoke rudely. Ryan returned the favor. He seems to tend to do that (VAcres battle).
Given the way the messages were given and responded to, I don’t think the content of the messages mattered much at all.
This isn’t deep. This is beyond superficial.
Anonymous,
I appreciate the comment but at this point, I’m not ready to take advice from someone rationalizing “throwing in the towel.” Euphemism or not, it is not something I agree with.
Frankly, your comments were a lot better than I expected. I tend to get a lot of “well this is the path I took and failed, so you’re ought not take a path at all. Everything is meaningless.”
But dude, go back and look at what you wrote. That you didn’t ever consider quitting before doesn’t make it right now. And that you’re quitting now doesn’t mean you were wrong now. I don’t know your circumstances obviously, but you sound like a broken old man. You’re 40. Unless you have terminal cancer, what could possibly be so bad? Is it not more likely that YOU are wrong, rather than idealism being wrong?
Art,
You won’t understand because you don’t get as much of it as I do, but people LOVE to shit on young people who are going places. Because if they can nip you in the bud, they diminish their chances of feeling envious and outdone later on. They like to project the feelings that held them back because it makes them real instead of limited only to them. I get these comments and emails all the time.
Not that this guy is that. But I got that vibe. At least he’s nice. Most of the time, it’s accompanied by bitterness and loathing (see: the fight earlier in the week)
Now, to return to the original topic; I love Plato. His work is so fundamental to almost everything that came later in philosophy, it’s like Newton’s work to modern physics. Especially the cave allegory (rasteinb, I laughed when I read your Matrix example – it’s exactly what my philosophy prof and I recently descended to in a discussion about Descartes), which can be found so often if you just look closely.
In ‘Atlas shrugged’ though (I must admit, I haven’t read it, just about it) I couln’t quite find any striking parallels. Those who left Plato’s cave are gifted, having caught a glimpse of what is true and perfect, but cursed, for being neither capable of entirely comprehending that other world and staying there, nor returning to the cave and fit in again (those who have been in the light can’t see as well in the dark as those who didn’t leave). Much less they will be able to persuade others to free themselves from the bonds that keep them in the cave, because such a journey obviously brings only misfortune.
Comparing this to my impression of the ‘gulchers’ (which probably isn’t that accurate), these people seem to my like they actually threw their bonds of, but did not turn around to look at the light and rather used their freedom to crawl deeper into the safety of the cave.
About whether there ought to be more people coming back and trying to open the others’ eyes; I’m not quite sure about that. Even if we’re past the persecution of free thinking (at least in most parts of the world), I think it’s still a miserable place to live in for people of true genius (just think about the Bunny-quote in your list). To know that no one can fully understand you, and that you can’t force your knowledge upon someone, because it is something everyone has to see for themselves and will see it, if the have the ability for it and don’t try to deny it because it’s easier.
Eva
I thought the philosopher’s burden was that one day the philosopher will wake up and think to himself “holy shit, I’m entirely useless to the world because I have a degree in philosophy. How am I going to justify my existence?”
I’m all for creative thinking, but I don’t think philosophers have a monopoly on it, and thus, their field of study is pratically useless.
AJ,
Could it be that you’re making a (apparently popular) mistake? Being a philosopher isn’t a profession to live on, but a state of mind. An author can be a philosopher as much as a banker or a postman.
I think we agree that a lot of people (maybe the majority, not everyone though) with a degree in philosophy are douchebags who try to look sophisticated, but that doesn’t make philosophers useless people, it just means THEY don’t qualify as philosophers. Get my point?
Eva
Ding. Ding.
Just a point regarding the profession of academic philosophy: These people are required to learn and understand everything that came before them so that they don’t waste time reinventing the wheel.
By having a formal process of academic philosophy, we can all enjoy logically produced structure that explains the reality we live in. Lay philosophy is fantastic. It should be encouraged. But some people waste whole stretches of their lives trying to figure out questions that were resolved hundreds of years ago.
So, let’s not dismiss the philosophy majors so quickly. We kind of need them.
Ryan, I think you’re getting the point of the novel wrong. Galt *was* trying to convince the world.
What did the world need to grasp? The contribution of thinkers and producers to human well-being–above all, the top thinkers and producers. His point, as he explains to the world, is: you say we’re unnecessary exploiters. We won’t try to force you the way you have us–we’ll leave you alone, and you can judge how accurate your views were by the results.
One of the major themes in the book is precisely that Dagny and the non-strikers in the book were making it *harder* to persuade the world because they were shielded it from the consequences of its ideas and actions. The world said: the thinkers and producers are immoral and leaving them free is immoral. By continuing to think and produce, while allowing themselves to be denounced, shackled, and drained by the world, they were maintaining an evil system.
Think of it this way. Imagine you have a kid who, despite your best efforts, decides to become an entitled bum. To the extent you continue to support him, you’re arguably making it *more likely* he’ll continue on that course–regardless of how much you chide him.
That said, *Atlas Shrugged* is fiction, and although Rand definitely endorsed the ideas in the book, she wasn’t endorsing going on strike as a literal strategy to follow. She certainly didn’t follow it. Her view, which I agree with, is that so long as you have free speech, there is hope of changing people’s minds through persuasion, and you should take that opportunity.
Would you rather not create your own ideal world, than fight what Galt saw as a hopeless battle?