| Of course I read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, et all -- basic high school reading, hasn't everyone? I actually won first place in that stupid prize they set out, and all I had to do was pretend Rand wasn't a total dunce (which happily turned out to be excellent training for the business world). Both novels, like the majority of Rand's work, are absolutely cracking as wish-fulfillment fantasies for folks without social skills who dream of having kinky, angular sex while demanding that they be made BusinessPapa for perfecting some mechanical process. Ignoring, of course, that perfection in a vacuum means very little; it is the ability to use said process in the context of society that makes it 1) useful and 2) profitable (although I suppose Rand would order those different :) Who is John Galt? The kid who took his ball and went home when the other children didn't let him make all the rules. In short, I do not find Objectivism to be a useful rubric when it comes to morality. Frankly, Objectivism is incoherent except when read as a wish-fullfilment fantasy as described above, as the life of the originator handily demonstrates. Success does not come from minimizing the contributions of everyone else -- that way lies loneliness, hypocrisy, and a reliance on the teat of the State. As I deeply value my freedom and lack of debt, I could never adhere to such a unprofitable and vacuous quote unquote philosophy. With regard to "moral compass" being a leftist invention -- such an accusation betrays precisely the sort of total willful ignorance I have come to expect from self-proclaimed Objectivists (akin to RATM being Atlas Shrugged devotee Paul Ryan -- aka the literal machine --'s favorite band). Suffice it to say that the phrase "moral compass" appears long before the current political paradigm -- and the concept to which it refers is literally older than written language itself. Have you read any books OTHER than Atlas Shrugged? If not, I would be happy to provide a few suggestions to get you started! And while I'm dispensing unsolicited-but-potentially-life-changing advice: If I were you, I'd hesitate to out myself in public forums as being unfamiliar with an inner sense of morality. Most people prefer a social circle that views their friendship as something greater than a business arrangement built on symbiotic profit. I would ALSO hesitate before living my life in the accordance with the principles of an parasitic welfare queen like Ayn Rand, but that's an entire conversation in and of itself. |