Ideological screwup forces recall of Atlas Shrugged DVD
November 13, 2011 - 5:50pm
Ha ha!
Whoever was designing it wrote that it was about self-sacrifice rather than self-interest.
I guess they're just too used to people lying, instead of being up front about it.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/11/13/atlas-shrugged-dvd.html
In a related story, I read not too long ago that the fellow who bankrolled the whole thing is thinking about whether he wants to fund the other two-thirds of the story, since this one bombed. I guess money trumping ideology is not a bad thing, sometimes.
Hey and no Ogg Theora or WebM video either ROTFLMAO!!!!
Of course not... using a non-proprietary format? That would be anti-free enterprise heresy!
What gives in bringing this up again? The movie failed utterly at the box office, didn't get a big wide release, and was virtually unknown or off of the radar to most people (I didn't even know it existed until I heard about it here.) Eveybody concerned should be glad that it wasn't and that Ayn Rand just isn't as popular as she used to be-as I said before months ago, 'The battle's won, the day is done, let's just leave it at that.' Giving yourselves a heart attack over Atlas Shrugged being a movie won't do you or anybody else any good, and only makes you look just as extremist as any member of the Tea Party. Save your energies for more important things.
Because it bears repeating and is a quite sensible post about beliving too much in dogma (from the same link):
I read it at 14, and again at 16, and it had a lot to do with how I look at the world, and myself in it.
I read some real "Commie" stuff in my adolescence, too. I am to a large extent a sum of the ideas and philosophies that I've explored - not some simple-minded distillation of the ideas that tickled my ego the most.
The problem is not the ideas, but with people who attain middle age still clinging to black-and-white narrow-minded world views.
You know the type - proudly proclaiming that they knew the difference between right and wrong when THEY were 14 - that's usually a sign that you should keep a close eye on how they express their ideas about right and wrong, for the rest of their lives...
[url]http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/11/13/atlas-shrugged-dvd.html[/url]
Thanks for the bump, Sky Captain.
I thought this thread also fell off the radar two months ago.
Ha ha!
Whoever was designing it wrote that it was about self-sacrifice rather than self-interest.
They should have said, it's about sacrificing babies, clean air, and safe drinking water for the instant gratification of a few in the here and now, and fuck the future.
That's a terrible irony. And now it won't even get to the dusty section at Blockbuster Video.
Have you tried to read Ayn Rand?
I don't think I'd describe the experience as instant gratification. And I only read "Anthem" because I was into Rush as a teenager. I count myself lucky to have learned that lesson early, or not to have been ordered to do so by a boss obsessed with his own importance.
Paying attention to Rush would have been a better use of your time then for sure, Smith.
Yes, I figured that out pretty quickly too.
No I've only ever read synopsises and summaries. I understand that Rand's book was an anthem for laissez faire capitalism, which is not so interesting for me, as well as introducing her notion of objectivism.
I am reading a wikipedia description of that now. And I already want to disagree with her view of human consciousness and reality - and I'm pretty certain that so would modern day theoretical physicists have objections.
And she appeals to my Marxist tendencies with this one:
-Atlas Shrugged
She had it right that we need a socio-economic system that places man and man's needs at the centre of things. It's just that laissez-faire capitalism is not that ideal system.
I will say that I like Rand's optimism for a technically advanced future. Theoretically it should be possible to someday eliminate material poverty, diseases etc. But we are a long way from that still. We are already manipulating matter and furthering scientific knowledge. I think discovery of new laws of nature are in the near future. In my opinion we have a bridge to cross before we become sufficiently advanced to, say, Kardashev-Dyson's type I civilization. And the bridge to the future is lined with conservation and resourcefulness not neoliberal capitalism. We've accelerated consumption of raw materials and fossil fuels since unleashing self-interest and greed on the world like never before some 30-35 years ago. This way is a road to serfdom for humanity if we don't stop it.
ACtually a lot of people read a lot of things into her work.
Apparently Neil Peart from Rush got into her because he took it as a statement of artictic freedom and non-compromise. Quite a difference from the radical right libertarians who now see her as their inspiration.
Of course Rand's real root motivation was inspired by a serial killer. The fact that he had no feelings for others and cared only his needs and his success made him the perfect ideal. She may say it is a hero she is admiring, but really it is a psychopath.
"Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"
http://www.alternet.org/books/145819/ayn_rand,_hugely_popular_author_and...
From what I have read it sounds like Rand's philosophy is a cheap first drug to hook young people on brown shirt mentality. The harder drugs come later, like benevolent imperialism and neoconservatism. Laissez faire capitalism fell from grace after 1929, and political conservatives really never developed an economic plan of their own until later when joining up with US liberals. It was former conservative Michael Lind who wrote that with social conservatism and economic liberalism you get nothing. Economic conservatism and social liberalism is nothing. Any combination of the two results in nothing remarkable. He wrote that conservatism was born of the deep south and is still based on religious revivalism and racism. Conservatives in the US are said to hold a range of different political and social views. I think Rand was just another mixed up conservative camouflaged by the rest of them.
The one percent have always been in search of new and even intellectual arguments to justify concentration of wealth since the 1930s and death of laissez faire capitalism. So they pumped a lot of money into a bevvy of right wing think tanks and universities in the US to promote economic and social inequality, and a 'let's stay armed to the eye teeth national security state' mentality since WW II. The Chicago School of Economics and Finance served their purpose since the Reagan era. A heavily armed group of militarized countries is absolutely necessary to enforce neoliberalism proven to be incompatible with democracy. And the neocons had to invent an invisible army of darkness to justify marauding into sovereign nations the way they have.