Sunday, April 17, 2022

Ayn Rand

My mother admired Ayn Rand, a Jewish Russian/American writer who founded "Objectivism". I came across her main work, "Atlas Shrugged" and read it at a relatively young age.

In it, her main character, John Galt, has gone on strike against the collectivist state imposed upon him and fellow entrepreneurs, and simply disappeared out of circulation.

Through her character, Rand expresses her disgust for what happened in Russia as the Bolsheviks took over political power and created the Soviet Union.

She idealized the entrepreneur, the brilliant man, who could create an ideal society, and was duly awarded with all kinds of admiration from the political right in the US.

As she got older, she, as many others, became intoxicated with her own public success but did not have a happy personal life.

Her character John Galt reminds me of Elon Musk and his astonishing financial success and admiration by the general public. He is also paying a price, in terms of his own health, for his success.

Political ideologies come and go and the characters they portray
pay for fitting in with them and 'live out the dream'.

Because these ideologies always tries to twist the real world into something it is not.

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