THis is in reference to the small argument I noticed on the second to last page of the 140mpw thread, regarding Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." It kept getting deleted on that thread, because I think the thread's probably getting a little old, but it took me like more than 10 minutes to write this, so it would feel like a waste of time to just let ti get canned, I guess.
PERSONAgazaga wrote:
And my point above was that you didn't understand at all how I was relating the two. I wasn't relating John Galt the character, I was relating John Galt, the crude slang that remained rather anamolous throughout the first two parts of the novel. They were seperate representations in the book, bud: John Galt the crude slang and John Galt the Character. The initial, crude slang was a representation of ask-no-questions acquiescence, blindly accepting a popular idealism (Nike Free Me basically said "I knwo what it is and to ask only shows that you're not worthy" and everyone went into submission), but as the myths of Galt developed more and more apparent for Rand's ultimate purpose....and Galt eventually transcended the initial metaphor into another, more profound reflection--a physical articulation--of what Rand was piecing together throughout the entire novel: The morality of self-interest. I was referring to the slang, not the character, and either way it was a pretty weak attempt to try to discredit my comment.
PF wrote:
Backpedal much? "Who is John Galt?" was a rhetorical question of apathy, yes. John Galt, who you specifically compared Nike Free Me to, was pretty much Nietzsche's "Superman". If you had said, Nike Free is the ubermeunsch(sp?), anyone who had read Nietzsche would laugh at you; just as we are laughing at you now. Keep fighting that quicksand though.
Neither of you understood either of the books (Nietzsche’s or Rand’s) and, PF, you obviously don't at all understand Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, so I wouldn't act so smug.
The Ubermenschen isn't a person, but a higher evolution of mankind...”man” (and Nietzsche uses no gender specific nouns in most of the original German writing) is merely the epoch--or as Zarathustra says "the rope" or "the bridge"--between the PERHAPS attainable Ubermensch, and the barbary of the monkeys and worms that Darwin claims we’ve evolved from. John Galt is explicitly Zarathustra, not the Ubermensch. This is very, very explicit and there are countless concrete similarities...I will only go over a few one here.
1.) He, like Zarathustra lived in a sort of meditative solitude for ten years (Zarathustra in a cave that was the antithesis of that in Plato's Republic–a cave that showed the nature of our existence–and John Galt Underground as a railroad serf.)
2.) Galt adopts the creed of Zarathustra to not be a Shepard, like Christ (which involves leading people into a life of submissive, unproductive contentment in which man longs to be released from his current existence in order to discover his true virtues, rather than pursuing them himself on earth...which is quite similar to Galt’s asking “Why can’t we have heaven on earth?”), but to become a creator who only collaborates with other like-minded creators.
3.) Zarathustra said in the “PreSpeech” (or prologue on English, which robs Nietzsche of one of his most clever play on words) "They will call us THE DESTROYERS," which is exactly the name that Dagney gives Galt before understanding his true motive.
4.) The historical Zarathustra was also the philosopher from whom much of the Judeo-Christian beliefs are supposedly derived from. He defined the relativist struggle between good and evil, and Nietzsche's sort of parody of that (if one can call TSZ a parody) was in his extension of the historical Zarathustra’s story: the belief that if the historical Zarathustra created this idea of man's struggle between such a good and evil, he would be the first to understand how (according to Nietzsche) preposterous it was in the face of reason and again in the face of humanity. John Galt, you will remember, recalls accounts of his acquiescence to the discrimintately altruistic (and thus hypocritical) system of Rand's dystopian society (as did Francisco) for a short while, before realizing the same thing that Nietzsche's Zarathustra did about the historical Zarathustra's initial comprehension or an irrational good and evil.
And so it goes, I should like to clear another thing up that PF did not understand (I’m not concentrating “Personaganzaga,” because he’s an idiot). Contrary to the pop-idiocy, “Wikipedia-has-all-the-answers”comprehension of these specific writings, Zarathustra does not prophecise the Ubermenschen in “TSZ”, he merely sets it as an ideal--as those of Galt's community had set such an ideal– for men to strive for (and Rand herself--even though she was notoriously opposed to most other work by Nietzsche, due to his SUPPOSED fetish toward raw power over men and his emphasis on human emotion--compares Dagney's life philosophy to the unending tracks of her railroad...a metaphor for the attempt to constantly better oneself, regardless of whether perfection--or the end of the unending track--is ever reached...he does, however, make it quite clear that, while Ubermenschen (which in Nietzsche's language does not mean SuperMAN, but SuperHUMAN...or, as was incorrectly translated, "overHUMAN," due to the constant references paid toward elevations: i.e., To go over, To go under...the bridge that Dagney and Hank cross at the end of the first part, which later collapses under the regime of the looters, or “Lastmen”) is not certain to be reached or evolved into through man's struggle toward the ideal, the "Last Humans" of "Last Men" who merely blink with ignorant, slavish contentment (or as Rand would say "The Indian Raja, rubbing gems between his fingers), will certainly be men's end result if he does not change his ways.
There are countless other references and parodies to countless other texts/philosophers in both pieces and “Atlas” goes much deeper than a simple meditation Nietzsche, just as “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” goes much deeper than a simple meditation on the irrationalities Nietzsche perceive in the Judeo-Christian religion and the flaws of the disenchanting, anti-existential Platonic world view, so this assessment is merely a small piece in an infinitely large puzzle. I personally don’t feel either of you knew what you were talking about (The similarities between “Atlas” and “Zarathustra” are pretty much only derived from Zarathustra’s brief “Prespeech, the rest of the novel pays much more recurring homage to Aristotle and Locke), but what do I know...I’m only a silly, stupid High School Student.