Morality of capitalism!!

’’If you feed a hungry man with a fish, you feed him for that day; instead, teach him fishing and you will feed him for the rest of his life.’’

This assumes willingness on the man’s part to learn fishing. Have you ever wondered what would a hungry man who has neither the skill nor the intention to acquire it do? And if the world is swarming with such men and you are one of the few who can and do fish, can you imagine your plight? Can you be sure of getting your catch home safely without being plundered or begged off? What would you feel for such parasites, be they beggars or looters? What would your moral disposition be? Compassion? Hatred? Indifference?

If you can’t see the enormity of what you are facing, read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

Atlas Shrugged is breathtaking in its scope and suspense, for it is about the murder - not of a body but of the soul of Man. Miss Ayn’s intellect cuts through the heavy mists of mystic confusion to expose the schemes and tools of Evil, or call them second-handers, if you will, who feed on the Creation and eventually, the Creator himself.

This masterpiece, originally titled as The Strike, reveals how the most important forces of human life - Money and Sex, have been used by the Second-handers, over the history of mankind, to keep the Creators in chains so that they can go on without ever bothering to produce. John Galt, the protagonist of AS, carefully drains the world of its productive energy by pulling out the Creators from the world into the Atlantis, a place where each lives for one’s own sake and never asks another to live for the sake of others. And for the first time in history, the Motor of the world stops, leaving the world to rot.

In a language that has a lucidity and profundity rarely found elsewhere, Ayn puts forth, with convincing arguments, the virtues of Selfishness as against the vices of Charity. However the rhetorical denigration of compassion and other similar human qualities that Ayn makes throughout the novel might get on your nerves. Not surprisingly, one finds no good mothers or family members or any heart-warming relationships in Ayn’s works. But that cannot be a worthy reason to miss this great book.

One of the reviews in MouthShut warned readers against the righteousness that they might get after reading Atlas Shrugged. I believe the righteousness of Reason is far less malevolent than the righteousness of religion or righteousness of renunciation. If the value of any idea is in its applicability, Ayn’s philosophical ideas are more valuable than most of the trite philosophy dished out today.

Brought up in a nation, which goes on living, denying existence, trying to lose its faces if not souls, with the hope of rewards far beyond in time, space and every other conceivable dimension, I find various scenes of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead being enacted almost everywhere with the help of many Atlases who never care to shrug . One can see Peter Keatings and James Taggarts all around if one cares to wake up. And if we dare, we can find variants of them within ourselves too.

Read it. And you will begin to see. And would feel ignorance was bliss.

I chose not to be blissful.

Ironically, I am reminded of the verses from Gita, which could very well have been said by Roark or Galt.

Of lordly elephants I am Airâvata, of the wielders of weapons I am Râma, of the flowing rivers I am the Ganges, of the Pandavas I am Arjuna. I am the highest possibility of everything.