A Joker’s World !

The editors at the Economist wrote The New Terrorism: Coming Soon to a City Near You in 1998. He offers for sale a story about Nihilism and New Terrorism. Nihilism has basically two points. The first is that you do not like what I like the same way I like it, so we can’t get that close to an understanding. The second part is: So I can kill you. How many people do you know like this? This sounds to me like Hannibal Lector. It sounds like the definition of a sociopath. The New Terrorist is the Joker!

I do not believe we are breeding more sociopaths. I do think the United States is being itself rather nihilistic when it predicts its own doom. We are not the likely target of the next terrorist attack. Most attacks happen in places the government does NOTHING to stop it. So in a way all terrorism is government sponsored, directly or indirectly.

I am not going to live in a world that I have to worry about the right wing zealots of another country coming to get us because we neglected to keep our right wing religious zealots out of white house for 40 years. I not saying we asked for it, but we did allow it. But it is late for the kettle calling the pot black.

The next generation of terrorists will wake up in a world that has few recruits. Nihilism is best left to comic books where it is most attractive. Feel the pull of mortality all you like. It is no reason to kill others. Even the article waxes nostalgically for the P.L.O. and the Red Brigade.

Ten years later the world is so different. I think we’ve crossed over something.

JUST THE CASH, THANKS

Hills and Hirschorn in their article Best in Class: How Corporations Can Help Transform Schools (Earnst&Young2007) say in the introduction “The issues our schools face are so urgent that more companies must do more.” They go on the tell how corporations can do more to create the skilled workforce they’re going to need by partnering with schools to educate children.

These companies aren’t fast food vendors or soda manufacturers. They are technology and economics firms. They want to invest in the next generation of minds to solve the problems of tomorrow instead of using them as fuel for short term profits that we’ve read about in our text book.

Parents do need to partner with anyone that cares about their children. The fast food vendor and soda makers have shown that they do not. Universities have begun to partner with schools. Corporations have partnered with higher education for a very long time in our colleges and they aren’t plastered with garish advertising. It can be done and we already know how!

The schools need the money because we have seen time and time again that the funding models of property and sales taxes are not working. Its too direct. (I personally think this is honest, but I’m in the majority. I voted for every single tax hike and strategy that invests in our future, the children.)

They call it human capital. “Most corporations involved in education reform have focused their energy on improving the quality of human capital through professional development
for classroom instructors.”-again Best in Class. By using corporations to invest in teachers, schools and children we can begin the fulfilling task of reaching the human potential we’ve all known in which humanity was destined.

http://www.fsg-impact.org/ideasitem/503

The Fountainhead

THE FOUNTAINHEAD

BY

AYN RAND

I read a lot. I read a book a week if not more. I tend toward Science Fiction, Biography, and Gay Fiction. After reading the entire Ringworld series, I read Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Then I read the Fountainhead. I’ll confess. My boyfriend found it on the street with many others in a box in his neighborhood of Bay Ridge here in New York. He read it when he was in college and suggested I read it. We had already spoken of Objectivism and I had my opinion, but confessed that I had not actually read any of Ms Rand’s novels. He brought me one and it was six months before I could pick it up. I assure you it was not the 700 pages that deterred me. I’m also reading the Norton Anthology of English Literature. I had heard of Objectivism and heard the opinions of those I respect. I didn’t feel honest about my own opinion until I read it for myself. Here is what I thought.

The style is ROMANCE. I’m talking bodice-ripper. I think a better cover would be of a strangely attractive muscular man with red hair overpowering a pale-pale elegant blond with the skyline of New York of the 20’s in the background. (There are no black people, Asian, Hispanic, homosexual, etc in her novel.) So! Okay, I’m reading a romance. I couldn’t read a romance if it was just a romance and this one isn’t. The dialogue is film noir where everyone is a smartass. One can picture Barbara Stanwick and Fred Murrray in Double Indemnity. I have laughed out loud, to the worry of my fellow subway passengers, as I read Ms Rand ridiculous human dialogue. I think it would make a good play, though and would encourage a stage adaptation. That’s essentially the feeling. I found the plot and dialogue so arching and dramatic that I thought it belonged on the stage and not, NOT in a novel. Ms Rand was a screenwriter before she became a novelist, we can remember.

I can also remember holding the book at arm’s length because what I reading was so distasteful. The rape scene that leaves our heroine passed out in her bathroom because she cannot bear to remove the scent of her rapist from her bruised body. After reading the novel I understand more, and I’ll go the distance for Ms Rand. The character of Dominique (cute for a rape victim, don’t you think?) needed a violent interaction to take her out of the mundane. She wanted to be jolted into a new reality. And I can understand a person putting out that need and expectation and having the universe give it, but a rape? I have trouble with Ms Rand’s method here. But this is a ROMANCE. Women are controlled and conquered etc.

Toohey provides the subplot. Toohey is a monster. Not a monster we don’t know, however. Today we know the monsters of Toohey’s ilk. Carl Rove is an excellent example of Toohey’s philosophy. But how are we to counteract the Tooheies of the world? They are masters of the public thought and masters of public opinion. Toohey can manipulate opinion because the masses are so predictable. I was very depressed by this thought. I knew that I could not have civil rights, could not have equal protection, etc until the masses saw it as their advantage. That is where the Tooheies of the world congregate. Ayn Rand does an excellent job of showing how the public is manipulated in order to further political goals. For that I shall always be grateful for Ms. Rand. But along the confession mode…I’m grateful for little else. According to Ms Rand the masses are ignorant, stupid, mean, petty, have no memory and desire to grow up. When I’m in a mood, I do think that way too. I ride the subway, as you know.

I read on my breaks at work and on the weekends and on the train to and from work. If you’re reading the Fountainhead, you’ll be stopped by someone who wants to talk about it. I’ve was approached about three times in the week it took me to read The Fountainhead. I was reading outside my job in Manhattan and a woman of moderate means asked me what I thought of the novel Here is the dialogue.

“Excuse Me! You’re reading The Fountainhead! What do you think?” She was a woman of ten years my senior, making her roughly in her early 50’s. She was clean and a bit eclectically dressed. She had dyed hair and lots of jewelry.

“It’s the best S and M Romance novel I’ve ever read.” I stated. “All the dialogue is right out of Film Noir with lots of rambling monologues by depressed people. As far as the philosophy is concerned it’s cribbed from the Justice League in Bizaro World.” I confessed also that I couldn’t put it down.

She was a bit confused. She said she liked romance novels and Film Noir. She stated she also thought Ayn Rand was a very smart woman, if a little homely. I asked her a question. “Would you rather live in a world where bad people did good things or good people did bad things?” She stated she believed that world was basically good and sometimes people did bad things. I asked her if she thought a good solution came from one mind or a whole bunch of minds contemplating a problem. She said that she thought solutions came from many people over a long time were better than one imposing solutions over all. Me too I said. That’s why I’m reading Ayn Rand. Ms Rand thinks just the opposite, as far as I can tell. “I never thought of it that way!” the bejeweled woman said, and began to rearrange items in one her bags.

I’ve learned some things about myself by reading the Fountainhead. One is that I understand her wish to exalt the individual artist. There is a lesson there about remaining true to one’s self that I think is encouraging. I also like her overall way of describing the understanding between Howard and Dominique or Gail and Dominique. She often states that no words are necessary, that those in this elevated union do not require anything of the other but the witness of a shared experience. I believe that. Ms Rand also reinforced my opinion of the television nation, however.

I don’t need to tell you by now that there are no three dimensional characters in Ms Rand’s ‘novel’. They are all see through and two dimensional. They are also beautifully so (they all stand for other ways of living after all). The background eroticism is apparent even when I don’t think Ms Rand was aware of it. I half expected Roark to bed Mallory, a fellow artist, and Mynard, his best friend at different times. Ms Rand’s plot is ripe for a porn rip off. Here’s the plot: Architect tries to get the commission to build a building. He fucks his rivals’ wife. After receiving the commission he fucks the sculptor commissioned to do the centerpiece of the work. Then he fucks the foreman of the construction company. When the local tabloid starts hatting on it, he fucks the paper’s owner. All the while a sickly old man tries to do him in.

This is not the plot of Fountainhead, there are two trials in the story. But that’s the basics. Man loves modern architecture. Man gets thrown out of architecture school because he is too modern. School mate is hailed head of class because he not modern. Man builds reputation by bootstraps, complete with dying mentor’s advice. Architect finds a friend in a construction worker. School mate becomes famous builder by appropriating Architects designs. Man gets commission to build a temple to the human spirit. Architect finds friend in a sculptor. Tabloid newspaper calls temple sacrilegious. Architect is sued for not building appropriate temple and looses everything. Architect goes to work for quarry. Beautiful woman sees him there. Architect rapes woman. Woman marries class mate. Woman divorces class mate and marries tabloid owner. Architect becomes best friends with tabloid owner. Architect repairs career by bootstraps. Architect designs prestigious housing project under class mate’s name. Architect blows up building in mid-construction, goes to trial and wins not only the case but the woman he raped at the quarry. Tabloid owner hires Architect to build a great sky scraper that “rises above the pinnacles of bank buildings”, the “crowns of courthouses” and the “spires of churches”. Subplot: Slimy opinion monger tries to destroy Architect in the public arena. The End.

The book is supposed to illustrate Objectivism. If you want to learn about Ms Rand’s philosophy, please read her non-fiction. Her fiction is awful.