I'm re-reading Atlas Shrugged, a 1000+ page novel written by philosopher Ayn Rand in 1957. It's a startling book I first read during my first year of college in 1970 and it changed my way of looking at the world and the way we live in it. Rand describes what fear and disconnection do to human beings and ultimately their society, destroying both their joy of achievement and their respect for morality. She's been generally despised for unveiling this world and how it operates but I didn't realize until now, more than 50 years later, that I've been living in the world she predicted the whole time.
Rand describes a world in which neither innovation for ambition has value, where a person's ability to think clearly, take responsibility, and act on those thoughts has no place, but where following orders, even questionable ones, is the only way forward. Around 1977, I had a job as a purchasing agent in a small plastics company near OHare airport and I had an idea to combine and change purchasing patterns to save money and enhance reliability. My boss, the owner's plodding son, told me I was not paid to think, but was paid to do as I was told. He used Rand's exact language and just like Rand's characters did, I quit that job.
Rand also describes a world in which the appearance of a thing is more important than the fact of it and that the players in the resulting schemes collude to cover up injustice. I remember when, as Vice President of a small steel company in the 1980s, I was told to obtain a price increase from our best customer when the conditions contractually allowing that increase, an increase in the price of steel, had not been met. I was expected to take a falsified invoice to the customer and I refused to do it. My employer was upset, of course, but not because I questioned their methods. Their only demand was whether I was declaring myself better or more virtuous than they. They never considered whether what they were asking could be honorably done (it couldn't). They just wanted to know if it was presentable. In the end, after my refusal, someone else did the deed and I learned that all involved on both sides of the table were aware of the subterfuge and knew the supposed negotiations to be a false mockery, a cooperation of farce. I quit that job, too.
Rand further describes a world where government regulations strangle creativity and productivity and in which people work ever harder and realize less benefit for either producer or consumer, leading to the breakdown of supply systems and in the end, the society they are supposed to support. Last week's New Yorker profiled a Kentucky farmer stymied by government controls on crop prices while he watches food being shipped overseas to poor countries even as local family farmers struggle to exist in the financial framework their own government allows. The farmer predicted a world where family farms, the backbone of our food supply, no longer exist and the food supply cannot recover.
In 1970, I didn't expect, really, that any of Rand's predictions would come true but they are - in these few and many more - in instances where we watch the government perpetuate itself rather than acting in the interests of a vital, alive future.
Frankly, hardly anyone likes Ayn Rand. My philosophy classmates once booed me for saying I did, and I still disagree with her in many ways. But in these ways, at least, she has told the truth. Come to think of it, that might be why she is so unpopular. The truth is, too.
