The City

In a city
That is in love with its dreams
I am a man
Lost to his connections
Human or divine.

I and the city
Have no meeting place
When I wake up

To walk its streets

The city sleeps.

In the throbbing quiet

The moon shines

Its graceful light.

By the time

The city has woken up

I am gone

Into my own delirium.

Metasis

The romance 

Faded out of my life.

The stars 

Fell off my shoulders.

And darkness 

Descended upon my eyes.

I walked along abandoned streets

My life was as empty.

My story

Turned from ecstatic poetry

Into a sour prose.

Not a tint of happiness

Visited my desolate spirit

Not even sadness 

Could find a place

In my lifelessness.

In this emptiness 

As ravaged as the Sahel

Only a faint memory remains

That, there was life, once

And an even fainter hope

That in time 

What was lost, will resurrect.

Titbits 2

Then the Oracle said the most incredible thing I ever heard her say. I was bemoaning the unfairness of Death when she declared:

~ But you have Sex as a compensation for Death.

~ What? -- I cried out. ~ Sex as a compensation for Death? How fair is it to compensate a loss of eternity with a pleasure of an instant? 

~ The more you do it the fairer it becomes! Said the Oracle

~ If every instant of life could be an orgasm, it wouldn't be fair enough.

~ Well-- she said again, ~ in the end that was your choice.

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What progress? (She said) What change? What growth?

Your life itself is borrowed from death. Your days are stolen from darkness. Your joy from your sadness, and all of your thoughts from nothingness. You can never sum them up and arrive at any thing positive. It will be zero -- from nothing to nothing.

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I went to the kitchen holding a giant bowl that was heavily greased with the oil from the stew I just ate for dinner. The microwave was on, heating up something. The timer on top of it indicated that it will run for 4 more minutes. I was busy washing up the oily bowl when the microwave peeped five times to indicate that the time was up. At that moment, it struck me that I just spent 4 minutes of my life washing a bowl. Four irreversible minutes consumed with a trivial task, without being consciously lived.

Time is finite, but the choice for action is almost infinite. And sometimes the arbitrariness and the triviality of the choices strikes you with an eerie sensation. 

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When the man dies, his teeth say 'Now let's take break!'

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What if a woman's love is just an advance payment for the future service of raising her kids?

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A hungry heart would mold a lover from mud.

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The first rule of writing is, she said, to write in first person form. Do not hide behind abstract subjects and passive forms. Write as a person normally speaks, and state your ideas directly. Loose-ended statements and half-finished arguments indicate that you are afraid to take a position. Open up and be vulnerable. Be willing to be refuted wrong.

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You are a small nerve ending of a giant living universe.

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What if the Big Bang was a Laughter of God, or maybe a Cry of Man?

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What is life but a combination of gimmicks and tricks to remain sane and relevant?

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The parks, the libraries -- and the real world in general -- are the first victims of the internet revolution.

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An apparition is warmer than a facebook friend. In the floods of information it unleashed on me, facebook drowned itself. Like tumor, it is growing too much to kill itself.

Van Gogh: The Life

It was on a night of a Holy Thursday that I finished reading Steven Naifeh and Gregory Smith’s compelling biography of the renowned Dutch painter – ‘Van Gogh: The Life.’ I had spent much of that evening in the City Centre attending a musical drama depicting the Passion of the Christ with thousands of townsfolk. When I returned home, I faced the last chapter of this engrossing book which had occupied me for weeks. I had come to know the two protagonists– Vincent and Theo van Gogh– so intimately that I was not looking forward to finishing the book. I was afraid of losing the warm company of the two brothers’ revealing story. Still, nothing had prepared me to the great shock that I would actually feel upon the tragic end of their story.

In the musical drama I had attended that evening, Jesus Christ was condemned to crucifixion by a bitter, unforgiving crowd and an acquiescent judge. In three days, however, Jesus would triumph over death and arise from the grave. His is a beautiful, reassuring story, with its message of love’s healing power that could even trump death.   

The story of the two Van Gogh’s was an exact opposite of the comforting story that I had celebrated that night. It is also a wonderful story of love – a fraternity of two young men that sustained decades-long stormy trials and tribulations. But its ending is devastating. It is a love that ends with the decimation of a whole family. First dies Vincent from a gun wound, in the arms of his ‘Waarde Theo,’ which drives the hitherto levelheaded Theo into a sudden cataclysm of craziness and eventual death. It was heartrending to witness the unravelling of an enduring story of friendship and brotherhood, chiseled into my mind through this elegantly narrated, 850-pages-long biography. Unlike Christ’s, the death of the Van Goghs is one without redemption, unless perhaps the fact of a total stranger like me reading their story with misty eyes a hundred years hence would count as a restitution of sorts.

Vincent van Gogh was essentially the abandoned child who never got the chance to grow up. Indeed, he was a quirky ‘strange boy’-- contrarian, unamiable and vehemently uncompromising. On the plus side he was passionate towards ideals and people whom he loved, with the capacity to galvanize the forces of his frantic heart and towering mind to meet his goals. His heart would ooze tender kindness towards the unfortunate, and at many points in his life he made extreme self-sacrifices to lend a helping hand for a neglected soul. He was thus a born evangelist, and it was only natural that he started out at young age into a career in the Church. However, his overture to study theology and follow his father’s footsteps foundered in the face of stringent university entrance requirements which he failed after two years of hard study in Amsterdam.

Still Life with Bible (1885)

Vincent van Gogh failed not once, but in all of his endeavors without exception till the tragic end of his life at the age of 38. Since his art almost never sold, he was financially dependent on his family. His tumultuous life was punctuated with endless failed relationships. Starting from his family ties to the friendships he formed in the many countries where his wanderlust soul took him, all of Vincent’s relationships suffered the same interminable fate of a quarrelsome fall out. A lifelong history of professional and personal failures registered a dark backlog in Vincent’s sensitive psyche. In his last years, he suffered bouts of depression that bordered madness. The state of his life was so gloomy that, looking back, Vincent described it as “shipwreck.”  

I think two events dramatically turned Van Gogh’s life to the worse. The first was his parents' decision to send him out to a boarding school at the age of 11, which started off young Van Gogh’s life on a perilous path. However impossible it might have seemed, his contrarian personality would have stood a better chance of reforming in the comfortable nest of his parent’s house. Unfortunately, he was torn apart from the family he dearly loved, and forced into a communal life in which he would inevitably become an outsider. His banishment into a boarding school sowed in Van Gogh’s mind irrepressible feelings rejection which would haunt his relationship with his family.

The second unfortunate event in Van Gogh’s life was his delusional sojourn into the Borinage, the black country of dreary coal mines in Belgium. Compared to the preceding adventures that similarly ended up in failure, the jaunt into these godforsaken mines at the age of 26 had a much worst effect of deteriorating the young man’s mental balance. Vincent emerged from that black country no longer an unlucky, idealistic adventurer whose innocent but misguided aspirations went awry. Rather, he came out as a bitter person with a distorted world view, tormented by his past rejections and unhinged by fear of future failure. The sleeping devils in his mind came out rushing, setting off fires of bitter anger towards his parents and guilt towards himself. For the rest of his life, he would build endless ‘castles in the air’ to reclaim his nostalgia of a lost love, which only led to more disappointment whenever the fantasies would go bust.

Almond Blosssoms (1890)

Eventually he moved to Brussels and started a career as an artist at the age of 27, which lasted until his death ten years later. Although Vincent’s life tacked back to normalcy thanks to his newborn dedication to art, the troubles of the past had left indelible bruises in his mind. Moreover, Theo now took over their father as Vincent’s financial care taker, thanks to his solid financial standing working in Paris for Goupil, a giant art-dealing business partly owned by their uncle Cent. Vincent had already tried working for Goupil, first in their branch in the Hague and then in London, but was found recalcitrant in his work, which eventually led to his dismissal.  

Vincent considered Theo not only as his confidant, but also as a sort of a protégé. Their relationship became complicated, however, when Theo outdid his brother by succeeding with ease in the art dealing business in Paris. He quickly climbed up the corporate hierarchy, cementing his status as the most favored sibling of their family. Vincent's financial dependence upon his younger brother was a twist of fate that would permanently alter the calculus of their wobbly relationship. In later years, Vincent’s profligacy compounded with Theo’s increasing financial cares to spawn incessant arguments in the brothers’ correspondences between Brussels and Paris.

Theo Van Gogh (1872)

Still, the bond between the two brothers withered all of this instability and Theo remained not only his brothers sponsor, but also his only constant source of intimate emotional support and professional advice. In fact, Vincent cast his work as a joint project of the two brothers, which might not be far from truth considering the intensity of Theo’s involvement that doubled roles of a financier, professional adviser, market counsellor, collector and promoter of practically all of Vincent’s paintings. This arrangement suited the otherwise desultory Vincent, motivating him to work hard as he tried to prove to his brother that he is worthy of his salt. In spite of several fall outs, including a persistent chill following Theo decision to marry Johanna Bonger, their affinity and correspondences persisted.

The Starry Night (June 1889)

The death of Vincent embellished the ironies of the life he had lived. In his life, Vincent was the rejected, degenerate child. In his death, he became among the most recognized and cherished artists the world over. He lived a life of penury and perpetual financial dependence. In his death, a single painting of him would fetch tens of millions. In his life, he was detested for his person, although his work occasionally drew praises from friends. In his death, it was the dazzling story of his life that would eventually draw attention to his work. Moreover, Vincent was the least sought after, and least recognized member of the large Van Gogh family. He proved to be the most indispensable when his death unleashed a domino of tragic deaths in the family, beginning from the heartbroken Theo, to their young brother Corr in South Africa. As much as the death of Vincent might have been tolerated, or even welcomed given all the troubles he gave, the Van Gogh household must have been rocked to its bottom upon the capitulation of the younger Theo. Theo, who was the antithesis of Vincent for his dutifulness, had been a beacon to his family, and their indispensable financial beast of burden.

Starry Night over the Rhône (September 1888)

The posthumous fame of Van Gogh is a testimony of the value of authentic artistic creativity, and our ability to recognize and cherish it. In his life as much as in his art, Van Gogh was severely unpretentious, intent on unequivocally expressing the subtlest hue of his feelings. As early as 1982, just two years into his serous artistic undertaking, Vincent wrote that he wants to be remembered as one who “feels deeply… tenderly -- notwithstanding my so-called roughness, perhaps even because of it.” The triumph of this enduring vision is there for everyone to see in the unmistakable roughness and yet forceful authenticity that is a signature of Vincent’s paintings. His paintings reflect the whole gamut of Vincent’s complex emotional experience – ranging from the dark, sterile paintings of ‘The Potato Eaters’ and ‘Two Women on the Heath,’ to the jovial, light-intoxicated vistas displayed in the paintings of wheat fields and lush gardens from his later days in France.

As Vincent once said: ‘Illusions may fade, but the sublime remains.’ His paintings indeed honestly convey the sublime spirit that animated him and the dazzling intensity with which he expressed it. The layers of color and texture of his relentless brush strokes are enduring witnesses of his lustful passion for life.  In the golden wheat fields of autumn decorated by hovering birds, in the magical olive gardens, in the twinkling, larger-than-life stars and moon, reflected on the Rhone and shining over the Place du Forum of Arles, one can still sense the glimpse of that sublime, creative impulse which Vincent used to express with a spur of exclamation: ‘Yes! Dat is het!’

Wheat Field with Cypresses (1889)

Facebook Fatigue

Now and then we fall under the spell of Facebook Fatigue. Or call it Facebook Fall out, Facebook Fed up, Facebook Fright. Or whatever FF suits you -- except for that word of four letters.

Even during a Facebook Fatigue, I remain logged in. I have too much at stake to totally abandon Facebook. What if someone sends an email? So I stay connected, following every post and reading every comment. But I keep quiet.

Totally unseen. Like a black cat in a pitch dark room. I don't even breath, nor comment, nor like. It is Facebook Fed up.

Facebook Fatigue is the end of Facebook Fetish. It is a natural burp of an immensely bloated infatuation... Excessive, near - 24X7 online engagement is clearly destined to end up in disaster. Even if Facebook were the best lover in the world, the time of reckoning should come for this fateful love affair. Then comes Facebook Fright, and all the fancied virtual love flees. 

Trouble is that Facebook is a free lunch. Believe it or not all free lunches are tasteless. Man does not appreciate what he has not paid for. Facebook friends are collected like stamps -- and they can be willfully discharged ('unfriended' as if there were any friendship) -- with just a click. Likes, comments and posts are exchanged without the slightest of emotional investment. There is no vulnerability in saying something. Posts are not spontaneous and natural. They are polished and artificial. All this lack of personal and emotional investment causes a certain dreariness that makes you run away after some time. Facebook Plague has started. 

And shame could also play a role behind Facebook Fatigue. We know that we are speaking too much. Mostly we know we are just talking to ourselves. But an unnamed craze of bravery exhilarates us and we go on with our monologue. Then we become nervous. Are all the Black Cats listening? Oh Gosh! Let's hope no one paid attention to all of that self-congratulating drudgery of words. What had happened to us?

Facebook Fatigue just exposed the fiction of a device we hoped had filled in the void in us. That gloomy void of loneliness and more. Like all other fancy technologies, we had come up with a solution that neatly plugs the openness of our void with mathematical precision. Without making any mess or splash. In the excitement of posting and commenting, the pain numbed, and we thought we are healed. And then --- Alas! -- Suddenly comes Facebook Fatigue - proving us totally wrong!! There is no denying that this medicine was like all the others before it. It has only the appearance of a medicine -- for otherwise, it does not work.

Facebook Ends with a Fatigue, but the search continues. With the failure of FB, the future belongs to other letters. It could even be XX.

Extracts

--------------- Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha ---------------

See, I'm no learned man, I have no special skill in speaking, I also have no special skill in thinking. All I'm able to do is to listen and to be godly, I have learned nothing else. If I was able to say and teach it, I might be a wise man, but as it is I am only a ferryman, and it is my task to ferry people across the river. 

I have transported many, thousands; and to all of them, my river has been nothing but an obstacle on their travels. They travelled to seek money and business, and for weddings, and on pilgrimages, and the river was obstructing their path, and the ferryman's job was to get them quickly across that obstacle. But for some among thousands, a few, four or five, the river has stopped being an obstacle, they have heard its voice, they have listened to it, and the river has become sacred to them, as it has become sacred to me." 

---------

Once, he said to her:  "You are like me, you are different from most
people.  You are Kamala, nothing else, and inside of you, there is a
peace and refuge, to which you can go at every hour of the day and be at home at yourself, as I can also do.  Few people have this, and yet all could have it." 

 "Not all people are smart," said Kamala. 

 "No," said Siddhartha, "that's not the reason why.  ...  Most people, Kamala, are like a falling leaf, which is blown and is turning around through the air, flutters, and tumbles to the ground.  But a few others are like stars which travel on a fixed path: no wind reaches them, they have within themselves their guide and path."

---------

S: "I am without possessions," said Siddhartha, "if this is what you mean. Surely, I am without possessions. But I am so voluntarily, and therefore I am not destitute."

K: "But what are you planning to live of, being without possessions?"

S: "I haven't thought of this yet, sir. For more than three years, I have been without possessions, and have never thought about of what I should live."

K: "So you've lived of the possessions of others."

S: "Presumable this is how it is. After all, a merchant also lives of

what other people own."

K: "Well said. But he wouldn't take anything from another person for

nothing; he would give his merchandise in return."

S: "So it seems to be indeed. Everyone takes, everyone gives, such is life."

K: "But if you don't mind me asking: being without possessions, what would you like to give?"

S: "Everyone gives what he has. The warrior gives strength, the merchant gives merchandise, the teacher teachings, the farmer rice, the fisher fish."

K: "Yes indeed. And what is it now what you've got to give? What is it that you've learned, what you're able to do?"

S: "I can think. I can wait. I can fast."

*****************************************************************

--------------- Albert Camus, The Plague --------------- 

                                                Tarrou's Story

"My father had an important post, he was prosecuting attorney; but to look at him, you'd never have guessed it; he appeared, and was, a kindly, good-natured man. My mother was a simple, rather shy woman, and I've always loved her greatly; but I'd rather not talk about her. My father was always very kind to me, and I even think he tried to understand me.... My father and I got on together excellently... 

"When I was seventeen my father asked me to come to hear him speak in court. There was a big case on at the assizes, and probably he thought I'd see him to his best advantage. Also I suspect he hoped I'd be duly impressed by the pomp and ceremony of the law and encouraged to take up his profession... What happened in a court had always seemed to me as natural, as much in the order of things, as a military parade on the Fourteenth of July or a school speech day. My notions on the subject were purely abstract, and I'd never given it serious thought.

"The only picture I carried away with me of that day's proceedings was a picture of the criminal. I have little doubt he was guilty, of what crime is no great matter. That little man of about thirty, with sparse, sandy hair, seemed so eager to confess everything, so genuinely horrified at what he'd done and what was going to be done with him, that after a few minutes I had eyes for nothing and nobody else. He looked like a yellow owl scared blind by too much light. His tie was slightly awry, he kept biting his nails, those of one hand only, his right.... I needn't go on, need I? You've understood, he was a living human being. 

"As for me, it came on me suddenly, in a flash of understanding; until then I'd thought of him only under his commonplace official designation, as 'the defendant.' And though I can't say I quite forgot my father, something seemed to grip my vitals at that moment and riveted all my attention on the little man in the dock. I hardly heard what was being said; I only knew that they were set on killing that living man, and an uprush of some elemental instinct, like a wave, had swept me to his side. And I did not really wake up until my father rose to address the court. 

"In his red gown he was another man, no longer genial or good-natured; his mouth spewed out long, turgid phrases like an endless stream of snakes. I realized he was clamoring for the prisoner's death, telling the jury that they owed it to society to find him guilty; he went so far as to demand that the man should have his head cut off. Not exactly in those words, I admit. 'He must pay the supreme penalty,' was the formula. But the difference, really, was slight, and the result the same. He had the head he asked for. Only of course it wasn't he who did the actual job. I, who saw the whole business through to its conclusion, felt a far closer, far more terrifying intimacy with that wretched man than my father can ever have felt."

---------

At this point Tarrou's handwriting began to fall off oddly... "She reminds me of my mother; what I loved most in Mother was her self-effacement, her 'dimness,' as they say, and it's she I've always wanted to get back to. It happened eight years ago; but I can't say she died. She only effaced herself a trifle more than usual, and when I looked round she was no longer there."

---------

Tarrou: "I know the world inside out, as you may see, that each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth is free from it. And I know, too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we breathe in somebody's face and fasten the infection on him. What's natural is the microbe. All the rest, health, integrity, purity, if you like, is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention. And it needs tremendous will-power, a never ending tension of the mind, to avoid such lapses." 

   The Plague's Final Calamity --  The passing of Tarrou 

The night began with a struggle, and Rieux knew that this grim wrestling with the angel of plague was to last until dawn. In this struggle Tarrou's robust shoulders and chest were not his greatest assets; rather, the blood that had spurted under Rieux's needle and, in this blood, that something more vital than the soul, which no human skill can bring to light. The doctor's task could be only to watch his friend's struggle. As to what he was about to do, the stimulants to inject, the abscesses to stimulate? many months'
repeated failures had taught him to appreciate such expedients at their true value. Indeed, the only way in which he might help was to provide opportunities for the beneficence of chance, which too often stays dormant unless roused to action. Luck was an ally he could
not dispense with. For Rieux was confronted by an aspect of the plague that baffled him. Yet again it was doing all it could to confound the tactics used against it; it launched attacks in unexpected places and retreated from those where it seemed definitely lodged. Once more it was out to darken counsel.
----
At noon the fever reached its climax. A visceral cough racked the sick man's body and he now was spitting blood. The ganglia had ceased swelling, but they were still there, like lumps of iron embedded in the joints. Rieux decided that lancing them was impracticable. Now and then, in the intervals between bouts of fever and coughing fits,
Tarrou still gazed at his friends. But soon his eyes opened less and less often and the glow that shone out from the ravaged face in the brief moments of recognition grew steadily fainter. The storm, lashing his body into convulsive movement, lit it up with ever rarer flashes, and in the heart of the tempest he was slowly drifting, derelict. And now Rieux had before him only a masklike face, inert, from which the smile had gone forever. This human form, his friend's, lacerated by the spear-thrusts of the plague, consumed by
searing, superhuman fires, buffeted by all the raging winds of heaven, was foundering under his eyes in the dark flood of the pestilence, and he could do nothing to avert the wreck. He could only stand, unavailing, on the shore, empty-handed and sick at heart, unarmed and helpless yet again under the onset of calamity. And thus, when the end came, the tears that blinded Rieux's eyes were tears of impotence; and he did not see Tarrou roll over, face to the wall, and die with a short, hollow groan as if somewhere within him an essential chord had snapped. 

Welcome

Welcome 

To the land of serious folks

Where children are born 

Devoid of innocence

Where teenagers do business

And adults wear straight face.

Welcome

To the land of the half-dead

Where only the mad

Are free to cry out loud

Where only the pitied

Can enjoy the pleasure

Of crackling in hearty laughter.

Welcome 

To the land of the oppressed

Where business has replaced 
The aspirations of love

And cunning has taken over 

The hallowed throne of virtue.

Welcome 

To the land of the confused

Where the proverbial cart 

Has out raced the horse

Where men always hurry

To a yet-unknown place.

Welcome

To the land of lost souls

Where only money talks

While everyone else listens

Where friendship has been buried 

Deep in the belly of the heath

Never to be recovered

Until the world passes.

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and Objectivism: A Critical Review

It took me a record number of weeks to finish this monumental piece of work, which is a dense tome of 1070 pages. In the middle of the book I faced a 67-pages long diatribe of a speech by the lead character, which challenged my patience and made me pause for several weeks. When I eventually finished it, I was at loss of words how to describe it. Is it one of the best or the worst books I ever read? Is there a way it could be both? I knew that if I totally dismiss it, it would be at my own cost since the book clearly comes from an inspired writer who knows what she is talking about. But if I accept the book, I would not remain myself any longer since some of its core principles are the total opposites of my (or any human’s) values. There is no doubt Atlas Shrugged is a divisive text. In this review I will try to see the source of these contradictions.

Atlas Shrugged is too big to summarize, so I will touch upon its themes rather than reviewing its plot. In this book, Ayn Rand sets out to defend capitalism, which perhaps makes her one of the most vocal guardians of the system. It tells a story of an America that is slowly degenerating, bedeviled by the plague of communism. The government, full of corrupt ‘looters’, draws the blood out of the economy through its intricate web of regulations and nepotism. Exasperated, rational and freedom-loving industrialists under the leadership of John Galt go to exile to form their own free system, thus letting the national economy fall into pieces. By way of a fictitious story, the book delivers strong arguments about the merits of free-markets, the inefficiency of government, the ideals of reasoning individuals, and the rewards of work. It essentially lays out Ayn Rand’s Objectivist thinking, a full-fledged philosophy of how a man and the world should be.

Perhaps one of the best qualities of the author is her fierceness and the precision of her language. Of course her fiery spirit makes her extremely radical and divisive, but it gives her language a power you do not see elsewhere. She attacks Communism and Religion, which she calls ‘the two mystics - the mystics of spirit, and the mystics of muscle’- with a consistent and dramatized tenacity. Ayn Rand’s unmistakably polemical writing style is both her biggest and worst quality[1].

If Atlas Shrugged were a mere work of fiction, I would pass it by having learned many things, but ignoring the rest as harmless fantasy. However, Objectivism is presented as a serious thought system, forcing me to articulate where my views differ. The biggest problem of the book is that it is a caricature of a human story. The protagonists (who are Objectivist heroes) are ridiculously ‘good,’ and the antagonists, especially the communists but also the broad masses, are depicted as sniveling and impotent savages. Objectivism by definition allows no degree of freedom for individual opinions, making it very suffocating and dogmatic[2].

Objectivism and Its Competitors  

Objectivism offers an alternative view of a just system that competes with established views such as Religion (Christianity), Communism, and Utilitarianism. In a layman’s words, the difference between Objectivism and these three can be described as follows.

Objectivism: A just system is based on the truth. For example, it is not just for the government to impose income tax to subsidize the poor since in truth all income belongs to the person who earned it.

Religion: A just system is based on the good. For example, individuals are urged to give alms to the poor because being good is a virtue rewarded by God.

Utilitarianism: A just system is that which maximizes the total utility (happiness) of the relevant group of people. Justice is thus evaluated by its consequences, not by its truthfulness or goodness. For example, it is just to impose income tax and subsidize the poor if doing so increases aggregate welfare (security, happiness).

Communism: A just system is that which gives everyone equal opportunities i.e. “satisfying work, and fair share of the product.”  All resources that determine production (land, labor, capital) should thus be commonly owned.

Objectivism contrasts with Christianity, Utilitarianism and Communism due to its staunch emphasis on individual freedom[3]. Since reality is objectively experienced by the individual, it has no aggregate equivalent at societal level. Thus Objectivism sees no place for a government with authority to enact and enforce a law on behalf of the community. Utilitarianism, in contrast, assumes that individual utilities can be summed up at societal level so that a government working for society also maximizes individual utilities. Communism is similar to utilitarianism except for its emphasis on communal ownership of resources.

Modern Western practice of politics and political economy is based on the Utilitarian theory that seeks to maximize welfare of the population of the country. Politically, utilitarianism is the underpinning of democracy, “a government of the people by the people for the people.” Economically, it calls for consumption maximizing policies at country level (and hence the GDP fetish).

The Good vs. the True

If you look closer, the abovementioned definitions of justice are partly based on what constitutes reality (i.e. is it God-given, or self-experienced? Is it individual or communal?) Equally importantly, however, they are also based on certain underlying assumptions of human behavior.

In broad terms, Christianity is based on the assumption that humans are essentially spiritual beings whose purpose is to be divine like their creator. Since the creator is said to be benevolent, a very important goal of human existence is to develop the virtue of being good. Objectivism, on the other hand, states that man is a being “with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” Objectivism thus contends that maximizing happiness is a man’s purpose. In this aspect, Objectivism is similar to Communism and Utilitarianism.

What is a noble man? In Christianity he is the good man, the saint. In Objectivism, he is the most productive citizen[4]. In a way, it does not appear that the two are mutually exclusive. Why can it not be that a noble man is both good and productive? It can even be said that these two are indivisible elements of a human being, which are often described as feminine and masculine (or yin and yang) aspects of man. A human being has the motherly nature of being caring and gentle, and the fatherly nature of being purposeful and productive. The motherly side sees man’s potential to achieve before it is actualized, and nurtures him towards it; the fatherly aspect oversees the realization of the potential, rewarding its achievement and penalizing its failure. These two can be seen as two halves of the circle that make a human being.

In valuing only achievement, Ayn Rand takes only half of what makes a human being, and stretches it painfully to make an unseeming full circle. As much as her theory beautifully elucidates one half of human nature, our ability to achieve, it not only ignores our softer side, but also misinterprets, and caricatures it. As a result, the book reads as a work of a genius, but one whose mind is somehow awkwardly skewed.

The Opposite of Communism

It is unmistakable that Ayn Rand envisioned her theory of Objectivism as the antithesis of Communism, from which she suffered firsthand growing up in Russia. The two social theories advocate opposite views of social organization; Communism is based on collectivization whereas Objectivism strongly rejects the notion of a collective will[5].

In calling for collective ownership of production factors, Marx was envisioning to eliminate class division which he considered to be unnatural and alienating. He argued that humans are more collaborators than competitors, so that collective production is both natural and more efficient. Communism was supposed to eliminate classes thus totally undoing the source of class struggle and exploitation. The underlying principle was “to each according to his needs, from each according to his ability.” In contrast, Objectivism saw individual achievements as the final expression of freedom of action and thought. The most just system is one totally based on market-based relationship – i.e. laissez faire capitalism with virtually no government role[6].

In truth, both Communism and Objectivism are based on behavioral assumptions about certain groups of people. Communism seeks to empower the proletariat because it considers the bourgeoisie exploitative.  Behind the elaborate façade that tries to give a different impression, Objectivism basically makes the opposite assumption. Capitalists are pictured as principled and knowledgeable of the value of their life, whereas the masses are parasitic, irresponsible and irrational[7]. Similarly politicians are depicted as opportunistic, so that any organized government would be rotten from top to bottom. The only acceptable form organization is through trade in the market, as exemplified by her idealized state of Atlantis.

Atlas Shrugged lacks the nuanced reasoning you expect from a philosophic text. It also fails to capture the complexity of the human spirit, and the subjectivity of human experience, something you would expect from a work of fiction. As a result, it reads more like a religious document than a work of philosophy or fiction[8].

The Romantic Realist

Ayn Rand describes herself as a romantic realist, and in fact her book has many romantic elements. It is fitting to conclude by citing one of the most beautiful parts of the book, a recital about love by Dagny Taggart, Vice-President of the Taggart Intercontinental Railways.

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You, whom I have always loved and never found

You, whom I expected to see

At the end of the rails beyond the horizon

You, whose presence I had always felt

In the streets of the city

And whose world I had wanted to build

It is my love for you that had kept me moving

My love and my hope to reach you

And my wish to be worthy of you

On the day when I would stand before you

Face to face

But, what is left of my life will still be yours

And, I will go on in your name

Even though it is a name I'm never to pronounce

I will go on serving you

Even though I am never to win

I will go on, to be worthy of you

On the day when I would have met you,

Even though I won't

I will fight for it, even if I have to fight against you

Even if you damn me as a traitor

Even if I am never to see you again.

~ Atlas Shrugged (style is edited)

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[1] Note the following polarized remark by the main protagonist, John Galt: "There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist... In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”

[2] This makes Objectivism a very static philosophy. Philosopher Leonard Peikoff, himself a pioneer of Objectivism, has described objectivism as a "closed system" that is not subject to change (see Peikoff, Leonard. "Fact and Value").

[3] In addition, Objectivism contrasts with Christianity due to its assertion that reality is objectively experienced, and is not God-given (an underlying basis of the US constitution).

[4] Francisco d’Anconia, one of the Objectivist heroes in Atlas Shrugged, speaks thus: “There's nothing of any importance in life - except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they'll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard.”

[5] The most sacred oath of Objectivists in Atlas Shrugged is “I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

[6] The outcome would be an extremely class-based society which Marx set out to eliminate. Even in the book’s fictional world, super-genius oligarchies dominate all aspects of life. This rightfully gives the impression that Rand is an elitist. Perhaps to compensate for this, the book starts with the story of Eddie Willers who is more of a normal person although he is soon overshadowed by the super-heroine Dagny Tagaart.

[7] In a sense, it is based on the real failed experience of Communism in Eastern Europe. The negative portrayal of the masses, for example, is to underscore why revolution-based Marxism would be irrational. But as a consequence, Ayn Rand also appears to view democracy, a government by the people, unacceptable because ‘the people’ in her view can be ignorant. At some point in her text, for example, she describes the masses as half-savage: "We [i.e. Galt and other heroes of the book] are the men who reach that day [i.e. that level of understanding]; you [the audience, or the masses] are the men who choose to reach it partly; a savage is a man who never does.” In his speech Galt also ridicules the masses for assuming the role of a king maker: "you [the masses] are incompetent to run your own life, … but able to judge politicians and to vote them into jobs of total power over arts you have never seen, over sciences you have never studied, over achievements of which you have no knowledge….”  

[8] The storyline of Atlas Shrugged has a parallel with a religion, complete with its God (capitalism), Devil (Communism), caring angels (Dagne), Fighting Angels (Ragnar Danneskjöld), Heaven (Atlantis), Hell (Earth). Dagne’s crash landing in Atlantis is very similar with the life after death religions preach. She of course confronts death and prevails over it, reminding us of Jesus.