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Comment by funstuff007 | Hacker News Reader

I know it's trite to say it, but in my early 20s reading Atlas Shrugged helped me regain my bearings. And, no, it did not turn me into Peter Thiel.

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It also helped me a lot. It taught me the ethics of rational self interest. It helps me to this day when I discuss my salary for example. Also, relationships work better when you know what you want, you have to give your partner the chance to do something for you every now and then, that works best when you have personality. I struggled with this. To be able to say I love you one must first be able to say I. For me the best parts are those about personal freedom.

I read most things Ayn Rand wrote and I really enjoyed it. Somehow, HN does not like Ayn Rand. I don't understand it really. I also read Rutger Bregman's Human kind, some people say it is the opposite of Atlas Shrugged, but I disagree strongly. I like both books and I think they can be part of unifying philosophy. Perhaps Paul Graham's "What you can't say" [0] is an explanation. I believe Ayn says some things that you can't really say anymore, but perhaps they are true.

[0]: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

There is a great lecture on The Fountainhead on YouTube by Dr. Andrew Bernstein. Really, really good.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2fue-FqIIP-C26vR2uAxV-J0...

Personally for me Fountainhead by Ayn Rand was transformative. Creators need to be respected and identified. Great Leaders often have this knack of reading people and using them appropriately.

For me Fountainhead was not about leadership, Roark is not really a leader, right? That is more Dagny in Atlas Shrugged. For me Fountainhead is about that line where he doesn’t care about the honor or money of having build that housing project, it’s about him having build that housing project. And about staying true to yourself, and knowing who that self is. It’s about not just being accepting but being proud of yourself, and not because others think you’re worthwhile, but because you yourself do. It’s about intrinsic motivation.

Yes agreed. I mentioned more from having read this, I now look to see what people are based on their work and how they approach a work. They say more about who they are rather listening to people talk about themselves.

Glad I found your comment. I was going to say Atlas Shrugged as well because I stopped reading it half-way through when I finally realized that the author was full of shit.

It's a great realization for a young person to have, that something can be published and also be total garbage and a complete waste of time.

> [...] realized that the author was full of shit.

Not only are her writings this way, she was nearly a wacko.

I will recommend to you a documentary where you can get to know the person better. The documentary is very nice, though.

The docu is "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace".

Never read Atlas Shrugged, but I had to read The Fountainhead for English in high school and it was really transformative. It helped me suss out flawed philosophy and gave me a sense of skepticism when being told what to think by authority (my English teacher at the time thought Ayn Rand was the second coming of Christ). I remember offering different perspectives when discussing the themes of the novel and basically being berated and told that I was wrong (about an opinion). Wild.

This is a paradoxical comment that makes it nearly impossible to believe you read the book. The entire theme of The Fountainhead is the rejection of conformity and collectivism. If you didn't like "being told what to think" then you felt what Howard Roark felt. If you were "berated and told I was wrong" for "offering different perspectives" then you experienced what Howard Roark experienced. Are you claiming to be a skeptic or independent thinker and also agreeing with Toohey and admiring Keating?

The Fountainhead is far from a perfect novel and certainly the "great man" theory is flawed. But the exposition of the inherent failure of collectivism to improve society is probably its greatest strength, and rings more true today than ever.

Sorry, missed this as HN doesn't have notifications about comment replies.

My comment about rejecting authority was more about my relationship with my teacher, not internal relationships within the book. Perhaps the paradox was my teacher then, no? Personally, I don't believe in Rand's philosophy. I think Roark is an unbelieveable archetype. If my teacher idolizes Rand and says she agrees with the philosophy, it's _her_ paradox for telling me "no, that's wrong" if I, for example, say that I agree that Roark is Rand's ideal man, but that I believe Gail Wynand is the antithesis of Rand's ideal man because he _has the power_ (and money) to reject the status quo but still refuses to do so (whereas Keating, whom most of the class and the teacher selected as the antithesis, is just a social climber and is working for that power).

That's an unbelievably long book to assign at the secondary or even undergrad level.

It was summer reading and we were made to email the teacher weekly about the assigned section.

I've read these. My first Rand exposure was Anthem, which I thought was interesting if a bit contrived (I read it as the same age as The Giver, felt The Giver was more relatable).

There are parts of Atlas Shrugged that I loved, mostly about the insights into the psychology of communism and of ideologues that Ayn Rand must have had first-hand experience with. But the love story that she weaves around it is just too poorly written.

There are set of popular books that turn people ready for it into assholes. They also have value if they don’t do that to you and you apply a certain skepticism to them, but still often a risk.

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