I also get such energy from Atlas Shrugged, I don't understand why. I know that the good guys are very carefully crafted, they don't cheat, they don't do things like lobbying to win. They don't compromise on their world view to the extreme. They don't have children, that makes it all easier, but also less real.

Raised christian but feeling burned out by the contradictions, the emptiness of trying to live for others (it's killing for relationships I can tell you), the mental struggle to rationalize all the rules, I too felt that spark. I realize dogmatism is always bad but that voice inside keeps saying: It's not when the theory is perfect! The truth is knowable and can be discovered through reason. How super comforting (and damn that Incompleteness Theorem I learned about later).

I don't know what it is, my hunger for a system? For rules to make sense of the world? Whatever it is, Rand's philosophy remains so appealing. It's probably the reason I started a company, walk into meetings now boldly, with a goal, why I enjoy things now, just to enjoy myself. As a rational, healthy human, there is nothing wrong with that, in contrast to what my upbringing tried to instill in me.

Perhaps that's it, it liberated my from a confining worldview. Perhaps another worldview could have done the same.