Sorry guys, sorry to keep you waiting....have been struggling with a bad cold lately and am currently battling sniffles and sneezes to post this article....
I finished reading ATLAS SHRUGGED almost a week back and i cant get it outa my head.....although it is a self-confessed work of fiction by Ayn Rand, the disclaimer -"the characters potrayed in this novel are purely a work of fiction and do not resemble any person living or dead"-doesn't seem to aply to it....in fact the book resembles our world so closely that it is like a mirror that reflects the naked truth of the world we live in....and the truth they say is always bitter.....sure is.
The book makes us realize that there are two forms of existence a man can lead....a second-hander, an all-pleaser, an altruist, in short a parasite who lives on the creator, the first-hander, the man who exalts himself, who believes the earth is for him to modify not him to adjust to the earth!....it is the second breed of men who run this world....it is they who create, who invent who keep the wheel of civilisation moving, hell, it is they who thought of the wheel in the first place!....these men are ostracised by us, the second-raters, the looters.....we feed on them. Great men like these are called selfish, conceited and what not. We have many examples before us, was not copernicus ridiculed for his theory?Was not galileo ostracised by all? The man who first invented the wheel was called mad....in greek mythology prometheus was a cunning man responsible for discovering fire....he was called a thief for stealing fire from the Gods!!.....these are the examples of the past....do they exist today?....Bill Gates?Warren Buffet?Adolf Hitler?....these men are called selfish, conceited, cheats aren't they?.....
According to greek mythology Atlas was a titan who was punished by zeus the god to bear the weight of the world on his shoulders....he silently bears this weight till today in the shape of these virtuous men....for no fault of his, hell but because of his virtue!......what if he gives up?....what if these men realize what they are doing and for whom?....and just vanish from the face of the earth?...in short...what if Atlas Shrugs?....that is the plot of this great master-piece by Ayn Rand.
We live in a world in which the strong is forced to provide to the weak, the weak is praised and the strong taken advantage of.....resources are divided not on the basis of ability, but on the basis of need....
What makes a man the man that he is?....by the birth he has?by the peers he has?...no.
A man is the man he is by the choices he makes after taking birth, by the goal he sets out to achieve....he is recognised not by the start but the end to his life....
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic 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.
-Ayn Rand
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