Clash of Titans

by Tom Pratt

  The story line is about a mysterious personage who appears in the text from time to time as either a referent in conversation or preaching or promise or poetry or prophecy. That person is associated with the hopes and aspirations of the whole world which is languishing in its desperate situation and looking for answers to what is wrong with it. Various heroes of conviction and virtue along with known flaws arise and fall as generations pass. No change, just repeats and reruns. One man is the hope of his father for the relief of toil and sorrow in work, but all he ends up saving are seven others after passing through a horrendous chaotic flood. A city for refuge and renown is set up in a fertile plain with a tower that invites the gods to come down and rest, but it ends up being the place of mass confusion and disappointment. An ideal, almost utopian society, is established with a view to righting the wrongs that have gone before. More heroic and ignoble characters pass through the narrative of the rise and fall of that nation. As the world of an apparent ideal civilization collapses, and its institutions fail to provide sustenance and prosperity as planned, there are increasing longings and hopes that somehow someone can rescue the situation. The utopian dream has fallen on the inability of the characters in the story to remain faithful to their highest ideals and aspirations.

  Finally, two-thirds of the way through the story that person arrives, as he does in the novel, and proves to be the consummate man with the answer for the world’s need. But he is not here to force himself upon the world. He speaks as no one has ever spoken. He is “able” in the face of the impossible. He has the perfect answer for every inquiry and attempt to divert his attention. He has the courage of conviction unto death. He is unafraid of the consequences of his singular vision of what is wrong and what must happen. He goes about gathering one and another here and there who will go with him and learn from him. He makes of them a fellowship built around his teaching of the truth, while he himself needs no one to teach him. And then he falls into the hands of evil men who kill him out of envy and lust for power and position. He disappears from view while others carry on his mission, instructed to imitate him in the world and not let themselves be compromised in any way by the world of power and politics and lying philosophies and religions. The parallels to Galt are striking. In the final denouement he returns to establish a city based on what he taught and died for.

  John Galt also promises such a scenario for those who follow his lead and answer the invitation he has given to make a choice and refuse to be victimized further:

  Go on strike—in the manner I did. Use your mind and skill in private, extend your knowledge, develop your ability, but do not share your achievements with others. Do not try to produce a fortune, with a looter riding on your back. Stay on the lowest rung of their ladder, earn no more than your barest survival, do not make an extra penny to support the looters’ state. Since you’re captive, act as a captive, do not help them pretend that you’re free. Be the silent, incorruptible enemy they dread. When they force you, obey—but do not volunteer. Never volunteer a step in their direction, or a wish, or a plea, or a purpose. Do not help a holdup man to claim that he acts as your friend and benefactor. Do not help your jailers to pretend that their jail is your natural state of existence. Do not help them to fake reality…If you find a chance to vanish into some wilderness out of their reach, do so, but not to exist as a bandit or to create a gang competing with their racket; build a productive life of your own with those who accept your moral code and are willing to struggle for a human existence. You have no chance to win on the Morality of Death or by the code of faith and force; raise a standard to which the honest will repair: the standard of Life and Reason. Act as a rational being and aim at becoming a rallying point for all those who are starved for a voice of integrity—act on your rational values, whether alone in the midst of your enemies, or with a few of your chosen friends, or as the founder of a modest community on the frontier of mankind’s rebirth. (p. 1067)

  And finally, when all else has collapsed he promises that he and the others will return, when the muscle-men lay down their arms:

  When the looters’ state collapses, deprived of the best of its slaves, when it falls to a level of impotent chaos, like the mystic-ridden nations of the Orient, and dissolves into starving robber gangs fighting to rob one another—when the advocates of the morality of sacrifice perish with their final ideal—then and on that day we will return. We will open the gates of our city to those who deserve to enter, a city of smokestacks, pipe lines, orchards, markets and inviolate homes. We will act as the rallying center for such hidden outposts as you’ll build. With the sign of the dollar as our symbol—the sign of free trade and free minds—we will move to reclaim this country once more from the impotent savages who never discovered its nature, its meaning, its splendor. (p. 1067)

  Surely this must be the vision of Anti-Christ. As attractive as that dismissive conclusion might be to some, it simply cannot be made to match the dismal and fearful picture of the “man of sin” in Scripture. That figure is clearly a coercive and totalitarian ruler with worldwide ambitions and delusive power whose goal is enslavement of the world through a “mark” that limits what any can do in trade or economics or political power. The monstrous “city,” which stands in as a whorish caricature of the New Jerusalem, is a debauched and dissipated city of stolen wealth and slave labor with degraded values of every kind. None of these powers or such dissipation or degradation of values interest John Galt. In fact, he stands for the exact opposite. He wishes to be left alone by such powers and has set himself to have such an existence, even if he must secede from the present structure altogether. He is passive-resistive. He is non-violent by conviction. He is willing to defend himself from direct attack and others from attack if they are innocent. He will not be the first to use force. He is ready to risk his own life to make the world freer for all and unable to support evil. He seeks no empire nor anything that he himself has not produced. All of this characterizes Galt, and it looks a lot more like Christ than it does the “man of sin.” Furthermore, his advice to those waiting for his return sounds a lot like Jesus praying for his disciples that they will be in but not of the world. It is clear that Rand has created a unique character and a unique picture of the world to which he aspires, as does she. The real question to be asked is how is this attainable without biblical presuppositions. We will address that issue later.

  Pertinent also to this characterization of Galt is the entire scenario of the mysterious broadcast to all the USA that supersedes all communication for a period of over two hours. It speaks from the air above a nation and addresses the fundamental issues of existence and insists that no other way forward is possible. It admits no compromise and gives no quarter. It bids to define the very nature of life and contends that all else is a way of death on this earth. It frightens and angers and disconcerts and puzzles and instructs and exhilarates the audience depending on their presuppositions in hearing it. No face is seen and no likeness is projected and the impression of immense power is created while words pile upon words on and on. Though it would seem Rand cannot have meant it so, this begs in our thinking to be compared to Sinai and the experience of Israel before the mountain that smoked and flamed and had a voice that thundered on and on in such a manner as to cause the congregation to plead with Moses not to insist they go on listening. Galt would clearly deny that he was imitating YHWH on the mountain, but the impression is uncanny and it contributes to our understanding of what it is that Rand saw about “faith” and “mysticism” that was repulsive. We will have more to say on this theme later also.

  Finally, it is surely of concern that Galt and Rand deny and excoriate their version and interpretation of “original sin.” We will be addressing this issue more as we go along. For now we note that reading carefully through the speech in the section that directly addresses the issue, one is forced to decide whether the problem for Rand is failure to understand what is at stake in the Garden and the subsequent development of it in t
he Bible, or whether she is truly unaware that sin is endemic to the human condition. Galt admits that the history of mankind confirms that he is the only animal that must make choices and use his mind to survive, to live. No other animal does—they act out of instinct, they are behavioral in nature, and they always fight for actual survival. Man is a reasoning creature, and has consistently chosen over time and history to be destructive of his own existence. Galt never labels this tendency as “sin.” One wonders what Rand would call it under direct questioning, other than irrationality. But what is it that makes this a persistent characteristic of man in all societies? It is possible she would simply attribute it to the teaching of “mystics” throughout man’s long development from being influenced by shamans and witch doctors to the medieval scholastics and modern religious fanatics. It is clear that there is some flaw that is causing this repetitive activity and Rand does not deny it. But her heroic characters, and especially Galt, who was her lifelong quest in real life, is actually a paragon of virtue in the classic sense of that word. He has somehow achieved this clear knowledge of truth and the unsullied ability to be loyal to it and all those who choose the same course. And yet he contemplates actual death toward the end of the speech, a death that could happen in the midst of the quest for the goal:

  All life is a purposeful struggle, and your only choice is the choice of a goal. Do you wish to continue the battle of your present or do you wish to fight for my world? Do you wish to continue a struggle that consists of clinging to precarious ledges in a sliding descent to the abyss, a struggle where the hardships you endure are irreversible and the victories you win bring you closer to destruction? Or do you wish to undertake a struggle that consists of rising from ledge to ledge in a steady ascent to the top, a struggle where the hardships are investments in your future, and the victories bring you irreversibly closer to the world of your moral ideal, and should you die without reaching full sunlight, you will die on a level touched by its rays? Such is the choice before you. Let your mind and your love of existence decide. (p. 1068)

  This is not the voice of the Anti-Christ. It is more that of the anti-Anti-Christ of our title. It is hard not to say what Jesus said to an inquirer one day: “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

  Chapter 11 - The Egoist

  Neither Ayn Rand nor her ideal man would shun the moniker in our title above. In fact, Rand used the term to distinguish between her understanding of “selfishness” and the concept of egotism. John Galt is the supreme egoist, though his role had been invented in The Fountainhead. Howard Roark in that story was the man who was purely concerned about his own values and person and simply did not take notice of the opinions or activities of others as they might pertain to his own value judgments and creative endeavors. When asked by his greatest critic, Ellsworth Toohey, what he (Roark) thought of him (expecting to get an earful), the egoist responded that he did not think of him at all. The self-important Toohey saw this as more than an indignity to his person. It was a moral failing. The same is constantly said about John Galt, whose character is an advancement on Roark designed to engage the ideal man in struggle to change the context in which he lives. Roark endures. Galt sets out to set right what’s “wrong with the world.” The character of both men is supreme confidence that they are capable in themselves of discerning the good and choosing it, of ignoring the carping of critics in favor of personal critical judgments about reality, and using this knowledge and critical ability to provide for themselves without resort to the pity and charity of others. The motto is clear and succinct: “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.”

  Rand never cut corners in her portrayal of this vow in action, and in her public acknowledgement of its raw, in-your-face style. It seems likely to us that she intended its stark fault-line as a shout above the noisy public din of her most despised concept, altruism. Altruists hold that individuals have a moral obligation to help, serve, or benefit others, if necessary, at the sacrifice of self interest. Auguste Comte's version of altruism calls for living for the sake of others. One who holds to either of these ethics is known as an "altruist." The word "altruism" (French, altruisme, from autrui: "other people", derived from Latin alter: "other") was coined by Auguste Comte, the French founder of positivism, in order to describe the ethical doctrine he supported. He believed that individuals had a moral obligation to renounce self-interest and live for others. Comte says, in his Catéchisme Positiviste, that:

  [The] social point of view cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such notion rests on individualism. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. After our birth these obligations increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service.... This ["to live for others"], the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. [Man must serve] Humanity, whose we are entirely.[37]

  The Catholic Encyclopedia says that for Comte's altruism, "The first principle of morality...is the regulative supremacy of social sympathy over the self-regarding instincts." Author Gabriel Moran (professor in the department of Humanities and the Social Sciences, New York University) says, "The law and duty of life in altruism [for Comte] was summed up in the phrase: Live for others.”[38] In general scholars, philosophers, and commentators on the subject follow substantially the same understanding that Rand has: altruism is literally living for others rather than oneself and discounting whether one finds personal joy or satisfaction in the actions taken. One’s personal happiness cannot be allowed to intrude upon the obligation to live for others exclusively.

  Most critics of Rand and her hero John Galt find the ideal of “selfishness,” when compared to the altruism defined above, to be repugnant. We might say in light of our previous chapter, Galt may not be the Anti-Christ, but he is an egotistical and selfish, even hateful man unworthy of serious consideration, especially by anyone seeking a Christian worldview. Two general reflections, however, speak to this concern. First, Rand is specifically reactive in her philosophy and novels to the idea of societal and governmental coercion to collectivist public policy, though we also see in Atlas the attempt to implement the altruistic ideal in a single company setting. She is aware of the nature of family and friendship and their mutual obligations, but she does not see them in the same light as the attempt to implement societal altruism as public policy. More on this below. Second, Rand is reacting to a version of Christian ethics that is decidedly un-biblical and requires serious refutation. The generally pervasive ideal of “other-driven” service to the church and/or mankind in general is typically irrational and “mystical” (Rand’s terminology) in formulation and impossible to implement in any rational way among the general populous. This is what spawned the language of egoism and selfishness in Rand’s philosophy. Most certainly she did not mean by either term what the term “egotist” designates by dictionary definition: chiefly, “self-absorbed” or “self-seeker” or even “narcissistic.” On the contrary, the antagonists of her novels display this personality disorder. Her heroes mostly want to be left alone to be productive and creative, celebrating the joy of their work, and reaping its rewards to be used as they think best. Their willingness to take responsibility for their own opinions and decision-making and their desire to make decisions about the dispersal of the profits of their labor is labeled by others as “selfish,” and Rand simply says, yes it is.

  Of course, the “self” in Rand is virtually synonymous with rational consciousness. To be selfish is to place primary dependency for interaction on the world in the hands of one’s own mind and not that of another or the collective of whatever makeup. This comes before all other considerations in decision making because one must think to make choices. Simply “going along” because conventional “wisdom” dictates certain courses of action is a robotic �
��life” not worthy of the name. It is also irresponsible for it diverts consequences from oneself to the ubiquitous and amorphous “they.” They say, they did, they decided, or worse, put “everyone” in the place of “they.” It follows that one can then claim in the face of disaster, it wasn’t my fault! I’m not to blame! Somebody help me! Of course, this thinking does not apply to situations that are truly out of the control of anyone capable of preventing them. But the real-life application of the principle in Atlas is the famous tunnel disaster that one group wants to call unavoidable and that Rand shows to be the logical progression of a chain of events linked to non-thinking robotic actions based on refusal to be “selfish” in the Randian sense. Of course, though Rand does not go out of her way in the novel to assert this selfishness against the general notion of “god,” the underlying philosophy posits no god-inference from rational data and ignores any implications that might flow from that possibility. Within the framework of her worldview the idea of selfish concern for personal freedom of the individual and accountability to oneself for choices without interference from others--so long as no harm is done to others through force or fraud--apart from any collective notion of good and evil is not an offensive concept.