Enough of that
Jul. 20th, 2005 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexxkayThat's enough -- no more Fountainhead for me. I spent some time today browsing web articles on Objectivism. It's a pretty coherent philosophy, on the face of it, and I agree with many of its tenets. I just don't think _The Fountainhead_ actually reflects those tenets terribly well. One brief Rand-ian description of her philosophy is:
As mentioned in earlier comments, I have several friends who identify as masochists -- that is to say, they enjoy physical pain. But the masochism of Roark and Dominique is not of that sort; they seem drawn to *mental* pain. They are only 'happy' when they are utterly miserable -- and miserable in an absolutely moral way, which seems utterly unconnected to sex. I'm not normally judgemental about other people's kinks, but this seems terribly broken and wrong to me, and I'm really not enjoying reading about it.
On a separate note, I'm greatly annoyed at the absolute lack of compromise shown by these characters, and the (to my mind) great damage it does to them. Given a Roark who was able to compromise just a *small* amount, the architectural firm of Keating & Roark would have taken the world by storm. Together, they would have done a huge amount of good, and (I think) Roark would have gotten no fewer "perfect" buildings accomplished than he did by being so stubbornly uncompromising. As a high-schooler, I would have amired such absolutism, but I'm much happier now that I've learned to bend a little, when it will have useful effects.
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.*Nobody* in TF (at least as of about 60% of the way through) has achieved anything approaching happiness, *including* the characters whom I take to be the protagonists. Their own happiness may be their moral purpose, but they're terrible at achieving that purpose. They are "heroic" primarily in the amount of punishment they can withstand, usually self-inflicted.
As mentioned in earlier comments, I have several friends who identify as masochists -- that is to say, they enjoy physical pain. But the masochism of Roark and Dominique is not of that sort; they seem drawn to *mental* pain. They are only 'happy' when they are utterly miserable -- and miserable in an absolutely moral way, which seems utterly unconnected to sex. I'm not normally judgemental about other people's kinks, but this seems terribly broken and wrong to me, and I'm really not enjoying reading about it.
On a separate note, I'm greatly annoyed at the absolute lack of compromise shown by these characters, and the (to my mind) great damage it does to them. Given a Roark who was able to compromise just a *small* amount, the architectural firm of Keating & Roark would have taken the world by storm. Together, they would have done a huge amount of good, and (I think) Roark would have gotten no fewer "perfect" buildings accomplished than he did by being so stubbornly uncompromising. As a high-schooler, I would have amired such absolutism, but I'm much happier now that I've learned to bend a little, when it will have useful effects.