I chanced upon a site this morning that had an embedded YouTube video, shown above, of Howard Roark's court room speech from Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead." Even with Hollywood's tendency to dumb down everything it touches, and with Gary Cooper's rather wooden performance, Rand's words ring out with a forceful and undeniable truth.
Where are today's men and women of principle, those willing to stand up for individual rights and refusing to sacrifice themselves on the altar of collectivism?
Come out, come out, wherever you are . . .
They've been dumbed down by their environments...
ReplyDeletePeace,
~chani
No doubt, Chani. I think the situation is made all the worse because of the passive lifestyle lived by most. It doesn't take much thought to watch TV, play video games, etc. I realized last night, as I sat outside enjoying the quiet evening air, how nice it is to have no distractions and to be able to let the mind roam freely.
ReplyDeleteWhat you are observing Sieg, is the result of many, many years of externalization.
ReplyDeleteThis happens because an individual decides to live his/her life to placate others, rather than for their own pursuit of happiness: It is a culturally ingrained mental disorder that emerges as a result of advanced education in altruism; by the which they are taught from their youth to ACT a certain way, to say a certain thing at a certain time, to treat these people better than those people, &c.
The end result of living with a mask on in such fashion is the person eventually either has no self concept without a mask, or they become proud of their "ability" to change masks on cue to placate different people.
This last state is the worst of all. It's called hypocrisy; a mental illness that runs rampantly pandemic among the religious and political.
My wife and I were discussing yesterday the fact that in high school curricula, there seems to be no place for literature with real heroes. Protagonists stagger through life with no direction, no clue, no spirit. Everyone appears to be expected to become yet one more drone in society and to live for anyone's sake but his or her own. It's sad. It's disgusting. The human spirit has the ability to soar above everything in this sometimes pathetic world of ours, but instead of teaching our children to rise above everything, they are encouraged to wallow in the muck.
ReplyDeleteI never knew The Fountainhead was a film! Thanks for sharing, and informing me as always. Now, I'll have to go rent the whole movie.
ReplyDeleteBellezza: Atlas Shrugged may make it to film one day too. For decades, the production rights have changed hands and the current owners, if I remember correctly, are considering a TV series.
ReplyDeleteThe socialist establishment in Washington D. C. and the Hellyweird leftists will NEVER let Atlas Shrugged see The Big Screen, and if they reinstate the un-Fairness Dogma - as is widely propounded by politicos on both sides, the little one either.
ReplyDeleteIt will have to be an independent film.
Galt, I did a search on Atlas and found this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480239/.
ReplyDeleteI know that the script had chnaged hands several times but maybe this time it will actually go into production. One can only hope.