Atlas Shrugged

Hey everyone! I know it's been forever, but I've had some crazy stuff going on. Everything is right with the world once more so I thought I'd resume my blogging which I've so sadly neglected.
Right now I'm reading a fabulous book called Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I havn't gotten through it yet and I am absolutly desperate to know "Who is John Galt?" but that will have to wait. For now I've contented myself with observing all the little details of the society that Ayn Rand has created, and it's a little bit scary.
In this new place everyone acts for the good of society as a whole. Business and greed are considered crass and undignified, as it doing something soley to make money. The majority of people there are fools. They fear hard and fast facts and when faced with a yes or no question they hem and haw and beat around the bush to avoid answering. These idiots run the world. They fear the power of politicians and the peoples opinions mean everything to them.
It creates a lot of interesting problems for everybody. People become cunning and malicious, yet wholly stupid. If it doesn't seem to benefit the world as a whole, they don't do it or care about it, even if it something good and necessary. They're running themselves into the ground.
As well as being moronic, they are extremily apathetic. This apathy in part comes from not wanting to take the blame for anything. If they never take action, they can never be blamed for doing something wrong. It's always someone else who can take care of it, and in this way nohting gets done.

It's an odd senario in the fact that it is both far fetched and already a realtiy.
We're apathetic. We're silly people who care far too much about ourselves and our individual causes to see the bigger picture. We often miss the simple things that make the most difference. Common sense is no longer common.

When talking about Politics we wish for equality in all things when we should be wishing for an Equaltiy of Opportunity instead. In Business we wish to eliminate Monopolies, yet encourage competition, which caps the limit of sucess one man can acheive from his hard work. In life we wish for things to be fair, when in reality the only fairness we can ever acheive is that equality of oppurtunity.

It's a frustrating thing to see the world and the direction it is headed in. It often makes me wish that more people would only stop and think and observe.

Leonardo da Vinci once lamented that too many people Look without Seeing, Listen without Hearing, Eat without Tasting, and Touch without Feeling. If we could all just take a moment of silence and listen, we might learn something.

As far as apathy goes, I beileve that the worst kind of man is the man without a purpose. That is one definition of apathy itself. Why should I do it when it's someone else's job? It's not my problem. We need people in this world who are doers. We need the kind of people who take it upon themselves to make a difference. Ghandi once said, "Be the change you want to see in the world."

We are a doing people. We have dreams and aspirations and work hard towards our goals. When we want something in life, we will not be content to sit back and dream. We make our dreams a reality. In this way we are not so very much like Ayn Rand's world. As long as we remain proud of ourselves and our accomplishements, as long as we never give up or settle, as long as we can truely see and hear the world around us, we have nothing to fear.