Lessons from The Fountainhead, part 2

It seems that this book is still haunting my existence. I am playing with ads by google and one of them popped up about ayn rand. So it seems I should return to my little reflection on The Fountainhead.


My other posts on it are under the 'literature' tab. So here's another installment.

"It was not malice. It was not judgement passed upon his merit. They did not think he was worthless. They simply did not care to find out whether he was good. Sometimes, he was asked to show his sketches; he extended them across a desk, feeling a contraction of shame in the muscles of his hand; it was like having the clothes torn off his body, and the shame was not that his body was exposed, but that it was exposed to indifferent eyes." page 99.

So many things come to mind. The most immediate is the art of blogging. You always have the choice of making these thing public. What is worse than people hating you... people not caring. Almost makes me want to shut down on those privacy setting and make it for my eyes only. But then, how would I ever discover if I was good. How would you?

But on a larger note... It's true that people usually don't give you the chance to show that you are good. Many people usually dont care. Few people are willing to take a chance on a stranger. Thats why, in my PSCI class on Social Capital, I thought that sometimes, social capital is a bad thing. It encourages nepotism and closed-mindedness.

Why dont we all take a chance on someone and something new today.

Lessons from "The Fountainhead", part one

I read the Fountainhead (Ayn Rand) recently. I must say, that I loved most of it. The end got a bit preachy, but either way the book has a lot to offer, philosophically and otherwise. So now that there is some distance between it and me - having read some other books - I will return to some of my favourite quotes/lessons. I hope you enjoy...

"He wondered whether he really liked his mother. But she was his mother and this fact was recognized by everybody as meaning automatically that he loved her, and so he took for granted that whatever he felt for her was love. He did not know whether there was any reason why he should respect her judgement. She was his mother; this was supposed to take the place of reasons." page 35

Replace "mother" with any relative you like and it still applies. Even better, if you can, replace "mother" with some relative you don't really know or particulaly like but you are expected to respect. What is this odd combination of dependence, admiration, guilt, debt, trust, obligation ...whatever, that we feel for them? Is this love? Is it that special brand of love that we can only feel for family - blood being thicker than water and all that? Or do we just assume it is because we don't want to be that crass bastard who doesn't love his mother? Is it taboo to even think that your father, your brother, your ageing homely grandmother has to -God forbid! - earn your love? When these same relatives mistreat you, is it petty and premature to just say, "Wow, that person just doesn't love me."

Can we accept this? Is this too hard to bear?