Read Ayn Rand, Albert Nock, Lysander Spooner

[don't]

Nathaniel Branden, Harvey Binswanger, Barbara Branden, David Kelly, and Leonard Piekoff, but avoid Ayn's fiction, with the possible exception of the Fountainhead. You'll learn a lot, if you are capable of learning anything, that is.

 

[Alle_Gory]

Why don't you give a summary of what each book is about?

 

[Stud]

and maybe what you can expect to learn about?

 

[Nexus Polaris]

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are both epic. Part two of Atlas Shrugged the movie comes out later this year. Part one was pretty solid for an indie film.

 

[PrettyBoyAJ]

Reading Ayn Rand now. Atlas Shrugged.

Supposed to be a book that influenced many millionaires in America.

 

[don't]

I've read shrugged 3x, and each time, it got more and more tedious. 1000+ pages, belaboring every point for pages, etc. There's far too much material to encapsulate here. It will start you on an entirelly different way of thinking, tho, I guarantee it. Libertairian thought is liberating, in the extreme, but quite unpopular with the second handers, as Ayn called them, who make up the vast majority of the population.

 

[Alle_Gory]

unpopular with the second handers, as Ayn called them, who make up the vast majority of the population.

Why don't you tell us what that means so that we can understand what you're talking about?

 

[Burroughs]

but quite unpopular with the second handers,.

so Ayn Rand hated thrift shops....??

 

[backbreaker]

if a fellow man came up to me and said backbreaker i wish to be a suave man with the ladies, can you recommend me just one book, just one book that will show me the ways of the alpha male and how to seduce women.. i would without hesitation recommend the fountainhead. over any lay guide, game book, PUA tip sheet out there x 1000. Rynd has an understanding of game and how it works that most DJ's could only wish to have. she understands what makes people tick, what really makes them tick not what they say makes them tick.

that book has altered my thinking and life more than any other book and i have read a lot of books, outside of maybe the laws of success by napeolean hill. In my 3 year stint with not dating women i cleared a book a week easily sometimes more than that depending on the size. lol what else can you do if you are broke and fat with no friends? Just about but not all of the classics, as well as other various things that caught my interest like books about presidents and religious history. not many books, in particular fiction books will change your total outlook on life and question your beliefs to the core. this one will i assure you.

it's what, every bit of 700 pages and you won't be able to put it down.

 

[Alle_Gory]

so Ayn Rand hated thrift shops....??

Well she lived off government assistance for a time, so maybe it was embarrassing.

she understands what makes people tick, what really makes them tick not what they say makes them tick.

Well... I thought it was about some bullsh*t capitalism love story. Now I have to pick it up.

 

[Orchard]

"An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it."

-Ayn Rand

The fact that people take her seriously is baffling. She fails so completely and utterly as a philosopher it hurts me some times.

 

[elite7]

I agree with back breaker hill's book are just as good as rands I was fortunate to see the film in high school due to an open minded :box: teacher!!

 

[Huffman]

Fountainhead was awesome to me, but Atlas Shrugged was just a prolonged, boring rant that contained little new material. You literally saw every "twist" coming a mile away. And with a horribly far-fetched story on top of it.

My opinion!

Also Napoleon Hill, I only read Think And Grow Rich. On one side it was quite the eye opener to me too, but on the other side I don't want to grow rich. Or in Hill's words, I'm not willing to give (most of my life, youth and spirit) in order to receive (wealth). Guess I was in some kind of a personal crisis at the time. But if you really want something, read his book. He will make you get it!

 

[don't]

second handers are people who never have an original thought, never dare tread a new trail, or risk having any opinion but the "mainstream" ones.Her non fiction articles, compiled into books, like CAPITALISM, THE UNKNOWN IDEAL, and Branden's and Piekoff's works ABOUT Ayn, and Nat's THE PHILOSOPHY OF SELF ESTEEM, written under AYn's tutelage, and Piekoff's, Ominous Parellels, Roy Child's, works, The Tannenbaum's, Harvey Binswanger, all great writers, read them all.

 

[Alle_Gory]

second handers are people who never have an original thought, never dare tread a new trail, or risk having any opinion but the "mainstream" ones.Her non fiction articles, compiled into books, like CAPITALISM, THE UNKNOWN IDEAL, and Branden's and Piekoff's works ABOUT Ayn, and Nat's THE PHILOSOPHY OF SELF ESTEEM, written under AYn's tutelage, and Piekoff's, Ominous Parellels, Roy Child's, works, The Tannenbaum's, Harvey Binswanger, all great writers, read them all.

Ayn Rand is a hypocrite and a complete b*tch with a child's understanding of the world. The very people you describe, which she villifies, are an essential cog in the machine of society.

If everyone is off exploring and doing new things, who is running the already existing? Who is doing the menial tasks? Who is following the trend and building and refining in the wake of the explorers?

If everyone was so brave and adventurous, nothing would get done. Ever. We would all be dead from neglect shortly after birth and our species extinct very shortly.

The reason you have a f*cking computer right now and you're able to communicate with us is because computers are a commodity and some workers, day after day do the same tasks over and over to bring this commodity to everyone. They aren't pioneers, they are followers. And very important in their roles.

Think about it.

 

[Burroughs]

Ayn Rand is a hypocrite and a complete b*tch with a child's understanding of the world. .

yup

pretty much.

Me and my friends all read rand in our freshman years of HS. It was popular reading in our dorm.

Rand appeals to the young and ambitious because her world is a world where ego traveling at full speed triumphs over all, the plain and the pedantic alike...but reality is a far different thing

compromise is not a dirty word

 

[backbreaker]

the irony being that Rand understands that the vast majority of people whor ead her stuff will come away with the same thougths that burroughs has.

just becuase you compromise, and others do it, doesn't make it any more correct to do.

i can only speak for myself. I read the fountainhead (which to me is a better book than atlas shrugged) AFTER i made my way in life but reading it, really just put in the sense what I had went through in the sense that i understand even as a very young adult that the only way i was going to TRULY be happy in life, was if i went for what i wanted. rather i got there or not was not the main concern but you have to try.

the more compromises you make in life in the name of continence, you sale a little piece of your soul every time you make such decisions. Some may call it idealistic thinking and "not understanding how the real world works". IMHO that is in actuality showing a greater understanding of the real world.


Look at peter keating. guy who was very smart, decent enough looking, a guy who hated his job and went his entire life doing what people thought he had to do. his entire life he looked to other peopel for validation and was a very insecure man who had no original thought of his own. to put this into real life terms, becuase he had no identity he looked to others to give him one (dominique). this is the backbone of AFC behavior.

i get pm's all the time and people ask me how do you become a DJ, or how do you be so confident or whatever, and to be really happy and to be really confident in life you have to start with the foundation of yourself and the very most foundation of yourself is doing what you want to do. it all steems from that.

Then look at Gail Wayland, however you spell his name lol. a guy who reached even higher hights than peter did, who was in today's terms a billionaire who owned a news empire but did not do so becuase that was his life long goal, he did so basically to show everyone in his life that he was not a loser. on the outside he looks successful and happy but on the inside he spends his time validating himself to people he views as his equals.


the more you compromise, the more you spend time trying to validate yourself to others or to yourself. you can circumvent all that by doing what you want to do.

when you make a compromise, youa re basically saying to yourself i don't have the balls to do what i really want to do or to endure the sacrifices and hardships it's going to take to do what i want to do. you can dress it up all you want but that's what it comes down to.


there is a reason why middle management married with 2 kids at age 25 with 30k in debt guys who have reached their life ceiling will thump their nose at the fountainhead as "not understanding how the realw orld works". there is also a reason why guys like myself and Mark Cuban will tell you that the fountainhead is the most important book they ever read (Adn yes cuban is on record stating this)


there is a point towards the end of the fountainhead in the beginning of the last section, where Rowark gets his big break and si comissioned to build this resort. as he goes on, he and the people who work for him, all loyal to Rowark through all his trails and tribulations, they can sense that something doesn't pass the sniff test with how everything is going on. something isn't right. Malloy tells Rowark that it's going to all go down hill and that they are not going to approve it even after they approve it once the business tanks and they will be to blame. Rowark asks malloy,well tells him you are probably right. but so what? would you let that stop you from doing this project htat we have worked for a year on, and he said no i would not. that flys above the head of most readers. most readers do not understand the concept that it's not about the money at all. they LOVE what they do. Rowark lives to build **** and this is his biggest project to date. just the chance to do it, regardless of what might or might not happen afterwards, was enough, consequences be damned.


i used to be a drug addict. a very bad one. everyone acts so amazed when i tell them my story and how much drugs i smoked upa nd was able to quit, pretty much cold turkey and have not picked up or event hought about it for over half a decade now. no desire to whatsoever. all these people that are quick to tell you that you have to make sacrifices are the same ones that have to go have a drink after work who have to go to the bar every friday-saturday-sunday night, who have to go ot every college footballg ame, who have to do something to escape the lives they have created for themselves, and you want to tell me that Ryad doesn't understand the world. the reaon i was able to quit drugs is simmly beucase i created a life that i dont' want to escape from anymore. no other reason. no AA (anymore), no detox.. just happiness. i don't have to get intoxicated or **** 100 women or buy 50 cars to feel good about myself. I wake up feeling great about myself becuase i love my life. i love my life becuase i do exactly what i want to do.

 

[Burroughs]

Backbreaker you do realize that Rand would give two sh!ts about your achievements and even those of Cuban...you would both be simpletons and clowns to her. If you don't believe this then you really don't understand Rand as well as you think you do.

Roark was meant by Rand to be a stand in for Frank Lloyd Wright a man hailed by some to be the greatest architect who ever lived. Fallingwaters, Johnnson Wax, Guggenheim museum etc.

Wright is a legend with few peers (Le Corbusier, Philip Johnson)

And that is fantastic...but Frank needed legions of workers and regular folk to build his visions, lawyers, businessmen and focus groups, clients with money who Lloyd regularly loathed, in short the common folk, second handers that Rand had no favor with..and that is her crucial flaw.

 

[don't]

so what is the "flaw"? You are just another one of the ones who fall so far short in your own eyes that you simply MUST attack anyone who dares say (or do)otherwise. Ayn was so far out in front of everyone else that very few could even see her dust trail.

 

[Alle_Gory]

Ayn was so far out in front of everyone else that very few could even see her dust trail.

She lived on government assistance.