News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community.
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Mail Starting 6/2/97 | |
Atlas Shrugged does not say that only some people count. It says that everyone counts, but that many (most) people don't value themselves. It says that everyone has the potential, the capability, to be truly marvelous in some way, and that most squander t hat opportunity. Obviously, the concept that there is some (small) group of people without whom the world would fall apart is rather egotistical. But that is a device used to dramatize the story of Atlas Shrugged, not the philosophical point of it.
From: Geoff.Canyon@HBO.com;
Sent at 6/4/97; 7:49:20 PM;
Atlas Shrugged and Apple's WhyMac pagesAtlas Shrugged does not say that some people are more valuable than others; it says that some people have uncommon skill or ability, and that those people have a large effect on the world, because of their uncommon skill or ability. This truth can be seem in just about every famous or successful person you look at. (The notable exception of David Hasselhoff is left as a myster for the reader to ponder :-)
Atlas Shrugged says that everyone has different sets of skills, talents, effort, and inspiration to offer, and that people have no right to take the skills, talents, effort, or inspiration of others. You are a perfect example of this. You have the ability , the talent, and the insight to create something out of nothing on a computer. There is no physical manifestation of what you create, and yet it has great value, and I have no right to it whatsoever, except by your say so. If you choose to give it to me, great. (Thanks, by the way!) If you choose to sell it for a reasonable price, it is my right to buy it. If you choose to sell it for what I determine to be an unreasonable price, be it one penny or a million dollars, then it is my right to say no. The poi nt of Atlas Shrugged is not that you are somehow "better" than me, but simply the recognition of our respective roles in such a transaction. You have something I want. I must be prepared to offer you something in return to get it. And it doesn't matter wh ether you are "better" or "worse" than me. Even if I were a better programmer than you, and could easily write my own version of Frontier that was smaller, faster, and more powerful than yours, that would give me no right to your talent, inspiration, and effort, in the form of frontier. No doubt you could write your own version of many of the programs you use. That doesn't give you the right to pirate someone else's code. The fact that I can make a hamburger doesn't give me the right to steal one from Mac Donald's, and there is no denying that a burger from Fuddrucker's is better, and therefore worth more.
Also, Atlas Shrugged does not say that intellect and morality go hand in hand. In fact, the difference is shown very clearly, in the two teachers that Galt had, his two "fathers." One, his philosophy instructor, recognizes that no one has a right to anoth er's time or effort. His physics instructor, on the other hand, believes that his intellect is such that others should be forced to support him so that he can be left alone to think his great thoughts. He pays for that in the end, while the philosophy ins tructor is happy flipping burgers as long as it is on his own terms.
Finally, any teen with a sense of inadequacy who thinks that running off to Galt's Gulch would be in for a rude awakening, if he/she were unable/unwilling to do/make something of value. The teen would starve to death! Atlas Shrugged is _absolutely not_ pe rmission to be sloppy, stop listening, or stop learning; or even to be closed to other experiences or points of view. It is, instead, a call to be the best you can at whatever you choose to do, to stop limiting yourself in the name of fitting in or not ro cking the boat, to look at things as they are, rather than as others tell us they are or should be, to not let others tell you that you are wrong to achieve, to create, to discover. Atlas Shrugged is _not_ about money. It is about the mind, and its limitl ess power to create.
Perhaps the typical American teenager take on Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" is what you say it is. It was very different for me, in several aspects, growing up in India, a democratic but socialist country.
From: gupta@mrspock.mt.att.com (Arun Gupta);
Sent at 6/4/97; 6:27:09 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?Touching upon merely the story of the economy in "Atlas Shrugged", I think with a little research I can give you pretty exact parallels to the idiotic decisions and the consequences that are in the book and what happened in India. In that aspect, "Atlas Shrugged" was about what happens when society attempts to lock everybody down to the lowest level of competence in the name of egalitarianism.
I certainly did not read "Atlas Shrugged" to be saying that some men and women are more important than the others. I read it to mean that it is important to let people grow to as full a stature as they can. I did not read it as there are gods and goddesses and there are inferior mortals. It was : there are people who try their hardest and best to do good jobs, and there are the slackers and the parasites. (Socialism breeds parasites and corruption faster than anything else known).
I don't know about American parents or perhaps even parents in general -- but my Indian parents never put me down or "in my place". So "Atlas Shrugged" didn't have any of the teenage angst connotations that you mention.
As to granting permission to be sloppy, to stop listening, to stop learning -- I never saw that either. "Atlas Shrugged" told me that neither what I want nor what other people want of me is automatically right -- there are objective criteria, a demand of reasonableness that must be applied. Technology and making money are irrelevant, really, it is about discovering and then doing what is right and not bowing to unreason. Ayn Rand's philosophy is called "Objectivism" and to be objective, to be able to discard rationalizations that one makes to justify oneself, one has to listen very widely and very critically, too.
(I think) I come from a very different cultural and social setup than yours, and it is interesting to see what different messages we've received from the same book. Perhaps that is the sign of great art; that it doesn't force you to see things in a particular way so only some people can see it and others don't.
There is even a connection between "Atlas Shrugged" and Krishna, that I remembered because one of your correspondents mentioned the Hare Krishnas. I think it would show that at least one famous Indian author sees "Atlas Shrugged" in terms similar to that which I described above. Maybe more about that some other time.
Your comments about living on sludge are right-on. I have just read a book that describes how and why TV provides such sludge for public discussion today:
From: rich@nygord.com (Richard Nygord);
Sent at 6/4/97; 1:21:12 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?"Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business" by Neil Postman
It was published in 1985 (and is still in print) and has only become more relevant since then. I very highly recommend it!
Hopefully the Net will provide a way out of the "everything is disconnected entertainment" epistemology that the TV medium gives us.
Rich
PS Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd fame) appears to agree with Postman. He has a CD called, "Amused to Death", (c) 1992, which is also very highly recommended.
I would argue that those Oakies that survived got a lift from the US success in WWII by participating in building Los Angeles, and the other big growth cities of the Southwest. This boom created a lot of jobs for people who enjoyed working with their hands, whether in construction, aerospace, or whatever.
From: BLHayes@quake.net (Bernard L Hayes);
Sent at 6/4/97; 11:16:12 AM;
Oakies -> Grounded Family Lives -> Radical KidsAfter this, for those that kept a strong orientation towards what you refer to "groundedness", some of them raised their kids with those kinds of values. In this sense, they carried the torch of human values thru the materialistic 50s and 60s. As these kids got older, they became the core group of people that raised the banner of connectedness during the middle/late 60s. As hippies/yippies/radicals/Deadheads/activists/protesters/involved citizens, they kept their eyes on these human values until a significant percentage of the population were comfortable enough to argue for and appreciate the value of groundedness/centeredness/ connectedness. Many others, of course, went along for the ride with little appreciation for the core values involved, but I would suspect that a focus on the emotional core of these movements would point to parents with the kind of attitudes you've discussed.
An interesting test of this theory would be to look for zip codes that produced an interesting percentage of core belivers in 60s movements from southwestern cities and then attempt to correlate that with inward migrations from dust bowel refugees.
While I dig Hotwired's Packet channel very much - I read it every day there's something new - it seems like they've been running more "reruns" lately. Take the article on MAE West - I swear I read that before. I even remember the part about Simson not being able to take a photo of the whole rack of equipment, just a section. Also, Mark Frauenfelder's (sp?) piece last week about his interview with a spammer was a repeat. Now, the fact that Hotwired has reruns doesn't bother me too much (well, it does...), but it really bugs me that they don't label the articles as such. It sucks when I get halfway through an article and realize I already read it. It's a waste of my time and really annoying.
From: tatertot@claven.idbsu.edu (Tim Tate);
Sent at 6/4/97; 10:53:01 AM;
Packet reruns...My first business mentor was one of the most eccentric people I ever met. He had this proclivity for "islanding" books. He'd buy the books at garage sales, then take a felt tip pen and make big black islands through all the premises he rejected. Then he'd give the book a rating. A Hare Krishna book might come out with a 30%, meaning about 70% was pure pap and the rest was golden. Morty Adler might be 60%. Baruch Spinoza might be 80%. The interesting thing was that no matter what the discard percentage, the gems of wisdom shone brilliantly.
From: evaway@simplersw.com (Eva Way Konigsberg);
Sent at 6/3/97; 8:44:03 AM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?I think everything you said about Rand and Steinbeck are true: I think that she is talking, as the I Ching does (would she despise it as part of the infiltration of eastern philosophy ruining the critical faculties of the intelligentsia, paving the way for socialism?) in the Superior Man. The superior artist. The superior industrialist. You are right that a message of transformation is, more aptly, everyone is an artist. Everyone is a genius. Discover your genius. Let your light shine. But even that last message is about INDIVIDUAL achievement. I know there are lots of contradictions in her stuff and her philosophy merits quite a bit of islanding, but there is wheat amidst that chaff. I don't think you're arguing with her about this. I think you're simply reducing the number of people who actually deserve the accolade of being manifesters of genius. She doesn't explicitly factor in that your productivity can't be at the expense of future generations or of the earth itself, eliminating agribusiness certainly. If we put in that screen, I don't know how we'd grade our little industry. What kind of environmental legacy are we (collectively) doing with the plastic popcorn and chip manufacturing byproducts?
I think as far as literature itself, it's no contest. Quasi cardboard characterizations with 40 page monologues doesn't quite stand up to the life and blood tormented guy over there, who burns three dimensionally in your brain as if you'd known him all your life. But both authors (for me) are reaching for a common ground: They're each taking someone or a few out of a mass and igniting a separate groups' compassion for the plight of that mass by that intimate, deep view of those few.
The challenge for me still lies with finding the balance between the individual and the collective.
One picture I like to think of when I dream of the entire world at peace is where each one of us is consumed by games more exciting than war, more exciting than coercion. One reason I like the Wall Street game is because it's a game more exciting than war (excluding the interests of the military industrial complex). It's the reason I'm pro porn and pro sex clubs and the whole gamut of bizarre magazines out there [which I don't pick up]. I hope some schmuck in the Hamas gets infected with a virus today that makes him obsessed with dressing up like a French maid and licking someone's boots. Maybe it'll distract him from that next school bus he's targeting.
The game of individual achievement is a good game. It's a game more exciting than war. That's my game. My biological clock expires the moment I die. I need to see some manifestations of artistic and socially transformational dreams that live in me now in order to beat the clock. I'm reaching out to my dream team "karass," the people in my life with whom I share an exceptional chemistry evidenced by our proclivity to manifest dreams together. Culture sculpture.
The game of individual achievement with no regard and respect for the other players out there is bad. Net worth does not equal self worth. I want all my friends to be rich and I want everyone on earth to have their own individual connect to sufficient, continual cash flow.
So where did the Okies go? My former business partner is the granddaughter of Okies. Both her grandpas are Pentecostal ministers; one of 'em did the rattlesnake thing (trance dancing to the epiphany while holding a rattlesnake.) After we sold our technology business with 100+ employees she moved to the Big Island of Hawaii. She's temporarily back on the mainland getting a Montessori credential, having realized she wants to wants to work with kids. My other friend who's the daughter of Okies, grew up Poor White Trash. She's now a most cultured, delightful, ex-New Yorker, Silicon Valley cutting edge technologist with a passion for mosaic art. Unfortunately, from what I know about the families of other heartland of America buddies, I suspect that a disproportionate number of Okie farmers got cancer and died from petrochemical exposure.
Well, Dave, you gave me a pleasant diversion with thoughts more interesting than commercialization of new technology. I figured I'd amuse you by sending some words back.
Where did the Okies go? To live in the fast-growing cities of the Sunbelt, especially southern California. Read Mike Davis' amazing "City of Quartz," especially the last chapter entitled "Fontana," for some interesting insights on that.
From: phred@teleport.com (Fred Heutte);
Sent at 6/3/97; 10:00:42 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?This was an amazingly good rant, Dave. The contrast of Ayn Rand and Steinbeck couldn't be more apt, and more indicative of the intellectual misguidance of the age. Guess which side Newt Gingrich, erstwhile visionary of the new era, falls on?
Ironic that I used to run The Objectivism Resource Guide (http://www.oms.com/org/) using Clay Basket, then Frontier. (I've since moved to Microsoft FrontPage -- but am eagerly awaiting Frontier for Windows.)
From: mark_gardner@merck.com (Gardner, Mark J.);
Sent at 6/3/97; 7:01:47 PM;
Ayn RandI know you're going to get a lot of response regarding Miss Rand, as does anything said on the Net about her. I'll only add that I disagree with your condemnation, but only because the summary you gave of her ideas isn't quite right -- selfishness is not incompatible with love, or appreciation of others, or acquiring new ideas.
It's true that a lot of overzealous teens read Rand and rationalize that Objectivism is basically a license to be a jerk, but that can be said of nearly any worldview (be it philosophy, religion, politics, whatever). Such misinterpretation and misapplication shouldn't be used to discredit the actual ideas, though. It would be like slagging on C just because some bozos write viruses in that language.
I think that someone has already recommended in DaveNet Mail for you to re-read Atlas Shrugged. I'd second that, and ask that you keep as open a mind as I know you normally do.
I highly recommend the following short book about a family farmer growing old fashioned peaches near Fresno:
From: laird@tabula.com (Laird Foshay);
Sent at 6/3/97; 3:19:54 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0062510258/3074-0130812-583674
Seeing all the different redesign sites roughly mirroring your main site made me think, "Why can't we keep *all* of them?"
From: saxton@apple.com (John Saxton);
Sent at 6/3/97; 2:56:02 PM;
Magic Mirrors (Scripting News Redesign)Anybody who wants to mirror the Scripting News site can. They simply have to set up a Frontier-powered web server, design their own template, and "tune in" their Frontier installation to yours. When you release a new version of the Scripting News site, your Frontier scripts would send the same content to theirs, which would then be rendered by their systems using their templates.
Your push with Frontier to separate content from design is focussed on making it easy to automatically pipe new content into an existing design; this idea would focus on users automatically wrapping new designs around existing content.
The phrase "Magic Mirrors" seems like a great title for this technology; not only does it invoke images of the tool Miss Nancy used to view all the kids at home from the set of Romper Room, but it also combines the "Magic Lens" user interface idea (which I hear comes from Xerox PARC), with the idea of a web site mirror.
You know, perhaps this could be part of where "push" should be heading; someone provides the content to me, and I can format and display it the way that works best for me. That way, the content isn't stuck in or otherwise limited by the browser or push receiver; I can process the data however I want; if it's numbers in a table, I can pipe them into my spreadsheet and graph them; if it's news articles, I can selectively archive them. (If it's ads, I can filter them.)
What do you think?
Hey! I enjoy reading articles by friends, and zines (homemade magazines about odd topics), and seeing bands with people I know in them.
From: cake@hooked.net (Cate T. Corcoran);
Sent at 6/3/97; 11:57:26 AM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?Have you checked out cable TV in S.F.? It's a glorious wonder, much like real life. Devoid of the Christian programming I hear dominates, say, San Diego cable TV. Some people say it's boring, but I love the homemade documentaries about shopping at Kmart and growing up in the Tenderloin. My favorite program was "Under the Mushroom," some sort of hippie punk spoof drug trip oddity. One episode featured the host dressed up as Joan Baez, singing one of her songs. In another episode, the hostess showed us how to make hippie lentil soup. It was just like the Galloping Gourment, only with brighter colors and a cute little 50s thrift store dish with dancing mushrooms on the rim. In another installation (actually a sub for another show), the hostess interviewed the host, who pretended to be from another planet (I forget which one). He was all dressed up. Much better than the daytime talk shows, huh?
But now I don't have cable anymore. So I read Dave Winer's email zine instead.
database web-publishing tools..cool idea!
From: tobeth@lava.net;
Sent at 6/3/97; 7:19:42 AM;
Re:Jesse Berst on Web Developmentcould be another reason why this isn't done more could be that it's taking food out of the mouths of the web-site developers..after all, if they can get paid for 50 hours of "one-page at a time" work, why should they automate and get paid for one hour of "fifty page at a time" work?
Just a random guess @;^)
Yesterday one of the local TV news stations did a brief report on how the weather on the East coast sucks. We have been getting a lot of rain, the equivalent of April showers bring May flowers, except it's June now. All they did was interview a bunch of residents who explained why they didn't like the weather. As if their viewers don't know what they think! And they didn't even give any scientific explanation as to why there is so much rain.
From: benjamin@fyi.net (Ben Ragheb);
Sent at 6/3/97; 10:59:21 AM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?What scares me is that, for all the capability of a digital press, THIS is the kind of information-rich content the five big websites will be churning out, and it will still take forever to download.
Sock it to me,
Benjamin Ragheb
http://www.fyi.net/~benjamin/A note about television.
From: fredb@compuserve.com (Fred Ballard);
Sent at 6/3/97; 10:55:28 AM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?The Cultural Indicators project found that, on the average, by the time children in the U.S. have reached the age of fourteen, they had watched about 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence on television. A study published in the _Journal of the American Medical Association_ in 1992 reported similarly that by the age of eighteen they had watched a total of 40,000 murders and 200,000 other violent acts. (Scott Stossel, "The Man Who Counts the Killings", _The Atlantic Monthly_, May 1997, p. 90.)
I am an Online Okie who enjoys reading www.scripting.com every week. (If not every day.) I work for a large PC Vendor as a network administrator, but have an Apple Bumpersticker on my windshield. (where can I find a Mac developer bumpersticker?), and treasure time on the PPC. I develop with Macintosh Common Lisp and am into creating interactive educational software. Your Frontier scripting language was a revelation to me, and started me on the Macintosh scripting pathway. Thanks for BEING YOURSELF man. NO KIDDING.
From: mark@compsmart.com (Mark Mann);
Sent at 6/3/97; 1:01:26 AM;
we're still hereThe net is the place where WE THE PEOPLE actually have a chance. Democracy, you bet. In the aftermath of the OK BOMBING trial, a cousin of a victim described it well. She said, "maybe this will teach Mr. McVeigh the lesson that there isn't room in this world for people try to take justice into their own hands, and blow up buildings and kill innocent people... this verdict shows that we are still a people who stand for due process, and that our rights are fought for through due process."
I hope so. I felt the ground shake April 19, 1995. A human generated earthquake carried out by a guy who was "educated" in American Schools, and Ramboized by American Television. I agree wholehearted with your statement in "Where are the Okies" where you point out the lack of educational value in the many manifestations of popular culture. mcveigh probably will not be the last embodiment of such mindlessness.
I also agree with the fact that the "Big Companies" will continue to ooze out their sludge. The question I ask is.... do we really need them? The developers and the software users now have a direct information link that is affordable and dependable.
As W.E.B. Du Bois said, "if we seize the means of production, our freedom will be inevitable." Guess what Dave, we're free! In the web, we have found the opportunity seize the means of production in media. The size bandwidth that we have and the servers that we use have their limitation, but instead of focusing on the limitations, let's look at it this way. We are on the side of production. We are producing. This is a paradigmatic shift that should resonate thusly, the pen is mightier than the sword. Or, the website is mightier than the truck filled with ammonium nitrate.
Communication is the key here. Unselfish, properly motivated, communication. For the good of our fellow human beings. And Dave, that's how I feel when I come to your site. You give me links to places that I would never have gone without your help. Someone might say to you, Dave, you are sending them to the "competition", don't listen to that stuff, Mr. Winer..
mark mann
http://chat.compsmart.com/Comic Books. Possibly the last place in American Culture that one man can create, print and distribute a work of art.
From: darren@shrubsole.demon.co.uk (Darren Shrubsole);
Sent at 6/2/97; 11:06:38 PM;
When was the last time?Check out:
http://www.teleport.com/~ennead/ampersand/sim/index.html
It's a collection of writing by the creator Dave Sim. Author and self publisher of the comic Cerebus. I think you may find his writing on self-publishing very interesting.
Well, a whole bunch of us moved up to Seattle. We're making music, writing code, designing graphics, and still we have broken down vehicles outside of our homes. Some things will never change....
From: cevin@hyperbole.com (Cevin Millstead);
Sent at 6/2/97; 5:34:15 PM;
OkiesI just wanted you to know this was the first of your writings that actually brought tears to my eyes. Well spoken, well thought, well felt.
From: acagle@zilker.net (Anthony Cagle);
Sent at 6/2/97; 7:04:28 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?As a long time reader of your column, I have to tell you that I appreciate it very much. Your insights have helped me follow computer developments and manage my small campus computer store and associated installations. Thanks for sharing!
From: mvsmith@uci.edu (michael valentine smith);
Sent at 6/2/97; 4:41:16 PM;
Atlas Shrugged...I have never been "interactive" before this, because, after all, the funnel seems so large at our end and so narrow at yours. But now I feel compelled to defend Randian "individualism".
I first read "Atlas Shrugged" at about the age you did. I, also, felt profoundly influenced by it. I have reread it a few times since, to make sure that the philosophical harmonic I felt with the book were not solely a result of the perspectives of youth. One of us mis-remembers this book.
My take is that the simple premise of the book is that people divide into two groups. The builders and do-ers on one side and parasites, bureaucrats and functionaries on the other. The builders did not necessarily consider themselves "better" people, indeed, it was the parasites, I recall, who wrapped themselves in a blanket of moral superiority. They found it failed to keep them warm. The builders had no wish to be deified. In fact, "Who is John Galt?" was the recurring mystery of the story. Like dogs shaking off their fleas, the simply walked away and left the parasites to their own devices.
The "do-ers" were self determined, self actualized, and took personal responsibility. Did this make them selfish? I would say no. They were more than willing to share in mutually beneficial relationships with like minded producers. Much like the relationships between platform vendors and 3rd party developers you are always writing about. Each can operate in his own *enlightened* self interest to their mutual benefit. (Parasites have no place in this.)
"Permission to be sloppy..."? I think not. When one accepts personal responsibility, sloppiness creates its own punishments. "...closed to other experiences and other points of view."? Because one rejects a point of view after coming to a critical understanding of it, does not mean one is closed to other points of view. When one stops listening, it doesn't necessarily mean that the other side has not been heard, perhaps it just means that the other side has nothing more to say.
Your visions of platform, developer, open standards, and synergy that lets producers produce is very "John Galt." I hope you will re-examine this story sometime. Perhaps it has more to teach you.
I think that the okies, in general, became the Simpsons. Climbing into the middle class over the generations but those who do so without ever learning to appreciate the finer things, the permanent things, mystery and wonder; their lives are empty.
From: wgood@leo.vsla.edu (Ward Good);
Sent at 6/2/97; 6:54:23 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?As an Okie myself I can tell you what happened. Mom and Dad were migrant farm hands, but the kids went to school. When WW2 started, Mom and Dad went to work in the defense industries, and the kids went to university. The cold war kept mom and dad busy working, and the kids took over.
From: dgadams@sandia.gov (Douglas G. Adams);
Sent at 7/2/97; 3:37:01 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?It's like Pogo. We have met the Oakies and they are us. A lot of the people forced west by the dust bowl came here and got jobs in the defense business. Once the war started, they built airplanes, tanks and guns. So, if you're born and raised here, the Oakies could be your grandma and grandpa.
From: CNolan@sjmercury.com (CNolan);
Sent at 6/2/97; 2:21:42 PM;
they're usI've been in Silicon Valley for a short (quick!) four years now. For some time I've made the joke that the valley was just populated my displaced Okies! Their grandfathers grew wheat in Oklahoma, and they fix computer systems now in the valley. I personal ly never linked my joke to the deeper meaning of what the Okies stand for, but I do agree with you in your comments and suddenly my joke has a humbling realism. This place with it's lightning pace and disposable riches can certainly crank out the sludge. It's too easy to miss the point in what we do and where we are going.
From: garrick_heuer@pointcast.com (Garrick Heuer);
Sent at 6/2/97; 1:51:03 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?That was really interesting, thanks. I haven't read the "Grapes of Wrath," but its now on my reading list (which at this point is reaching well into the next millenium of books I'd like to read, still haven't started "Shogun" and I know that will take at least two solid months).
From: ulieberman@alexander-pr.com (Usher Lieberman);
Sent at 6/2/97; 1:33:15 PM;
Where did the Okies go? -ReplyAnyway, I can't remember where I heard this, or maybe I had a conversation with my father about it or something, but your newsletter made me remember it. We or they, were talking about roles in society, and it was pointed out that with the great interconnection of the planet, the roles of many have been diminished. When we lived in small villages, tribes, etc., we all had roles. Some were story-tellers, some were hunters, athletes, magicians, what have you. Anyway, in today's society only the very best are heard or recognized. Someone who might have thrived in a past-time as a story-teller or thespian in a smaller society may today be waiting tables, hoping for the big-break that never comes. Never really able to fulfill their given societal role.
Says a lot about technology sometimes. We are more connected, but are we? What are we connected to? Anyway, thanks for the food for thought.
I've never read any of Ayn Rand's works, but your observations and those of Nathaniel Branden are very interesting. Sometimes I believe it, sometimes I don't. Human gods! I always wonder why there's such a fear and hatred (is there a difference?) of elitism in today's American society. The superman, alone against the world, who achieves amazing things; isn't that the American dream? People say no, that doesn't happen in reality, that can't happen to you. I don't know if it can happen to me or not.
From: wesf@mail.utexas.edu (Wesley Felter);
Sent at 6/2/97; 3:33:47 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?Society acknowledges that extraordinary people exist, but there's no attempt to accommodate them. Conformance is important; if you see things that other people don't, just be quiet, don't attempt to change things. That's not how I was rasied!
Rand's ideas certainly appeal to the young; this week I'm starting a new life. It's not something my family chose for me, as they chose my entire life previously. It's something I chose for myself. I'm going to seek something for myself, to make something that's mine. Thanks to the Net, we can make connections with people who we normally wouldn't. I know more people on the West Coast than in Austin, where I live! So I'm looking for a connection, too, some face-to-face conversation, maybe even love. It's exciting and scary at the same time.
On Saturday I saw "The Power of One". I think you would really like this film, if you haven't already seen it. It's a wonderful story about an English child who grows up in South Africa under South African/Zulu/German/English guidance and how he influences his environment.
From: dash@verano.com (John Dasher);
Sent at 6/2/97; 1:25:58 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?I remember reading Atlas Shrugged during a hot Bombay summer and being a really obnoxious person for months afterward.
From: Kamini@portal.netobjects.com (Kamini Ramani);
Sent at 6/2/97; 1:23:46 PM;
Who is John Galt?I appreciate your efforts to inject humor, fallibility, and plain old "thoughts while shaving" (as Herb Caen would have said) into the software discussion. And none so much as Okies. I was a big Ayn Rand fan when I was young, as you mention. Now I re-read it and shiver. Especially as a worker in an industry that has so much potential for change, positive and negative.
From: johngari@microsoft.com (John Garibaldi);
Sent at 6/2/97; 1:11:03 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?The best DaveNet I've read yet. The analysis of Atlas Shrugged was piercing.
From: rafec@insource.com (Rafe Colburn);
Sent at 6/2/97; 3:12:06 PM;
Where did the Okies go?My family was of Okie stock.
From: bkm@uplanet.com (Bruce Martin);
Sent at 6/2/97; 12:58:29 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?The short answer is that they lived the California experience - they worked hard, had kids, sent those kids to college, and generally integrated into society.
Some where very successful, some not. Overall they are distinguished not so much by where they came from, but by the Depression era that they lived in.
Thanks for the rant against Atlas Shrugged. The Fountainhead is my Mom's favorite book. Rand's work makes me shudder.
From: spiff@edventure.com (Jerry Michalski);
Sent at 6/2/97; 3:54:16 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?Keep on diggin'!
They went to Mexico and opened a brewery, it used to be called Dos Okies. I guess they recently changed the name to something else...
From: jlg@be.com (Jean-Louis Gassee);
Sent at 6/2/97; 12:53:22 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?Thank you! An excelent discussion of Atlas Shrugged. I have often been party to diverse discussions that touch on Rand, and yours is the only stand against self interest that didn't depend on personal invective.
From: howland@conxion.com (Curt Howland);
Sent at 6/2/97; 12:47:09 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?The Okies were taxed out of existance.
Curt-
http://www.Priss.comMuahahaha! I misread this the first time (Freudian!) as "whiners and columnists"! Doesn't change the meaning of the sentence much, does it?
From: cshotton@biap.com (Chuck Shotton);
Sent at 6/2/97; 2:44:06 PM;
Re:Where did the Okies go?Like many people in Southern California, the Okies eventually went to work building airplanes for the war effort. Assembly-line work. The airplane (etc.) economy was booming, even after the war. So: those that survived the 30s later were able to buy their own homes in the suburbs, have backyard barbecues, lead the quintessential California life in the 50s. They weren't Okies anymore.
From: bsimmons@ranchero.com (Brent Simmons);
Sent at 6/2/97; 12:55:23 PM;
Where the Okies wentThe second half of this story would make a good read, I think. It took a war to solve the problem.
-Brent
PS I dig the literary stuff in this DaveNet -- I myself read The Fountainhead and Grapes of Wrath as a teenager. But J.D. Salinger had a greater influence then (but his stuff is flawed, too, but in different ways than Ayn Rand's books).