PRACTICAL APPLICATION (worth rereading)
The circumstances surrounding the torture of John Galt is worth rereading. We’ve already addressed some of the topics above. In addition, Dagny knew what the negative side was all about once they decided to torture Galt. "She knew what they intended doing and what it was within them that made it possible. They did not think that this would succeed. They did not think that Galt would give in; they did not want him to give in. They did not think that anything could save them now; they did not want to be saved. They did not want to live; they wanted him to die."
Motive – Their response to killing Galt showed how far on the negative scale these people were. "Ferris’ eyes were blank, Mouch’s terrified, Taggart’s disappointed. Mouch was drawing away, pressing against the back of his armchair. Taggart was sitting on the edge of his, leaning forward." Jim is actually enjoying this display of capital punishment.
Friends – Jim’s cohorts didn’t go insane because they actively evaded the knowledge of what drove them. "Mouch and Ferris did not ask themselves or wonder what it was that had happened to Taggart; they knew they must never attempt to discover it, under peril of his fate."
Generator – Why did Galt offer to help them fix the generator? There are several possible reasons. First, Galt believed in defeating evil with no resistance. Evil is unstable and needs to borrow energy to keep going. That energy comes in the form of resistance. Galt allowed evil to get to its end by demonstrating the least resistance. In an electrical sense, he shorted out the generator. Secondly, Galt believed in the Law of Causality. Things happen for a reason. Why did the generator short out? It could have been poorly designed. It may never have been run that strong. The precise cause doesn’t matter as much as Galt knowing it did happen. He could just do what he did before and it would short out again. Thirdly, Galt knew he had more energy than the generator. He embodied life. It may be that at some point the generator actually took energy from Galt and couldn’t handle it. Thinking back to the scale, the further positive, the more life and energy one has. Remember that the notes for the first few chapters pointed out how certain people felt more energetic and certain people felt exhausted after dealing with others. If you were to reread the book, you’d see the consistencies with the scale for every interaction in the novel.
Life – The source of his energy may be that Galt was willing to "die" for an idea.
SUPPLEMENT
"At some point in the early 21rst Century, all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI. A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines. Throughout human history we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate it seems is not without a sense of irony. The human body generates more bioelectricity than a 120 volt battery and over 250,000 BTU’s of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion, the machines had found all the energy they would ever need." (Morpheus, The Matrix)
"But I tell you, on the day of judgment men will have to give account for every idle, nonworking (unprofitable) word they speak." (Bible)
"Again, Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever. And immortality makes this other difference, which, by the by, has a connection with the difference between totalitarianism and democracy. If individuals live only seventy years, then a state, or a nation, or a civilisation, which may last for a thousand years, is more important than an individual. But if Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more important, for he is everlasting and the life of a state or a civilisation, compared with his is only a moment." (CSL-MC)
"Because you have been down there. You know that road. You know exactly where it ends, and I know that’s not where you want to be." (Trinity, The Matrix)
"Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment – even to death. If one had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy." (CSL-MC)
"Do not fight evil with evil, but overcome evil with good." (Bible)
"But there is another way of demanding results in which the outer world may be quite illogical. They may demand not merely that each man’s life should improve if he becomes a Christian: they may also demand before they believe in Christianity that they should see the whole world neatly divided into two camps – Christian and non-Christian – and that all people in the first camp at any given moment should be obviously nicer than all the people in the second. This is unreasonable on several grounds." (CSL-MC)
“In the first place the situation in the actual world is much more complicated than that. The world does not consist of 100 per cent Christians and 100 per cent non-Christians. There are people (a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name: some of them are clergymen. There are other people who are slowly becoming Christian though they do not call themselves so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. And always, of course, there are a great many people who are just confused in mind and have a lot of inconsistent beliefs all jumbled together. Consequently, it is not much use trying to make judgments about Christians and non-Christians in the mass." (CSL-MC)
“For whoso findeth me (wisdom) findeth life, and shall obtain favor of the Lord. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.” (Proverbs)
"For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." (Bible)
Next Post
Table of Contents
No comments:
Post a Comment