The flim clip is top rate - really enjoyable stuff. The problem of course is

1. the people won't get off their couch in the first place

2. which is probably good because when they do most are more likely to destroy than create

I think looking to the masses for the answer is probably always going to lead to disappointment. Even the people who I like tend to be more occupied with just making it through life and responding to crisis than really thinking about things.

We are really only a few years out of the jungle and the fact that we have come this far as a species is remarkable. Now the trick is to keep the momentum going and prevent backsliding.

I have come to believe that this has to be done through the telling of stories in popular media such as music and movies. You just aren't going to get enough people to read and understand objectivist philosophy. EVER.

However, most people get their 'philosophy' by gluing bits and pieces of junk from their family and mixing it with some junk from Hollywood and the latest Big and Rich song. We have to get active in the production of these bits to be part of the equation.

My favorite recent example is the movie the Incredibles-

Helen: Dash... this is the third time this year you've been sent to the office. We need to find a better outlet. A more... constructive outlet.
Dash: Maybe I could, if you'd let me go out for sports.
Helen: Honey, you know why we can't do that.
Dash: But I promise I'll slow up. I'll only be the best by a tiny bit.
Dash: Dashiell Robert Parr, you are an incredibly competitive boy, and a bit of a show-off. The last thing you need is temptation.
Dash: You always say 'Do your best', but you don't really mean it. Why can't I do the best that I can do?
Helen: Right now, honey, the world just wants us to fit in, and to fit in, we gotta be like everyone else.
Dash: But Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of, our powers made us special.
Helen: Everyone's special, Dash.
Dash: [muttering] Which is another way of saying no one is.

Not a coherent philosophy, but a pretty good bit that someone may glue into thier own hodgepodge.

In short, if the goal is to get all of humanity singing along I think we are doomed to failure, but if the goal is re-framed to get enough people thinking enough to keep the world progressing towards liberty and reason and capitalism, then I believe we can be successful.

Right now I am trying to think about how I can increase the production of my own personal bits to feed the mediastream. 

Bill Thomas

http://www.linkedin.com/in/rocketfuel

www.RocketfuelSigns.com

PS - just a funny note - the spell checker doesn't have objectivist in its dictionary!

Did this a short while back, mixing it up.....

http://fawstin.blogspot.com/

It's a great movie moment, better experienced via the movie than in text alone. You can watch that clip on:

http://www.americanrhetoric.co...

"The single journey through consciousness should be participated in as fully as possible by the individual no matter how dangerous or cruel or terror-filled that experience may be."

Using that quote from the movie was intended as tongue in cheek. I knew my post was somewhat zealous and using that as the title was a nod to that (if you knew its context in the film). You raise interesting points, in the film the reaction of the audience was benign they saw all of this as good entertainment and the TV execs started marketing him. In the real world though, if such an event were to happen, and that message got through to the masses and they accepted it? It would depend on their philosophy. What makes them mad? What are they going to do about it? The anarcho-socialists would blow up banks, the Islamofascists would keep doing what they do, the Christians would stone; well everyone, 'basically the worst parts of the bible'. Telling everyone to act on their anger would be suicidal at best.

So, if it was fatalistic in the movie, Lance, what do you think the reaction would be in real life?

There's a similar scene in ATLAS, though somewhat different: Reardon makes his big speech in court, and is acquited. He is cheered on by the people. But he knows this won't last: That they would turn on him in the end. I wonder if Rand was aware of the Hosanna's Jesus recieved shortly before his crucifixion. At any rate, a wise person had this to say about the Free State Project's goal to show the world how a free society could be done: If the spectacle of 200 years of American history is not enough, what makes them think that will be?

You can get people mad, awake, ready for action, but if they haven't accepted the principles of a rational philosophy, what then?

Timothy McVeigh was mad as hell, too...

************************************************

Spaceplayermusic.com

The movie is quite fatalistic, despite Beale's best intentions and desire to change the world, the status quo remains in place.
In one impassioned diatribe, Beale galvanizes the nation with his rant, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" and persuades Americans to shout out their windows during a spectacular lightning storm. Soon Beale is hosting a new program called The Howard Beale Show, top-billed as a "mad prophet of the airways." Ultimately, the show becomes the highest rated (Duvall's character calls it "a big fat, ... big-titted hit!") on television, and Beale finds new celebrity preaching his angry message in front of a live audience that, on cue, repeats the Beale's marketed catchphrase en masse. His new set is lit by blue spotlights and an enormous stained-glass window, supplanted with segments featuring polls and astrology.

"So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,
"I'm as mad as hell,
and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

Then what? Be careful what you wish for...

************************************************

Spaceplayermusic.com

In case anyone missed the pop-culture reference of the title, it is from the 1976 film Network. Peter Finch deservingly won Best Actor for his role.

"We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy.

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!

I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you've got to get mad.

You've gotta say, 'I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!'

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

"I'm as mad as hell,

and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

I don't think it's wired into us, certainly not into me anyway. When I was younger it seemed like that was what you were supposed to wind up doing, but when presented with the actual prospect of children I took some convincing. But now I figure if you can't convince people to become thinkers, why not breed your own!

The kick in the pants to get involved was the overall asinine response to Lindsay's 'Death to Islamofascism' Salient articles, they were infuriating. They were the trigger that set me off. My initial introduction to Objectivism was via Lindsay's Politically Incorrect show some time in 1997 I think it was, and I'm sorry to say that in those 10 years since then I was generally apathetic, hell, I've only just read my first Ayn Rand. My only concern was securing an income, finding a wife, raising some kids, and hopefully die of old age before the world turned to shit. Now though, I will not accept this as inevitable.

Gratifying to see the asinine response of the student "intellectuals" led to something good. After "finding a wife and raising some kids" (ugh) you've got some atoning to do, Lance.

Is this wife-and-kids thing wired into us, do you suppose, or do folk just do it because other folk do it? No rational person would ever do it out of independent thought and choice. It really is a fearful waste. All that money that could go on Shiraz.

Stay mad as hell, Lance. Maintain the rage!

Thanks Peter. At least now if the world goes to hell in a handbasket, it won't be because I didn't try to stop it.

"Now though, I will not accept this as inevitable."

Good for you, Lance. Bravo!

She can't help it, she's a teacher in a state school, it's a job requirement isn't it? Anyway, she is redeemed slightly by the fact that she is a music teacher, and a kick-ass trombone player.

Lance!

I enjoyed reading about your activities during the last decade (although you really should get rid of the socialist Wife, take her back and get another model) and delighted you are making a worthwhile contribution to the website.

The Politically Incorrect Show was all great fun...funny to think how long ago that was.

We really need some more Libertarian/Objectivist media in addition to the Free Radical.