Atlas Shrugged

Last night, as everyone else in my home went to bed, I was restless. I decided to watch a movie recommended to me by a neighbor, Atlas Shrugged.

The movie explores a dystopian United States that reduces its most productive citizens to the rest of its citizens. Profit is seen a greed and any company that increases its profits is brought into "control" by government regulations and policies.

John Galt begins to recruit the country's most intelligent and creative minds. One-by-one, these people begin to disappear, leaving their companies and their country in dire straits. The consequences of reducing everyone to a slave of society and eliminating creativity and profit is explored. Ayn Rand first published this novel in 1957, and yet, the movie I watched last night could have been made today.

Be warned, the movie is not Christian, but it is relatively clean. There is some language, but no nudity. If you watch the movie, keep in mind that Rand wrote this book with a statement in mind.  The theme of Atlas Shrugged, is "the role of man's mind in existence," according to Rand. She explored a number of her philosophical themes in this novel, developing them later into her philosophy of Objectivism. Rand, in Objectivism, advocated her concept of human achievement, which she expressed in the ideas of reason, individualism, capitalism and the idea that less government is best.

Interestingly, Richard Weaver wrote an entire book devoted to the concept, ideas have consequences. That book and this novel and movie give us a glimpse of this concept in action as current ideas are put into play resulting in causal unavoidable consequences.