Thanks for your insight Radio_Randy. Stay safe!

Thanks, blarman, for the clarification.

I'm currently on my 3rd fire assignment, this year, and have seen my share of these backfires. So far...none of them has gone the wrong way.

True enough. Some ways are worse than others

In degrees as well as in different ways.

I misunderstood. Liberals accept and promote collectivism. Conservatives are less inclined to be collectivists in general, but not necessarily. Its all on some sliding scale from 0-100%

Liberals have not been opposing collectivism.

You are right that its a long process- both the trip up and the trip down to destruction. I wont ague that point.

Religion is bad because it is dogma, not based on facts or reason. Each religion holds as dogma different principles, some of the ones the religions have selected as "truths" arent that far from reality. Most are not however.
I would disagree that "most of the oppositon" has been from conservatives, however. The liberals, at least today, are the worst offenders by far

Most of the public opposition has been from conservatives compromising on principle and pushing religion as an alternative.

This is a long term intellectual process. There are no shortcuts.

What had been tried to date to stem the tide of collectivism certainly hadnt worked either

"Trying to appeal to the emotions of those accepting altruistic premises is hopeless and not a shortcut bypassing reasoned understanding and explanation."

Venezuelans have been suffering and dying for years, not "basking in the light of socialist nirvana living off the wealth of others". They are not receptive to ideas opposite to what they believe and which they do not understand.

A single "Galt" to "start educating" Venezuelans claimed to be receptive to ideas and values the opposite of what they cling to is fiction.

There are no short cuts. Seeking to bring down societies in order to get frightened, desperate people to reform their life long thinking is fiction, and not what Atlas Shrugged portrayed.

Seeking to crash everything in an emotional outburst is not rational. There are no shortcuts. Spreading the proper ideas of reason, ethics and political organization requires educated people with philosophic understanding, and time and effort to reform an entire culture over generations, not frightened people suddenly scrapping for their next meal with no time for education and contemplation. Crashing civilization with the expectation that "libertarian" politics will suddenly save everyone is a destructive, hopeless non-solution. This has been discussed on this forum and elsewhere many times.

Emotions are not primaries. You cannot emotionally manipulate people into being rational who hold opposite values.

People in Venezuela have been suffering and dying for years. Socialism has a record of this for a century. Capitalism has demonstrated its superiority for two centuries. Further "degenerating" of socialism will add nothing new. It will not provide them with values opposite to what they believe and ideas they do not understand.

I agree that people in Venezuela are still looking for a way to make collectivism “work” in the face of a lack of wealth for it to feed in. A hopeless endeavor if there ever is one. So it needs to degenerate further yet before there is more receptivity to new ideas

I would agree that the timing of events became artificially shortened in AS We see the real timing more in Venezuela today,

And I would agree that there is no widespread intellectual basis for individualism in that culture today.

The events in Venezuela so far have followed the path of the story in AS though

Would you not agree that the people of Venezuela would be MOrRE receptive to the ideas espoused by Galt when their system is collapsing than when their system was basking in socialist plenty?

I am wondering that the decision to lead Ives life as an individualist or collectivist is made as a very young person and is less likely to be changed later in unless faced with irrefutable and unforgiving reality.

So here we are today with half the people not really understanding the moral underpinnings if capitalism., but kind of going along with a combination of capitalism and fascism, and the other half not even knowing really what socialism is, but going along with it While it feeds off the wealth created by the remaining productive people

“Stopping the motor of the world” seems to be required today to get people at least more receptive to change than when they are basking in the light of s socialist nirvana living off the wealth of others. Venezuela is close to that point today. It needs a galt to start educating the people as maduro’s regime collapses further. That’s my real point

Whether AR WAS INTENTIKNALLY SUGGESTING or not thst the society must collapse, I think that the plot of AS is actually pretty close to how things would go. But I agree the timing in real life would be a lot slower

Their emotions are not primaries. They are based on the philosophic premises and values they hold, explicitly or implicitly.

The Venezuelan collapse has made the people there frightened, not receptive to fundamentally new ideas in politics, let alone ethics and reason as the human means of survival. They seek a "middle way" still trying to make collectivism work without giving up their faith and altruism.

The purpose of the speech was to explicitly state the theme within a fictional setting, explaining the role of man's mind in human survival and illustrating it by showing what happens when it is withdrawn. The plot was artificially accelerated in fiction to show the progression in the much shorter time frame of the plot.

The speech in the plot was addressed to anyone who was willing to listen and who had an idea of what was wrong but couldn't put it together themselves. Its role in the plot shared the fictional speeding up of events.

It was never intended to urge bringing down society so that people would embrace an individualistic society without understanding the required ideas, and did not claim that those ideas can in reality be understood, accepted, and spread in a very brief period.

People who believe in collective dependence do not become receptive to self reliance by a collapse; they only become more frightened and seek another collectivist attempt.

A young baby's instinctual emotions for self interest in the form of immediate gratification are not conceptual and are not a concept of either how to survive in self reliance or collectivist entitlement. They have natural inquisitiveness and seek to understand; they do not just lie there becoming accustomed to being taken care of until forced to think for survival. They want to think. Leftists do not seek self survival, they want power and nihilist egalitarianism, as illustrated by the villains in Atlas Shrugged.

Trying to appeal to the emotions of those accepting altruistic premises is hopeless and not a shortcut bypassing reasoned understanding and explanation.

I don’t think most people think at all about the intellectual underpinnings of socialism. They live in a world of emotions

Venezuelan collapse isn’t waking people up. That said, I think it makes people more receptive to new ideas

Interesting points. Galt did not his speech On the masses until they were made receptive by the collapse of collectivism. Before that he did what he could to stop the motor of the world (by his own words)

I think babies are born with survival emotions before they actually think about things in a conceptual level

Societal collapse doesn’t guarantee acceptance of individualism, but I do think collapse of collectivist society makes the people more receptive to individualism. That is my point

Thanks Chad,
That sounds like a strong possibility I wish the video was a little more expansive.

A back fire can be started ahead of the main fire, if it is burning at lower temperatures because it hasn't fully involved the forest yet this can be a very effective way of stopping a fast approaching hot fire. There is a roadway near where the helicopter started the fire, this can be used as a fire break. If the main fire can be slowed and cooled then the fire may not jump the line. If the wind picks up and drives the backfire it may heat up and jump the line. It is an attempted controlled risk and may not always work but often does.

Galt didn't give a speech until near the end of the novel. He held and privately communicated the same values long before that. It was possible -- in the fictional plot -- for the best to go back to the world only because of the collapse in ability of the establishment to resist them, not because the irrationalists and their followers in an intellectual vacuum had somehow suddenly learned better.

We are not born with emotions for collectivism. Emotions are automatic reactions to one's own values. There are no innate ideas.

Ayn Rand emphatically advocated the spread of better ideas of reason and egoism, not letting society collapse and then expecting and automatic acceptance of individualism with no understanding. There are no shortcuts.

Logic is not useless in fighting socialism. But politics is the last realm to follow a proper ethics and philosophy on which it is based. No amount of 'logic' of economics will turn people away from an emotional appeal of socialism when they still embrace altruism and anti-reason, and neither will any appeal to emotions based on false premises or contrary to the premises widely accepted.

Venezuela did not wake people up. At most it is seen as one way collectivism does not work to achieve a collectivist ideal.

I am not so sure of that. Galt didnt start talking about reason in his long speech UNTIL things crashed. Before that, no one would listen except the producers, who just left for the gulch.

I get the impression that the leftist emotions are just borne out of a desire to somehow be taken care of by some universal mother. I think these emotions come from birth as a baby, and the leftists never get past those emotions. They dont think about getting past them. Babies are taken care of by momma and they get used to it. Its only the facts of reality that come into play at some point and the baby is forced to accept the way things are and to start thinking.

I guess what bothers me is that logic seems to be useless when it comes to fighting socialism. It all seems to be being driven by emotion and NOT the facts of reality (so long as they can be ignored)

At least until hunger, cold, and danger cant be ignored any longer. At that point, even in AS, people started to listen. Before a crash, I am thinking its pretty hopeless.

Venezuela tells us tht a crash has to be a really serious crash before it wakes people up, however. I wonder how its going to work out here

Emotions are not primaries and false premises cannot be defeated with emotions. Socialists appeal to emotions based on altruistic premises. Those premises must be replaced through reason before anyone will respond emotionally to something better.

Ayn Rand advocated the spread of better ideas of reason and egoism, not letting society collapse and then expecting and automatic acceptance of individualism.

Helping socialists has never burned them out. They thrive on acceptance of altruism and no matter how many failures they cause, the alleged idealism feeds them to keep going. When they get more power they have to be beaten back or left to collapse, which is not good for those who part of the crash. Their false moral high ground makes it harder to let them collapse because so many want to help them. It's better to change the premises that people accept as to what is moral.