There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
That is all.
I read a very small part of Atlas Shrugged
Judging books after a few pages: this is the least stimulating book I’ve come across. Nothing is vivid. The characters are repulsive even when (especially when) they’re perfectly right. They’re just automatons that run through their roles by rote: the workaholic businessman, the worried mother, the worried philanthropists…they’re nothing new and they speak and think in stock phrases. I don’t care who’s right, they can do whatever they want with their lives and it’ll be wrong if they keep being such bland people, and whatever they are each choosing to do would be better if they had some enthusiasm. These people need some romanticism in their lives, badly.
I think I’m going to quit, or read something else at the same time. Motivating me to learn how to not put myself through unnecessary tedium I don’t even like and to read an actual good book is probably the best that I can get out of this.
Atlas Shrugged (I haven’t read it)
I am going to read it (now). It sounds like an awful book, but apparently having internal shouting matches with authors is how I like to spend my time, and I can’t keep going around complaining about it if I haven’t read it.
I don’t really want to buy it either, this hype doesn’t need my contribution, not that I care for my money, Ayn Rand’s money, or some publisher’s money, but I’d rather not boost its popularity in the best seller lists or among smug arrogant college students either. Oh well.
Why I think I won’t like it (opinions may change after I get the first hand facts):
I don’t agree with the metaphysical bit of “objectivism”, I think no part of reality is any type of objective.
Individualism’s fine. So is amorality, selfishness, etc.. But I don’t understand how it has to be about money. I think to equate success or happiness with money is to miss the point of life spectacularly. I think accumulating more money than one needs isn’t so much immoral as pointless.
And I hear it’s not well written.
Ayn Rand’s personal views don’t seem very likeable either.
My thought is me: that’s why I can’t stop. I exist because I think…and I can’t stop myself from thinking. At this very moment — it’s frightful — if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire: the hatred, the disgust of existing, there are as many ways to make myself exist, to thrust myself into existence.Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (via sisyphean-revolt)
(via toadustyshelf)
“Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted - On this home by horror haunted”
Here’s a collection of things that could go horribly wrong with this planet. Or, if you’re a writer, some beautiful settings. Apocalyptic landscapes are the best landscapes.
River of Dreams
The hippocampus is a region of the mammalian brain involved in learning and memory. In this confocal microscopy image of an adult mouse’s hippocampus by Sandra Dieni of the Institute of Anatomy and Cell Biology at Albert-Ludwigs University in Germany, reactive astroglia (star-shaped cells that support neurons in the brain, here colored pale yellow) have proliferated and enlarged in response to neuronal activity over time.
(Source: ucsdhealthsciences, via freshphotons)
Did I ever mention I’m not a fan of the mind/body dichotomy? Which means I don’t agree with the sex/gender distinction either. It’s gotten dogmatic. I’m not going to tell anyone they’re not synonyms. If you want to think of it that way that’s fine, but I don’t believe it’s the one right thing to be teaching cis people, in fact it just shifts the problem of people thinking they can tell other people what their gender “really” is to thinking they can tell other people what their sex “really” is. If the sex part truly isn’t relevant, why bother keeping it in mind.
Also, scientifically recognized and social construct aren’t mutually exclusive. If the medical community or the dictionary have a firm opinion about what sex is that still doesn’t make it absolute. It just means it a model that mostly works.
