23 May 2004 #0421.html

Fountainhead

. . .

Dear Paul and Kate, Melanie and Jared, Bridget and Justin, Sara, Ben and Sarah, Heather, Audrey, Rachel, Matt via hardcopy, and Brian,

cc: file, Andrea, Tony Hafen, Sara and Des Penny, & Maxine Shirts

Welcome to "Thoughtlets." This is a weekly review of an idea, belief, thought, or words that will hopefully be of some benefit to you, my children, with an electronic copy to on-line extended family members. Any of you can ask me not to clutter your mail box at any time.

"For years I have underlined things of interest in books. Some books, like Critical Path by Buckminster Fuller, or The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steve Covey were almost all underlined. When there was money, I hired people to type these books so that I could put them in an on-line digital repository, for retrieval with a search engine. Sherry Sump, Sharon Boyce, David Johnson's older sister, and several others typed a lot of these files for me. I have never put them on-line nor have I implemented the search engine, although the diskettes have been pulled out of storage, and are ready to be moved onto a web site, once there is more disk space.

As mentioned in last week's thoughtlet (0420.html), on this trip to China, we were stuck in Houston for three hours because of storms, I went into a bookstore, and saw the 704 page book by Ayn Rand called The Fountainhead. I read the entire book within a few hours of returning to the house from the trip. And I underlined passages that caught my interest. So I debated about whether to type out as quotes the phrases and passages I underlined from The Fountainhead, or whether to have someone else type them out sometime and to simply to put them in a separate file and just reference that file. For as long of a book as it is, there was not that much underlined, and so I decided to type it out and to include the words in this Thoughtlet. My two reasons are:

  1. these words will become part of this permanent record; and
  2. it will give me a chance to do a detailed review on those concepts which caught my attention.

Before this text, which I expect most of you will skip over and not read, at least not now, let me summarize this most recent trip to China. We arrived on Saturday and we stayed at the Hilton International Hotel because this is where the ConocoPhillips executives were staying. Dave upgraded us to the executive floors. I was on the 25th floor in room 2513, overlooking the second ring (similar to the Toll road in Houston). I wrote in the last thoughtlet (0420.html) about the party and dinner we had with Paul and his classmates. When I talked to Paul last Sunday evening, after sending out that Thoughtlet, he clarified that two of the students did not eat any oriental food, and they were the two that went out to McDonalds to eat dinner after the party.

I mentioned that the Westerns picked up Jeff Jurinak and me for District Conference. I forgot to include a possible Prime Words stanza written based on the the comments of Sister Stafford, the Relief Society District President (a):

`The Lord doesn't love us In spite of our weaknesses The Lord loves us (a) Especially in our meekness'


Sunday evening Want Tiejun and his son joined us for dinner at the hotel. We had a good discussion. His son is 14, is very tall, and like many youth in the modern 1 child China is even more spoiled than you kids are. Monday morning we got a call from Zhuozhou saying meetings had come up on Tuesday with the President of Kazikhstan, where all of the BGP executives had to be at a public signing of a major pipeline CNPC had committed to build from the Caspian to Western China, so our meeting in Zhuozhou was moved to Monday. The President of BGP International is 36. His lawyer and assistant is 33. The Vice-President of Finance for BGP is a female who is about 35. I felt like I was in a meeting with you kids and your friends. And these kids control annual budgets in excess of US$500 million. Smart! Aggressive! Self-confident! Frankly, I do not see youth in the west who can compete with what I saw in that meeting. The world is changing, and it is changing very fast. Our meeting was very successful, and we came away with a list of 8 different opportunities for BGP. We had a nice dinner to celebrate the meeting. After the dinner we met with Mr. Wang Xuejun, President of BGP. I gave him Ken Turner's print of the Treaty at San Saebo. He was visibly moved by the painting. Where as the young President of BGP International was not touched by the painting. He just knew it should be given to his boss, and not to him.

Tuesday Jialin took us to visit the Key Lab at Beijing Petroleum University. These are the folks who have built physical models similar to the ones I pioneered at the Seismic Acoustics Laboratory. They have several other very interesting technologies. This was the beginning of a GDC University Program, which I expect I will get in the middle of over the next few years. Tuesday evening I went to the Senior High Priest Fireside with the Shakespeares, as written about in the previous Thoughtlet (0420.html).

Wednesday morning Jialin took me to Petroleum Press to talk about publishing Fred Hilterman's book on Seismic Amplitudes. The Petroleum Press was founded in 1951, and they have 6,000 kinds of publications. They publish 400 books per year, including 2 journals focused on Exploration and Development. I had 4 calls on my cell phone during the meeting we were attempting to have. Each of the calls were to set up a meeting with Zhou Jiaping, the Vice-President for International Exploration for CNPC. Turns out he had a Board meeting cut short, and so he was available to meet with us on short notice. The meeting did not go as well as I would have liked, and there will be an opportunity to recover. Oh well! Wednesday evening we had dinner with Jiafeng Yan and his brother-in-law and the CNPC Petroleum Editor. Spicy dinner. Good discussions and positive opportunities.

Thursday Jialin took us to Da Gang Oilfield. We gave a presentation, listened to where they are at, and they fed us a big lunch. This oil field is on the southern shore of the Bohai Bay. There was crab, shrimp, and other seafood. It is amazing how much difference there is between the technology at Da Gang and at their sister oil field to the north, which we visited last time we were in China. I did not feel well at all on Wednesday or Thursday, and felt like I had a temperature. Dave had some Doxycycline (malaria penicillin), and he gave me seven tablets. It did the trick, and I was feeling pretty good by the time we went to the airport on Saturday morning. However, there were a few minutes of reflection on my life, considering the SARS issue and the issues of even leaving the country if you have a temperature. Any of you that come to China with me should plan to go to your Doctor and to get malaria medicine to bring with you in case something like this happens to you.

Friday Dave and I went shopping again. Dave purchased about 15 purses on this trip. He would take digital photos, send copies of the photos to his sister, and she would tell him what she wanted. He had a great time, and I ended up doing more shopping than I intended. Oh well! Friday afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Yan hosted us at Beihai Park. Mr. Yan had his guitars, and we played at two different places in the Park. This is a beautiful park just north of the Forbidden City. The private dining rooms were filled, and so we were in a room with many tourists. It was a very nice evening, with good discussions. After the dinner we were playing guitars on the island, and a middle school teacher came with a Chinese Instrument and played with us. She was very good, and it was a lot of fun. As we left, she said "I believe in Jesus." It was touching. Dave put his arm around her and said "Bless you." When we got back to the car, I gave the other painting I brought to Mr. Yan. It was a small giclee print of Cortez and Montezuma.

It was a good week. I ate too much. Total swallows for Sunday were 186, Monday 169, Tuesday 209, Wednesday 127, Thursday 212, Friday 179, and Saturday 260. Experience has shown I should average less than 150 swallows per day. It is amazing to me that I don't balloon out like a hippopotamus when I eat like this. Chinese food is good to me. It was good to get home. It was especially good to get through quarantine without problems. And the best part of all was seeing Ben, Sarah, and Ethan at the airport in Los Angeles. I had transposed Ben's phone numbers, the Sun Workstation at the house had rebooted because of a power hit (0422.html), and I thought I was going to miss you guys. But it worked out, and Ethan seemed to like his owl kite from China (I have presents for Grant and Colby also, but I'm keeping them until I see them). And what I will remember about this, I believe my 28th trip to China, was reading The Fountainhead.

So I guess I will start my discussion of The Fountainhead by telling you the book is about a guy named Howard Ro..., no I get ahead of myself. I will just put the quotes first, classified as positive concepts (+) or negative concepts (-), and then talk about who and what the book is about:

- Man's character is the product of his premises. page vii + Neither politics nor ethics nor philosophy is an end in itself, neither in life nor in literature. Only Man is an end in himself. pages vii-viii - Religion ... has usurped the highest moral concepts of our language, placing them outside this earth and beyond man's reach. page ix + Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the materials determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it. page 24 - Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. page 24 + But the best is a matter of standards - and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one. pages 24-25 - An architect is not an end in himself. He is only a small part of a great social whole. Co-operation is the key word to our modern world and to the profession of architecture in particular. page 26 + I don't intend to build in order to have clients. I intend to have clients in order to build. page 26 - Architecture, my friends, is a great Art based on two cosmic principles: Beauty and Utility. In a broader sense, these are but part of the three eternal entities: Truth, Love, and Beauty. page 27 + Dogmatic discipline is the only thing which makes true originality possible. page 51 - Architecture was truly the greatest of the arts, because it was anonymous, as all greatness. page 77 - A great building is not the private invention of some genius or other. It is merely a condensation of the spirit of a people. page 78 + But I have to work somewhere, so it might as well be you ... - if I can get what I want from you. I'm selling myself, and I'll play the game that way - for the time being. page 88 + `Do you always have to have a purpose? Do you always have to be so damn serious? Can't you ever do things without reason, just like everybody else? You're so serious, so old. Everything's important with you, everything's great, significant in some way, every minute, even when you keep still. Can't you ever be comfortable - and unimportant?' `No.' page 89 + He wondered why ineptitude should exist and have its say. page 90 - I hope I shall be forgiven for a trace of the vain child which is in all of us. But I realize - and in that spirit I accept it - that this tribute was paid not to my person, but to a principle which chance has granted me to represent in all humility tonight. page 109 + It doesn't say much. Only `Howard Roark, Architect.' But it's like those mottoes men carved over the entrance of a castle and died for. It's a challenge in the face of something so vast and so dark, that all the pain on earth - and do you know how much suffering there is on earth? - all the pain comes from that thing you are going to face. I don't know what it is, I don't know why it should be unleashed against you. I know only that it will be. And I know that if you carry these words through to the end, it will be a victory. Howard, not just for you, but for something that should win, that moves the world - and never wins acknowledgment. It will vindicate so many who have fallen before you, who have suffered as you will suffer. May God bless you - or who ever it is that is alone to see the best, the highest possible to human hearts. You're on your way into hell, Howard. page 133 + Within a week, Heller knew that he had found the best friend he would ever have; and he knew that the friendship came from Roark's fundamental indifference. page 135 +`A house can have integrity, just like a person, said Roark, `and just as seldom.' `In what way?' `Well, look at it. Every piece of it is there because the house needs it - and for no other reason. You see it from here as it is inside. The rooms in which you'll live made the shape. The relation of masses was determined by the distribution of space within. The ornament was determined by the method of construction, an emphasis of the principle that makes it stand. You can see each stress, each support that meets it. Your own eyes go through a structural process when you look at the house, you can follow each step, you see it rise, you know what made it and why it stands. But you've seen buildings with columns that support nothing, with purposeless cornices, with pilasters, moldings, false arches, false windows. You've seen buildings that look as if they contained a single large hall, they have solid columns and single, solid windows six floors high. But you enter and find six stories cut into floor lines, band corners, tiers of windows. Do you understand the difference? Your house is made by its own needs. Those others are made by the need to impress. The determining motive of your house is in the house. The determining motive of the others is in the audience.' page 136 - It's not only that, Alvah. It's not you alone. If I found a job, a project, an idea or a person I wanted - I'd have to depend on the whole world. Everything has strings leading to everything else. We're all so tied together. We're all in a net, the net is waiting, and we're pushed into it by one single desire. You want a thing and it's precious to you. Do you know who is standing ready to tear it out of your hands? You can't know, it may be so involved and so far away, but someone is ready, and you're afraid of them all. And you cringe and you crawl and you beg and you accept them - just so they'll let you keep it. And look at whom you come to accept.' page 143 - You know, it's such as peculiar thing - our idea of mankind in general. We all have a sort of vague, glowing picture when we say that, something solemn, big and important. But actually all we know of it is the people we meet in our lifetime. Look at them. Do you know any you'd feel big and solemn about? There's nothing but housewives, haggling at pushcarts, drooling brats who write dirty words on the sidewalks, and drunken debutantes. Or their spiritual equivalent. As a matter of fact, one can feel some respect for people when they suffer. They have a certain dignity. But have you ever looked at them when their enjoying themselves? That's when you see the truth. Look at those who spend the money they've slaved for - at amusement parks and side shows. Look at those who're rich and have the whole world open to them. Observe what they pick out for enjoyment Watch them in the smarter speak-easies. That's your mankind in general. I don't want to touch it. pages 143-144 - Do you know, Alvah, that primitive people make statues of their gods in man's likeness? Just think of it, what a statue of you would look like - of you nude, your stomach and all. pages 144-145 - I can't figure her out. No one can approach her. She's never had a single girl friend, not even in kindergarten. There's always a man around her, but never a friend. I don't know what to think. page 148 - Your life doesn't belong to you, Peter, if you're really aiming high. You can't allow yourself to indulge every whim, as ordinary people can, because with them it doesn't matter anyway. It's not you or me or what we feel, Peter. It's your career. It takes strength to deny yourself in order to win other people's respect. page 154 - Think it over, ... And while you're thinking it over, think just a bit that if you do this now, you'll be breaking your mother's heart. It's not important, but take just a tiny notice of that. Think of yourself for an hour, but give one minute to the thought of others. page 156 + You're a self-centered monster, Howard. The more monstrous because you're utterly innocent about it. page 160 + It's a monument you want to build, but not to yourself. Not to your own life or your own achievement. To other people. To their supremacy over you. You're not challenging that supremacy. You're immortalizing it. You haven't thrown it off - you're putting it up forever. Will you be happy if you seal yourself for the rest of your life in that borrowed shape? Or if you strike free, for once, and build a new house, your own? You don't want the Randolph place. You want what it stood for. But what it stood for is what you've fought all your life. page 163 + The beauty of the human body is that it hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose; that there's not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man. page 165 + Don't you know that most people take most things because that's what's given them, and they have no opinion whatever? Do you wish to be guided by what they expect you to think they think, or by your own judgment? page 165 - The twelve faces before him had a variety of countenances, but there was something, neither color nor feature, upon all of them, as a common denominator, something that dissolved their expressions, so that they were not faces an longer, but only empty ovals of flesh. He was addressing everyone. He was addressing no one. He felt no answer, not even the echo of his own words striking against the membrane of an eardrum. His words were falling down a well, hitting stone salients on their way, and each salient refused to stop them, threw them farther, tossed them from one another, sent them to seek the bottom that did not exist. page 166 - ... carried by the torrent. He needed the people and the clamor around him. There were no questions and no doubts when he stood on a platform over a sea of faces; the air was heavy, compact, saturated with a single solvent - admiration; there was no room for anything else. He was great; great as the number of people who told him so. He was right; right at the number of people who believed it. He looked at the faces, at the eyes; he saw himself born in them, he saw himself being granted the gift of life. page 188 + We are the guardians of a great human function. Perhaps of the greatest function among the endeavors of man. We have achieved much and we have erred often. But we are willing in all humility to make way for our heirs. We are only men and we are only seekers. But we seek for truth with the best that there is in our hearts. We seek with what there is of the sublime granted to the race of men. It is a great quest. To the future of American Architecture! page 200 + He liked the work. He felt at times as if it were a match of wrestling between his muscles and the granite. He was very tired at night. He liked the emptiness of his body's exhaustion. page 201 - One must never allow oneself to acquire the exaggerated sense of one's own importance. There's no necessity to burden oneself with absolutes. page 242 + There were times when he remained in the office all night. They found him still working when they returned in the morning. He did not seem tired. Once he stayed there for two days and two nights in succession. On the afternoon of the third day he fell asleep, half lying across his table. He awakened in a few hours, made no comment and walked from one table to another, to see what had been done. He made corrections, his words sounding as if nothing had interrupted a thought begun some hours ago. page 251 + There's nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we're not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge. pages 264-265 + All things are simple when you reduce them to fundamentals. You'd be surprised if you knew how few fundamentals there are. Only two, perhaps. To explain all of us. It's the untangling, the reducing that's difficult - that's why people don't like to bother. I don't think they'd like the results, either. page 278 - ... a board of directors is one or two ambitious men - and a lot of ballast. I mean that groups of men are vacuums. Great big empty nothings. They say we can't visualize a total nothing. Hell, sit at any committee meeting. The point is only who chooses to fill that nothing. It's a tough battle. The toughest. It's simple enough to fight any enemy, so long as he's there to be fought. But when he isn't ... pages 311-312 + When facing society, the man most concerned, the man who is to do the most and contribute the most, has the least to say. It's taken for granted that he has no voice and the reasons he could offer are rejected in advance as prejudiced - since no speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgment on a man than on an idea. Though how in hell one passes judgment on a man without considering the content of his brain is more than I'll ever understand. However, that's how it's done. You see, reasons require scales to weigh them. And scales are not made of cotton. And cotton is what the human spirit is made of - you know, the stuff that keeps no shape and offers no resistance and can be twisted forward and backward and into a pretzel. pages 312-313 - The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line - it's a middleman. And the more middlemen, the shorter. Such is the psychology of a pretzel. page 313 + Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think. Thinking is something one doesn't borrow or pawn. page 313 + Don't worry. They're all against me. But I have one advantage: they don't know what they want. I do. page 313 + We want to capture - in stone, as others capture in music - not some narrow creed, but the essence of all religion. And what is the essence of religion? The great aspiration of the human spirit toward the highest, the noblest, the best. The human spirit as the creator and the conqueror of the ideal. The great life-giving force of the universe. The heroic human spirit. That is your assignment, Mr. Roark. page 319 - What one desires is actually of so little importance! One can't expect to find happiness until one realizes this completely. ... It's not the doer that counts but those for whom things are done. pages 321-322 + In the first years of the Banner's existence Gail Wynand spent more nights on his office couch than in his bedroom. The effort he demanded of his employees was hard to perform; the effort he demanded of himself was hard to believe. He drove them like an army; he drove himself like a slave. He paid them well; he got nothing but his rent and meals. He lived in a furnished room at the time when his best reporters lived in suites at expensive hotels. He spent money faster than it came in - and he spent it all on the Banner. The paper was like a luxurious mistress whose every need was satisfied without inquiry about the price. page 410 - You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them, while they're reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors, facing each other across a narrow passage. Usually in the more vulgar kind of hotels. Reflections of reflections and echoes, of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose. page 426 + I acted as the world demands one should act. Only I can do nothing halfway. Those who can, have a fissure somewhere inside. Most people have many. They lie to themselves 0 not to know that. ... It's said that the worst thing one can do to a man is to kill his self-respect. But that's not true. Self-respect is something that can't be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man's pretense at it. page 427 + No happy person can be quite so impervious to pain. page 438 + When I look at the ocean, I feel the greatness of man, I think of man's magnificent capacity that created this ship to conquer all that senseless space. When I look at mountain peaks, I think of tunnels and dynamite. When I look at the planets, I think of airplanes. page 446 - When the fact that one is a total nonentity who's done nothing more outstanding than eating, sleeping and chatting with neighbors becomes a fact worthy of pride, of announcement to the world and of diligent study by millions of readers - the fact that one has built a cathedral becomes unrecordable and unannounceable. A matter of perspectives and relativity. The distance permissible between the extremes of any particular capacity is limited. The sound perception on an ant does not include thunder. page 471 + She saw no apology, no regret, no resentment as he looked at her. It was a strange glance; she had noticed it before; a glance of smile worship. And it made her realize that there is a stage of worship which makes the worshiper himself an object of reverence. page 489 + It was a contest without time, a struggle of two abstractions, the thing that had created the building against the things that made the play possible - two forces, suddenly naked to her in their simple statement - two forces that had fought since the world began - and every religion had known of them - and there had always been a God and a Devil - only men had been so mistaken about the shapes of their Devil - he was not single and big, he was many and smutty and small. page 492 + `I wish I could understand you.' `I thought I should be quite obvious. I've never hidden anything from you. page 498 + He had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the thing he sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the first phrases of Tchaikovsky's First Concerto - or to the last movement of Rachmaninoff's Second. Men have not found the words for it nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. Not servants nor those served; not alters and immolations; but the final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers - show me yours - show me that it is possible - show me your achievement - and the knowledge will give me courage for mine. page 504 + The houses were plain field stone - like the rocks jutting from the green hillsides - and of glass, great sheets of glass used as if the sun were invited to complete the structures, sunlight becoming part of the masonry. There were many houses, they were small, they were cut off from one another, and no two of them were alike. But they were like variations of a single theme, like a symphony played by an inexhaustible imagination, and one could still hear the laughter of the force that had been let loose on them, as if that force had run, unrestrained, challenging itself to be spent, but had never reached its end. Music, he thought, the promise of the music he had invoked, the sense of it made real - there it was before his eyes - he did not see it - he heard it in chords - he thought that there was a common language of thought, sight and sound - was it mathematics? - the discipline of reason - music was mathematics - and architecture was music in stone - he knew he was dizzy because this place below him could not be real. page 505 + Battle ... is a vicious concept. There is no glory in war, and no beauty in crusades of men. But this was a battle, this was an army, and a war - and the highest experience in the life of every man who took part in it. page 508 + Do you remember, Howard, what I told you once about the psychology of a pretzel? Don't despise the middleman. He's necessary. Someone had to tell them. It takes two to make a very great career; the man who is great, and the man - almost rarer - who is great enough to see greatness and say so. page 512 + If you want me, you'll have to let me do it all, alone. I don't work with councils. page 513 + Most people build as they live - as a matter of routine and senseless accident. But a few understand that building is a great symbol. We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a statement of his life. If he doesn't build, when he has the means, it's because his life has not been what he wanted. page 517 + I must tell you much more about the house I want. I suppose an architect is like a father confessor - he must know everything about the people who are to live in his house, since what he gives them is more personal that their clothes or food. Please consider it in that spirit - and forgive me if you notice that this is difficult for me to say - I've never gone to confession. page 519 - If you want to know what to expect, just think the worst wars are religious wars between sects of the same religion or civil wars between brothers of the same race. page 522 + Roark knew that Wynand seldom spoke of his childhood, by the quality of his words; they were bright and hesitant, untarnished by usage, like coins that had not passed through many hands. page 529 - Did you want to scream, when you were a child, seeing nothing but fat ineptitude around you, knowing how many things could be done and done so well, but having no power to do them? Having no power to blast the empty skulls around you? Having to take orders - and that's bad enough - but to take orders from your inferiors! page 529 + `It has to be mine,' said Roark. `But in another sense, Gail, you own that house and everything else I've built. You own every structure you've stopped before and heard yourself answering.' `In what sense?' `In the sense of that personal answer. What you feel in the presence of a thing you admire is just one word - "Yes." The affirmation, the acceptance, the sign of admittance. And that "Yes" is more than an answer to one thing, it's a kind of "Amen" to life, to the earth that holds this thing, to the thought that created it, to yourself for being able to see it. But the ability to say "Yes" or "No" is the essence of all ownership. It's your ownership of your own ego. Your soul, if you wish. Your soul has a single basic function - the act of valuing. "Yes" or "No," "I wish" or "I do not wish." You can't say "Yes" without saying "I." There's no affirmation without the one who affirms. In this sense, everything to which you grant your love is yours.' `In this sense, you share things with others?' `No. It's not sharing. When I listen to a symphony I love, I don't get from it what the composer got. His "Yes" was different from mine. He could have no concern for mine and no exact conception of it. That answer is too personal to each man. But in giving himself what he wanted, he gave me a great experience. I'm alone when I design a house, Gail, and you can never know the way in which I own it. But if you said you own "Amen" to it - it's also yours. And I'm glad it's yours. page 539 + There's so much nonsense about human inconsistency and the transience of all emotions. ... I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place. There are books I liked at the age of sixteen. I still like them. page 540 - If there's any connection to you at all, it's only one thought that keeps coming back to me. I keep thinking that you and I started in the same way. From the same point. From nothing. I just think that. Without any comment. I don't seem to find any particular meaning in it at all. Just `we started in the same way.' page 543 - And then I thought of you. I thought that you weren't touched by any of it. Not in any way. The national convention of advertisers doesn't exist as far as your concerned. It's in some sort of fourth dimension that can never establish any communication with you at all. I thought of that - and I felt a peculiar kind of relief. page 544 + Howard, everything you've done in your life is wrong according to the stated ideals of mankind. And here you are. And somehow it seems a huge joke on the whole world. page 547 + `Howard, have you ever held power over a single human being.' `No. And I wouldn't take it if it were offered to me.' page 548 - I was thinking of people who say that happiness is impossible on earth. Look how hard they all try to find some joy in life. Look how they struggle for it. Why should any living creature exist in pain? By what conceivable right can anyone demand that a human being exist for anything but his own joy? Every one of them wants it. Every part of him wants it. But they never find it. I wonder why. They whine and say they don't understand the meaning of life. There's a particular kind of people that I despise. Those who seek some sort of a higher purpose or `universal goal,' who don't know what to live for, who moan that they must `find themselves.' You hear it all around us. That seems to be the official bromide of our century. Every book you open. Every drooling self-confession. It seems to be the noble thing to confess. I'd think it would be the most shameful one. page 551 - What I mean is what makes people unhappy is not too little choice, but too much. ... Having to decide, always to decide, torn every which way all of the time. Now in a society of pattern, a man could feel safe. Nobody would come to him all the time pestering him to do something. Nobody would have to do anything. What I mean is, of course, except working for the common goal. page 554 - If everybody were compelled to have the proper kind of education, we'd have a better world. If we force people to do good, they will be free to be happy. ... This is a perfectly useless discussion. ... No intelligent person believes in freedom nowadays. It's dated. The future belongs to social planning. Compulsion is a law of nature. That's that. It's self-evident. page 555 - We must help the others. It's the moral duty of intellectual leaders. What I mean is we ought to lose that bugaboo of being scared of the world compulsion. It's not compulsion when it's for a good cause. What I mean is in the name of love. But I don't know how we can make this country understand it. Americans are so stuffy. page 556 - Something's got to be done about the masses. ... They've got to be led. They don't know what's good for them. What I mean is, I can't understand why people of culture and position like us understand the great ideal of collectivism so well and are willing to sacrifice our personal advantages, while the working man who has everything to gain from it remains so stupidly indifferent. I can't understand why the workers in this country have so little sympathy with collectivism. page 556 - No, you would never be able to match Gail Wynand's career. Not with your sensitive spirit and humanitarian instincts. That's what's holding you down, Mitch, not your money. Who cares about money? The age of money is past. It's your nature that's too fine for the brute competition of our capitalistic system. But that, too is passing. page 560 - Change is the basic principle of the universe. Everything changes. Seasons, leaves, flowers, birds, morals, men and buildings. The dialectic process. page 567 - Howard, I'm a parasite. I've been a parasite all my life. You designed my best projects at Stanton. You designed the first house I ever built. You designed the Cosmo-Slotnick building. I have fed on you and on all the men like you who lived before we were born. The men who designed the Parthenon, the Gothic cathedrals, the first skyscrapers. If they hadn't existed, I wouldn't have known how to put stone on stone. In the whole of my life, I haven't added a new doorknob to what men have done before me. I have taken that which was not mine and given nothing in return. I had nothing to give. This is not an act, Howard, and I'm very conscious of what I'm saying. And I came here to ask you to same me again. If you wish to throw me out, do it now. page 575 + Now listen to me. I've been working on the problem of low-rent housing for years. I never thought of the poor people in the slums. I thought of the potentialities of our modern world. The new materials, the means, the chances to take and use. There are so many products of man's genius around us today. There are such great possibilities to exploit. To build cheaply, simply, intelligently. I've had a lot of time to study. I didn't have much to do after the Stoddard Temple. I didn't expect results. I worked because I can't look at any material without thinking: What could be done with it? And the moment I think that, I've got to do it. To find the answer, to break the thing. I've worked on it for years. I love it. I worked because it was a problem I wanted to solve. You wish to know how to build a unit to rent for fifteen dollars a month? I'll show you how to build it for ten. Keeting made an involuntary movement forward. But first, I want you to think and tell me what made me give years to this work. Money? Fame? Charity? Altruism? Keeting shook his head slowly. All right. You're beginning to understand. So whatever we do, don't let's talk about the poor people in the slums. They have nothing to do with it, thought I wouldn't envy anyone the job of trying to explain that to fools. You see, I'm never concerned with my clients, only with their architectural requirements. I consider these as part of my building's theme and problem, as my building's material - just as I consider bricks and steel. Bricks and steel are not my motive. Neither are the clients. Both are only the means of my work. Peter, before you can do things people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action, not any possible object of your charity. I'll be glad if people who need it find a better manner of living in a house I designed. But that's not the motive of my work. Nor my reason. Nor my reward. pages 577-578 - Have you ever seen an architect who wasn't screaming for planned cities? I'd like to ask him how he can be so sure that the plan adopted will be his own. And if it is, what right has he to impose it on others? And if it isn't, what happens to his work? I suppose he'll say that he wants neither. He wants a council, a conference, co-operation and collaboration. pages 578-579 + Yes. Cortlandt. Well, I've told you all the things in which I don't believe, so that you'll understand what I want and what right I have to want it. I don't believe in government housing. I don't want to hear anything about its noble purposes. I don't think they're noble. But that, too, doesn't matter. That's not my first concern. Not who lives in the house nor who orders it built. Only the house itself. If it has to be built, it might as well be built right. You ... want to build it? In all the years I've worked on this problem, I never hoped to see the results in practical application. I forced myself not to hope. I knew I couldn't expect a chance to show what could be done on a large scale. Your government housing, among other things, has made all building so expensive that private owners can't afford such projects, nor any type of low-rent construction. And I will never be given any job by any government. ... I've never been given a job by any group, board, council or committee, public or private, unless some man fought for me. ... I love this work. I want to see it erected. I want to make it real, living, functioning, built. But every living thing is integrated. Do you know what this means? Whole, pure, complete, unbroken. Do you know what constitutes an integrating principle? A thought. The one thought, the single thought that created the thing and every part of it. The thought which no one can change or touch. I want to design Cortlandt. I want to see it built. I want to see it built exactly as I design it. ... I like to receive money for my work. But I can pass that up this time. I like to have people know my work is done by me. But I can pass that up. I like to have tenants made happy by my work. But that doesn't matter too much. The only thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself. My work done my way. Peter, there's nothing in the world that you can offer me, except this. Offer me this and you can have anything I've got to give. My work done my way. A private, personal, selfish, egotistical motivation. That's the only way I function. That's how I am. pages 479-480 + I'm giving you a trust which is more sacred - and nobler, if you like the word - than any altruistic purpose you could name. Unless you understand that this is not a favor, that I'm not doing it for you nor for the future tenants, but for myself, and that you have no right to except on those terms. page 580 + Why, no. I'm too conceited. If you want to call it that. I don't make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. I'm an utter egotist. Yes. Yes you are. But egotists are not kind. And you are. You're the most egotistical and the kindest man I know. And that doesn't make sense. page 582 + I'd like to look at it from here ... I spent all day here yesterday, watching the light change on it. When you design a building, Howard, do you know exactly what the sun will do to it at any moment of the day from any angle? Do you control the sun? page 583 + Wynand watched her as she walked across a room, as she descended the stairs, as she stood at a window. She had heard him saying to her: "I didn't know a house could be designed for a woman, like a dress. You can't see yourself here as I do, you can't see how completely this house is yours. Every angle, every part of every room is a setting for you. It's scaled to your height, to your body. Even the texture of the walls goes with the texture of your skin in an odd way. It's the Stoddard Temple, but built for a single person, and it's mine. This is what I wanted. The city can't touch you here. I've always felt that the city would take you away from me. It gave me everything I have. I don't know why I feel at times it will demand payment someday. But here you're safe and you're mine." She wanted to cry: Gail, I belong to him here as I've never belonged to him. page 584 + It's the hardest thing in the world - to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. page 598 - I've never owned anything. I've never wanted anything. I didn't give a damn - in the most cosmic way Toohey could ever hope for. I made myself into a barometer subject to the pressure of the whole world. page 603 + I'm not an altruist, Gail. I don't decide for others. page 604 + What have you been thinking about these past weeks? The principle behind the dean who fired me from Stanton. What principle? The thing that is destroying the world. The thing you were talking about. Actual selflessness. The ideal which they say does not exist? They're wrong. It does exist - though not in the way they imagine. It's what I couldn't understand about people for a long time. They have no self. They live within others. They live second-hand. page 605 - He borrowed from others in order to make an impression on others. There's your actual selflessness. It's his ego he's betrayed and given up. But everybody calls him selfish. That's the pattern most people follow. Yes, And isn't that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. The man whose sole aim is to make money. Now I don't see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose - to invest in his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury - he's completely moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others. They're the second-handers. Look at our so-called cultural endeavors. A lecturer who spouts some borrowed rehash of nothing at all that mans nothing at all to him - and the people who listen and don't give a damn, but sit there in order to tell their friends that they have attended a lecture by a famous name. All second-handers. page 605 + If I were Ellsworth Toohey, I'd say: aren't you making out a case against selfishness? Aren't they all acting on a selfish motive - to be noticed, liked, admired? -by others. At the price of their own self-respect. In the realm of greatest importance - the realm of values, of judgment, of spirit, of thought - they place others above self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn't need it. pages 605-606 + I think Toohey understand that. That's what helps him spread his vicious nonsense. Just weakness and cowardice. It's so easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is the strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence - such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence. page 606 - That, precisely, is the deadliness of second-handers. They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They're concerned only with people. They don't ask: `Is this true?' They ask: `Is this what others think is true?' Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull. What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egotists. You don't think through another's brain and you don't work through another's hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another. Not an entity, but a relation - anchored to nothing. That's the emptiness I couldn't understand in people. That's what stopped me whenever I faced a committee. Men without an ego. Opinion without a rational process. Motion without brakes or motor. Power without responsibility. The second-handers acts, but the source of his actions is scattered in every other living person. It's everywhere and nowhere and you can't reason with him. He's not open to reason. You can't speak to him - he can't hear. You're tried by an empty bench. A blind mass running amuck, to crush you without sense or purpose. Steve Mallory couldn't define the monster, but he knew. That's the drooling beast he fears. The second-handers. page 606 - I think your second-handers understand this, try as they might not to admit it to themselves. Notice how they'll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once. By instinct. There's a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They've got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them - because they don't exist within him and that's the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man. Look back on your own life, Howard, and at the people you've met. They know. They're afraid. You're a reproach. pages 606-607 - That's because some sense of dignity always remains in them They're still human beings. But they've been taught to seek themselves in others. Yet no man can achieve the kind of absolute humility that would need no self-esteem in any form. He wouldn't survive. So after centuries of being pounded with the doctrine that altruism is the ultimate ideal, men have accepted it in the only way it could be accepted. By seeking self-esteem through others. By living second-hand. And it has opened the way for every kind of horror. It has become the dreadful form of selfishness which a truly selfish man couldn't have conceived. And now, to cure a world perishing from selflessness, we're asked to destroy the self. Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You've wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's ever held a truly personal desire, he'd find the answer. He'd see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion - prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can't say about a single thing: "This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me." Then he wonders why he's unhappy. page 607 + Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing. But now we are taught to throw everything within us into public light and common pawing. To seek joy in meeting halls. We haven't even got a word for the quality I mean - for the self-sufficiency of man's spirit. It's difficult to call it selfishness or egotism, the words have been perverted. page 607 + If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others. page 607 - What do you ... want ... Ellsworth? Power, Petey. page 634 - I've always said just that. Clearly, precisely and openly. It's not my fault if you couldn't hear. You could, of course. You didn't want to. Which was safer than deafness - for me. I said I intended to rule. Like all my spiritual predecessors. But I'm luckier than they were. I inherited the fruit of their efforts and I shall be the one who'll see the great dream made real. I see it all around me today. I recognize it. I don't like it. I didn't expect to like it. Enjoyment is not my destiny. I shall find such satisfaction as my capacity permits. I shall rule. Whom? You. The world. It's only a matter of discovering the lever. If you learn how to rule one single man's soul, you can get the rest of mankind. It's the soul, Peter, the soul. Not whips or swords or fire or guns. That's why the Caesars, the Attilas, the Napoleons were fools and did not last. We will. The soul, Peter, is that which can't be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get your fingers on it - and the man is yours. You won't need a whip - he'll bring it to you and ask to be whipped. Set him in reverse - and his own mechanisms will do your work for you. Use him against himself. Want to know how it's done? See if I ever lied to you. See if you haven't heard all this for years, but didn't want to hear, and the fault is yours, not mine. There are many ways. Here's one. Make man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and his integrity. That's difficult. The worst among you gropes for an ideal in his own twisted way. Kill integrity by internal corruption. Use it against itself. Direct it toward a goal destructive of all integrity. Preach selflessness. Tell man that he must live for others. Tell men that altruism is the ideal. Not a single one of them has ever achieved it and not a single one ever will. His every living instinct screams against it. But don't you see what you accomplish? Man realizes that he's incapable of what he's accepted as the noblest virtue - and it gives him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness. Since the supreme ideal is beyond his grasp, he gives up eventually all ideals, all aspirations, all sense of his personal value. He can't be good halfway or honest approximately. To preserve one's integrity is a hard battle. Why preserve that which one knows to be corrupt already? His soul gives up its self-respect. You've got him He'll obey. He'll be glad to obey - because he can't trust himself, he feels uncertain, he feels unclean. That's one way. Here's another. Kill man's sense of values. Kill his capacity to recognize greatness or to achieve it. Great men can't be ruled. We don't want any great men. Don't deny the conception of greatness. Destroy it from within. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional. Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept - and you stop the impetus to effort in all men, great, or small. You stop all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection. Laugh at Roark and hold Peter Keating as a great architect. You've destroyed architecture. Build up Lois Cook and you've destroyed literature. Hail Ike and you've destroyed the theater. Glorify Lancelot Clokey and you've destroyed the press. Don't set out to raze all shrines - you'll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity - and the shrines are razed. Then there's another way. Kill by laughter. Laughter is an instrument of human joy. Learn to use it as a weapon of destruction. Turn it into a sneer. It's simple. Tell them to laugh at everything. Tell them that a sense of humor is an unlimited virtue. Don't let anything remain sacred in a man's soul - and his soul won't be sacred to him. Kill reverence and you've killed the hero in man. One doesn't reverence with a giggle. He'll obey and he'll set no limits to his obedience - anything goes - nothing is too serious. Here's another way. This is most important. Don't allow men to be happy. Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free men. So kill their joy in living. Take away from them whatever is dear or important to them. Never let them have what they want. Make them feel that the mere fact of a personal desire is evil Bring them to a state where saying "I want" is no longer a natural right, but a shameful admission. Altruism is of great help in this. Unhappy men will come to you. They'll need you. They'll come for consolation, for support, for escape. Nature allows no vacuum. Empty man's soul - and the space is yours to fill. ... The farce has been going on for centuries and men still fall for it. pages 634-637 + But if ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that it's your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself - that will be the man who's not after your soul. That will be the man who has nothing to gain from you. But let him come and you'll scream your empty heads off, howling that he's a selfish monster. page 637 - You're afraid to see where it's leading. I'm not. I'll tell you. The world of the future. The world I want. A world of obedience and of unity. A world where the thought of each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thought of the brain of his neighbor who'll have no thought of his own but an attempt to guess the thought of the next neighbor who'll have no thought - and so on. page 637 - I just forced to sell your soul. You've used people at least for the sake of what you could get from them for yourself. I want nothing for myself. I use people for the sake of what I can do to them. It's my only function and satisfaction. I have no private purpose. I want power. I want my world of the future. Let all live for all. Let all sacrifice and none profit. Let all suffer and not enjoy. Let progress stop. Let all stagnate. There's equality in stagnation. All subjugated to the will of all. Universal slavery - without even the dignity of a master. Slavery to slavery. A great circle - and a total equality. The world of the future. pages 638-639 - They jerked the wires and you moved. You were a ruler of men. You held a leash. A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends. page 660 + Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received - hatred. The great creators - the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors - stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered, and they paid. No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the slothful routine of their lives. His truth was his only motive. His own truth, and his work to achieve it in his own way. A symphony, a book, an engine, a philosophy, an airplane or a building - that was his goal and his life. Not those who heard, read, operated, believed, flew or inhabited the thing he had created. The creation, not its users. The creation, not the benefits others derived from it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men. His vision, his strength, his courage came from his own spirit. A man's spirit, however, is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego. The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power - that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He had lived for himself. And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement. Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant he needs a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes fro a single attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind. But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act - the process of reason - must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred. We inherit the products of the thoughts of other men. We inherit the wheel. We make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile. The automobile becomes an airplane. But all through the process that we receive from others is only the end product of their thinking. The moving force is the creative faculty which takes this product as material, uses it and originates the next step. This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It belongs to single, individual men. That which it creates is the property of the creator. Men learn from one another. But all learning is only the exchange of material. No man can give another the capacity to think. Yet that capacity is our only means of survival. Nothing is given to man on earth. Everything he needs has to be produced. And here man faces his basic alternative: he can survive in only one of two ways - by independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces nature alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary. The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men. The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself. The parasite lives second-hand. He needs others. Others become his prime motive. The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary. The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order to serve others. He preaches altruism. Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self. No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles. Men have been taught ever precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue. The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality - the man who lives to serve others - is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit? The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has the merit of having resisted and of considering his condition evil. But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man and he degrades the conception of love. But this is the essence of altruism. Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution - or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise the act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement. Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. But suffering is a disease. Should one come upon it, one tries to give relief and assistance. To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer - in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism. The creator is not concerned with disease, but with life. Yet the work of the creators has eliminated one form of disease after another, in man's body and spirit, and brought more relief from suffering than any altruist could ever conceive. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator in the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone. Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge, or act. These are functions of the self. Here the basic reversal is most deadly. The issue has been perverted and man has been left no alternative - and no freedom. As poles of good and evil, he was offered two conceptions: egotism and altruism. Egotism was held to mean the sacrifice of others to self. Altruism - the sacrifice of self to others. pages 678-681 + The code of the creator is built on the needs of the reasoning mind which allows man to survive. The code of the second-handers is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival. All that which proceeds from man's independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man's dependence upon men is evil. page 681 + Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence. page 681 + A man thinks and works alone. A man cannot rob, exploit, or rule - alone. Robbery, exploitation and ruling presuppose victims. They imply dependence. They are the province of the second-hander. page 682 + Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. page 683 + ... the integrity of a man's creative work is of greater importance than any charitable endeavor. Those of you who do not understand this are the men who're destroying the world. page 684


I find it fascinating that the Copyright for this book was 1943, then renewed in 1971, and 1993 by The Bobbs-Merrill Company of New York. If you took the time to read through the sections I quoted, I'm sure you will recognize things similar to my philosophy of life, particularly as I have striven to live my life. When Andrea proofed it she said some of the negatives should be positives, and some of the positives negative. She also said the quotes are very good examples of how philosophies of men are always learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth. Maybe this is a summary of of my life. I hope not.

The book does a wonderful job of capturing the evil of power and of those who seek power through plagiarism, through tearing others down, and through money. I don't buy into all of the ego, self-interest first stuff Ayn Rand writes about, but I do enjoy my work, like to focus on it and truly work at it, and I have spent much of my career fighting against those who have told me I was wrong or out in left field or what I'm working on is completely impractical. And then the changes we have been able to participate in are called wonderful by some, while others simply hold me responsible for their unemployment.

There is no way that the passages I marked will pass on the story, the framework, or the characters written about. The book is about an architectural student named Howard Roark (not Howard Roice), who is dispelled from school because he refuses to compromise his work and do as his instructors insist. It is his life story, along with the story off four other major players: Peter Keating; Ellsworth Toohey; and Gail Wynard.

Peter Keating is a fellow student who graduates at the head of his class. However, Howard spent his three years at architecture school living with Peter and his mother. Howard had designed all of Peter's successful projects. Peter went to work for Francon & Heyer, Architects, a traditional firm that borrowed most designs from the ancient Greeks. Peter would visit when he was stuck, and Howard would show him the errors of his designs and in effect continued to do the design on the projects which made Peter famous. Howard went to work for Henry Cameron, an idealistic hard-nosed architect who had spent his career attempting to build things functionally, and tied to usage and environment. Peter played politics, got people fired, took their positions, and became the partner of Guy Francon. He even married Guy's daughter Dominique Francon, whom Howard had raped (yea, there was some of this type of stuff in the novel). Dominuqe left Peter and married Gail Wynard.

Ellsworth Toohey was a socialist/communist, who wrote in the newspaper and formed different study groups to become the promoters of his ideas and plans. Ellsworth is painted as a very enjoyable person, and it is only after 600 pages his true intentions of seeking power by tearing everyone else down come out. He is the prominent architectural critic, and as such he slams Howard Roark's work and builds up the work of those architects who pursue projects he is interested in and in the way he wants them pursued.

Howard Roark is discovered by Roger Enright, who has him build a house for him. This house becomes Howard's calling card, and he gets several commissions because others see and fall in love with the house. Including Gail Wynard, a self-made media mongol, who is the publisher of The Banner, a tabloid. He becomes good friends with Howard Roark, talks Dominique into leaving Peter, and ends up loosing Dominique to Howard.

It is fascinating how Ayn Rand takes the various characters and builds a caricature of all of the types of folks I have worked with in my career. The description of people copying Howard's work and taking credit for it perfectly describes people in several oil and service companies that have built their career on my ideas and work. The description of what it was like for Howard to be waiting on the next commission parallels what I have felt the last few years. The way the author describes Howard going to the granite pits and doing manual labor to meet ends is not unlike how I look at getting on the Katy Freeway some mornings. The way Ayn Rand describes those who work for money (power), position (power), connections (power), prestige (power), etc. is an apt summary of why it is so hard for me to work in a corporation with the petty politics and the other baloney.

And I guess the thing that most surprised me about this book was the name of the person it was about: Howard Roark. I recall at Aunt Mary's funeral someone, I think it was Big Roice or Aunt Elaine, talking about how Mom insisted that I be named Howard. I recall Dad telling me about how Mom first met him when Grandpa Hafen came by the farm to sell Grandpa Nelson some cattle, and Dad was working in the fields. I recall Mom describing how she had read every book in the St. George library, and how she fascinated she had been with the ones the Liberian's said she should avoid. Ayn Rand, like writers today, 60 years later, included in her novels information best avoided. As I was reading The Fountainhead, I had a picture come to my mind, and I have a question I would love to be able to ask my Mom, and obviously won't ask her in this life: Was I named for my Dad, or was I named for the hero, Howard Roark, in Ayn Rand's book The Fountainhead?"

I'm interested in sharing weekly a "thoughtlet" (little statements of big thoughts which mean a lot to me) with you because I know how important the written word can be. I am concerned about how easy it is to drift and forget our roots and our potential among all of distractions of daily life. To download any of these thoughtlets go to http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets or e-mail me at rnelson@walden3d.com.

With all my love,
Dad
(H. Roice Nelson, Jr.)

. . .

Copyright © 2004 H. Roice Nelson, Jr.