A Facebook friend quoted a comment about the movie version of Atlas Shrugged: "I get it now -- this is the capitalist/atheist rapture story." And I wanted to smack my own face with a slab of halibut for not having thought of that myself -- which I would have, if halibut weren't so expensive.
This brilliant insight evokes no fewer than two books of which I am author or co-author: one, a recently-digitally-published parody of the titanic Ayn Rand monstrosity, and the other, a more-timely-than-ever post-apocalyptic investment guide for those of us who, come May 21, will not have the pleasure of being swept up to Heaven prior to the onset of the seven years of (literally) hell on earth known as The Tribulation. That book (How to Profit from the Coming Rapture), published in 2008, bears the subtitle, "Getting Ahead When You're Left Behind," which says it all.
So I, more than any other person on Earth, should have seen the stark similarities between these two stories. The least I can do to make amends, now, is to compare the two, taking care to italicize their common elements.
First, the Christian Apocalypse:
At any moment, the skies will part, Jesus will appear, and those who have accepted Him as their personal savior will be airlifted up to Heaven. First the dead (or what's left of them) shall arise, and then the living. Everyone else (including all Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Scientologists) will remain here. Over the ensuing seven years, evil will proliferate, prompting our loving and merciful Heavenly Father to inflict upon mankind war, famine, pestilence, and a robust series of other catastrophes, including the seas turning to blood, the stars falling from the sky, an attack of invisible locusts, and the rise of the Antichrist.
He will be abetted by the False Prophet, his advance man/p.r. flack/comical sidekick. Oh, there will be men of virtue -- the Biblical sages Elijah and, probably, Moses will appear -- but they will be mocked and scorned.
Eventually Satan himself will "indwell" the Antichrist, and will lead the forces of Evil against the forces of Good, led by the descended Christ, in the final confrontation at the Battle(s) of Armageddon. SPOILER ALERT: Good wins. Satan will be chained to a rock in the Abyss, which is not a Goth night club but a chasm that isn't really Hell but is no picnic.
Then Jesus will leave Heaven and live amongst us. After this Thousand Year Reign, Satan will be released one last time, to meet his foretold destruction in the Lake of Fire. Finally -- and I mean finally -- the New Jerusalem, a city 1,500 miles wide, long, and high, will descend from the sky and land we-know-not-where. Not only will all believers move into this structure to live literally forever, each enjoying what we estimate to be an apartment one-half mile in each direction, but God himself will move in, too.
All this, and so much more, is set forth in blood-curdling but portfolio-maximizing detail in How to Profit from the Coming Rapture. Now let's compare this End Times scenario with the one set forth by the militantly-atheistic Ayn Rand. Of course, Atlas Shrugged is fiction not prophecy, although that hasn't stopped its Randian fans and acolytes from noticing "disturbing" parallels between its made-up story and the actual events of today as we live here, now, in the reality of the moments of our lives. Thus:
Some time in the near future, all the true producers of society disappear into "Galt's Gulch," a secret valley in Colorado, where an ideal society has been established for individually-invited achievers who (amusingly, considering Rand's disdain for unions) have elected to go on strike. In their absence, wicked men with icky names such as Wesley Mouch prevail; the economy grinds to a halt and society collapses, as it is manipulated and destroyed by the bad people, including bureaucrats, weaklings, corrupt union thugs, careerist scientists, moochers, leeches, looters, and (as I suggest in the parody) hoochie-koochers and koochie-koo-ers.
Of course, there are men of virtue, including Francisco d'Anconia, the supposedly dissolute playboy Chilean copper heir, and Ragnar Danneskjold, the strikingly attractive Swedish pirate. But they are mocked and scorned by the morally-bankrupt preeners and hypocrites of polite society.
Finally, when all seems lost, John Galt (the savior of capitalism) confronts the forces of Evil in a sixty-page radio address to the nation and the world. SPOILER ALERT: Evil is vanquished. The book ends with Galt escaping captivity and torture and leading his community of producers back into the world, to presumably inaugurate a thousand-year paradise of no taxes, no unions, no minimum wage, no socialism, no tripartite government, and no Jesus.
Rapture and Rand: What a couple of sexy, compelling twins! They're the Mary Kate and Ashley of late capitalist eschatology. Both offer unsparing moralistic revenge fantasies. Both solicit your agreement and your endorsement in exchange for your salvation. The constituencies for each display a cult-like belief in their own superiority, combined with a self-flattering view of themselves as bravely enduring persecution and unfair victimization. Both offer comic book notions of virtue and villainy as embodied in a winner-take-all melodramatic clash between one-dimensional characters. Both offer an irrefutable source of authority: For the Rapturists, it's the Bible. For the Randists, it's "rationality."
Coincidence? It's enough to make you believe that there really is a collective unconscious. Which myth you prefer depends on, as the Randians say, "your premises." I don't know why some of the Rapturists have chosen May 21 (at least the Mayans give us another year to live), but we'll see what happens. Or doesn't.
Not that it will matter to the believers. The point of a cult isn't to be right -- to promulgate an accurate picture of one's real life or of the world, or to correctly predict the future. It's to feel special. Maybe the Church Lady had it right all along. Bad news for you, SATAN!
Follow Ellis Weiner on Twitter: www.twitter.com/EllisWeiner
Michael Shermer: Why Liberals Should See (and Like) Atlas Shrugged Part 1
The Ayn Rand Institute: A Brief Biography of Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011) - IMDb
'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years - WSJ.com
Picked up the book, read the blurbs and the first chapter, bought the book, loved the book. I'm now ready to make my post-apocalyptic fortune.
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Unless there are zombies. Hm. I think I'm gonna need another book...
Ellis - I read your book How to Profit from the Coming Rapture, loved it, and plan on getting rich on its advice come post-May 21.
Bravo.
1) The vast majority of people in the country who support the Republican Party, its base, are conservative religious types. For them morality is primarily personal and is all about responsibility. Their main motivating issues are abortion and being against Muslims and Gays.
2) They are led by an intelligentsia that are committed devotees of Ayn Rand and extreme economic libertarianism. For them the primary philosophy is all about self will. Their main motivating issues are reducing government to the point you can drown it in a bath tub. BUT... they are willing to reframe these ideas in terms of personal responsibility to sell them to the religious masses that make up the base and they will modify their Randism to support or pretend to support the anti-libertarian issues of being against abortion, Muslims and Gays.
Both these first two groups are "true believers."
3) The politicians themselves and the full time political operatives are the next group. Some of them come from these groups. But most are pragmatists who realize catering to these groups is how to stay in power. But all of these folk are serving the real masters of the Republican Party who are group 4.
continued
4) The plutocrats who own the political machine and the propaganda machine and actually give the orders to the politicians who do their will and direct the media systems that frame what's in the best interest of the plutocrats in a way that appeals to the intelligentsia Randian true believers and the base Religious Right true believers. But the plutocrats don't believe in ANYTHING but what is in their best interest. They don't believe in conservative religion or in Rand's objectivism. They believe in their vast wealth and are willing to sacrifice everyone else for it.
There's no Rapture, either.
There's also no passage where it says the Jews are saved in the end.
If it needed saying, there is nothing atheistic about objectivism, no more than communism. It is just an arbitrary attribute that isn't necessary for the ideology.
Commenting there, I learned one can relate these kind of ideas to anything. I got into a conversation with one of the people there about The Legend of Zelda of all things and they pointed out how the story of the series game Ocarina of Time roughly mirrored Left Behind if you looked at it from the right angle. (That is the protagonist of said game up there as my avatar, BTW). The game involves a prophecy (dreamed by a princess), a hero who is "taken into another realm" for a while, seven years of rule under a demonic evil-McEvil tyrant after which the hero awakens, does stuff, and has a final climatic showdown with the aforementioned superevil after which peace is restored to the kingdom. However, the hero doesn't exactly get to enjoy the peace he brings everyone...
2-dimentional good vs evil story, seven years of a world suffering under evil...
I used to be into LB-type theology. Currently, I'm not sure what to make of Revelation or any of that. Some say it's more about Rome than the future. *Shrug.*
Wait--the hero does stuff? That's MY idea. (Yeah, the less-insane believe that Revelation is about the Roman Empire. But where's the fun in that?)
More exciting than LB since, as I recall and as Slack enjoys pointing out, the protagonists of the story don't do much "stuff" - they spend most of their time waiting for phone calls and yakking about prophecy and how they're mostly powerless in the face of it. Er, it's been years since I read any of those books, though.
Once upon a time, there was a society -- I'll call it Fuckingshitistan -- dominated by hypocritical fundie Christians, greedy businessmen, and militaristic jerks. However, not one member of these three groups had read "The Prophecies of Gilligan and Fonzie". "TPoGaF" says "S/he who hath not accepted tolerance as a rational way of life, and who hath not admitted that the '60s were a really great time, shall not have a fun hereafter."
Suddenly, a blue light encircled the world and everything in Fuckingshitistan vanished. All who had obeyed "TPoGaF" got sent to a world in which they were surrounded by everything that they liked (and had supported). All who had ignored the prophecies were surrounded by whatever angered them: the hypocritical fundie Christians had to spend eternity in a gay pride parade, the greedy businessmen had to spend eternity without the right to pollute, and the militarists had to spend eternity on Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love.
The end
Rand gives me the sense that she abused her privilege of living in this country, despite her freedom of speech. Most people who migrated to the U.S. in the early 20th Century, even if they had a hard go of it here, appreciated the opportunity and didn't complain because they knew they had left even worse conditions back in their home countries. Rand, by contrast, developed a grievance attitude towards the American people who had given her refuge from communism, let her become a citizen and made her financially comfortable by buying her novels. She returned the favor by publishing a novel which calls most of them bums, moochers, looters, thugs, derelicts, etc., and shows that they don't deserve to live because they don't meet her fantasy standards.
And of course, YOU are an atheist with respect to Mithra, Zoraster, Odin, Kali, Rama, Vishnu, Isis, Allah, Zeus, Neptune, Osiris, etc. You deny the existence of ALL gods except for the Xian ones. At least atheists like myself are consistent in our thinking.
"My imaginary friends in the sky are REAL--everyone else's imaginary friends are made up!"
All praise the Holy Dot
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