Atlas Shrugged & Wetiko

I decided to go into the belly of the beast recently and am watching the 3-part movie of Atlas Shrugged, closely based on the book except that it's set in 2016. That is the dominant, diseased ideology infecting all of us, and we need therapy to get out of it. And we must also replace it with a new, healthy meme, the collaborative commons.

Also see this article on Wetiko. We explored how wetiko capitalism has unconsciously infected the integral movement in the anti-capitalism thread, which also links to this very topic being addressed at the last Integral Theory Conference. One might also check out Carlson's work on integral ideology. And this article on how the left has unconsciously internalized the system of their oppressors.

Interestingly, in Atlas Shrugged the producers decide to no longer participate in the corrupt government/business alliance and withdraw altogether from participating in that system into their own hidden Atlantis. Granted Rand called that corrupt system socialism, that definition being based on the 50s conception from Russian socialism and Cuban communism. Still, it is ironic that Rand hated that sort of corrupt fascism and her followers now are completely embedded in it.


It seems these producers (aka job creators but no so much) decided they needed to infiltrate the system in order to change it. Hence their long-range plan succeeded as they own most of the legislatures and courts. And they no longer 'earn' monopoly status by being the best and brightest with the best products for the best price, but manipulate the system so that they create overpriced shit protected by a government they own..

Granted at base of Rand's system is greed and self-interest with the belief that those things in themselves generate social good. That is part of the Wetiko malaise. Plus the current collaborative commons is nothing like the socialism of her time, because it too can recognize and reward earned individual achievement but also place it in balance with communal needs. I.e., libertarian socialism, not state or totalitarian socialism. Hence her version of libertarianism went to extremes given her social context.